Between Two Bridges

BWD and Link Dump

2009-01-24T23:04:00.007+04:00

My fellows Americans, here are your tax dollars at work.

The criminal murders of hundreds of innocent children in Gaza are war crimes. Where are the American right to lifers? Aren't these babies, too? You, the American taxpayer, enabled these crimes. There must be justice for these children and their families. Israel is a nation of war criminals. They are the new Nazis. Israel was founded on acts of terrorism and war crimes. The Zionists are some of the worst people in the world. While the Jewish people deserve a homeland safe from the possibility of any Holocaust, they don’t have the right to do this. They have become the people who tried to wipe their people from the earth. They must be stopped. There is no other way.

International Tribunal to Save Israel and Palestinians by Daoud Kuttab and Ilan Ziv

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daoud-kuttab/international-tribunal-to_b_159285.html

Israel’s Lies by Henry Siegman

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n02/sieg01_.html

Children of Gaza by Rory McCarthy

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/23/gaza-children-killed-israel

War Crimes Accusations Mount Against Israel by Rebecca Shapiro

h ttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/rebecca-shapiro/war-crimes-accusations-mo_b_160441.html

Why Do They Hate The West So Much We Will Ask by Robert Fisk

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090109_why_do_they_hate_the_west_so_much_we_will_ask/

UN Suspends Gazan Relief Operation

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7818577.stm

Israel Shelled Palestinians After Evacuating Them, UN Says by Jo Adetunji

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/09/gaza-palestinians-israel-evacuees-zeitoun

Neoconservatism Dies in Gaza by Juan Cole

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/01/08/gaza/

Both Parties Cheerlead Still More Loudly for Israel’s War by Glenn Greenwald

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/01/08/israel/

Obama Camp “Prepared to Talk to Hamas” says The Guardian by Jeffrey Feldman

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-feldman/obama-camp-prepared-to-ta_b_156405.html

The Time of the Righteous by Gideon Levy

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1054158.html

For ex-President George W. Bush and ex-Vice President Dick Cheney and most who served in Bush’s criminal administration, there must be justice. They committed war crimes and must be brought to justice. They are responsible for the deaths of thousands of young American men and women and countless Iraqi and Afghan men, women and children based on lies. They must be put in prison as the common criminals they are. Dick Cheney and his companies profited from the wars he started and that money should be repaid to the US government. There is no other way.

W. and the Damage Done by Vincent Rossmeier and Gabriel Winant

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2009/01/08/damage/

For the hundreds of Wall Street executives who took money from the US taxpayers, hard-earned money that the US government doesn’t even have, and used it to redecorate their offices and go on expensive retreats and pay outrageous bonuses to people who basically drove their companies and with them the American and thus the global economy into the ditch. They must be brought to justice. There is no other way.

What should be a joyous celebratory time as a new president, the first Afro-American president, has taken over from the disastrous catastrophe of the last eight years; it is instead a time filled with grave danger and important litmus tests. It’s not President Obama’s fault. It’s the fault of every goddamned one of you stupid Americans who pulled the lever or marked the box that put George W. Bush in power, twice. Shame on you and shame on the disaster you’ve brought to your country. There is blood on your hands and there is a bleak economic future awaiting your children. It’s your fault.

Obama Must Halt America’s Moral Decline by William Pfaff

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090122_obama_must_halt_americas_moral_decline/

Expect the World Economy to Suffer Through 2009 by Bremmer and Roubini

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123267029592108287.html

2009 and The New Nazis

2009-01-04T21:56:00.006+04:00

I was so hoping that 2009 was going to be a much better year than 2008. In December 2008 I flew to Langkawi, Malaysia and had one of the best vacations of my life. It’s a beautiful island. I did one night in Singapore on the return flight to Abu Dhabi and have it on my list to visit again. The pictures are posted online just use the link on the side that says Jack’s Pictures. Then on Boxing Day I bought a pup, Joe the Cocker Spaniel. He’s really a great dog, very well-behaved and sweet and friendly. A few pictures of him are posted there, too. He’s adjusting to life in a flat and the city pretty well. But, I have to write about something else and it’s a subject I’ve been to again and again and nobody listens.

The Israelis are the new Nazis. What a sad, shameful commentary on what should be a proud, noble country. Here’s what the Israelis want you to remember and never forget and they’re right about that. The world should never forget!!

This is from the Jewish Holocaust.

And this is from the Jewish Holocaust.

Now, here is what the Israeli Nazis want you to forget.

This is a war crime. This is a Lebanese child murdered by the Israeli military using weapons from the United States in their war against Hezbollah a few years ago.

This is another war crime. This is a Palestinian child in Gaza murdered by the Israeli military using weapons from the United States only this week.

This cannot continue. I watch CNN International and I am embarrassed as it spews the talking points of the new Nazis. The rockets that Hamas fire into Gaza are their major talking point. What a load of crap. How can anyone with half a brain believe anything they say? The Israelis never kill anyone but “suspected militants”. The “suspected militants” are freedom fighters trying to establish a country of their own. The Israeli Nazis are as criminal as the Bush regime and should be brought before the World Court on charges of war crimes. Both the Bush administration and the current Israeli government need to face justice.

Bush pushed the Palestinians to have elections even though everyone told him the outcome—Hamas would be elected. Then once the people voted in free and fair elections, the Bush junta along with Israel has tried to destroy them. Doesn’t the world even know or care that Hamas was started with help from the Mossad as a counter to Yassir Arafat? Just like the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan was started by the CIA to fight the Russians. What goes around comes around, huh?

The Israeli Nazis have held Gaza under siege for over a year with the land, air and sea crossings blockaded. The people there are dying of hunger and a lack of medical and basic supplies. I heard President-Elect Obama say that if someone were lobbing missiles at his house with his daughters in it he would do everything to stop them. What if they were laying siege to Chicago and food and medicine and basic supplies could not reach your family? What would you do then Mr. President-elect? Please give us change we can believe in and not the same old tired crap we’ve heard over and over again for countless years.

It’s time for the United States to be a real friend to Israel and help them save themselves. While the Israeli lobby holds many world politicians in the palm of their hand, the people of the world are sick of the senseless slaughter and war crimes of the new Israeli Nazis. Scream it, shout it, tell your elected officials that this must end.

Party to Murder by Chris Hedges
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20081229_party_to_murder/

Leaders Lie, Civilians Die and Lessons of History are Ignored by Robert Fisk
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20081229_leaders_lie_civilians_die_and_lessons_of_history_are_ignored/
Rules of Engagement from Baghdad to Gaza by David Bromwich
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-bromwich/rules-of-engagement-from_b_154669.html

Happy Thanksgiving

2008-11-22T17:27:00.003+04:00

Thanksgiving is less than a week away. After Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday, I fly out to Singapore and then Langkawi for a ten-day break at a beach resort / spa there. I know that given the current global financial situation, it may seem stupid, but I’ve done stupid things before.

Just wanted to make a few comments about having watched the global financial / economic crisis unfold. The first thing is about the Bush bail out. In his administration’s typical fashion, meaning that everything they’ve touched has turned to shit and criminal, the entire bail out is a joke and it’s not working. This has undoubtedly been the most inept presidential administration I have witnessed in my lifetime. They can’t accomplish anything worthwhile. Can we make it until 20 January?

It’s all so obvious that those in charge just don’t get it. The government used the people’s money to bail AIG out and AIG used some of the money for luxury trips for their staff. The three CEOs of the Big Three automakers flew to beg money from the government in three separate private jets. Then you see the typical Republican talking points about labor costs and labor unions being one of the root causes of the automakers troubles. These are people of the lowest order. The scum of the worst of American politics.

Should the government help save the automakers or not? I honestly don’t know.

Read these for more.

The Simple Arithmetic of Hank Paulson’s Financial Disaster by David Fiderer
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-fiderer/the-simple-arithmetic-of_b_145389.html

You Got Screwed, CEOs Made A Fortune by Jonathan Tasini
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jonathan-tasini/you-got-screwed-ceos-made_b_145125.html

We’ve Been Down This Road Before: A Great Depression Quiz by Jacob Savage
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jacob-savage/weve-been-down-this-road_b_145542.html

Bailout or Bust: How to Save the Big Three From Themselves by Titus Levi
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20081120_how_to_save_the_big_three_from_themselves/

Below is the full text of an article about my hometown. Huntington, WV was named the unhealthiest city in the US. Thanks to David Lebo for sending me the link.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27697364/

W. Virginia town shrugs at being fattest city
Huntington characterized as obese, toothless and poor in recent report
The Associated Press
updated 7:02 p.m. ET Nov. 17, 2008

HUNTINGTON, W.Va. - As a portly woman plodded ahead of him on the sidewalk, the obese mayor of America's fattest and unhealthiest city explained why health is not a big local issue.

"It doesn't come up," said David Felinton, 5-foot-9 and 233 pounds, as he walked toward City Hall one recent morning. "We've got a lot of economic challenges here in Huntington. That's usually the focus."

Huntington's economy has withered, its poverty rate is worse than the national average, and vagrants haunt a downtown riverfront park. But this city's financial woes are not nearly as bad as its health.

Nearly half the adults in Huntington's five-county metropolitan area are obese — an astounding percentage, far bigger than the national average in a country with a well-known weight problem.

Huntington leads in a half-dozen other illness measures, too, including heart disease and diabetes. It's even tops in the percentage of elderly people who have lost all their teeth (half of them have).

It's a sad situation, and a potential harbinger of what will happen to other U.S. communities, said Ken Thorpe, an Emory University health policy professor who is working with West Virginia officials on health reform legislation.

"They may be at the very top, but obesity and diabetes trends are very similar" in many other communities, particularly in the South, Thorpe said.
Huntington's health problems, cited in a U.S. health report, are a terrible distinction for the city, but the locals barely talk about it. Many don't even know how poorly the city ranks.

Culture and history are at least part of the problem, health officials say.
This city on the Ohio River is surrounded by Appalachia's thinly populated hills. It has long been a blue-collar, white-skinned community — overwhelmingly people of English, Irish and German ancestry.

For decades, Huntington thrived with the coal mines to its south, as barges, trucks and trains loaded with the black fuel continually chugged into and past the city. There were plenty of manufacturing jobs in the chemical industry and in glassworks, steel and locomotive parts. Nearly 90,000 people lived in the city in 1950.
The traditional diet was heavy with fried foods, salt, gravy, sauces, and fattier meats — dense with calories burnt off through manual labor. Obesity was not a worry then. Workplace injuries were.

Heart disease, little exercise

But as the coal industry modernized and the economy changed, manufacturing jobs left. The city's population is now fewer than 50,000, and chronic diseases — many of them connected to obesity — seem much more common.

Shari Wiley is a nurse at St. Mary's Regional Heart Institute in Huntington. She runs a program that identifies heavy school children and tries to teach them better eating and exercise habits. The effort began because of an alarming trend.

"A lot of the patients we were seeing were getting heart attacks in their 30s. They were requiring open heart surgery in their 30s. And we were concerned because it used to be you wouldn't see heart patients come in until they were in their 50s," Wiley said.

Huntington is essentially tied with a few other metropolitan areas for proportion of people who don't exercise (31 percent), have heart disease (22 percent) and diabetes (13 percent). The smoking rate is pretty high, too, although not the worst.
However, the Huntington area is a clear-cut leader in dental problems, with nearly half the people age 65 and older saying they have lost all their natural teeth. And no other city comes close to Huntington's adult obesity rate, according to the report by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, based on data from 2006.

Perhaps fittingly, hospitals are now Huntington's largest employers. Another is Marshall University, home of the "Thundering Herd" football team depicted in the 2006 film "We Are Marshall" which dominates local sports conversations.
People 'can't afford to get healthy'

The river runs along the edge of town, but it's not a focal point. Marshall and one of the city's remaining factories sit to the east with several blocks of hotels and office buildings farther west. A new complex called Pullman Square — which includes a movie theater and a Starbucks — is trying to become a retail and dining center and illustrates a transition to a service economy.

The area's unemployment rate was about 5 percent in September, actually a bit better than the 6.1 percent national average that month. But often the jobs are not high-paying. Many workers lack health insurance, and corporate wellness programs — common at large national companies — are rare.

Poverty hovers, with the area rate at 19 percent, much higher than the national average. In the hilly coal fields to the South, people still live in houses or trailers with drooping, battered roofs. They stare hard at any stranger in a new car. In Huntington and its outskirts, many people think of exercise and healthy eating as luxuries.

The economy needs to pick up "so people can afford to get healthy," said Ronnie Adkins, 67, a retired policeman, as he sat one recent morning on the smoking porch of the Jolly Pirate Donuts shop on U.S. 60.

Doughnut shops don't help either, of course. But breakfast pastry shops aren't the most common outlets for fatty food. Pizza joints are. They are seemingly on every block in some parts of the city. The Huntington phone book lists more pizza places (nearly 200) than the entire state of West Virginia has gyms and health clubs (149).
Hot dog places also abound, with the city hosting an annual hot dog festival every summer. "I've never seen so many places that are hot dog oriented. I guess it's a cultural thing. Appalachian," said Mayor Felinton, who grew up in Maryland and moved to Huntington to attend Marshall University and stayed put.

Fast food has become a staple, with many residents convinced they can't afford to buy healthier foods, said Keri Kennedy, manager of the state health department's Office of Healthy Lifestyles.

Kennedy said she had just seen a commercial that presented "The KFC $10 Challenge." The fried-chicken chain placed a family in a grocery store and challenged them to put together a dinner for $10 or less that was comparable to KFC's seven-piece, $9.99 value meal.

"This is what we're up against," said Kennedy, noting it's an extremely persuasive ad for a low-income family that is accustomed to fried foods. "I don't know what you do to counter that."

Lack of exercise is another concern. During a warm and sunny autumn week in Huntington — the kind of weather that would bring out small armies of joggers in some cities — it was unusual to see a runner or bicyclist. The exercise that does occur is mostly confined to a local YMCA, at campus recreation facilities at Marshall, or at Ritter Park in a tony neighborhood south of downtown.

Some attribute the problem to crumbling sidewalks in the city and a lack of walkways along busy rural roads. Others blame it on lack of motivation, as well as a cultural attitude that never included exercise for health.

There's a connection between education and lack of exercise, too, said Dr. Thomas Dannals, a Huntington family physician.

"The undereducated don't know the value of it. They don't have the drive for it. There's a reason you're successful, you've got drive. The same is true for exercise," said Dannals.

Dannals has been trying to change cultural attitudes. The local newspaper has called him "an exercise evangelist" for founding the city's triathlon, marathon and other projects designed to make exercise popular and fun. He's also spearheading a riverfront exercise trail project, called the Paul Ambrose Trail for Health (PATH).
Ambrose was a Huntington physician who died in the Sept. 11, 2001, jet that crashed into the Pentagon. Just before he died, he had been working on a U.S. Surgeon General report on obesity, and was on the plane that morning to attend an adolescent obesity conference in Los Angeles.

Few smoking restrictions

But the PATH project, first proposed more than a year ago, has yet to win the necessary funding. The lack of support is not surprising: Dannals can't even get a company to sponsor the Huntington marathon.

Local politicians tend to be equally tepid about improving health, said Dr. Harry Tweel, director of the Cabell-Huntington Health Department.

Smoking — a common sin in West Virginia — has been hard to control, Tweel said. When the health department tried to restrict smoking in local bars and restaurants, a group of local businesses fought it all the way to the state Supreme Court. (The restrictions were upheld in 2003.) Even hospitals have fought smoking restrictions in the past, Tweel said.

Other communities have taken more ambitious steps to control the amount of fat in local restaurant food. In July, the Los Angeles City Council placed a moratorium on new fast food restaurants in an impoverished area of the city with above-average rates of obesity. In 2006, New York City became the first U.S. city to ban artificial trans fats in restaurant foods. Other cities are considering similar measures.

Forget it, Tweel said. Not in Huntington.

"You're mentioning areas (of the country) that are well beyond this local region in accepting that kind of change," said Tweel.

"People here have an attitude of 'You're not going to tell me what I can eat.' The cultural attitude is 'My parents ate that and my grandparents ate that,"' he said.
Mayor Felinton echoed Tweel. Felinton had stomach surgery last year to help him lose weight and has been walking to work about three days a week. He has shed nearly 80 pounds and became sort of a local poster boy for weight loss. But in the midst of a re-election campaign last month, he said he had no plans to plunge into a fight over fat in restaurants.

"We want as much business as we can have here," said Felinton, who lost his recent re-election bid and leaves office in January. "As many restaurants as you have, it kind of enhances the livability. Maybe not the health."

Unusually obese place

To be fair, most people in Huntington don't seem to be aware of how poorly their city looks in national health statistics.

The latest numbers came from the CDC report, released in August, but little-publicized. It was based on survey data from 2006, comparing about 150 metropolitan areas. The Huntington area includes five counties — two in West Virginia, two in Kentucky and one in Ohio.

Of the 40 Huntington-area residents interviewed for this story, many had heard something about West Virginia being one of the unhealthiest states. But only one — Tweel — knew about the latest report showing how bad Huntington compared with other metro areas.

Some doctors, on hearing the statistics, noted the Huntington area is not in such bad shape by West Virginia standards. A recent state study found that health problems are significantly worse in the more rural coal counties to the south. But those places didn't show up in the CDC report, because they were too small.
Still, Huntington is an unusually obese place, said Dr. John Walden, chairman of the family and community health department at Marshall University's medical school.
Walden is a third generation physician in the area, but he's also traveled extensively around the world. He says it's always a little jolting coming home and realizing how obese his hometown is compared to the rest of the world.
"I don't know that I've ever been in a place where I've seen so many overweight people," he said.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27697364/

Well, to all my family and all my American friends, Happy Thanksgiving.

Ready for Vacation, But Before I Go

2008-11-15T15:34:00.002+04:00

I’m 54 years old and have been working as an expat for almost all of my last 22 years. From the years I worked in the United States I have managed to become eligible for a very minimal amount of social security. The bulk of my retirement is mine to create. Over these last few months I’ve seen my retirement investments decline at a disturbing pace. That’s why despite all the vital issues facing the world, I find myself reading and obsessing on the various economic crises rushing through the world.

Here’s a fairly gloomy article I read the other day from a writer at Forbes.

The Worst is Not Behind Us by Nouriel Roubini,
http://www.forbes.com/opinions/2008/11/12/recession-global-economy-oped-cx_nr_1113roubini.html

Here are links to two blogs which offer essential information on the current situations.

http://calculatedrisk.blogspot.com/

http://bonddad.blogspot.com/

The Bonddad blog is especially helpful in understanding the situation. He offers a lot of graphs but goes to great lengths to explain what the information is and what it means.

"The Shock Doctrine" by Naomi Klein is a very good book to read about the recent past economic policies and the meaning of “disaster capitalism”,

One of the most important crises which is getting drowned out by the economic crises is that of Israel and Palestine. With Nazi-style Bibi Nethanyahu looking poised to become the new leader of Israel, the time has come for the world to understand that Israel is not going to fix this holocaust-like problem they’ve created in Palestine. In the end Israel will destroy itself through its actions towards the Palestinians. We can’t allow that to happen. The Nazi Holocaust was a vile and criminal attempt to destroy a people of historic proportions. For the children of the Holocaust and all other Jews, there must be a safe, peaceful homeland for them. Israel is that homeland. That they are electing bad governments, stealing other people’s land, imprisoning innocent people among other things is destroying their country.

The world is going to have to adopt the South African model to solve this crisis. I know how distasteful it is to even consider, but it’s something that must be done. The countries of the world have done everything necessary to acknowledge the atrocities done to Jews. We can’t go back and change it. It’s done. Now, the world leaders must find the courage to put the sanctions and boycotts on Israel necessary to end these crimes against humanity in Palestine and to save Israel from itself.

There is also a very insightful and eye-opening book written by an Israeli historian regarding the founding of the state of Israel and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and the use of terrorism used to found the state of Israel. The book is called The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by Ilan Pappe. Read it because it’s an important tool for understanding this situation.

America, in a typically pandering and hypocritical fashion, considers itself a friend of Israel. It is not. It is an enabler. Friends shouldn’t let friends ethnic cleanse other people’s lands. Friends shouldn’t let friends barricade and embargo a small strip of overpopulated land creating hunger and disease on the ground. Friends shouldn’t let friends bomb and attack defenseless people. Below is the text of an article written by an Israeli journalist about this very point.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1035415.html

Gideon Levy / Let's hope Obama won't be a 'friend of Israel' By Gideon Levy Tags: occupation, Israel News

The march of parochialism started right away. The tears of excitement invoked by U.S. president-elect Barack Obama's wonderful speech had not yet dried, and back here people were already delving into the only real question they could think to ask: Is this good or bad for Israel? One after another, the analysts and politicians got up - all of them representing one single school of thought, of course ¬ and began prophesizing.

They spoke with the caution that the situation required, gritting their teeth as though their mouths were full of pebbles, trying to soothe all the fears and concerns. They searched and found signs in Obama: The promising appointment of the Israeli ex-patriots' son, whose father belonged to the Irgun, and maybe also Dennis Ross and Dan Kurtzer and Martin Indyk, who may, God willing, be included in the new administration.

But in the background, a dark cloud hovered above. Careful, danger. The black man, who had associated with Palestinian expats, who speaks of human rights, who favors diplomacy over war, who even wants to engage Iran in dialogue, who will allocate more funding for America's social needs than to weapons exports. He may not be the sort of "friend of Israel" that we have come to love in Washington, the kind of friend we have grown accustomed to.

What's the panic all about? The truth needs to be said: At the base of all of these fears is the angst that this president will push Israel to end the occupation and move toward peace.

Well, maybe Obama will not be a "friend of Israel." May the great change he is promising not omit his country's Mideast policy. May Obama herald not only a new America, but also a new Middle East.

When we say that someone is a "friend of Israel" we mean a friend of the occupation, a believer in Israel's self-armament, a fan of its language of strength and a supporter of all its regional delusions. When we say someone is a "friend of Israel" we mean someone who will give Israel a carte blanche for any violent adventure it desires, for rejecting peace and for building in the territories.

Israel's greatest friend in the White House, outgoing U.S. President George W. Bush, was someone like that. There is no other country where this man, who brought a string of disasters down upon his own nation and the world, would receive any degree of prestige and respect. Only in Israel.

Only in Israel does the prime minister place George Bush's portrait in his den, in his private home. Only in Israel does the prime minister travel to visit him in the White House.

That's because Bush was a friend of Israel. Israel's greatest friend. Bush let it embark on an unnecessary war in Lebanon. He did not prevent the construction of a single outpost. He may have encouraged Israel, in secret, to bomb Iran. He did not pressure Israel to move ahead with peace talks, he even held up negotiations with Syria, and he did not reproach Israel for its policy of targeted killings.

Bush also supported the siege on Gaza and participated in the boycott of Hamas, which was elected in a democratic election initiated by his own administration.

That's just how we like U.S. presidents. They give us a green light to do as we please. They fund, equip and arm us, and sit tight. Such is the classic friend of Israel, a friend who is an enemy, and enemy of peace and an enemy to Israel.

Let us now hope that Obama will not be like them. That he will reveal himself to be a true friend of Israel. That he will put his whole weight behind a deep American involvement in the Middle East, that he will try to solve the Iranian issue through negotiation - the only effective means. That he will help end the siege on Gaza and the boycott of Hamas, that he will push Israel and Syria to make peace, that he will spur Israel and the Palestinians to reach a settlement.

We should hope Obama will help Israel help itself, because that is how friendship is measured. That he will criticize its policy when he must, because that, too, is a test of true friendship.

Let him use his clout to end the occupation and dismantle the settlement project. Let him remember that human and civil rights also apply to the Palestinians, not only to black Americans. And apropos world peace, he needs to start with peace in the Middle East, home to the most dangerous of conflicts, which has been threatening the world for a century now, and is feeding international terrorism.

A true friend of Israel needs to remember that Israel may be "the only democracy in the Middle East," but not in its own backyard. That next to Sderot, which he visited, is Gaza. That "common values" must not include a cruel occupation. That friendship does not mean blind and automatic support.

Let him speak with Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas, as often as he can and with whomever is willing to talk. And let him do it before the next war, not after it. Let him remember that he has the power to do all that.

Changing the Middle East was in the power of each and every U.S. president, who could have pressured Israel and put an end to the occupation. Most of them kept their hands off as if it were a hot potato, all in the name of a wonderful friendship.

So bring us an American president who is not another dreadful "friend of Israel," an Obama who won't blindly follow the positions of the Jewish lobby and the Israeli government. You did promise change, did you not?

Now for something completely different. Despite the economic meltdown, Jack is taking a much needed vacation in early December. Below are the links to the Malaysian island where I’m going and the resort where I’m going to stay. I need the break.

http://www.langkawi-info.com/

http://www.langkawi-resorts.com/berjaya-langkawi/

The Day After

2008-11-05T22:32:00.000+04:00

The Day After

For the first time in eight long, hideous, embarrassing, humiliating years spent as an American living abroad, I can say today that I feel good about my country. It’s a good feeling.

I was not an early supporter of Barack Obama. I was a Hillary supporter. There was one simple reason. I didn’t trust that Hillary would always do the right thing, but I was sure that at least she would restore competency to government and some degree of respect for the country. I don’t believe Barack can walk on water or that he has all the answers or even most of the answers. I just know that he’s not a stupid, arrogant criminal who will push the US further down the path of self-destruction.

We’re in trouble. America is in trouble. The world is in trouble. George W. Bush, his entire administration, the Republican Party, the neo-conservatives and most American churches are to blame. They are responsible for bringing America and the world to this crisis point. To right itself, America must bring these people to justice. America needs to convene a truth and reconciliation committee to cleanse itself of the shame and blight of the last eight years. Blame for the failure of September 11^th, blame for the failure of the war in Afghanistan, blame for the shameless failure of government after Hurricane Katrina and blame for the illegal lies that led to the thousands of death in Iraq for no justifiable reason must be assigned to those responsible and they must be punished. THEY MUST BE HELD RESPONSIBLE AND PUNISHED!! Why are there no American leaders pushing for this judgment? What are they afraid of? Who do they think they are protecting? Why aren’t the people in the streets screaming and shouting for justice from the debacle of the last eight years? Are you afraid it will look bad on your resumes?

George W. Bush, his administration and the Republican Party have done more to destroy America than any of our enemies ever could. From the first days of the Bush presidency when a military submarine joyride for his supporters surfaced and sunk a boat killing several Japanese high school kids to the ignorance and arrogance that enabled the 9/11 attacks on America to the disaster of Katrina to the lies and incompetence of the Iraq war to the near-collapse of America’s economy and financial system, America has been ruled for the last eight years by a gang of white-collar criminals. Justice is necessary.

There is a fresh breeze today, a hope that America can right itself. I only hope it’s possible. That’s it’s not too late. Before America can move forward there must be perp walks. America needs to see George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and others marched in orange jumpsuits into a courtroom to face justice for the crimes they have committed. They have committed crimes. There’s no doubt and they need to be brought to justice. They should lose the wealth they’ve gathered from the wars and disasters they helped create and they should end out their years in a prison cell.

Lost in Reorganization

2008-03-28T19:21:00.003+04:00

Right. Missing again for a month or more. Hardly surprising. I'm a faithful journal writer and haven't even written in my journal for the same amount of time--months. With the help of a colleague, I bought fresh, colorful paint and had the flat painted. I still don't have it back together yet, and it's been over a month. I finally have everything framed and ready to go back on the wall and will try to have that done tomorrow. Then I can finally open that bottle of 12-year old Jameson's I've been saving for the occasion. It really took a lot more out of me emotionally than I'd ever expected. I had been living in a museum dedicated to a relationship that had ended three years ago. This is something I should have done about three years ago. Anyway, it stirred up a lot of things and I lost the thread a little bit, but now I feel like the place is all mine and I've almost gotten it to what I want.

The main reason I'm posting now is to let you know there's a new photo album at Jack's pictures. Just click on the Jack's Pictures link in the list on the right. Lorin, Janine, Pat and I took a desert balloon ride last weekend and saw the sun come up over the desert mountains. It was great, as the pictures show. If I get all the wall art up tomorrow I'll take some pics of the re-done flat so everyone can see. Then I'll get back to posting and bitching politics and list some really good books I've read and music I've been listening to. Maybe next weekend. Wish me luck.

Remake Remodel

2008-01-21T18:47:00.000+04:00

I've been busy with several projects including redecorating the flat. In the meantime read this recent piece about bubble boy's trip to the Middle East and I'll be back with something else soon.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080113_the_end_of_the_road_for_george_w_bush/

The End of the Road for George W. Bush
Posted on Jan 13, 2008
By Chris Hedges

The Gilbert and Sullivan charade of statesmanship played out by George W. Bush and his enabler, Condoleezza Rice, as they wander the Middle East is a fitting end to seven years of misrule. Despots stripped of power are transformed from monsters into buffoons. And this is the metamorphosis that is eating away at the Bush presidency.
Bush stood in Jerusalem, uncomfortable and palpably bored. He mouthed platitudes about a peace settlement that mocked the humanitarian crisis he aided and abetted in Gaza, the rapacious land grab by Israel in the West Bank and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The diminished George Bush, increasingly irrelevant at home and abroad, is fading into insignificance. A year from now one half expects to see him stand up at the next president’s inauguration and screech “I’m melting! I’m melting!” as he sinks into a puddle of slime. He will return, I expect, to his ranch, where he will be able to spend the rest of his life doing the only task for which he has shown any aptitude—cutting down brush with a chain saw.
He may yet rise again to torment us with an attack on Iran, condemning more innocents to slaughter. He and his cigar-smoking soul mate Ehud Olmert would like to go out with one more flash of mayhem and violence. But even this will not ultimately save him. Bush will soon be reduced to the cipher he once was, left to spend the rest of his life trying to salvage a legacy of shame and deceit. In a just world he would be put on trial, if not by the International Criminal Court of Justice then by the U.S. Congress. He would be forced to face up to his lies and wars of aggression. But the moral rot that infects the nation has seeped into the bowels of the legislative as well as the executive branch.

World leaders, including those whom Bush desperately wants to intimidate, now dismiss him. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said a few days ago that relations with the United States are of “no benefit to the Iranian nation. The day such relations are of benefit, I will be the first one to approve of that.”

Bush will have flown from Israel to Palestine to Kuwait to Bahrain to the United Arab Emirates to Saudi Arabia to Egypt in search of a legacy, one that he hopes will lift up his name in history. But, isolated and deluded, he has yet to grasp that he and the United States are reviled and detested for our violence, arrogance and greed. The bands played on the tarmac. He was toasted at state dinners. But even our allies, including Kuwait and Egypt, know Bush is a danger to himself and others.

He publicly displayed his inability to connect rhetoric with reality. He promised peace and cooperation, a new era, a Palestinian homeland. He promised solutions that will arise from negotiations that do not exist. Negotiations, in his eyes, are always about to begin. They were about to begin a year ago. They were about to begin with Annapolis. They are about to begin now. The messy issues between the Israelis and Palestinians that he and his administration have never attempted to address—the borders, the expanding Jewish settlements and outposts, the plight of Palestinian refugees and Jerusalem—will all be seamlessly solved ... one day. But the brutal reality of the Israeli occupation barrels forward. The Jewish settlements and outposts continue to be expanded. The crisis in Gaza, with the cuts in fuel and electricity, the deadly army incursions and airstrikes, has turned the world’s largest walled prison into a swamp of human misery. And huge new settlements, like Har Homa, continue to rise up on Palestinian soil.

When Bush met with the Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah he blithely defended the patchwork of Israeli roadblocks that have turned the West Bank into a series of ringed Palestinian ghettos. The roadblocks, he told Abbas, are necessary for Israeli security. He announced that the 1949 Green Line, the borders established by the United Nations, would never be restored. There would be no discussion, he said, of the status of Jerusalem. And the plight of Palestinian refugees would be solved by setting up an international fund, meaning, of course, that none would ever return. In short, he offered an unequivocal endorsement of right-wing Israeli policy with not a murmur of dissent. And the Palestinians can either have it rammed down their throat or rot. Bush will be back, he has promised, in May to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Jewish state. Olmert, no doubt, will again be fulsome in his praise, which is probably what Bush’s trip to the Middle East is, at its core, really about. Bush desperately wants someone to pretend with him that he is an agent for peace and statesmanship. Olmert, who knows the callow American leader will give him everything he desires, is happy to oblige.

But as Bush basks in the glow of his own fantasy, the suffering in Gaza, one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters, along with the savage occupation of Iraq, continues to fuel widespread anger and rage. Bush has spent his time in office bolstering the Middle East’s most despotic regimes, including that of Gen. Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. He approved a $20-billion arms package for these states. He has backed efforts to crush mainstream Islamic groups that have electoral legitimacy and popular support. He has stood by as these regimes have stifled democratic dissent, and he has, with Israeli encouragement, isolated governments, even friendly governments, in the Middle East that raised feeble protests. But his day is past. There is open revolt. Opinion polls show that two-thirds of Palestinians, and three-fourths of Israelis, do not believe Bush can affect events in the Palestinian territories.

The agenda of the Bush White House is exposed as irrelevant, myopic and counterproductive. Most Arab countries are in open defiance of Washington and are actively reaching out to Iran.
“As long as they [Iran] have no nuclear program ... why should we isolate Iran? Why punish Iran now?” Arab League Secretary-General Abu Moussa told The Washington Post.
The chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, is in Iran for talks. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad attended December’s Gulf Cooperation Council summit. The Iranian president attended the just-completed hajj in Mecca at the invitation of the Saudi monarch, King Abdullah. Tehran is exploring the resumption of diplomatic ties with Egypt, cut since the 1979 revolution, and has offered to cooperate with Cairo in the production of nuclear energy. And the Syrian and Lebanese governments have ignored Washington’s warnings to sever ties with Hezbollah and Hamas.

It is the end of the road for George Bush. The world takes less and less notice of him. He strutted and swaggered across the stage. He bellowed and raged. He plundered and murdered. And now he wants to be anointed as a peacemaker. His presidency, like his life, has been a tragic waste. But he at least he has a life. There are tens of thousands of mute graves in Gaza, Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan that stand as stark testaments to his true legacy. If he wants to redeem his time in office he should kneel before one and ask for forgiveness.
Chris Hedges, the former Middle East bureau chief for The New York Times and author most recently of “American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America,” can be found every other Monday on Truthdig.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080115_those_ungrateful_saudis/

Those Ungrateful Saudis by Robert Scheer

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080116_what_they_call_progress_in_iraq/

What They Call Progress In Iraq by Joe Conason

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joseph-a-palermo/the-terrific-news-in-iraq_b_81814.html

The Terrific News In Iraq by Joseph A. Palermo

Above are a few other links to interesting reads.

2007 rear end

2007-12-31T20:08:00.000+04:00

So, yeah, I’ve been busy and not in the mood to write. Tomorrow is New Year’s Day and I’m working so I’m having a quiet dinner at home this New Year’s Eve. Then we have a four-day weekend and I’m going to do a 2007 wrap-up. Check out Jack’s pictures to see photos from the Christmas dinner at Phil and Enma’s. It was very special this year. In the meantime, read this little piece below by Chris Hedges. There are also a couple of links following the piece that gives some disturbing information on the state of the US economy. That oughta cheer you up. Happy New Year!

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20071223_the_evangelical_rebellion/

The Evangelical Rebellion By Chris Hedges

The rise of Mike Huckabee as a presidential candidate represents a seismic shift in the tactics, ideology and direction of the radical Christian right. Huckabee may stumble and falter in later primaries, but his right-wing Christian populism is here to stay. Huckabee represents a new and potent force in American politics, and the neocons and corporate elite, who once viewed the yahoos of the Christian right as the useful idiots, are now confronted with the fact that they themselves are the ones who have been taken for a ride. Members of the Christian right, recruited into the Republican Party and manipulated to vote against their own interests around the issues of abortion and family values, are in rebellion. They are taking the party into new, uncharted territory. And they presage, especially with looming economic turmoil, the rise of a mass movement that could demolish what is left of American democracy and set the stage for a Christian fascism.

The corporate establishment, whose plundering of the country created fertile ground for a radical, right-wing backlash, is sounding the alarm bells. It is scrambling to bolster Mitt Romney, who, like Rudy Giuliani or Hillary Clinton, will continue to slash and burn on behalf of corporate profits. Columnist George Will called Huckabee’s populism “a comprehensive apostasy against core Republican beliefs.” He wrote that Huckabee’s candidacy “broadly repudiates core Republican policies such as free trade, low taxes, the essential legitimacy of America’s corporate entities and the market system allocating wealth and opportunity.” National Review’s Rich Lowry wrote that “like [Howard] Dean, his nomination would represent an act of suicide by his party.”

Huckabee spoke of this revolt on the “Today” show. “There’s a sense in which all these years the evangelicals have been treated very kindly by the Republican Party,” he said. “They wanted us to be a part of it. And then one day one of us actually runs and they say, ‘Oh, my gosh, now they’re serious.’ They [evangelicals] don’t want to just show up and vote, they actually would want to be a part of the discussion.”

George Bush is a happy stooge of his corporate handlers. He blithely enriches the oligarchy, defends a war that is the worst foreign policy blunder in American history and callously denies medical benefits to children. Huckabee is different. He has tapped into the rage and fury of the working class, dispossessed and abandoned by the mainstream Democrats and Republicans. And he refuses to make the ideology of the Christian right, with its dark contempt for democratic traditions and intolerance of nonbelievers, a handmaiden of the corporate establishment. This makes him a much more lethal and radical political force.

The Christian right is the most potent and dangerous mass movement in American history. It has been controlled and led, until now, by those who submit to the demands of the corporate state. But the grass roots are tired of being taken for rubes. They are tired of candidates, like Bush or Bill Clinton, who roll out the same clichés about working men and women every four years and then spend their terms enriching their corporate backers. The majority of American citizens have spent the last two decades watching their government services and benefits vanish. They have seen their jobs go overseas and are watching as their communities crumble and their houses are foreclosed. It is their kids who are in Iraq and Afghanistan. The old guard in the Christian right, the Pat Robertsons, who used their pulpits to deliver the votes of naive followers to the corporatists, is a spent force. Huckabee’s Christian populism represents the maturation of the movement. It signals the rise of a truly radical, even revolutionary force in American politics, of which Huckabee may be one of the tamer and less frightening examples.
Hints of Huckabee’s bizarre worldview seep out now and then. Bob Vander Plaats, Huckabee’s Iowa campaign manager, for example, when asked about his candidate’s lack of foreign policy experience, told MSNBC: “Well, I think Gov. Huckabee has a lot of resources that he goes to on national security matters. Here’s a guy, a former pastor, who understands a theological nature of this war as we’re fighting a radical religion in Islam.”

Robert Novak noted that Huckabee held a fundraiser last week at the Houston home of Dr. Steven Hotze. As Novak wrote, Hotze is “a leader in the highly conservative Christian Reconstruction movement.”

Huckabee has close ties with the Christian Reconstructionist or Dominionist branch of the Christian right. The Dominionist movement, which seeks to cloak itself in the mantle of the Christian faith and American patriotism, is small in numbers but influential. It departs from traditional evangelicalism. It seeks to redefine traditional democratic and Christian terms and concepts to fit an ideology that calls on the radical church to take political power. It shares many prominent features with classical fascist movements, at least as such movements are defined by the scholar Robert O. Paxton, who sees fascism as “a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cultures of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.”

Dominionism, born out of Christian Reconstructionism, seeks to politicize faith. It has, like all fascist movements, a belief in magic along with leadership adoration and a strident call for moral and physical supremacy of a master race, in this case American Christians. It also has, like fascist movements, an ill-defined and shifting set of beliefs, some of which contradict each other. Paxton argues that the best way to understand authentic fascist movements, which he says exist in all societies, including democracies, is to focus not on what they say but on how they act, for, as he writes, some of the ideas that underlie fascist movements “remain unstated and implicit in fascist public language” and “many of them belong more to the realm of visceral feelings than to the realm of reasoned propositions.”

Dominionism teaches that American Christians have been mandated by God to make America a Christian state. A decades-long refusal by most American fundamentalists to engage in politics at all following the Scopes trial has been replaced by a call for Christian “dominion” over the nation and, eventually, over the Earth itself. Dominionism preaches that Jesus has called on Christians to actively build the kingdom of God on Earth. America becomes, in this militant Biblicism, an agent of God, and all political and intellectual opponents of America’s Christian leaders are viewed, quite simply, as agents of Satan. Under Christian dominion, America will no longer be a sinful and fallen nation but one in which the Ten Commandments form the basis of our legal system, in which creationism and “Christian values” form the basis of our educational system, and the media and the government proclaim the Good News to one and all. Labor unions, civil rights laws and public schools will be abolished. Women will be removed from the work force to stay at home, and all those deemed insufficiently Christian will be denied citizenship.

Baptist minister Rick Scarborough, founder of Vision America and a self-described “Christocrat,” who attended the Texas fundraiser, has endorsed Huckabee. Scarborough, along with holding other bizarre stances, opposes the HPV (human papillomavirus) vaccine on grounds that it interferes with God’s punishment of sexual license. And Huckabee, who once advocated isolating AIDS patients from the general public and opposed increased federal funding in the search for a cure, comes out of this frightening mold. He justified his call to quarantine those with AIDS because they could “pose a dangerous public health risk.”

"If the federal government is truly serious about doing something with the AIDS virus, we need to take steps that would isolate the carriers of this plague,” Huckabee wrote. “It is difficult to understand the public policy towards AIDS. It is the first time in the history of civilization in which the carriers of a genuine plague have not been isolated from the general population, and in which this deadly disease for which there is no cure is being treated as a civil rights issue instead of the true health crisis it represents.”

Huckabee has publicly backed off from this extreme position, but he remains deeply hostile to gays. He has used wit and humor to deflect reporters from his radical views about marriage, abortion, damnation, biblical law, creationism and the holy war he believes we are fighting with Islam. But his stances represent a huge step, should they ever become policy, toward a theocratic state and the death of our open society. In the end, however, I do not blame Huckabee or the tens of millions of hapless Christians—40 percent of the Republican electorate—who hear his words and rejoice. I blame the corporate state, those who thought they could disempower and abuse the working class, rape the country, build a rapacious oligarchy and never pay a political price.

Chris Hedges, who graduated from seminary at Harvard Divinity School, is the author of “American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America.”

http://www.rollingstone.com/photos/gallery/17538811/dickheads_of_the_year

by Bill Maher

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-cesca/the-most-inappropriate-bu_b_78357.html

by Bob Cesca The Most Inappropriate Bush War Smirk of 2007

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/hale-stewart/news-flash-were-broke_b_78022.html

by Hale “Bonddad” Stewart News Flash: We’re Broke

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/hale-stewart/2008-economic-preview-no_b_78294.html

by Hale “Bonddad” Stewart Economic Preview for 2008: Not So Good

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/hale-stewart/what-to-watch-for-economi_b_78779.html

by Hale “Bonddad” Stewart What to Watch for Economically in Early 2008

Bye Bye November

2007-11-30T17:14:00.000+04:00

Okay, where was I?
You know, I don’t actually remember.
Hardly surprising, I’d say.
November was a busy month and I haven’t posted here since the first week of November. No problem, I’m doing it now. They really made a welcome change here when they moved the weekend to Friday, Saturday. Friday is such a great day to just relax and let the day make itself. It’s the last Friday in November and the weather is gorgeous. The windows are open and the a/c is off, for a change, so some of the smoke is getting aired out. The sky is cloudy, believe it or not. I’m a bit under the weather with a sinus-type cold. Everyone in my office has been sick for a week, so I’m not surprised. It could be worse; I haven’t had to take to the bed or anything. I’ve been doing some long-needed spring (?) cleaning around the flat.

In addition to being a work-heavy month, there’s also been more than my usual allotted time for socializing. It’s that time of year. In my earlier November post I alluded to some changes in my little blog. And, honestly, I do have some cool ideas for things I could do here. It’s just making the time and the effort to turn them into reality. Just have to see how things go. (Stop whining, Jack!) December will be another busy month, as usual. People come and visit during this period because the heat has backed off and the weather is really nice.

A co-worker from my former office, Chris, decided to retire and go to Cyprus with his wife. Since he and Rich live in Dubai, the goodbye “do” was held at the Fairmont. Quite a posh place, actually. My car was still awaiting a transmission transplant, so Sam drove us down. That was also so I could drink and not have to worry about driving home. We all met up in the downstairs bar and I had a vodka martini while we waited for the rest to arrive. Bruno was there. I hadn’t seen him since he left the institute well over 2 years ago. Patrick, Rich, Alan, Charlie (Alan’s wife—Charlotte), Sam and I made up the rest of the guest list along with Chris and his wife, Pam. We had dinner upstairs at the Spectrum. Food was quite good, as expected. There are a few pictures posted in Jack’s albums from that night.

Work has been work, details of which I am not really permitted to go into. Just believe me when I say it’s been busy. We also had over a week of really heavy fog to stumble through in the morning to work. Usually we have the odd day or so of fog, but this damn fog reappeared morning after morning. The first morning of the fog two instructors missed the turn for work and ended up way out in the desert. I was trying to drive in the fog too, but luckily had someone with me and he tried to get enough information to figure out where the instructors were and then we handed them over to someone else once we got to work to try and talk them back to the office. They finally arrived. Someone I share an office with ended up putting his car in the large roundabout not far from the main entrance to work. He was fine, only the car and his ego suffered mild damage.

Lorin’s son, Kris, flew in from Canada two weeks ago. I hadn’t seen him for years. He’s since married, has two sons and is a very successful computer (I don’t know the technical word) guy. Lorin scheduled us into the Burj Al Arab on Thursday for lunch. I’ve been there several times before, but only for the Friday brunch thing. I drove down from Abu Dhabi and met them in the lobby. We moved upstairs to the restaurant for our reservation. Riding up in the glass elevator, looking out over the Gulf and the construction of Palm Islands and The World is impressive, as is the view from the restaurant. We took our time and went over the set menu and ended up ordering from that. I was tacky and stuck with beer. I had this amazing Japanese beef that was too tender and juicy.

After eating, we took a stroll around the lobby, did a little shopping and then called for the cars. I followed Lorin, she knows Dubai and I just get angry and frustrated driving there on my own. First we stopped at the Madinat Jumeirah so Kris could do some shopping. I have to admit that it’s not my favorite shopping mall in Dubai and I was a little tired. There was also a MTV launch party going on for their new Arabic music channel. Several people, all in black, who had obviously spent way too much time and thought on what to wear and the correct positioning of facial hair, were there. Leaving the mall, I followed Lorin to the Safa Park area where her friend Naimi and family live. I hadn’t seen Naimi in years and we spent a pleasant hour or so with her and family. She has beautiful kids and they live in a great, older villa that has personality and warmth.

From there, I put Reynan and David into my car to take them back to Sharjah and Lorin and Kris were going down to Deira to have his new suit fitted. As is my habit, I got lost and when I get lost in Dubai I get frustrated and upset and feel feeble. We finally made it back to Sharjah, safe and sound on the American University of Sharjah campus and I immediately went for the Jameson’s. I was sitting on the patio in the back garden when Lorin and Kris returned.

Lorin and her entourage had come to Abu Dhabi earlier in the week. Tuesday, I think it was. She wanted to get Kris a carpet or two to take home to Canada and she has a shop in Abu Dhabi where she prefers to buy. I had planned to meet up with them at Peppino’s, an old Abu Dhabi tradition with great Italian food. As I was getting dressed to leave she called me to tell me that Peppino’s had gone dry. A quick adjustment in destination took us to PJ O’Reilly’s (obviously an Irish pub) at the downtown Meridian. It was a pleasant night so we ate outside on the upper deck, overlooking the swimming pool. Big, greasy burgers and fries were the popular choices, along with a couple pints of Kilkenny.

Back to Sharjah and on Friday Lorin had organized a brunch party for people to meet Kris before he flew out on Friday night, late. Finger food and drinks and a large crowd were on hand. Most of them know me from all the different AUS parties I’ve crashed with David and Lorin. I honestly was not in a partying mood and can’t really say why, not because it’s a secret, but because I didn’t know. I hadn’t shaved or even bothered to gel my hair and was just slobbing around in shorts, T-shirt and flip-flops. There were some people I knew there and we talked and that was enjoyable. Everyone emptied out about 6 or so and then we settled down to relax before dinner. I kept on drinking, which in hindsight might have been a mistake. At least I slept early. The drive back to Abu Dhabi was early Saturday afternoon with very little traffic.

And that brings me to last weekend’s Thanksgiving blowout at George’s. George’s large apartment was crammed with people and food. I knew many of the people there and felt comfortable. I even managed to meet a few new people. I arrived about 7:30 or so and after saying hello and chatting with several people I moved out to my usual spot on the balcony overlooking the Corniche and the gulf. There were a lot of other people out there smoking, too. Some people were from work so I see them almost every day, but have never socialized with them. It was a good chance to get to know them outside work. Everyone had a great time. I can’t remember what time George called everyone to dinner, probably after 9, and everyone moved around the table to grab food. The turkey was to die for and the table was filled with all the trimmings. It was really the best Thanksgiving I’ve had in years. Thank you George.

Next thing up is Christmas shopping. Cheers.

(Did you notice, no politics?)

First Tuesday in November

2007-11-06T21:56:00.000+04:00

All the dishes are done and I’m shaved and the clothes are laid out and everything is ready for another work day tomorrow. It’s 9:30 pm. The alarm goes off at 5 am as usual.

If you checked out my pix from my trip to the UK for last New Years you’d have seen the B & B that we stayed at while we were in the little village of Cherlton Bishop, near Exeter. It was owned and lovingly ran by a great couple, Jean and Ron Martin. Ron passed away on Sunday from cancer. I know it must be devastating for Jean and my heart goes out to her in what must be a very terrible time.

In happier news, I have my car back, after paying about 7,500 Dhs. to have a new transmission installed in addition to the 130,000 kilometer service. I really missed it and was extremely happy to return the rent-a-wreck and have my own car back.

Even though it’s only early November, the holiday visitors are starting to trickle in. Lorin’s son Kris arrives this weekend for a week. I should catch up with him the following weekend before he flies out. I haven’t seen him in 12 or 13 years. Now he’s married with two young sons. Then David’s brother Peter, whom we visited in Cherlton Bishop, is due in for a visit. Mark, Denise and daughter Clair are coming in for Mark’s birthday and Christmas. They’ll be staying with Phil and Enma.

What that means is that in terms of socializing the next two months will be full. We also have an extended National Day holiday coming up in early December and then another Eid coming up in late December, near Christmas. Any time off is always appreciated.

I’m working over in my head some changes to the blog. Time will be one of the major factors in trying to work those changes into actuality. Wish me luck. In the meantime, read Gore Vidal’s great piece on Bush for TruthDig.com.

http://www.truthdig.com/dig/item/20060207_president_jonah_redux/

President Jonah, Meet Oliver Cromwell by Gore Vidal
Today, as I sit, like so many Californians, at the heart of what seems to be a vast burning bush, I realize that Jehovah’s jinx of the weirdest American president is as operative in this lowering pre-Halloween season as it was last February when, guided by Scripture, I posted here on the Internet the bad news that our nominal president was seriously jinxed by an unrelenting deity who, from his throne of fire, now blows fiercely upon the west coast of the United States, spreading from San Diego to Malibu to Lake Arrowhead. Lucifer’s finest new-minted flames, a reminder to us, President Jonah’s Supreme Court-appointed subjects, that our ruler is triply cursed for his disobedience to obey his Lord not only long ago at Nineveh, but lately compounded by his inability to destroy all of Baghdad, a city hailed in that magical musical comedy, “Kismet,” by a song entitled “Never underestimate Baghdad.” But a jinxed president’s estimate is bound to be fatally wrong even in the eyes of his creator.

While contemplating the ill-starred presidency of G.W. Bush, I looked about for some sort of divine analogy. As usual, when in need of enlightenment, I fell upon the Holy Bible, authorized King James version of 1611; turning by chance to the Book of Jonah, I read that Jonah, who, like Bush, chats with God, had suffered a falling out with the Almighty and thus became himself a jinx dogged by luck so bad that when a Stone Age cruise liner, thanks to his presence aboard, was about to sink in a storm at sea, the crew for safety’s sake threw him overboard and—Lo!—the storm abated. The three days and nights he subsequently spent in the belly of a nauseous whale must have seemed like a serious jinx to the digestion-challenged mammal who extruded him much as the decent opinion of mankind has done to Bush.

Originally, God wanted Jonah to give hell to Nineveh, whose people, God noted disdainfully, “cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand,” (rather like the people of Baghdad who still cannot fathom what democracy has to do with their destruction at the hands of the Cheney-Bush cabal). But the analogy becomes even more precise when it comes to the plague of hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico that led to the Curse of Katrina upon a plainly incompetent president, as well as one who has been plainly jinxed by whatever faith he cringes before. Witness the ongoing screw-up of, say, prescription drugs, and the revival of an ancient race war in Louisiana. Who knows what further disasters are in store for us thanks to the curse Jonah is under? As the sailors fed the original Jonah to a whale, thus lifting the storm that was about to drown them, perhaps we the people can persuade President Jonah to retire to his other Eden in Crawford, Texas, taking his jinx with him. We deserve a rest. Plainly, so does he. Look at Nixon’s radiant features after his resignation! One can see former President Jonah in his sumptuous presidential library happily catering to faith-based fans with animated scriptures rooted in “The Pet Goat.”

Not since the glory days of Watergate and Nixon’s Luciferian fall has there been so much written about the dogged deceits and creative criminalities of our rulers. We have also come to a point in this dark age where there is not only no hero in view but no alternative road unblocked. We are trapped terribly in a now that few foresaw and even fewer can define despite a swarm of books and pamphlets like the vast cloud of locusts which dined on China in that ‘30s movie ”The Good Earth.”

As I mentioned last February, I have read many of these descriptions of our fallen estate, looking for one that best describes in plain English how we got to this now and where we appear to be headed once our good Earth has been consumed by fire and only Rapture is left to whisk aloft the Faithful. Meanwhile, the rest of us can learn quite a lot from ”Dark Ages America: The Final Phase of Empire” by Morris Berman, a professor of sociology at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.

I must confess that I have a proprietary interest in anyone who refers to the United States as an empire since I am credited with first putting forward this heretical view in the early ‘70s. In fact, so disgusted with me was a book reviewer at Time magazine who, as proof of my madness, wrote: “He actually refers to the United States as an empire!” It should be noted that at about the same time Henry Luce, proprietor of Time, was booming on and on about ”The American Century.” What a difference a word makes!

Berman sets his scene briskly in recent history. “We were already in our twilight phase when Ronald Reagan, with all the insight of an ostrich, declared it to be ‘morning in America’; twenty-odd years later, under the ‘boy emperor’ George W. Bush (as Chalmers Johnson refers to him), we have entered the Dark Ages in earnest, pursuing a short-sighted path that can only accelerate our decline. For what we are now seeing are the obvious characteristics of the West after the fall of Rome: the triumph of religion over reason; the atrophy of education and critical thinking; the integration of religion, the state, and the apparatus of torture—a troika that was for Voltaire the central horror of the pre-Enlightenment world; as well as, today, the political and economic marginalization of our culture.... The British historian Charles Freeman published an extended discussion of the transition that took place during the late Roman empire, the title of which could serve as a capsule summary of our current rulers: ”The Closing of the Western Mind.”

Mr. Bush, as God knows best, is no Augustine; but Freeman points to the latter as the epitome of a more general process that was underway in the fourth century: namely, ‘the gradual subjection of reason to faith and authority.’ This is what we are seeing today, and it is a process that no society can undergo and still remain free. Yet it is a process of which administration officials, along with much of the American population, are aggressively proud.” In fact, close observers of this odd presidency note that Bush, like his evangelical base, believes he is on a mission from God and that faith trumps empirical evidence. Berman quotes a senior White House adviser who disdains what he calls the “reality-based” community, to which Berman sensibly responds: “If a nation is unable to perceive reality correctly, and persists in operating on the basis of faith-based delusions, its ability to hold its own in the world is pretty much foreclosed.”

Berman does a brief tour of the American horizon, revealing a cultural death valley. In secondary schools where evolution can still be taught too many teachers are afraid to bring up the subject to their so often un-evolved students. “Add to this the pervasive hostility toward science on the part of the current administration (e.g. stem-cell research) and we get a clear picture of the Enlightenment being steadily rolled back. Religion is used to explain terror attacks as part of a cosmic conflict between Good and Evil rather than in terms of political processes.... Manichaeanism rules across the United States. According to a poll taken by Time magazine fifty-nine percent of Americans believe that John’s apocalyptic prophecies in the Book of Revelation will be fulfilled, and nearly all of these believe that the faithful will be taken up into heaven in the ‘Rapture.’

“Finally, we shouldn’t be surprised at the antipathy toward democracy displayed by the Bush administration. ... As already noted, fundamentalism and democracy are completely antithetical. The opposite of the Enlightenment, of course, is tribalism, groupthink; and more and more, this is the direction in which the United States is going. ... Anthony Lewis who worked as a columnist for the New York Times for thirty-two years, observes that what has happened in the wake of 9/11 is not just the threatening of the rights of a few detainees, but the undermining of the very foundation of democracy. Detention without trial, denial of access to attorneys, years of interrogation in isolation—these are now standard American practice, and most Americans don’t care. Nor did they care about the revelation in July 2004 (reported in Newsweek), that for several months the White House and the Department of Justice had been discussing the feasibility of canceling the upcoming presidential election in the event of a possible terrorist attack.” I suspect that the technologically inclined prevailed against that extreme measure on the ground that the newly installed electronic ballot machines could be so calibrated that Bush’s heirs would win handily no matter what (read Rep. Conyers’ report (.pdf file) on the rigging of Ohio’s vote).

Meanwhile, the indoctrination of the people merrily continues. “In a ’State of the First Amendment Survey‘ conducted by the University of Connecticut in 2003, 34 percent of Americans polled said the First Amendment ‘goes too far’; 46 percent said there was too much freedom of the press; 28 percent felt that newspapers should not be able to publish articles without prior approval of the government; 31 percent wanted public protest of a war to be outlawed during that war; and 50 percent thought the government should have the right to infringe on the religious freedom of ‘certain religious groups’ in the name of the war on terror.”
It is usual in sad reports like Professor Berman’s to stop abruptly the litany of what has gone wrong and then declare, hand on heart, that once the people have been informed of what is happening, the truth will set them free and a quarter-billion candles will be lit and the darkness will flee in the presence of so much spontaneous light. But Berman is much too serious for the easy platitude. Instead he tells us that those who might have struck at least a match can no longer do so because shared information about our situation is meager to nonexistent. Would better schools help? Of course, but, according to that joyous bearer of ill tidings, the New York Times, many school districts are now making sobriety tests a regular feature of the school day: apparently opium derivatives, not gin, are the opiate of our stoned youth. Meanwhile, millions of adult Americans, presumably undrugged, have no idea who our enemies were in World War II. Many college graduates don’t know the difference between an argument and an assertion (did their teachers also fail to solve this knotty question?). A travel agent in Arizona is often asked whether or not it is cheaper to take the train rather than fly to Hawaii. Only 12% of Americans own a passport. At the time of the 2004 presidential election 42% of voters believed that Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11. One high school boy, when asked who won the Civil War, replied wearily, “I don’t know and I don’t care,” echoing a busy neocon who confessed proudly: “The American Civil War is as remote to me as the War of the Roses.” He should have added the US Constitution, as well.

We are assured daily by advertisers and/or politicians that we are the richest, most envied people on Earth and, apparently, that is why so many awful, ill-groomed people want to blow us up. We live in an impermeable bubble without the sort of information that people living in real countries have access to when it comes to their own reality. But we are not actually people in the eyes of the national ownership: we are simply unreliable consumers comprising an overworked, underpaid labor force not in the best of health: The World Health Organization rates our healthcare system (sic—or sick?) as 37th-best in the world, far behind even Saudi Arabia, role model for the Texans. Our infant mortality rate is satisfyingly high, precluding a First World educational system. Also, it has not gone unremarked even in our usually information-free media that despite the boost to the profits of such companies as Halliburton, Bush’s wars of aggression against small countries of no danger to us have left us well and truly broke. Our annual trade deficit is a half-trillion dollars, which means that we don’t produce much of anything the world wants except those wan reports on how popular our Entertainment is overseas. Unfortunately the foreign gross of “King Kong,” the Edsel of that assembly line, is not yet known. It is rumored that Bollywood—the Indian film business—may soon surpass us! Berman writes, “We have lost our edge in science to Europe...The US economy is being kept afloat by huge foreign loans ($4 billion a day during 2003). What do you think will happen when America’s creditors decide to pull the plug, or when OPEC members begin selling oil for euros instead of dollars?...An International Monetary Fund report of 2004 concluded that the United States was ‘careening toward insolvency.’ “ Meanwhile, China, our favorite big-time future enemy, is the number one for worldwide foreign investments, with France, the bete noire of our apish neocons, in second place.

Well, we still have Kraft cheese as of today and, of course, the death penalty.
Berman makes the case that the Bretton-Woods agreement of 1944 institutionalized a system geared toward full employment and the maintenance of a social safety net for society’s less fortunate—the so-called welfare or interventionist state. It did this by establishing fixed but flexible exchange rates among world currencies, which were pegged to the U.S. dollar while the dollar, for its part, was pegged to gold. In a word, Bretton-Woods saved capitalism by making it more human. Nixon abandoned the agreement in 1971, which started, according to Berman, huge amounts of capital moving upward from the poor and the middle class to the rich and super-rich.

Mr. Berman spares us the happy ending, as, apparently, has history. When the admirable Tiberius (he has had an undeserved bad press), upon becoming emperor, received a message from the Senate in which the conscript fathers assured him that whatever legislation he wanted would be automatically passed by them, he sent back word that this was outrageous. “Suppose the emperor is ill or mad or incompetent?” He returned their message. They sent it again. His response: “How eager you are to be slaves.” I often think of that wise emperor when I hear Republican members of Congress extolling the wisdom of Bush. Now that he has been caught illegally wiretapping fellow citizens he has taken to snarling about his powers as “a wartime president,” and so, in his own mind, he is above each and every law of the land. Oddly, no one in Congress has pointed out that he may well be a lunatic dreaming that he is another Lincoln but whatever he is or is not he is no wartime president. There is no war with any other nation...yet. There is no state called terror, an abstract noun like liar. Certainly his illegal unilateral ravaging of Iraq may well seem like a real war for those on both sides unlucky enough to be killed or maimed, but that does not make it a war any more than the appearance of having been elected twice to the presidency does not mean that in due course he was: in due course, our befuddled people will demand an investigation of those two irregular processes. Although he has done a number of things that under the old republic might have got him impeached, our current system protects him: incumbency-for-life seats have made it possible for a Republican majority in the House not to do its duty and impeach him for his incompetence in handling, say, the natural disaster that befell Louisiana and then the U.S. military itself.

The founders thought two-year terms for members of the House was as much democracy as we’d ever need. Therefore, there was no great movement to have some sort of recall legislation in the event that a president wasn’t up to his job and so had lost the people’s confidence between elections. But in time, as Ecclesiastes would say, all things shall come to pass and so, in a kindly way, a majority of the citizens must persuade him that he will be happier back in Crawford pruning Bushes of the leafy sort while the troops not killed or maimed will settle for simply being alive and in one piece. We may be proto-slaves but we are not unreasonable.
Reason requires that we explain to the media and to this self-anointed “war-time president” whose “inherent” powers, to hear him babble, transcend the Constitution itself. But they can’t: First, we are not at war with another country; second, presidential powers are enumerated in the constitution, not inherent--despite the weird legal misreadings by ambulance-proud White House lawyers.

Nevertheless, our neo-totalitarians are planning new wars in the Middle East, Far East, Conga Line! while his latest State of the Union speech justifies eavesdropping (without judicial warrants) on anybody in the United States that he wants to listen in on. This is what we call dictatorship. Dictatorship. Dictatorship. And it is time we objected before he shoves us into World War Three.

Can we wait till the next election? Only if the electronic voting machinery has paper trails or, perhaps, honest old-fashioned paper ballots. In any case, with one voice let us say, “We’ve had enough of you. Go home to Crawford. We’ll help you raise the money for a library, and you won’t ever have to read a book. We the folks are not cruel even though we must now echo America’s spiritual ancestor Oliver Cromwell, in his order to the infamous Long Parliament: ‘You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing lately… Depart, I say; and let us have done with you. And so, in the name of that God who created the whale—Go!’”

Cheers and keep an eye on this blog for changes coming soon!!

October Wrap and Link Dump

2007-10-28T19:58:00.000+04:00

Oil is on the boil and the dollar is in the toilet. Why aren’t those people in prison? All of them!

My niece Morgan just had her tonsils out. I think it was probably harder on her parents than on her. Hope you get well soon, sweetheart.

My beloved Honda lost its transmission last week. I’ve been driving a crappy rental for over a week. Anything past 120 kph and the front end starts to vibrate. They’ve promised me I’ll get mine back this coming Tuesday but only after I sign over the last several years of my life to pay for it. I miss my car.

It’s been a busy month and the holiday season hasn’t even started yet. I spent the Eid at the American University of Sharjah campus with David, Lorin and Reynan. It was a nice, quiet restful time. Lorin is really getting into this cooking thing. On Friday night she made lasagna, which was great. Lorin’s friend Eva joined us. I hadn’t met her before but had heard Lorin speak of her a lot. She’s an equestrian and a journalist and works for Princess Haya’s office in Dubai. Then, on Saturday night, Lorin baked lamb, which is one of my favorites. It was her first attempt and it turned out brilliantly. Pat, the head of libraries for Zayed U., joined us and we had a very nice evening. Pat brought a rhubarb crumble, which I’d never had before, and it was very tasty. David and I watched a lot of rugby, including the England win over France. Great game.

Susan, ex-embassy, flew in for a short visit. George threw a small dinner party for her. It was a good evening. Badda and Asli were there. Asli was getting ready to fly back to the States and Huntington for a quick visit. It’s strange being able to talk to someone here about Huntington and different places and even a few people we know in common there. Susan really looked well and is planning her retirement from the Army and looking forward to it a lot, from what I could tell.

Enma threw a nice dinner party about a week or so back. Glynnis and her son James were visiting from the UK. Enma cooked a whopping big beef roast and it was to die for. Barry and Catherine, Steve and Leah and Hannah and I ravaged that beef carcass in under an hour. Lots of talk and laughing and drinking, the usual.

Last Friday we had a goodbye dinner for Chris and his wife, Pam. I worked with Chris at Operations for several years and he has decided to retire to Cyprus. Rich chose the Fairmont in Dubai for the venue. It’s pretty posh, that hotel. Since my car is in the shop, Sam drove us down. That was also so that I could drink and not have to drive back. Major Patrick and Major Bruno, the French contingent, were there. Hadn’t seen Bruno in over a year or so, but he’s looking well. Rich was there without Stephanie, who was ill. Alan and Charlie were there. Charlie looks great and is making new career plans.

There are a few new pix posted in the Family Reunion and Birthdays albums. There’s also a new album with a few pix from the goodbye dinner for Chris at the Fairmont.

I’ve been using a new search engine Mininova ( http://www.mininova.org/ ) that works in conjunction with BitLord, to get music. It’s great. It has a lot of older music on it as well as classical and jazz. There’s also a list of the most popular downloads of the day on the home page.

I just discovered a new search type site called stumbleupon. Just Google stumbleupon, download the toolbar and give yourself a user name. They email you a password and then you set up the site by ticking off your interests. It’s also a networking site, as well. I haven’t really had a chance to fully explore it yet, but it looks cool.

Oh, almost forgot, Ian Rankin is going to be in Abu Dhabi on Nov. 10 at the Abu Dhabi Mall, Jashanmal Book Shop to sign his new book, Exit Music. I read somewhere that he kills Rebus off in this one. I will not be happy, still I want to get him to sign the book for me.

I’m going to dump several links here at the end. They’ve been accumulating since my last post.

Israel’s rising right wing by Gregory Levey
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/10/09/gaydamak_bibi/

(It worries me more that the crazy Israeli’s have the bomb. How about you?)

The ‘Good Germans’ Among Us by Frank Rich
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/14/opinion/14rich2.html?_r=1&ex=1193112000&en=9d6f60099c11a72b&ei=5070&emc=eta1&oref=slogin

(I’ve never read the book, The Good Germans, but from what I understand it’s about the general German population, while not avid Hitlerites, who just “went along” with it all. That’s the USA in 2007. A country of “Good Germans.”)

Dissent From The Front Lines by Robert Scheer
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20071016_dissent_from_the_front_lines/

Iran: Why I Am Still Worried by Mike Farrell
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/10/24/iran-why-am-i-still-worried/#more-22765

(Remember Mike “BJ” Farrell from MASH? He’s not the only one who’s worried.)

Electoral Dysfunction by Eugene Robinson
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20071025_electoral_dysfunction/

I’m Dressing Up as a Melting Polar Ice Cap by Bill Maher
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/10/27/fear/

This last one I am posting in its entirety because of its importance. Remember Scott Ritter who was looking for WMD before the Iraq war. Read this and learn something.

On the Eve of Destruction
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20071022_on_the_eve_of_destruction/
Posted on Oct 22, 2007
By Scott Ritter

Don’t worry, the White House is telling us. The world’s most powerful leader was simply making a rhetorical point. At a White House press conference last week, just in case you haven’t heard, President Bush informed the American people that he had told world leaders “if you’re interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing [Iran] from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon.” World War III. That is certainly some rhetorical point, especially coming from the man singularly most capable of making such an event reality.
Pundits have raised their eyebrows and comics are busy writing jokes, but the president’s reference to Armageddon, no matter how cavalierly uttered and subsequently brushed away, suggests an alarming context. Some might note that the comment was simply an offhand response to a reporter’s question, the kind of free-thinking scenario that baffles Bush so. In a way, this makes what the president said even more disturbing, since we now have an insight into the vision, and related terminology, which hovers just below the horizon in the brain of George W. Bush.
When I was a weapons inspector with the United Nations, there was a jostling that took place at the end of each day, when decisions needed to be made and authorization documents needed to be signed. In an environment of competing agendas, each of us who championed a position sought to be the “last man in,” namely the person who got to imprint the executive chairman (our decision maker) with the final point of view for the day. Failure to do so could find an inspection or point of investigation sidetracked for days or weeks after the executive chairman became distracted by a competing vision. I understand the concept of “imprinting,” and have seen it in action. What is clear from the president’s remarks is that, far from an innocent rhetorical fumble, his words, and the context in which he employed them, are a clear indication of the imprinting which is taking place behind the scenes at the White House. If the president mentions World War III in the context of Iran’s nuclear program, one can be certain that this is the very sort of discussion that is taking place in the Oval Office. A critical question, therefore, is who was the last person to “imprint” the president prior to his public allusion to World War III? During his press conference, Bush noted that he awaited the opportunity to confer with his defense secretary, Robert Gates, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice following their recent meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. So clearly the president hadn’t been imprinted recently by either of the principle players in the formulation of defense and foreign policy. The suspects, then, are quickly whittled down to three: National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, Vice President Dick Cheney, and God. Hadley is a long-established neoconservative thinker who has for the most part operated “in the shadows” when it comes to the formulation of Iran policy in the Bush administration. In 2001, following the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States, Hadley (then the deputy national security adviser) instituted what has been referred to as the “Hadley Rules,” a corollary of which is that no move will be made which alters the ideological positioning of Iran as a mortal enemy of the United States. These “rules” shut down every effort undertaken by Iran to seek a moderation of relations between it and the United States, and prohibited American policymakers from responding favorably to Iranian offers to assist with the fight against al-Qaida; they also blocked the grand offer of May 2003 in which Iran outlined a dramatic diplomatic initiative, including a normalization of relations with Israel. The Hadley Rules are at play today, in an even more nefarious manner, with the National Security Council becoming involved in the muzzling of former Bush administration officials who are speaking out on the issue of Iran. Hadley is blocking Flynt Leverett, formerly of the National Security Council, from publishing an Op-Ed piece critical of the Bush administration on the grounds that any insight into the machinations of policymaking (or lack thereof) somehow strengthens Iran’s hand. Leverett’s article would simply underscore the fact that the Bush administration has spurned every opportunity to improve relations with Iran while deliberately exaggerating the threat to U.S. interests posed by the Iranian theocracy. The silencing of informed critics is in keeping with Hadley’s deliberate policy obfuscation. There is still no official policy in place within the administration concerning Iran. While a more sober-minded national security bureaucracy works to marginalize the hawkish posturing of the neocons, the administration has decided that the best policy is in fact no policy, which is a policy decision in its own right. Hadley has forgone the normal procedures of governance, in which decisions impacting the nation are written down, using official channels, and made subject to review and oversight by those legally and constitutionally mandated and obligated to do so. A policy of no policy results in secret policy, which means, according to Hadley himself, the Bush administration simply does whatever it wants to, regardless. In the case of Iran, this means pushing for regime change in Tehran at any cost, even if it means World War III. But Hadley is simply a facilitator, bureaucratic “grease” to ease policy formulated elsewhere down the gullet of a national security infrastructure increasingly kept in the dark about the true intent of the Bush administration when it comes to Iran. With the Department of State and the Pentagon now considered unfriendly ground by the remaining hard-core neoconservative thinkers still in power, policy formulation is more and more concentrated in the person of Vice President Cheney and the constitutionally nebulous “Office of the Vice President.”
Cheney and his cohorts have constructed a never-never land of oversight deniability, claiming immunity from both executive and legislative checks and balances. With an unchallenged ability to classify anything and everything as secret, and then claim that there is no authority inherent in government to oversee that which has been thus classified, the Office of the Vice President has transformed itself into a free republic’s worst nightmare, assuming Caesar-like dictatorial authority over almost every aspect of American national security policy at home and abroad. From torture to illegal wiretapping, to arms control (or lack of it) to Iran, Dick Cheney is the undisputed center of policy power in America today. While there are some who will claim that in this time of post-9/11 crisis such a process of bureaucratic streamlining is essential for the common good, the reality is far different.
It is said that absolute power corrupts absolutely, and this has never been truer than in the case of Cheney. What Cheney is doing behind his shield of secrecy can be simply defined: planning and implementing a preemptive war of aggression. During the Nuremberg tribunal in the aftermath of World War II, the chief American prosecutor, Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, stated, “To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.” Today, we have a vice president who articulates publicly about global conflict, and who speaks in not-so-veiled language about a looming Armageddon. If there is such a future for America and the world, let one thing be certain; World War III, as postulated by Dick Cheney, would be an elective war, and not a conflict of tragic necessity. This makes the crime even greater.
Sadly, Judge Jackson’s words are but an empty shell. The global community lacks a legally binding definition of what constitutes a war of aggression, or even an act of aggression. But that isn’t the point. America should never find itself in a position where it is being judged by the global community regarding the legality of its actions. Judge Jackson established a precedent of jurisprudence concerning aggression based upon American principles and values, something the international community endorsed. The fact that current American indifference to the rule of law prevents the international community from certifying a definition of criminality when it comes to aggression, whether it be parsed as “war” or simply an “act,” does not change the fact that the Bush administration, in the person of Dick Cheney, is actively engaged in the committing of the “supreme [war] crime,” which makes Cheney the supreme war criminal. If the world is not empowered to judge him as such, then let the mantle of judgment fall to the American people. Through their elected representatives in Congress, they should not only bring this reign of unrestrained abuse of power to an end, but ensure that such abuse never again is attempted by an American official by holding to account, to the full extent of the law, those who have trampled on the Constitution of the United States and the ideals and principles it enshrines.
But what use is the rule of law, even if fairly and properly implemented, if in the end he who is entrusted with executive power takes his instructions from an even higher authority? President Bush’s relationship with “God” (or that which he refers to as God) is a matter of public record. The president himself has stated that “God speaks through me” (he acknowledged this before a group of Amish in Pennsylvania in the summer of 2004). Exactly how God speaks through him, and what precisely God says, is not a matter of speculation. According to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, President Bush told him and others that “God told me to strike at al-Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did.” As such, at least in the president’s mind, God has ordered Bush to transform himself into a modern incarnation of St. Michael, smiting all that is evil before him. “We are in a conflict between good and evil. And America will call evil by its name,” the president told West Point cadets in a speech in 2002.
The matter of how and when an individual chooses to practice his faith, or lack thereof, is a deeply personal matter, one which should be kept from public discourse. For a president to so openly impose his personal religious beliefs, as Bush has done, on American policy formulation and implementation represents a fundamental departure from not only constitutional intent concerning the separation of church and state but also constitutional mandate concerning the imposition of checks and balances required by the American system of governance. The increasing embrace by this president of the notion of a unitary executive takes on an even more sinister aspect when one realizes that not only does the Bush administration seek to nullify the will of the people through the shackling of the people’s representatives in Congress, but that the president has forgone even the appearance of constitutional constraint by evoking the word of his personal deity, as expressed through his person, as the highest form of consultation on a matter as serious as war. As such, the president has made his faith, and how he practices it, a subject not only of public curiosity but of national survival.
That George W. Bush is a born-again Christian is not a national secret. Neither is the fact that his brand of Christianity, evangelicalism, embraces the notion of the “end of days,” the coming of the Apocalypse as foretold (so they say) in the Book of Revelations and elsewhere in the Bible. President Bush’s frequent reference to “the evil one” suggests that he not only believes in the Antichrist but actively proselytizes on the Antichrist’s physical presence on Earth at this time. If one takes in the writing and speeches of those in the evangelical community today concerning the “rapture,” the numerous references to the current situation in the Middle East, especially on the events unfolding around Iran and its nuclear program, make it very clear that, at least in the minds of these evangelicals, there is a clear link between the “end of days” prophesy and U.S.-Iran policy. That James Dobson, one of the most powerful and influential evangelical voices in America today, would be invited to the White House with like-minded clergy to discuss President Bush’s Iran policy is absurd unless one makes the link between Bush’s personal faith, the extreme religious beliefs of Dobson and the potential of Armageddon-like conflict (World War III). At this point, the absurd becomes unthinkable, except it is all too real.
Thomas Jefferson, one of our nation’s greatest founders, made the separation of church and state an underlying principle upon which the United States was built. This separation was all-inclusive, meaning that not only should government stay out of religion, but likewise religion should be excluded from government. “I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else where I was capable of thinking for myself,” Jefferson wrote in a letter to Francis Hopkinson in 1789. “Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent.” If only President Bush would abide by such wisdom, avoiding the addictive narcotic of religious fervor when carrying out the people’s business. Instead, he chooses as his drug one which threatens to destroy us all in a conflagration derived not from celestial intervention but individual ignorance and arrogance. Again Jefferson, in a letter written in 1825: “It is between fifty and sixty years since I read it [the Apocalypse], and I then considered it merely the ravings of a maniac, no more worthy nor capable of explanation than the incoherences of our own nightly dreams.”
Nightmares, more aptly, unless something can be done to change the direction Bush and Dobson are taking us. The problem is that far too many Americans openly espouse not only the faith of George W. Bush but also the underlying philosophy which permits this faith to be intertwined with the governance of the land. “God bless America” has become a rallying cry for this crowd, and those too ignorant and/or afraid to speak out in opposition. If this statement has merit, what does it say for the 6.8 billion others in the world today who are not Americans? That God condemns them? The American embrace of divine destiny is not unique in history (one only has to recall that the belt buckles of the German army during World War II read “God is with us"). But for a nation born of the age of reason to collectively fall victim to the most base of fear-induced theology is a clear indication that America currently fails to live up to its founding principles. Rather than turning to Dobson and his ilk for guidance in these troubled times, Americans would be well served to reflect on President Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address, delivered in the middle of a horrific civil war which makes all of the conflict America finds itself in today pale in comparison:
“Both [North and South] read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. ... The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. ... [T]hat He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him?”
God is not on our side, or the side of any single nation or people. To believe such is the ultimate expression of national hubris. To invoke such, if one is a true believer, is to embrace sacrilege and heresy. This, of course, is an individual right, granted as an extension of religious freedom. But it is not a collective right, nor is it a right born of governance, especially in a land protected by the separation of church and state.
The issue of Iran is a national problem which requires a collective debate, discussion and dialogue inclusive of all the facts, and stripped of all ideology and theocracy which would seek to deny reasoned thought conducted within a framework of accepted laws and ideals. It is grossly irresponsible of an American president to invoke the imagery of World War III without first sharing with the American people the framework of thought that produced such a comparison. Such openness will not be forthcoming from this administration or president. Not in the form of Stephen Hadley’s policy of no policy, designed with intent to avoid and subvert both bureaucratic and legislative process and oversight, or Dick Cheney’s secret government within a government, operating above and beyond the law and in a manner which violates both legal and moral norms and values, and certainly not in the president’s own private conversations with “God,” either directly or through the medium of lunatic evangelicals who embrace the termination of all we stand for, and especially the future of our next generation, in a fiery holocaust born from the fraudulent writings of centuries past. The processes which compelled George W. Bush to speak of a World War III are intentionally not transparent to the American people. The president has much to explain, and it would be incumbent upon every venue of civic and public pressure to demand that such an explanation be forthcoming in the near future. The stakes regarding Iran have always been high, but never more so than when a nation’s leader invokes the end of days as a solution.

Cheers and take care.

Last Week of Ramadan

2007-10-06T16:44:00.000+04:00

I forgot to mention on my last post that there are new pics. Just follow the link for Jack’s Pictures and there is an album from birthday parties of September.

Tomorrow starts the last working week of Ramadan. There will a short holiday, an Eid, and then back to work on the regular schedule. I’ll probably head up to Sharjah and invade David and Lorin for the Eid holiday. What I should do is lock myself up in my flat and start cleaning out and throwing away. I am such a pack rat.

I just finished reading the latest Rebus entry, The Naming of the Dead by Ian Rankin. The Rebus series is one of my favorites. There is never a bad Rebus novel. This one is set at the G8 conference held in Scotland and also includes the London subway bombings that occurred at the same time. They all keep referring to Rebus’ impending retirement. Mr. Rankin, please, don’t.

Watched the last episode of Season 3 of “Lost” on Thursday night. I know some people have given up on the series, but I still find it one of the more intelligent things on TV. It ended with a supposed “flash forward” to when Jack and Kate are off the island, rescued. What I don’t understand is that in the flash forward Jack made mention of his father being “downstairs” in the hospital. I thought the old drunk was dead. More mystery? Oh, and Charley apparently drowned. Charley was one of my favs, I’ll miss him.

Here are some links to some things I’ve read this week. Some are important and should be read ASAP.

How the Democrats Blew It by Gary Kamiya

http://www.salon.com/opinion/kamiya/2007/10/02/democrats/

Israel’s Toy Soldiers by Chris Hedges

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20071001_israels_toy_soldiers/

Why Don’t They Like Us as Much as They Used to by Anne Applebaum

http://www.slate.com/id/2175026/

My Christian Daughter Says I’m Going to Hell by Cary Tennis

http://www.salon.com/mwt/col/tenn/2007/10/04/christianity/

Milton Viorst on “The Israel Lobby”

http://www.truthdig.com/arts_culture/item/20071004_milton_viorst_on_the_israel_lobby/

Time to Weigh in on the Israel Lobby Debate by Daniel Levy

http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/coffeehouse/2007/oct/05/time_to_weigh_in_on_the_israel_lobby_debate

Have a good week. Cheers.

53

2007-09-30T19:28:00.000+04:00

Yeah, yeah. It’s just a number. You look the same. You don’t feel any different. You don’t want to remember it. None of your friends will let you forget it and you make sure that everyone knows anyway because in some weird way you want the attention. Still.

It’s been two successive weekends of birthday parties. It seems like the bulk of my friends all come from the Snow Belt so September seems to be the most popular month for birthdays.

Last weekend George and I endured a 2-hour gridlock traffic jam on Emirates Highway to reach David and Lorin’s. The jam started just before Dubai Airport and continued all the way to the National Paints Flyover. I guess I’m going to have to break down and buy the new Salik toll chip for my car and start going there on Sheikh Zayed Highway. Anyway, it was practically Iftar time when we reached the American University (AUS) campus in Sharjah. I hadn’t had lunch or my nap. I’m not sure which one I missed the most.

We had a tentative plan to go check out the bowling lanes on campus, but none of us were really in the mood. We ate dinner in a café at the student center and had coffee after at Starbuck’s then went back to David and Lorin’s for a quiet wind-up to the day by sitting in the garden and smoking cigarettes.

The birthday party was on Friday night. David Ritchie, Wendy Merkley and I were the birthday kids. George, Reynon, Daphne and Janine were the guests. Lorin cooked my special request—burgers, and they were great, as usual. Daphne is a librarian at AUS who had worked for several years at HTC Women’s in Al Ain. She knew Val and yes, Val, you were talked about, but it was all fond memories. You are still missed. Janine is new to the campus, having arrived a few months before from Florida. She’s very interesting and entertaining. She worked her way through college as a singer and has a wonderful voice. Her gift to David was a song from Sweeney Todd. It was a great moment. Then we opened gifts and had cake and there was the usual wind down.

My actual birthday was on the 25th, Tuesday and I did nothing to really mark the day. I worked and took a few phone calls from friends. Later in the week Thursday was admin day at work, so we were off. I went to Carrefour and bought myself a birthday gift, a new stereo. David and Lorin and Reynon arrived early Thursday evening. We taxied over to Phil and Enma’s for another birthday party with Leah, David and I as the birthday kids. Enma cooked my request, lamb. She makes a killer leg of lamb. Guests included Phil, Enma (actually they were the hosts), Leah, Steve and daughter Hannah, David, Lorin and Reynon, Miguel and friend and me. We had a great time. Drinking and talking and laughing, as we usually do. Dinner was fantastic and was followed by cake. And there were a few more presents to open as well.

On Friday George hosted a brunch for David, Lorin, Reynon and I at his flat. We arrived about noon and ate shortly after. The food was wonderful. I’d made no requests and hadn’t been asked to either. We ate and talked and ate more before David and Lorin and Reynon had to return to Sharjah.

This upcoming weekend is going to be spent at home doing nothing but watching TV, reading and spending some time online. Oh yeah, and listening to my new stereo.

There were also family & friends birthdays back in the States. I told you, September is a busy months for births. My Mom turned 70 on 8 September, the day of the Marshall-WVU football grudge match. Rosie Dickson, with whom I’ve lost touch, had her birthday on 22 September. My nephew, Tyson, had his birthday the same day as mine, 25 September and my niece, Shannon, had hers two days later on the 27th. Marcia Davis, still a close friend from grad school in Brattleboring, had her birthday today, 30 September. It gets pretty cold in January.

Bits & Pieces.
James Lee Burke is one of the outstanding American authors (in my opinion). I finished his Pegasus Descending about a week ago and it is beautifully written. I wish I could write like that.

The last book of my 52nd year was A History of the Amish by Steven M. Nolt. Don’t ask me why. I bought it in the summer of ’06 when we visited Amish country in Ohio. I still don’t get it.

The first book of my 53rd year was Promise Me by Harlan Coben. I loved Coben’s early career series of novels featuring Myron Bolitar, a sports agent who solves mysteries. He left Myron behind several years ago to write other things and this novel marked the return of Myron. It was worth the wait. Reading it was like catching up with an old friend, which was what I needed to start year 53.

Below are some links to some stories you should be aware of. Most of them seem to be struggling to answer the question can America survive the rest of Bush-Cheney. At this point, I well and truly don’t know.

Iraq Will Have to Wait by Scott Ritter
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20070927_ritter_stop_iran_war/

The US Military Role in Preventing Bombing of Iran by Glenn Greenwald
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/?last_story=/opinion/greenwald/2007/09/28/military_iran/

The War President “At Peace” With Himself by Joe Conason
http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2007/09/28/aznar_iraq/

Twilight Zone-The Children of 5767 by Gideon Levy
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/907708.html

Shifting Targets by Seymour M. Hersh
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/10/08/071008fa_fact_hersh

Post Vacation Post

2007-09-11T19:16:00.000+04:00

I’ve been back home in Abu Dhabi a little over two weeks now. I can’t say I’ve been too busy to post anything, just too lazy and not really in the mood. A little bit of post-vacation blues to go through, I guess. Also, I was finishing Against the Day by Thomas Pynchon, which I’d started just before I left the States. It was a massive book, over 1000 pages and difficult, at times, to keep up with. Where I’d grown tired and bored with his Mason and Dixon and put it down unfinished, this one refused to let go of me. I finished it last night and as I closed the book I couldn’t help but wonder what I’d read, what he’d been trying to say and if I had wasted my time. I still haven’t decided.

Ramadan starts on Thursday and I hope to make a full post over the first weekend of Ramadan. Things slow down here. In the meantime, here are some links I’ve been mining over the past couple of weeks. I have also copied and posted two very important full-length pieces that I read today on Salon, along with links to them to the Salon site. This is an anniversary, you know, but exactly of what, I couldn’t say.

BTW, new vacation pictures have been posted on Jack’s Pictures.

Siegman on Israel
http://harpers.org/archive/2007/08/hbc-90001039

Why did Gonzales resign? By Sidney Blumenthal
http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2007/08/27/gonzales_resignation/

The Waning Power of the War Myth by Gary Kamiya
http://www.salon.com/opinion/kamiya/2007/08/28/war_myth/

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/?last_story=/opinion/greenwald/2007/09/04/addington/

Bush Knew Saddam Had No Weapons
http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2007/09/06/bush_wmd/

http://www.salon.com/opinion/kamiya/2007/09/11/911_lessons/

The real lessons of 9/11
The attacks exposed grave weaknesses in our nation's defenses, our national institutions and ultimately our national character.
By Gary Kamiya
Sep. 11, 2007 Six years ago, Islamist terrorists attacked the United States, killing almost 3,000 people. President Bush used the attacks to justify his 2003 invasion of Iraq. And he has been using 9/11 ever since to scare Americans into supporting his "war on terror." He has incessantly linked the words "al-Qaida" and "Iraq," a Pavlovian device to make us whimper with fear at the mere idea of withdrawing. In a recent speech about Iraq, he mentioned al-Qaida 95 times. No matter that jihadists in Iraq are not the same group that attacked the U.S., or that their numbers and effectiveness have been greatly exaggerated. It's no surprise that Gen. David Petraeus' "anxiously awaited" evaluation of the war is to be given on the 10th and 11th of September. The not-so-subliminal message: We must do what Bush and Petraeus say or risk another 9/11.
Petraeus' evaluation can only be "anxiously awaited" by people who are still anxiously waiting for Godot. We know what will happen next because we've been watching this movie for eight months. Gen. Petraeus, Bush's mighty-me, will insist that we're making guarded progress. Bush, whose keen grasp of military reality is reflected in his recent boast that "we're kicking ass" in Iraq, will promise that he will reassess the situation in April. The Democrats will flail their puny arms, the zombie Republicans will keep following orders, and the troops will stay.
So let's forget the absurd debate about "progress" and whether a bullet in the front of the head is better than one in the back, and how much we can trust our new friends from Saddam's Fedayeen. On the anniversary of 9/11, we need to ask more basic questions -- not just about why we can't bring ourselves to pull out of Iraq, but why we invaded it in the first place. Those questions lead directly to 9/11, and the ideas and assumptions behind our response to it.
The real reason that Congress cannot bring itself to end the war in Iraq, and incredibly, may be prepared to start another one in Iran, has little to do with benchmarks or body counts. The real reason is that even after the Iraq debacle, the American establishment -- meaning the government and the mainstream media -- has not questioned the emotions and ideology that drove Bush's crusade.
Sept. 11 is a totemic date for the Bush administration. It justifies everything, explains everything, ends all argument. It is the crime that must be eternally punished, the wound that can never heal, the moral high ground that can never be taken. Bush's reaction to 9/11 was to declare a "war on terror," of which the Iraq adventure was said to be the "front line." The American establishment signed off on this war because of 9/11. To oppose Bush's "war on terror" was to risk another terror attack and dishonor our dead. The establishment has now turned against the Iraq front, but it has not questioned the "war on terror" itself, or the assumptions on which it is based.
Bush's, and America's, response to 9/11 was fundamentally flawed for two reasons: It was atavistic and instinctive, and it was based on a distorted, ignorant and bigoted view of the Arab/Muslim world. These two founding errors are qualitatively different: The first involves emotions, the second ideas. But mixed together, they created a lethal cocktail. The grand justification of "spreading democracy in the Middle East" merely provided a palatable cover for vengeance and racism.
Bush's America responded to 9/11 by lashing out. We chose vigilantism over justice, instinct over reason. Bush demanded that America play the role of the angry, righteous avenger, and America followed him. But we were not taking vengeance on the guy who attacked us but on somebody standing on the corner. The war was like the massacre in Haditha on a global scale.
There's a reason why Americans responded to Bush's demand and why Democrats have been afraid to challenge it. It's biological hard-wiring -- after you're hit, your instinct is to hit back. For conservatives, this instinct is not only natural but necessary. Hence the endless right-wing denunciations of war critics as wimps, girly-men and appeasers.
Gender images play a significant role. The right wing embraces a cartoonlike image of masculinity because it believes that only an alpha male can protect America from its enemies. (In a recent essay in the New York Times, Susan Faludi argued that such retrograde gender images have been used to construct the American self-image from the earliest days of our presence on this continent.) This is part of the reason that Bush has put forward Gen. Petraeus as the cheerleader for the war. Petraeus is the ultimate alpha male, right down to his rigorous workout routine. In the Hobbesian world of the conservative imagination, the big club rules, and he who puts down the club will be brained by another unfettered troglodyte, be it a communist or an "Islamofascist." Nature is red in tooth and claw, and those who dream of transcending nature or transforming it will be destroyed by it.
The fetishization of the "natural," of which instinct is only a part, is key to conservative thought. In the early '60s, conservatives like Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan defended the right of individuals and states to practice segregation because that decision was instinctual and organic. They saw the federal government's attempt to outlaw segregation as artificial and coercive.
Of course, instincts play a vital role in human life: They underlie virtually all of our thoughts and actions. To ignore them is to fall into a deracinated world of sterile rationality. Lashing out is sometimes an effective way to defend yourself. But instinct is atavistic and often self-defeating. Higher-level mental functions came into existence to control and refine it. Both individuals and states have learned that they should not base their reactions merely on animal instincts. That's why law arose: to prevent every injury from turning into a destructive and endless feud. Retribution is a legitimate motive for punishment but only to a point. It is limited by the higher concept of justice. Justice not only prescribes the extent of the retribution that is morally acceptable, but insists that the context of the crime, including the criminal's history and state of mind, must be considered before meting out punishment.
Democrats have effectively challenged the reign of nature and instinct in the domestic realm. But they cower when it comes to war. They are afraid to criticize the irrational, instinctive nature of Bush's "war on terror" because they believe their political Achilles' heel is the perception that they are "weak on national security." They are afraid they'll be seen as wimps. Beaten down by Republican propaganda that asserts that America's only choice is between the GOP's macho John Wayne and the Democrats' dithering Hamlet, they pathetically don their cowboy hats and tank helmets, a tactic that actually reinforces the very image of weakness it is intended to dispel. Unchallenged by the Democrats, the right wing's master narrative about American power and the need to carry a big stick has carried the day.
Of course America was enraged and fearful after the attacks. But reacting to the attacks as we did, like an angry drunk in a bar, was not in our national interests. It was vital that we think clearly about our response, who attacked us, why they did, and what our most effective response would be. But here the American establishment ran up against its ideological blind spot -- its received ideas about the Arab/Muslim world. Combined with the hysterical emotionalism, those ideas, which amount to a kind of de facto bigotry, allowed Bush to push through one of the most bizarrely gratuitous wars in history.
We attacked Iraq because of 9/11. That is the scandalous and surreal claim that reveals our fatal emotional-ideological flaw. Anyone who knew anything about the Middle East knew that Saddam Hussein, a secular tyrant, had nothing to with 9/11 or al-Qaida. War defenders like to claim they were "misled by bad intelligence" into thinking Saddam had WMD. But there was no new evidence that Saddam posed a threat. He was the same old Saddam. He only became frightening in light of our prejudice against Arabs and Muslims. Moreover, despite the appalling effectiveness of the 9/11 attacks, it was clear that al-Qaida posed no existential threat to either America or to the Middle East. As the invaluable analyst Juan Cole has pointed out, apocalyptic Salafi jihadists like al-Qaida were an isolated and weak force within the Arab-Muslim world -- or at least they were until Bush invaded Iraq.
The angry bigotry that drove the war rings out loud and clear in the right-wing battle cry: "They attacked us, so we had to attack them." The recent TV ads run by war supporters repeat this theme: "They attacked us," a narrator says as an image of the burning World Trade Center appears. "They won't stop in Iraq." The key word here, of course, is "they." Just who is "they"? For Bush's die-hard supporters, "they" simply means "Arabs and Muslims." Cretinous rabble-rousers like Ann Coulter and Michael Savage play to this crowd, demanding that we nuke the evil ragheads. For the establishment, "they" is not quite so explicitly racist. "They" refers not to all Arabs and Muslims, but only to the "bad" ones. The "bad" guys include al-Qaida, Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and the militant Palestinians. And, of course, it used to include Iraq (and may again). Anyone who makes this list is eligible for attack by the U.S.
What makes these wildly disparate entities so evil and so threatening that we're prepared to attack them without cause? Simply that they reject the U.S.-Israeli writ in the Middle East -- and that they're Arabs or Muslims. They are clearly not on our side, but they pose no significant military or economic threat to the U.S. In realpolitik terms, they are no more beyond the pale than many other dubious countries we do business with, from Venezuela to Nigeria to Russia to Saudi Arabia. No one would dream of suggesting that if Cuba attacked the U.S., we should respond by invading Venezuela. But we play by different rules in the Middle East.
America's anti-Arab, anti-Muslim prejudice has several causes. One of them derives from America's powerful identification with the one state that has always been at war with the Arab-Muslim world: Israel. For the establishment, it is axiomatic that America's and Israel's interests are identical, and that enemies of Israel must be enemies of the U.S. America has always identified more with Israel, the plucky underdog and home to Holocaust survivors, than with the Arabs and Muslims who threaten it. Since this view is held by right and left, Democrat and Republican alike, and criticizing it leads to accusations of anti-Semitism, it is difficult to challenge it. This is the reason why there has been almost no discussion in Congress over Bush's saber-rattling with Iran: Iran is Israel's most dangerous enemy, and that fact trumps all other considerations.
America's Israel-centric stance has helped determine the way we see the Arab-Muslim world, but it isn't the only factor. The rise of radical Islam, with its cult of martyrdom and terrifying terrorist attacks, exacerbated America's existing prejudices, flattening out the Arab-Muslim world into a monolithic entity. Our almost complete ignorance of Arabs and Islam, their history and the actual grievances that they have against the West, contributed to this flattening. Oil plays a role. But perhaps the most potent explanation of all is simply the fear of the Other: Islam is not in our cultural tradition, it stands apart, it's mysterious and ominous, and it is all too easy to project our fears on it.
One sure sign of cultural bias is the presence of high-flown concepts. Mission civilatrice, the White Man's burden, is inevitably accompanied by lofty rhetoric. Iraq was all about Grand Theory.
One of the neocons' main goals in invading Iraq was to "remake the Middle East" -- a weirdly grandiose, imperialist concept of the sort that doesn't apply anywhere except with Muslims. Only in the Middle East do lofty historical generalizations about why a world culture went wrong -- like those of the right-wing Arabist and White House favorite Bernard Lewis -- provide the intellectual underpinnings for unprovoked wars. Yes, the Arab-Muslim world has some serious problems, and yes, only a politically correct pedant would forbid all cultural generalizations. But when you go to war on the basis of those generalizations, you cross the line into colonialist prejudice.
The most lofty, abstract generalization of all is the insistence that this is a war of good vs. evil. "They" attacked us not because they had grievances or for any reasons that exist in the sublunary realm: They attacked simply because they were evil. Saddam would do the same because he, too, like Syria, Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas, was evil. The "war on terror" is a crusade, a Holy War, whose essentially theological nature was summed up by the title of Richard Perle and David Frum's book, "An End to Evil." And once you're dealing with "evil," niggling distinctions -- between Sunni and Shiite, or secular and religious, or whether the country you want to invade had anything to do with attacking you -- can be dispensed with.
The failure of the American establishment to question such ideas, and its willingness to sign off on a war based on them, amounts to a kind of de facto bigotry: Kill one Arab, send a message to the rest of 'em. Attacking Iraq because of 9/11 made about as much sense as attacking Mozambique after the Watts riots. If we had done something that insane, we would be accused of being racists. We wouldn't be able to shake the accusation, no matter how much gobbledygook apologists came up with about bursting a "terrorism bubble" or the "pathologies of black culture." But when America did something equally insane and attacked Iraq in response to 9/11, no one accused it of racism. Instead, we got a lot of sophistry about "Islamofascism" and other Aquinas-like attempts to make 99 virgins dance on the head of a Baathist.
Sept. 11 was a hinge in history, a fork in the road. It presented us with a choice. We could find out who attacked us, surgically defeat them, address the underlying problems in the Middle East, and make use of the outpouring of global sympathy to pull the rest of the world closer to us. Or we could lash out blindly and self-righteously, insist that the only problems in the Middle East were created by "extremists," demonize an entire culture and make millions of new enemies.
Like a vibration that causes a bridge to collapse, the 9/11 attacks exposed grave weaknesses in our nation's defenses, our national institutions and ultimately our national character. Many more Americans have now died in a needless war in Iraq than were killed in the terror attacks, and tens of thousands more grievously wounded. Billions of dollars have been wasted. America's moral authority, more precious than gold, has been tarnished by torture and lies and the erosion of our liberties. The world despises us to an unprecedented degree. An entire country has been wrecked. The Middle East is ready to explode. And the threat of terrorism, which the war was intended to remove, is much greater than it was.
All of this flowed from our response to 9/11. And so, six years later, we need to do more than mourn the dead. We need to acknowledge the blindness and bigotry that drove our response. Until we do, not only will the stalemate over Iraq persist, but our entire Middle Eastern policy will continue down the road to ruin.
-- By Gary Kamiya

http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2007/09/11/dean/

"Broken Government"
I never thought that the GOP posed a threat to the well-being of our nation. But these days, I no longer recognize my old party.
By John W. Dean
Sep. 11, 2007 In almost four decades of involvement in national politics, much of them as a card-carrying Republican, I was never concerned that the GOP posed a threat to the well-being of our nation. Indeed, the idea would never have occurred to me, for in my experience the system took care of excesses, as it certainly did in the case of the president for whom I worked. But in recent years the system has changed, and is no longer self-correcting. Most of that change has come from Republicans, and much of it is based on their remarkably confrontational attitude, an attitude that has clearly worked for them. For example, I cannot imagine any Democratic president keeping cabinet officers as Bush has done with his secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, and attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, men whom both Democrats and Republicans judged to be incompetent. Evidence that the system has changed is also apparent when a president can deliberately and openly violate the law -- as, for example, simply brushing aside serious statutory prohibitions against torture and electronic surveillance -- without any serious consequences. Similarly, but on a lesser scale, Alberto Gonzales faced no consequences when he politicized the Department of Justice as never before, allowing his aides to violate the prohibitions regarding hiring career civil servants based on their party affiliation, and then gave false public statements and testimony about the matter. When the Senate sought to pass a resolution expressing "no confidence" in the attorney general, the Republicans blocked it with a filibuster. The fact that Bush's Justice Department has become yet another political instrument should give Americans pause. This body was created by Congress to represent the interests of the people of the United States, not the Republican Party, but since the system of law no longer takes account when officials act outside the law (not to mention the Constitution), Republicans do so and get away with it.
In the past the White House (whether occupied by Republicans or Democrats) placed tight restrictions on who could contact the Department of Justice regarding pending business. It was typically limited to only the president, the vice president, the White House chief of staff and White House counsel, who were authorized to speak with the attorney general, the deputy attorney general or the top assistant and associate attorneys general. However, in the Bush White House no less than a startling 471 White House aides are authorized to speak with 30 senior Justice Department officials. It is not an exaggeration to say that the Bush administration has made the Justice Department a political extension of the White House in the area of law enforcement, which is unprecedented and seriously dilutes the credibility of the government when it goes to court. It will take years to depoliticize the Justice Department, and countless nonpolitical career attorneys -- including some of the most experienced and able men and women ever to serve in the department -- have left because of the way Bush's people run it. Ironically, when Republicans find Democratic officials with even a toe across the line, they raise unmitigated hell for that official. But when a Republican official crosses the line, Republicans close ranks around the miscreant, as they have done with the former chief of staff to the vice president, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.
Libby, a sophisticated Washington attorney, leaked Valerie Plame Wilson's covert CIA identity. Libby had leaked her name as part of the effort to discredit Valerie Wilson's husband, former ambassador Joe Wilson, who had traveled to Niger to determine for the CIA if Saddam Hussein had purchased uranium -- a claim that would be made by the Bush White House. When Ambassador Wilson wrote a New York Times op-ed putting the lie to that claim, Scooter Libby led the attack against him, notwithstanding the fact that he was telling the truth. One of his tactics was to claim that Wilson's wife, a covert CIA operative, had sent him on a boondoggle. Libby, as Cheney's national security adviser, was quite familiar with the potentially dire circumstances of leaking the identity of a covert agent. When special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald (the U.S. Attorney in Chicago) was appointed to investigate, Libby lied to the FBI and then to the grand jury about how he had learned of Valerie Wilson's CIA connection, claiming a newsman had told him, when, in fact, he had been told by the vice president. Although Special Counsel Fitzgerald found no criminal statute had been violated in leaking Valerie Wilson's name, he indicted and convicted Scooter Libby for false statements, perjury and obstruction of justice. Even before federal judge Reggie Walton (a Bush appointee) sentenced Libby to 30 months in prison and a $250,000 fine, Republicans were demanding that Bush pardon him.
Republicans have offered an array of explanation and justifications for a Libby pardon, but when one cuts through the smoke, what they are really arguing is that one of their own should not be punished criminally. It is an absurd position. Conservatives once claimed they stood for law and order, and that no person was above the law, but their words belie their true beliefs as expressed in their actions. Frankly, I hoped that Bush would pardon Libby, as it would have served as a particularly egregious and conspicuous example of the Republican double standard -- the authoritarian's "do as I say, not as I do" mentality. Voters understand hypocrisy, and another solid abuse of process (and power) could only help the Democrats get back into the White House.
Having watched the GOP's evolution as it embraced the radicalism of authoritarian conservatism, slowly ceding control to its most strident faction, the authoritarian conservatives, I can no longer recognize the party. These new conservative leaders have not only sought to turn back the clock, but to return to a time before the Enlightenment when there were no clocks. As former vice president Al Gore nicely stated it, the Republicans have undertaken an "assault on reason." Indeed, they have rejected their own reasoned philosophy by ignoring conservatism's teachings -- based on well-documented history -- about the dangers of concentrations of power. They have done so by focusing on the presidency as the institution in which they wish to concentrate the enormous powers of the federal government. Nixon led the way, and Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II learned from his mistakes. Nixon scowled as he scolded and secretly investigated his opponents in the name of national security; his GOP successors have smiled and reassured Americans they are operating to protect them as they have proceeded to convert the American presidency into an elective monarchy, with its own high council, which was once known as the federal judiciary.
Fortunately, the power of the authoritarian conservatism that has so dominated the Bush/Cheney presidency is waning, although it is not likely there will ever be less than about one in four Americans who will follow such authoritarian leadership without question. For authoritarian conservatism to win another presidential contest, its candidate would have to attract independent voters in addition to their hardcore base. But polling of independents reveals that they have largely become disgusted with the Republicans, and lean heavily toward the Democrats. In surveying all of the Republican contenders for the GOP nomination, I have found that to the man, they all are far more authoritarian than even the most authoritarian of the Democrats. This raises the almost certain likelihood that, regardless of how great a distance any of these GOP candidates might attempt to place between himself and the Bush/Cheney presidency during a general election campaign, in fact, if elected he is going to continue in the vein that has already caused this nation so much trouble. (There is no doubt that the GOP will select an authoritarian standard-bearer, because these are the people who are most active in the primaries and the most devoted workers in the general election. It is almost impossible for a non-authoritarian to win the Republican nomination, as the party is now structured.)
As I was writing this closing section an old friend from the Nixon White House called. Now retired, he is a lifelong Republican who told me that he voted for Bush and Cheney twice, because he knows them both personally. He asked how my new book was coming, and when I told him the title, he remarked, "I'll say the government's broken." After we discussed it, he asked how I planned to end the book, since the election was still a good distance away. I told him I was contemplating ending midsentence and immediately fading to black -- the way HBO did in the final episode of the Sopranos, but that I would settle for a nice quote from him, on the record. He explained that he constantly has to bite his tongue, and the reason he does not speak out more is because one of his sons is in an important (nonpolitical) government post, and we both know that Republicans will seek revenge wherever they can find it. How about an off-the-record comment? I asked. That he agreed to.
"Just tell your readers that you have a source who knows a lot about the Republican party from long experience, that he knows all the key movers and shakers, and he has a bit of advice: People should not vote for any Republican, because they're dangerous, dishonest and self-serving. While I once believed that Governor George Wallace had it right, that there was not a dime's worth of difference in the parties; that is not longer true. I have come to realize the Democrats really do care about people who most need help from government; Republicans care most about those who will only get richer because of government help. The government is truly broken, particularly in dealing with national security, and another four years, and heaven forbid not eight years, under the Republicans, and our grandchildren will have to build a new government, because the one we have will be unrecognizable and unworkable."
These comments summed up our current situation -- and our possible future -- as eloquently as anything I could have wished.
-- By John W. Dean

Vacation 2007 Wrap

2007-08-20T06:43:00.000+04:00

Okay, a week from today will find me back at work. Vacation is almost at an end. Overall, it’s been a very good month. A lot of it has been about reconnecting with family.

It started with a day on my own in Knoxville. It was my first visit there and from what little I saw of it, it seemed like a nice enough city. Next came the Baker Family Reunion in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. It was a big success and it felt really good to get to know my Aunt and Cousins again and to get to meet their children. The only thing I wanted to do on that trip which I didn’t do was to go horseback riding.

Once back in West Virginia it was the usual situation of there being just enough to do to keep me busy and also enough free time to enjoy the pool and read. I visited with my Dad’s side of the family down in Ceredo, the little village on the Ohio River where I grew up. That included my great Aunt Sissy (my grandmother’s sister), Uncle Pat (Dad’s brother) and my cousins Norma Jean and Kyle. I visited with them twice. Uncle Pat gave us homegrown tomatoes, corn, cucumbers and cabbage. Things fresh from the garden really do taste better—it’s not a psyche thing either.

There was shopping to do at the Huntington Mall and downtown. There were new restaurants to try and some old ones to return to. Rocco’s 21 Club made for a nice meal and we saw Dancing With The Stars people there. Went to the movies and saw “The Bourne Ultimatum” and thought it was good for an action pic. Visited with some of Mom’s neighbors here in Island Estates. It’s never really that difficult to fill a day when I come home.

There was the Marilyn Monroe exhibit at the Huntington Galleries. We took Morgan, my 7-year old niece and introduced her to Marilyn. We took a trip up to Tamarack near Beckley and shopped the arts and crafts there after we had trout cooked by the Greenbrier Resort. We visited the new arts and crafts shop that opened in downtown Huntington called The Downtown Depot. They offer local artists, wood carvers, potters, photographers, glass blowers, etc. a place to sell their art.

I was really looking forward to flying to Boston and meeting up with Bronagh and Betsy and driving around Massachusetts and Brattleboro, Vermont, where we had first met in graduate school about 17 years ago. I was just putting my shirt on that Friday morning when the phone rang and an automated call told me my flight had been canceled. I rebooked a flight for 4 pm and switched on CNN. The reason the flight had been canceled was due to a security breach at the Charlotte airport. See, to get out of Huntington, you pretty much have to fly first to Charlotte and then onward. Anyway, I’d arranged with Jennifer to come by for me about 3 to take me to the airport. The woman (who was very nice and helpful btw) from the local USAir office called me about 12:20 and asked if I could get to the airport by 1. I knew I couldn’t and told her and she told me that my 4 flight was already showing 20 minutes late and that I couldn’t make my Charlotte connection to Boston. I canceled the trip and sulked my way up to the pool. I called Bronagh and Betsy the next day and they were having fun without me.

My brother-in-law Kent has a new boat and it’s killer. He took us out on the Ohio River twice. Both days the sun was out and the water was nice and warm. We went out yesterday, Saturday, and his father, Ken, and his Grandma Browning joined us on their pontoon boat. Ken does great grill and he cooked burgers and we swam and I got too much sun. Kent is an engineer for the Army Corps. Of Engineers and works on their river projects. He took us up near the Robert C. Byrd dam and showed us their dredging operation there. It was interesting watching them sucking the silt out of the shipping lanes and dumping it through this huge pipe to the other side of the river to let it drift on downriver.

Visited several times with my sister, Judy and her husband, Chuck. Judy has a new job and she seems to be a lot happier than I’ve seen her in awhile. One evening I took Judy, Mom, and our friend Carol out to Ironton, Ohio for dinner. A new steak house (Austyn’s) opened in the old railroad depot. It was heaving and we had an hour wait for a table. Carol knew of an old bar down by the river called The Fuzzy Duck. We walked across the parking lot and through the floodwall gates and there were like 30 hogs parked there and on the deck of the bar were their riders et al. There was some kind of biker convention going on in Ironton. We went in anyway and I got us drinks and we sat outside and watched the bikers and the river and talked and drank. The food at the restaurant was excellent, nothing fancy, just good eatin’.

Mom’s gone out of her way to cook some of my favorite foods. She’s sorta gotten out of the habit of cooking but she managed to put together several good meals. She cooked a turkey and we did an early Thanksgiving. Today she cooked meat loaf and Judy and Chuck joined us. We hit the pool after and my skin feels like it’s fried, especially after yesterday’s run on the river. Mom also makes great homemade barbeque and then she always does pinto beans and fresh kale. Kent also does a great grill and he did burgers for us one night at his and Jennifer’s house. I know I’ve definitely added a little to that spare tire around my waist.

I won’t be posting the pics from all of this until I get back to Abu Dhabi. Mom’s computer just doesn’t have the power. It barely hangs on so I can do this. Also, I have a political rant coming on and I’ll probably save that until I get back home. So, Thursday I fly home and Friday night I will sleep in my own bed again. I will have Saturday to recover from an 8-hour time zone leap and then back to work on Sunday. Wish me luck. Cheers.

Joe Klein Says Read This Now
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/8/19/20110/0110

Baker Family Reunion 2007

2007-08-09T08:14:00.000+04:00

I had a great time at the 2007 Baker Family Reunion. We arrived in Gatlinburg early Sunday afternoon. We drove to the office and couldn’t check in until 3 pm. As we waited a lot of people arrived and then Jennifer told me that the cabins weren’t located there by the office but were about a 15-minute drive away. Jennifer stayed in touch with Laura and Betty by phone through all of this. We finally got checked in and got directions and information about the bugs and the bears and piled back in the car to go to Pigeon Forge. Traffic was very heavy. We turned left at Traffic Light #6 and drove about 1.5 miles and then turned left and drove up a mountain until we found the cabin named “Mountain Retreat”. We sat inside and talked and waited for Laura to arrive with Betty, Evan, Jacob and Mallory. Jennifer manned the phone to give Laura directions on how to find the cabin. Once they arrived, we helped them unpack their car and Laura gave out our room assignments and then we carried stuff to our rooms. Laura, Jennifer and I then piled in the car and drove over to Wal-Mart for groceries. We filled two buggies. Drove that back to the cabin, unloaded the stuff and put it away then had a cold beer, meat pies (which Betty had brought on dry ice from Louisiana) and salad for dinner.

Monday we got up at a decent hour, got everyone fed and dressed and took off for Gatlinburg. Laura drove her big-ass car that talked to you to tell you which way to turn. She found a place to park. Jennifer was following in the van and followed suit. Gatlinburg is basically one street with a lot of tourist crap on it. We had lunch downtown. Laura took all the kids to Wacky Bear as secret shoppers. I shopped for a decent pair of shoes that I could wear rafting and horseback riding and which looked good with jeans. Towards the end of our day I found a pair of Top-Siders that were perfect. I also located and went to a liquor store to score a bottle of Jameson’s Irish whiskey. Laura rode with Mallory and I rode with Jacob up the mountain on a ski lift. It was cool and there was a beautiful view of the surrounding Smokey Mountains. We herded everyone back towards the cars and started for the cabin. Laura had been manning the phone with Liz and Mark (along with Micaela and Nathan) giving them directions to the cabin. We met them in the parking lot of Shoney’s at Traffic Light #6. Everyone hugged and greeted there in the parking lot and then they followed us up to the cabin. Laura and Micaela took the kids to Mr. Gati’s pizza for dinner while Mom, Betty, Mark, Liz, Jennifer and I ate at the Old Mill Restaurant. There was about a 30-minute wait for a table, but the food was good. I had trout, one of my favorites.

On Tuesday everyone, but Micaela, agreed to have a picnic at this spot that Laura knew of and the plan was to then hike up to a near-by waterfall after we ate. The sky looked threatening all along the drive and then as we pulled into the picnic area the sky opened up, along with some sound and light effects. Mom and Betty played statues under an umbrella and ate. I ate under a tree and got soaked. Finally, after about 30 minutes or so everyone was ready to leave. As we neared the waterfalls, Laura pulled off. Since everyone was already soaked, she wanted to go ahead and climb up to the waterfall. Betty, Mom, Jennifer and I declined and left with Evan to go back to the cabin. Jennifer and I fired up the hot tub and sat in it for about an hour and talked as it continued to pour the rain. Mom and Betty played Scrabble. Micaela sulked. Evan played. That evening was the birthday party for Evan and Jacob and Nathan. Liz, Laura and Betty had brought presents for all the kids. They tore through those gifts in bare minutes and they were very, very happy. The kids went off to play downstairs. Mom and Betty played Scrabble and I sat in along with Liz, I think. Jennifer watched.

Wednesday was Dollywood day. We all wore our Baker Family Reunion 2007 T-shirts that Liz had bought for us. It was a short drive from the cabin. The parking lots were full and we parked a mile or so from the main gate. A trolley came by and picked you up to take you to the main gate. We got our picture made and then grabbed maps of the place and I stood back while everyone made a plan of where and when to meet up. I slipped my music player into my ears, cranked up the music and headed up to Craftsmen Valley. It was a beautiful Tennessee early afternoon. There were some cool things up the valley, actually- glass blowers, wood carvers, pottery makers and Jennifer’s favorite, homemade pork rinds. I bumped into Betty and Mom as I was watching this rafting ride and talked them into doing it with me after lunch. We walked to the newly designated area to meet up with everyone else and then had lunch. After I finished lunch I went out to smoke and the kids came with me and there was a nearby pond where you could buy food for a quarter and feed the fish, ducks and turtles. They had a good time. All of us rode the water ride next. Betty didn’t know you got wet, but once she found out, she went anyway. Since there were 13 of us total and each tire held 6 people, I went as a single and rode with what I believe was a local family. It was still fun. Everyone split up again and I took Mom and Betty on the train ride around Dollywood. There was a breeze. After the train I took off on my own again, listening to music and looking for something else to do. There wasn’t much. I don’t like those rides that throw you around and upside down, too old, you know. I basically just wandered for about an hour or so, shopped a little, went into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame and it started to just pour rain and it poured more. We all met up down around the gate and I remembered the pictures. We bought a few packages of those and then had to file out through the gift shop with everyone else. It was still pouring the rain and it seemed like the whole park had decided to leave at the same time so everyone was waiting for trolleys back to their cars. That part was a little miserable. Finally to the cars and back to the cabin and most of us opened beers. I organized dinner with Laura, in other words I called and ordered the pizzas. She and Micaela went to pick them up. After dinner was the now usual thing. The kids played downstairs. Mom and Betty played Scrabble.

Thursday was whitewater-rafting day. Mom and Betty stayed home with Evan. It was a long ride over to the river site, practically to the North Carolina state line. Everyone but Micaela and I did the lower rafting, for children. Micaela and I did the upper with class 3 and 4 rapids on them. The water was really wild in spots and several people fell off. Our guide was Jared and he was very good and patient. He said he’d been doing this for over seven years. I was a little bit nervous before we got started, but after the first set of rapids, I chilled out for the most part and had a fantastic time. By the time we got back to the offices, I was soaked. I bought a T-shirt because mine was drenched and dried off and put on my dry shorts and new T-shirt. Back to the cabin we went.

We showered and put on fresh clothes because I was taking Jennifer, Laura, Liz and Mark out to the Hard Rock for dinner. We left about 7:30. Jennifer drove. The Café was busy when we arrived but I used my All Access pass and got us a table before we’d even gotten a good start on our drinks. Evidently, Tennessee has a strange law that you must show an ID before you can be served alcohol, even if you look 50, it doesn’t matter, you have to show ID and if you don’t have ID then you can’t drink. America has become so rigid and filled with these ridiculous laws, most of them for stupid people. Anyway, working on my first vodka martini we hit the table and started scoping out the menus. We ordered the food and I ordered a second martini. I had the barbeque brisket and it turned out to be fabulous. I left them to go to the bar for a smoke. I returned and we chatted and got to know each other again. We hadn’t been together as a group like that for such a long time, if ever. Food came and I ordered a pint of beer. We ate and talked some more and laughed a lot about our respective families, which is a sure sign of love. Jennifer drove us home. Mom looked like she’d been tied behind a pick-up truck and drug for thirty miles. She and Betty had been watching all the children. Not long after we got back the Two Moms were tired and went to bed.

Friday was our last full day there. Jennifer and Morgan and I wanted to go horseback riding and Mallory and Nathan wanted to come along. Laura took the two Moms shopping. Liz and Mark took everyone else for another hike up to a waterfall. By the time we got to the stables, there was such a crowd that he told us there was a two-hour wait for riding. We didn’t have the time because we were meeting back up with everyone else for lunch. Morgan cried a little bit because she really wanted to ride. I really wanted to ride, too, but I thought it would look back if I cried. We got back in the car and started flipping through options. Jennifer hit on the Hillbilly Putt Putt. We stood in line for maybe 20 minutes and then rode a lift up the side of this mountain where they’ve carved out two miniature golf courses. We played eighteen holes of golf, laughing and carrying on like kids, which some of us were.

If Jennifer knew one thing about the Pigeon Forge area it was possible dining options. She is her father’s daughter. There was a place she knew called the Apple Barn and we were all meeting there for lunch. Liz and Mark had already eaten and they were coming later. The food at this place was really good and not faux homemade country cooking. We ate and shopped some in the gift store and then we all split up again. Mark and Liz took all the kids back to the cabin and then down to the swimming pool. Mom, Betty, Jennifer and I went to this huge Outlet Mall in Pigeon Forge. Laura and Micaela went there as well, but we never really met up with them. I went out on my own, listening to music and going into a few shops, but basically it’s just a rip-off. I mean the place is enormous, and filled with everything and nothing. Close to 5 o’clock I bumped into Betty and Mom and we wobbled back to where the car was parked, conveniently in front of a bar/grill. I saw some people sitting outside having what looked like a pint of iced cold beer. Betty was thinking along the same lines. Mom had iced tea. In a bit Laura and Micaela joined us and we had another beer. Liz and Mark and the kids had eaten so we just decided to eat there. What the hell, we were tired and a little hungry and just wanted to get it out of the way. Jennifer and I both ordered the seafood and it was horrific. It had definitely traveled and then sat, god only knows how long. I still ate mine because I’d paid for it and because I was hungry. Then it was back to the cabin to pack and get ready for Saturday blast-off. You MUST vacate the cabin by 10 am exactly or be fined.

Saturday morning was a little chaotic. I slept through some of it, as I’m sure surprises no one. Slammed down some coffee and a granola bar, showered, dressed, hauled stuff out to the van and drove off to meet everyone at the Old Mill Restaurant for a goodbye breakfast. And it was a great country breakfast. I took the boys out with me to see the ducks and have a cigarette while everyone finished up eating. Not long after everyone met in the parking lot and said goodbye. We all drove off looking for the interstate and our respective homes. It had been fun and I hope we all get the chance to do it again before we’re all on walkers.

I want to write more about the reunion, but it’s been all I could do to just get the details of the trip down. Vacation with your family can be a busy time, believe it or not. I want to write about my time here in West Virginia visiting family, etc. I’m flying up to Boston Friday to meet up with Bronagh and Betsy from grad school. There will be a post in that I’m sure. And then there is a definite political tirade coming. Stay tuned for all of it.

Here are a few links I thought you should read.

The three links below are regarding CNN correspondent in Iraq giving the straight poop on the results of the Surge.
Michael Ware: Surge is undermining the very government that America created

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/08/01/ware-surge-is-undermining-the-very-government-that-america-created/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-durang/war-correspondent-respond_b_58769.html

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0707/31/acd.01.html

The Impeachment Dilemma by Scott Horton
http://harpers.org/archive/2007/08/hbc-90000697

Bush and Napoleon by Ed Bulliet
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/08/02/opinion/edbulliet.php

The greatest danger to American security after Bush and then Iran is Israel. Read this!
A New History Lesson in Israel by Rami G. Khouri
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/08/02/opinion/edkkhouri.php

Read this. Frightening to say the least!
Bush on the Couch by Coleen Rowley
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/coleen-rowley/dangers-of-a-cornered-geo_b_58429.html

End Of July Sell-Out

2007-08-01T08:11:00.000+04:00

It’s been over a month since I’ve posted anything here. I guess that’s not too bad. And it was a v. busy month. I should go back and check how many posts begin that way. Anyway, this is coming to you from Huntington, West Virginia. I’ll back up a little.

The day I left for the airport in Abu Dhabi was chaos and none of it of my making, really. Work was chaos for reasons I can’t divulge, you understand. George was supposed to pick me up at about 7 for a dinner party at Asli’s villa and then he’d take me on to the airport after, about 9 or so. The flight wasn’t until midnight, but I wanted to shop and use the open bar in the lounge, the usual. He didn’t arrive until almost 8 and was lost in my neighborhood. I talked him to my place on the mobile while I waited for him downstairs. Then, I was supposed to help navigate us to Asli’s villa and I was trying to do that and speak to my boss to make him aware of a problem George had discovered regarding work, of course. We drove around lost in Um Al Nar for about 30 minutes until we found the villa. Patricia and James were there, along with John and (my god I can’t think of her name, it begins with a B or an M and she’s Turkish) she was there, too. I met Asli’s daughter and her husband. Some other people from the embassy were there, but I forget their names. Had a little white wine and some dinner and got George to take me to the airport. John rode along to assist George. Got to the airport about 30 minutes late, which isn’t bad for George.

The airport was easy thanks to Golden Class Service and I dumped my stuff in the lounge and went shopping. No problems. Scoped out the bookstore, nothing to buy. Headed to the liquor store and found out that because of new regulations regarding liquids on flights, I couldn’t buy my usual two bottles of Jameson’s for the trip. I was shocked, shocked and thrown off my usual routine. I got a couple of carton of cigarettes and then moved on to the cologne shop. I bought a small bottle of Prada that fell under the new regulations for liquids and walked back to the lounge to consume some, Jameson’s. The Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt wasn’t bad except for the stopover in Kuwait City. The five hours in Frankfurt airport were pretty miserable, but at least there are smoking areas. The USAir flight to Charlotte was comfortable and I did manage a bit of sleep and also to snag one bottle of duty-free Chivas, which I had to stow in my checked luggage after I went through customs. I was only in the Charlotte airport for maybe an hour before they called my flight and I was off to Knoxville. Arrived Knoxville about 7 pm or so and seemed like I waited forever on my bags. I was so out of it. About 27 hours in airplanes and airports and very little sleep. Found a taxi and got to the Hilton. The taxi driver was very nice and very knowledgeable about things to do in Knoxville as well as in the Pigeon Forge area. I washed up in my room and stumbled down to the bar, The Pink Martini, and had a large vodka one followed by a hamburger with a pint of beer. Not long after that I was asleep.

Jet lag seems to get worse as I get older. I woke up about 5 or so and had a really hard time getting back to sleep. Next thing I knew it was 1 o’clock. The sky was blue and I thought the best way to wake up was at the pool. Out I went and had a dip. The water was pretty cold. I was hungry and found that there wasn’t room service at the pool. I went to the front desk and they said I could order it from my room and have it sent to the pool. That wasn’t exactly correct. I got room service on the phone and he told me that you couldn’t have glass at the pool. I got to the bottom line. I’m hungry and I want to eat at the pool, what can I have? The kid was bright. I can make you a club sandwich in a to-go box. I said great and went back to the pool. Not long after that, I ate. Then a mother came with two screaming children. Their screams hit my head on reverb and I stayed about another thirty minutes before I went up to shower.

After I got dressed, I went down to the Starbucks in the lobby for a coffee and then went on the computer. Checked mail and started reading some news. I tried to go to Salon and the net nanny told me it was blocked. I was stunned. They block Salon.com at the Hilton in Knoxville. Later I tried to go to The Huffington Post and it was also blocked by the net nanny. They block The Huffington Post at the Hilton in Knoxville. Finally, I twigged to something and googled the fascist Drudge Report, clicked on the link and went right there. Well, being jet-lagged and a little hung over I went up to the desk and argued with some clueless little southern Christian bimbo who assured me NO, the hotel was not just blocking liberal news sites but that the computer guy who did that was off today. I told that was exactly what was going on and said I’m not in this country much but that nothing surprises me here anymore. I vented a bit. I finished on the computer and then went out into the garden to have a cigarette and to finish off my coffee.

I wanted to get out and walk and see a little of the city. I asked the same bimbo at the desk and she directed me to the Old Market Square area, a few blocks away. I got my music player on and cranked it up loud and went walking. I found it easily and shopped in several places. I found a Jesus action figure with glow in the dark hands. I also bought a countdown calendar to Bush’s last day in office and a copper bracelet. I wanted some water so I went into this bar and ended up having to buy this expensive water in a bottle and I started to leave and she handed me a glass. I went out to sit on the patio and have a smoke. I looked at the glass as I was about to pour the expensive water into it and there was lipstick still on the rim. I just drank from the bottle. I still had the music cranked up and there were two other tables taken on an eight-table patio. I lit my cigarette and was enjoying the water and the cigarette and the music when this waitress bimbo with multiple piercings on her face told me “this is a non-smoking patio”. I laughed at her, of course, and questioned her seriousness. She said she was serious. I said, “I’ll go then,” and left the water and the dirty glass on the table and started walking again.

One street over I found an art cooperative, The Art Market Gallery. I still had the music cranked up when I entered and felt a tap on my shoulder after a minute or so and the woman told me that it was an art cooperative and they have details on all the artists and if I needed any help, just to ask. I thanked her and put the music back on. There were some brilliant pieces there. I spent about a hundred, but I could have spent a lot more. There’s always the baggage weight allowance on the fight home to consider. I bought a nice piece of pottery, a lovely turned wooden bowl, and a really cool hand-painted glass soap dish. After I left there I headed back to the hotel and dropped off my purchases and then walked over to the Sundome (I think that’s what it’s called) that is a remnant of when Knoxville hosted the World’s Fair about 20 years ago. You ride the elevator to the top and you get this great view of the park and parts of the city and the river. The mountains are really beautiful in the distance. I walked the park a bit more and had intentions to eat out somewhere but when I got back to the hotel I just decided to go back down to the same bar, where you can smoke, and order the BBQ sandwich. It was very good. After dinner it was upstairs to pack, watch a little TV and try to sleep early because my mother, sister and niece were picking me up early the next day to go on to Pigeon Forge for the Baker Family Reunion 2007.

I’m on vacation so I’m going to cut this up into several parts. Next part will be on the Baker Family Reunion 2007 in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. There is also a political rant coming on. Thus, the title of this post. I saw a Bill Maher comedy special on HBO at the Hilton. He said that he loves America; it’s Americans that he hates. I agree. The country is filled with sell-outs. From the minute you board any American carrier to come here you can see them. I’ll save my feelings on that for a later post.

This is a good piece on the next terror attack and what could happen.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marty-kaplan/after-the-next-911_b_58264.html

I found this website and thought my friends back in the UAE would like it. You take a pic of someone parked like an asshole and post it on the website. Check it out.
http://www.youparklikeanasshole.com/

War, Chaos and Bush’s Faith by Gary Kamiyahttp://www.salon.com/opinion/kamiya/2007/07/31/faith_war/

Socializing and Unsocializing

2007-06-30T17:41:00.000+04:00

Saturday and car bombs in London and back to work tomorrow. This upcoming week will be a heavy one at work, I’m sure. Nothing to do but just duck my head and get through it. George, head of one program at the Institute, is probably going to be a bit pissed or disappointed with me, but I’ll get into that later.

Last weekend was say-goodbye-for-the-summer dinner with Phil, Enma, Steve, Leah and Hannah. I decided to taxi, for several reasons. I get tired of being in the car, for one thing, and also of having to drink responsibly so I can drive myself home safely. There’s a strategy involved in getting an evening taxi. Right now, evening prayer is about 7:30. You are not going to get a taxi around 7:30, no way. Then, after prayer, everyone and his brother are out on the street trying to flag a taxi. I opted to go early to Phil and Enma’s. The other day I waited 10 – 15 minutes in 110° weather for a taxi to take me down to Honda to pick up my car after its 120,000 km service. This time I walked out the door of my building and bam, there was an empty taxi. That’s how life is. It’s like when you get home from work or from out running errands and cannot find a parking place anywhere near the building so you park a street or so away, and then you walk up to the building and there’s an empty space right in front of the door and you sort of look back over there at your car and think about moving it, but just shake your head and walk on inside the building.

So, I arrived at Phil and Enma’s early. Everyone was already several ahead of me, but I caught up. We had a good time, as always. We talked about everything and nothing and laughed and ate takeaway from the Rainbow Steak House. Phil and Enma are off to Trinidad and then Venezuela to visit her parents. Steve and family are back to the UK to visit his family and then up to Scotland to visit Leah’s family. I have a little less than three weeks left before I’m out of here. Leah and Hannah got sleepy and Steve took them home around 9 or so. I hung out for about another hour talking to Phil and Enma and then I left. It was a nice evening.

Work was typically busy and chaotic last week. Due to new programs just coming online, we have to rework the entire September program of classes for the Institute. Hopefully with a few meetings this week, we’ll get that set up. Also have finals, etc. for three classes which will graduate on next Monday and that means a lot of paperwork. There was also a lot of outside testing last week, but that’s mostly George’s area.

Lorin had called me during the week and said they were coming to Abu Dhabi for Thursday night. She also mentioned that Wendy’s daughter, Kayla, had wanted her mother to get word to me that she had enjoyed meeting and talking to me at David and Lorin’s “Goodbye to B-01” party last month. Kayla is back in Canada getting ready to start her sophomore year of university this fall. Anyway, those exchanges led to Wendy coming down with David and Lorin on Thursday, which was great because I have a feeling that Wendy is becoming family and she’s very good people. Anyway, I had suggested that we all go to Hemingway’s for dinner and get a good burger and some beers.

George has had family visiting him for weeks. Frankly, I don’t see how he does it. He’s a better man than me, that’s for sure. Anyway, he invited me to a party at his place on Friday evening to meet his family and I was pretty sure it was something I wouldn’t make. George throws a great party and I attend when I’m in the mood for a party and think that I can be an entertaining guest. That’s not always the case, so I blow him off. I think it offends him and it’s not meant to. It’s just my nature. Anyway, I invited him and his family to Hemingway’s on Thursday to meet David and Lorin and Wendy and that way I could meet his family and I thought that would cover me. Then, Lorin called me back and told me that Rex (a librarian at the Petroleum Institute) wanted to join us and he was bringing two people. Now, I was up to a table for 12 and Hemingway’s doesn’t take reservations. I’d tried to use some wastuh and get my barber, Jihad, whose shop is at the Hilton where Hemingway’s is, to talk to someone about holding me a table, but they basically said no.

We’d scheduled to meet at 8. I left home about 7:20 and stopped at the petrol station to fill up and then headed on over to the Hilton, arriving about a quarter to 8. Luckily, Hemingway’s “back room” was empty and I spoke to the waiter and he started putting me together a table for 12. He finished about 8 and I ordered a beer and when it arrived I lit a cigarette. I know Lorin and I know George and I know they’re always running late, so I was expecting to sit and wait a bit. What was odd, though, was that the place started filling up and there’s me sitting alone at a table for 12 trying to look cool and comfortable and feeling very conspicuously alone. I think I pulled it off, but it felt really lonely at that huge table for about 15 – 20 minutes.

Everyone started arriving and I felt vindicated. I tweaked the seating and ended up sitting next to George and opposite his family. It was a fun evening. George’s family is sweet and real, just like George, and we hit it off from the start. Everyone talked and drank and ate and laughed and got acquainted and I really enjoyed myself. I took some of George’s family into the Jazz Bar to watch the Jazz Band. The place was heaving, so we had to stand, but the band was the same one that’s been there forever and they’re good. Then, George let everyone know that I probably wouldn’t be at the party on Friday and the pressure started. George knows me. Finally, I promised I would come and fully intended to join them for at least a few hours on Friday. Well, I didn’t.

We got back to my flat about 11:30 pm after Hemingway’s. We sat in the living room and caught up, because I’d spent the evening talking to George’s family. Wendy inspected the flat and I know it seemed like a big change from living on the American University of Sharjah campus. Wendy went to bed first, she had the spare room. David fell asleep on the sofa, as he usually does, and Lorin and I stayed up talking and drinking Paddy’s (Irish whiskey) until 4. We did major damage to that bottle. David and Lorin had my bedroom and I was on the sofa bed in the living room. David and Lorin and Wendy left about 5 pm the next day and I was feeling a bit under the weather. I got my bed back and turned on CNN and settled into my usual position and watched Breaking News about the car bombs in London. (I love London, it’s one of my favorite cities, and I have visited all those places they were talking about on the news.) I did shave and trim my moustache, etc. in preparation to go to George’s, but I just couldn’t pull myself off the bed to shower and dress and drive over there. It played on my mind a lot. Basically, I wasn’t in the mood to go to a party, any party. And what I wanted to do and needed to do was relax in bed and watch Lost and Grey’s Anatomy and House, which was what I did.

Still, tomorrow I will have to face George, but I’ll just tell him the truth and hope he understands.

Oh, btw, so far, the best CD of 2007 is Icky Thump by The White Stripes.

I received an email from my friend Mark Starr. He and his wife work in Kuwait and the email is the long story of this teacher who offended some Kuwaiti with wastuh by putting his son in detention and now is basically being held in the country and not allowed to leave. They put a travel ban on her so she can’t leave the country. The US Embassy can’t or won’t help her. It’s all very shameful. Either I will find a way to link to it or post the whole thing here later. It’s a very eye-opening story.

Below is a link to a story by one of our greatest journalists, Seymour M. Hersch, about the general who did the report on Abu Gharib. I can’t say it surprised me; it’s just typical American government under Bush. Read it tho, it’s an interesting piece.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/06/25/070625fa_fact_hersh?currentPage=1

The General’s Report by Seymour M. Hersch

Seinfeld Post

2007-06-16T17:44:00.000+04:00

It’s impossible to be “up” all the time. I do put on a good show of it though, but it takes a lot of energy. By the time I get to the weekend, all I can do is vegetate. Mentally, it’s time for a vacation, but calendar time says it’s still a little over a month away. I should be going to a surprise goodbye party for someone this evening and I just can’t. I can’t make conversation. I can’t listen to conversation. I will read and watch a little TV and have dinner and go to bed early to start a new work week tomorrow. I’m doing the best I can. Maybe I’m also feeling a little guilty because I should go, but I won’t go. Guilt also drains energy, trust me.

The book I’m reading now led me to two blogs that the author maintains. I was jealous. What I do in my journal, he does on his blog. That isn’t an option for me for several reasons and it’s frustrating.

Do you know that I have maintained this current job for longer than any other job I’ve had in my life? Do you know that I am making the highest salary I’ve ever made in my life? I have more money in the bank and in funds than I’ve ever had in my life. There’s a “but” that should come after that, only I’m not quite sure what it is. I can’t say that I’m unhappy, and yet there are times I don’t feel happy. I guess that’s just the natural flow of life. Plus, I’ve never been 52 before. It makes me uncomfortable.

There’s an 8 x 10 of me that’s behind the bedroom door and I rarely even notice that it’s there. I noticed it the other day. It’s about 10 years old. I’m standing behind the first car I ever bought in the UAE, a KIA Sportage. There’s a story to that car, but I’ll save it for another time. I’m too busy feeling sorry for myself or whining or whatever this is. Anyway, it’s up on top of Jebel Hafit in Al Ain. I remember the trip and that was a good day. We were with Tony and Sarah. I didn’t have any white hair then. I still had a goatee. I look better with facial hair, actually, but I can’t grow it now because it all comes out white. Small children would come up to me and tell me what they want for Christmas. Get the idea?

Sometimes, I wish life came with narration. You know, like that woman on “Desperate Housewives” who killed herself, but hangs out watching and commenting on everything that happens and then usually ties up each episode into a theme. Or maybe not.

I miss my lame attempts at writing fiction. I haven’t plotted or written fiction since the last time I took an online writing course, which was almost two years ago. Val was still here then and she offered support. I miss creating characters and plotting and then trying to put it all into words which don’t embarrass me.

So, here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to post this and do a couple of other things on my blog. Then I’m going through each room in the flat making notes of what I want done. I’m going to have a company come in and paint while I’m on my vacation and then I want to re-do several things in the flat after I return. I had thought of moving but with rent inflation what it is here, I’m better off just staying where I am. Then I’m going to make a list of things I have to get done before I leave for my vacation. I like lists. They keep me organized. Then I’ll write in my journal and include all the bits and pieces I can’t say here. I’ll do the dishes and shave and get clothes laid out for work tomorrow and I think I’ll order home delivery from Subway. I’m not in the mood to cook. Then maybe I’ll watch a movie because none of the shows I like to watch are on this evening. After that, about 10, I’ll make a nightcap and read my book (the one by the author I’m jealous of). At 5 the alarm will go off and I’ll switch on the coffee maker before I take my shower.

Some things to read are listed below.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/06/11/doubt/

Better to be Hamlet than President George
By Peter Birkenhead

http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2007/06/14/bush_foreign_policy/

Bush’s European Disaster by Sidney Blumenthal (READ THIS!!!!!!!)

http://www.salon.com/books/review/2007/06/14/eagleton/

What is The Meaning of Life? By Laura Miller

Bye to B-01

2007-06-03T19:43:00.000+04:00

So, it’s June. Weather, hot and humid. What's new, huh? There’s a new photo album to check out. There are a couple of pix from Lorin’s birthday dinner at Finz at Rotana Beach Hotel in Abu Dhabi. The rest of the pix are from this past weekend when we got together to say goodbye to their place in Block B-01. They should be getting settled into their new place as I’m writing this.
I drove up to Sharjah on Wednesday after work and did the usual lunch with David and then a nap. That evening we had dinner at home and then sat in the garden and drank and talked. Lorin had to work the next day. I slept very late on Thursday and then after coffee and brekkie David, Rainan and I took a load of things over to the new flat and ran by the Co-Op for a few groceries. Lorin was a bit late getting home from work and then she got caught up in this movie on Showtime and we didn’t leave to go out to dinner until about nine. We went to this “Sports Club” for dinner, an old Brit haunt that’s been there since the 50’s, I think. It wasn’t that crowded, but very noisy, and a great experience. There aren’t many places left like that in the UAE now. Everything is all glitz and glamour and overpriced. The menu was pretty limited so I went for the All-Day English Breakfast. I haven’t had one since I was in the UK for New Year’s when Jean cooked me one at her B&B. Fried eggs, potatoes, beans, mushrooms, grilled tomato, bacon, sausage and blood pudding, with a little toast on the side, was all washed down with a couple of pints of Amstel Lite. It was just what I needed.
On Friday the boys took another load over to the new flat and then made another run to the Co-Op. Lorin was busy cooking chili for the party that night. Pat arrived early, about 6 or so, and we chatted for a bit and then I went upstairs to wash and change T-shirts. It was a casual party. People started arriving after 7 and continued coming until well past 11 pm. It was a good party. I know many of the people there from all the other parties I’ve crashed on the campus. Wendy was there with her daughter, who was visiting the UAE for the first time. They’re from Alberta and she’s going to university there. Wendy works in the library at AUS and is good fun. She went with us last winter when we did the Big Bus trip around Dubai. Leslie from Wales was there. She’d just finished packing and was flying out about 2 am for the last time, so it was goodbye to Leslie. Larry from Canada was also there and he’s leaving for good in about a week’s time. That’s expat life in a nutshell. The party was lots of fun and sometime after midnight I helped Lorin clean up. Saturday, I slept late as I do, and then while I had coffee, Lorin made French toast, which is a “family” tradition for Saturday before I drive back to Abu Dhabi. Then I showered, dressed and packed up. We took a few last pictures, as you can see in the album, then I loaded up and car and drove home. On the way home I stopped as I was entering Abu Dhabi on the Musafah road to take a picture of the area that gave my blog its name. Just as you’re driving onto (or off of) the island city of Abu Dhabi there is Between Two Bridges. It is exactly what it says it is. There are two bridges connecting Abu Dhabi with the mainland, the Musafah bridge and the Maqta bridge, and this place is between those two bridges. Anyway, there’s the pic at the top of the blog now.

Below is a link to Steve's picture album of our Hannah. There are even a few pix of her old Mum and Daddy.
http://picasaweb.google.com/steveallisonauh/Hannah20062007

Here are a few links I've stored over the last week or so, you might want to give them a read.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/kamiya/2007/05/28/memorial_day/

Memorial Day by Gary Kamiya

http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2007/05/31/policy/

America is not Bush by Sidney Blumenthal

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/05/conservatism_realistic_about_g.html

The Case for Conservatism by George Will

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/06/01/rhetoric/index.html

Words in a time of War by Mark Danner

One More Day

2007-05-23T22:09:00.000+04:00

So, it’s Wednesday night, 9:30. I watched Coronation Street and then an episode of Friday Night Lights taped from last night, had dinner, did the washing up, shaved and have my clothes laid out for a 5:00 start in the morning. I’m burning a couple of CDs I’ve downloaded over the last week while I write this. Usually I get in bed about 10:00 with a nightcap and the book I’m reading and then the lights are out about 11:00. Exciting, huh?
It’s been one of those weeks at work. What can I say, they happen. A contributing factor is that 3 classes graduate next week and that always seems to ratchet up the tension a bit. We’ll survive it. Last weekend David, Lorin and Pat came down from Sharjah and joined Phil, Enma and I at Finz at the Rotana Beach Hotel for a birthday dinner for Lorin and anniversary dinner for David and Lorin. Everyone was late, so I was forced to have a vodka martini before they got there and then another one, of course, once we all get settled in at table. Started with ½ dozen oysters then some white wine and the catch of the day, grilled, then chocolate mousse for dessert. Everyone had a good time. We laughed and talked about old times and future plans and summer vacation.
Tomorrow, Thursday, is last day of the work week. Dinner is going to be at Steve, Leah and Hannah’s with Phil and Enma and me. I’m looking forward to it, a true family dinner. Then I will probably spend the rest of the weekend with the wagons in a tight circle watching a little TV, reading and working on the computer, the usual. The valueless joy of not hearing my name called.
Next weekend will be goodbye to David and Lorin’s flat and garden. I have a feeling it’s going to be a weekend to remember, but most of it will be lost in an appropriate haze of alcohol. I’ll drive up to Sharjah next Thursday after work and that night we’ll do a private family-type goodbye to the place and all we’ve shared there. Friday night will be an open house type-thing with people from the campus. Saturday will be a day of recovery and then Sunday back to Abu Dhabi for work on Monday. It’s our long weekend. I’ll try to take pics. I have pics also, before and after, from Finz from last weekend and will try to post them this weekend along with a longer, more coherent post. It’s 10:00 and time to make a drink and read myself to sleep.
Below are links to a few pieces I’ve read over the last week or so. Check them out. They’re worth the ten minutes. I’m reading Fiasco by Thomas Ricks now and so I’m feeling a highly political post coming on. I’m about half-way through it. Why isn’t most of the Bush government in prison? Maybe reading the Impeachment post by Gary Kamiya linked below will help explain, maybe not.
More soon.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/05/14/iraq/
America’s Long Iraq Nightmare by Patrick Cockburn

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/05/14/drudge/
The Matt Drudge Primary by Michael Scherer

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/05/14/wolfowitz/
Paul Wolfowitz’s Fatal Weakness by Juan Cole

http://www.salon.com/opinion/kamiya/2007/05/22/impeachment/
Why Bush Hasn’t Been Impeached by Gary Kamiya

David and Lorin's Garden

2007-05-11T23:43:00.000+04:00

Ex-pat life can be many things. Lots of interesting people are met from lots of different countries who are living here for lots of different reasons. You meet a lot of people who are here one year and then gone the next. It’s been my experience that you keep a small core group of friends who become your extended family and support group and you feel lucky to have them there for you. Phil and Enma, Steve and Leah and Hannah, David and Lorin—they are my family here. Birthdays, Christmas, Thursday evenings, among other events, are spent together. Laughing and drinking and eating and smoking and talking about what’s what.
A couple of weekends back I went up to visit David. Lorin was away in Canada for what I call the Festival of the Dead. It’s a Ukrainian Orthodox religious festival, okay. They live in a two-floor flat on the American University of Sharjah (AUS) campus in University City, Sharjah. I well and truly hate the drive up from Abu Dhabi. I always leave Sheikh Zayed Road at the Jebel Ali South exit and take Emirates Road, fighting the traffic up Emirates Road to Sharjah. It can be a dangerous drive, as most can be here in the UAE, but I’ve been driving here for a long time and I know the tricks. Timing is important. If I can get away from work a little early, then I can miss the rush hour traffic and just have to deal with the long line of huge cargo trucks, which by law are supposed to stay in the right lane. But, once I arrive at David and Lorin’s place at the AUS campus, it’s like being on holiday. I joke with them that the faculty at AUS, like Embassy employees and W., live in a bubble, and they do, but it’s a very pleasant bubble.
The spare bedroom is called “Jack’s room” and that’s where I dump my stuff and change out of my work clothes and then go down to have a quick bite of lunch with David, along with a couple of beers, and then return to my bedroom for a nap.
Hey, I love my afternoon nap. For one thing, I wake up at 5 a.m. every workday and when I get home from work I want a bit of sleep. I wake up from my nap about 5 p.m. and have the rest of the evening to run errands, work on the computer, watch TV, read, etc. Besides, when I first came here to the UAE, everyone napped in the afternoon. Nothing was open. The country basically shut down for the most part from about 1 – 5 p.m. That’s not the case now. The shopping malls and the business urge have changed all that. Anyway, after I wake up from my nap at David and Lorin’s, I wash my face, push down my hair with a little water and head down to the back garden for a cigarette and a jar of Starbuck’s mocha latte that I picked up at the little petrol station near campus.
David and Lorin will be moving to a different flat soon and I’ll lose that garden. I love their garden. I sit on the little covered patio and smoke and watch geckos and birds and just relax.
We have shared so many wonderful times in that garden. A few months back we returned from dinner in Dubai about midnight just as a storm was hitting. They followed me to the garden so I could smoke and we watched this amazing lightshow of jagged, Hollywood-perfect lightning hitting all around us in the outlying desert and the rain washing down everything. Lorin said she loved the smell of rain on dirt and that it reminded her of the village in Canada where she grew up and where her family had a farm. One night Lorin and I sat on the patio and watched a major wind storm wreak havoc with the fan-leaved palm trees which loom tall just outside the garden wall. It was beautiful.
We’ve gotten so drunk in that garden. Continuing on from dinner and sitting outside and drinking and talking. Talking about the past, the future, our jobs, our friends (the ones still here in the UAE and the ones who have moved on) and everything we’ve shared over our 15 year friendship. We’ve laughed until we’ve had tears running down our aging cheeks and sometimes we’ve just had tears running down those same cheeks because we also share our problems.
I’ve told Lorin that we need to do something special and memorable to give the flat and the garden a proper goodbye. I’m hoping that works out. I want to spend a little time alone in the garden one last time, having a few cigarettes, a few drinks, and remembering all the great memories that rest inside the walls of that garden and the decaying cells of my brain. If it works out, I’ll take pictures.

Just a couple things more.

Bushies Behaving Badly by Holly Allen, Christopher Beam, and Torie Bosch
http://www.slate.com/id/2165980/fr/nl/

This is a handy guide to all the various Bush administration scandals. It’s a truly amazing list of sleaze.

Also, I’ll post the link here and on the list to the side for the website of an Abu Dhabi-based artist. His paintings are truly original, refreshing and reflective. You can order directly from his website. If anyone based here in the UAE knows where he could have a bit of free exhibition space for a short time, I’m sure he would appreciate it. The website address is www.artspositive.com and its user friendly. Check out his paintings as well as his sculptures. He’s going to be famous one day and buying one of his paintings now will prove to be a good investment, I’m sure.

Wednesday Quickie

2007-05-09T19:26:00.000+04:00

Allow me to whine about not having any time to write. I haven’t posted here for over two weeks. I’m, check that, I have always been a faithful journal writer and haven’t even opened my journal in over two weeks. This weekend I have a dinner party on Thursday evening and then I plan to spend my weekend at home and sit here for several hours updating this blog. There are more pix I’ve wanted to add to my albums. I deleted my lists several weeks ago because I wanted to re-do them and haven’t had the time to do that, either.
I just wanted to do a quick post because there are several links to very good stories that I’ve been accumulating and I want to post them before they’ve expired. The first one is about Google. I prefer Google, using them for blogging, my email and my photo albums. Here’s a link to a posting on new personalized tools available at Google.

Google Expands Personalization With iGoogle
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070501/tc_nm/google_personalization_dc_2

I haven’t explored the iGoogle options yet because of time constraints, but am hoping to check this out this weekend.

Apes May Lead to Origin of Languages: Researchers
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070501/sc_nm/apes_language_dc_4

As most of you know I teach a foreign language and this is an interesting piece on the possible origins of languages.

Last Refuge of the Scoundrel by Gary Kamiya
http://www.salon.com/opinion/kamiya/2007/05/01/bush_defeatists/

This guy is one of my favorite journalists and I always look for his pieces at Salon. This one concerns the labeling of Democrats as defeatists because of their growing opposition to the Iraqi debacle. Check it out.

Mission Accomplished Speech
http://www.salon.com/news/primary_sources/2007/05/01/mission_accomplished/

This is great. Read this. This is the verbatim transcript of the monkey’s Mission Accomplished speech after he swooped down on the aircraft carrier and he stood before a banner announcing Mission Accomplished which was of course put up without Karl Rove’s knowledge.

A Tale of Two Horrors by Gary Kamiya
http://www.salon.com/opinion/kamiya/2007/04/24/virginia_tech/

This is a very, very powerful piece on the Virginia Tech massacre and the reaction to the loss of life. It brilliantly and movingly compares that reaction to our increasing numbness to the deaths of thousands of Iraqis for whom we have no names. It speaks to a loss of humanity. Just read it.

Bill Moyers
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/btw/watch.html

I don’t have access to American PBS so I haven't seen Moyers new series. Evidently he has returned with a new program and one of the first episode dealt with the complete and utter failure of the American press to objectively report on the lead-up to the war in Iraq. This article offers some background on that episode. Basically, as you know, the Bush junta fed the American press the information and they fed it back to the American people, few if any questions asked. Your press failed you.

Bush’s Favorite Historian by Gary Kamiya
http://www.salon.com/opinion/kamiya/2007/05/08/alistair_horne/

This is a very interesting interview with the British historian who has been a favorite of leaders from Bush to Pinochet to Sharon, some of the great butchers of our time. He is a very interesting read and I’m going to look for his books on my next trip to the book store. Evidently his most famous book is one on the Algerian war for independence from the French.

The Bush Beat by Glen Harkavy
http://villagevoice.com/blogs/bushbeat/archive/2007/05/cruel_and_usual.php

This blog was a great read on the Village Voice and then it was abruptly dropped when they went through some management changes. Well, it’s back now and it’s just as good as ever. The above link takes you to his posting on Israeli torture of Palestinians. It’s eye-opening. Bookmark his blog because he’s good.

Lou Dobbs A Call to the Faithful
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/05/08/Dobbs.May9/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

Lou Dobbs writes about the dangers in the ever blurring lines of separation between church and state. It’s been an obviously growing danger for years and I think Dobbs just jumped on it now because he pissed off the religious hypocrites and they’ve gone after him. It’s still a good read.

Well, that’s it. Maybe part of the reason that I don’t have the time to write is that I read too much. Anyway, it’s time to make a before-dinner drink and then cook it and eat it. The usual. Cheers. More later.

Saturday Lite

2007-04-21T17:32:00.000+04:00

Well, it’s Saturday and back to work tomorrow. Slept late today. Cereal and then coffee. Made myself sit down and finish my taxes, basically plugging in the numbers from the rough draft onto the actual forms. It’s all signed, sealed and ready to be mailed off tomorrow. I’ve been online for a couple of hours and really have nothing very outstanding to report, nothing to link you to. Gotten everything pretty much ready for work tomorrow. 5 a.m. comes hard, my friends. On Thursday night went to Phil and Enma’s for a birthday dinner for Phil. Actually, his birthday was last Sunday, but because of conferences, he postponed the piss-up until Thursday. As usual, Enma cooked a great meal. Yesterday, I slept quite late and woke up moderately hung-over, but with no lasting damage. I was online for awhile, then curled up in bed and watched 5 hours of TV I’d taped all week, but hadn’t had time to watch. I’ve gotten hooked on Prison Break, Heroes, Grey’s Anatomy, House and Friday Night Lights.

You know, there’s something about Friday Night Lights that seems to embody all things American and I can’t quite put my finger on it. This entire Texas town (much like Ceredo-Kenova, WV used to be) is totally and singly obsessed with their high school football team. It’s like the only thing they have in their lives and the only thing that matters to them. You throw in the mix a kid whose father is fighting in Iraq and another who is a Katrina refugee. All the cheerleaders are cute and all the football players are cute with cute girlfriends. There are so many reasons why I should hate this show, yet I’m totally hooked on it and I don’t know why. Could be because Peter Berg produces it, based on the film he did.

Q: A terrible tragedy occurred on the Virginia Tech campus this past week. Over 30 people were horribly shot and killed by American guns used by another student. CNN International totally dropped all other coverage to focus on this. Even the BBC spent a considerable amount of air time on it. We know the victims names and we know the name and background of the killer. I’ve seen his roommates, his English teacher and other assorted people who knew him speak of him and his problems. On the day following the VT massacre, over 190 were killed in Baghdad. CNN barely mentioned it. BBC did at least one report on it. Why don’t I know the names of those people who were killed in Baghdad and why don’t I know anything about the person who killed them? Is it simply because we don’t care? They’re Iraqis and they are getting killed all the time so they don’t matter? Don’t you think that the people of the world see this and understand this and use it to form opinions of America, and rightly so?

As I’m writing this I’m uploading more photos into a new album. I’m not sure I’ll get it all done today, but hopefully by the end of this week. They’re photos from various places. From a dinner with work colleagues at a very nice Indian restaurant in Abu Dhabi, my stopover in Frankfurt and trip up the Rhine on my way home for summer break last year, and my family’s trip up into the Amish Country in Ohio. Frankfurt wasn’t a bad city, but the weather was so hot and miserable, that it was just impossible to enjoy it. The boat trip on the Rhine was super, though. Our family trip up to the Amish Country was great. We really had a nice time. Great food and friendly people and Morgan, Jennifer and I got to go horseback riding. Hope you like the pix.

If you know me, then you know I read a lot. I can’t remember when I have not been between page 1 and the end of a book. That sounds familiar. Maybe I’m plagiarizing myself. Anyway, I have a huge library in my flat because I tend to read according to mood. I really enjoy detective novels which are written as a series. There’s a new series I’ve been reading featuring Leo Waterman that I’ve been enjoying. It’s set in Seattle and features a private detective, of course. G.M. Ford is the author and he definitely has a keen sense of humor. I just finished the first in the series entitled Who In Hell Is Wanda Fuca? There’s a new movie out starring Mark Wahlberg called The Shooter. It’s based on a series of novels written by Stephen Hunter and they are all great. The main focus is Bobby Lee Swagger (I know!), but some of the series have centered on his father. They’re well-written and thoughtful. Can’t wait to see the movie. Last night I wasn’t in an escapist mood because I’d just escaped with several hours of TV, so I started a serious novel, one that’s been on my shelf for years. It’s Caracole by Edmund White. It goes without saying that the writing is superb as usual. I’m only about 50 pages into it so I’ll give it another mention after I’ve finished it.

Well, that’s it for me. Going to continue trying to upload these pix, but got things to do around here. Next time.

Friday the 13th

2007-04-13T17:14:00.000+04:00

Has been a while, huh? This time, believe it or not, I have a legitimate excuse. I have been well and truly busy. The process to put me onto the new contract system with the Air Force began back in November ’06. It drug on forever. It was thanks to my boss, I’m sure, that I continued to receive my salary. My BA and MA were stuck in an obviously hopeless Ministry of Higher Education, awaiting certification. My residence visa had expired and I was almost past the thirty day grace period allowed. I was angry and frustrated and anxious and, as usual, fairly vocal about it. Then something happened that made me feel like a complete fool. At the last possible minute, everything dropped into place and, enshallah, beginning next month I will receive my new salary and maybe the following month receive the back pay for the salary increase which should have begun with December’s salary.

Q: After the Green Zone suicide bombing I saw Bush on CNN talking about the loss of innocent life and this Q occurred to me. Which group has killed more innocent Iraqis—the Coalition of the Willing or the insurgents/terrorists/militias? I don’t know the answer, but I would like to know.

Last year we had a family reunion with my father’s side of the family down in Ceredo, WV at my great aunt Sissy’s home. This year we are getting together with my mother’s sister, Aunt Betty, and her two children (cousins Liz and Laura) and all of their children. We’re going to rent a large cabin in Gatlinburg, Tennessee and spend about a week there. Jack is going to Dollywood. I will give you all the details and the pix, promise.

Q: Can America and the world survive the remainder of the Bush government? I wonder if the bookies are giving odds. I can’t say the Bush government is the worst American government ever, I’m not that old, but I can shout out that this is the most miserable excuse for an American government I have seen in my lifetime.

So, I’ve booked my ticket for the flights home in late July. Lufthansa to Frankfurt, USAir (ugh!) to Charlotte and then to Knoxville. Will do two nights in Knoxville on my own where I will not hear my name called at all. I love that. Then the return leg is from Huntington to Charlotte and Charlotte to Frankfurt on USAir (ugh!) and Lufthansa from Frankfurt to Abu Dhabi. And the price, hold on to your hats, is over 7,000 Dirhams, which is like about $2,000. And that’s economy class. It’s unbelievable what these thieves get away with.

Q: Do the American people know how the state of Israel was founded? This one I can give you the answer to. Terrorism. How many Israeli politicians were once world-wide wanted terrorists? More than one, I can tell you that. When will America come to understand that Israeli interests and American interests are not the same, and that using our foreign policy to further Israeli interests is killing America. Israel is like South Africa under Apartheid, it’s either going have to change or it will destroy itself. I just hope it doesn’t take America with it. Read this for more.
Can American Jews unplug the Israel lobby? By Gary Kamiya
http://www.salon.com/opinion/kamiya/2007/03/20/aipac/

Here are some other pieces I thought you might like, although I took the addresses over the last few weeks, I think most of them are still posted.

Declaim Academy by Nicholas Blincoe
http://books.guardian.co.uk/poetry/features/0,,2045551,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=10

Bush’ Long History of Politicizing Justice by Alia Malek
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/03/30/civil_rights/

This one is an especially good piece on how the US media failed the country in the lead-up to the Iraq War. It’s a very insightful and informing read.
Why the media failed by Gary Kamiya
http://www.salon.com/opinion/kamiya/2007/04/10/media_failure/

Upending the Mayberry Machiavellis by Sydney Blumenthal
http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2007/04/12/bush_destruction/

Now, here’s something that I’ve heard and read about. From what I understand, you go to the link and sign in and then you are asked to post what you are doing at that moment. Just a few short lines and they’re called Tweets. I guess it’s the latest fun thing for bored people, like me, to do on the net. I haven’t visited the site because it’s blocked by the proxy here. They block websites, mostly porn, and I really don’t know why this one is blocked for us. I wrote them an email to ask them. Anyway, check it out. I hear it’s fun.
http://www.twitter.com/

Well, that’s about me for now. More later.

Another Temporary ID

2007-03-09T18:08:00.000+04:00

Another Temporary ID

Still no movement on my contract. Waiting for my Master’s Degree to be authenticated. When it’s all finished I’m going to do a long post explaining this process, but don’t burn a bridge before it’s been crossed, if you know what I mean. Another busy week at work, got another temporary ID and also got my rent paid for four months. Two things out of the way. Out to dinner last night to the Thai at the Al Ain Palace Hotel. It was very, very good. I didn’t know it was the one that used to be at the Khalidya Palace Hotel. Phil and Enma were there. Enma had plenty of stories to tell about her visit to Miami to help her sister after she had surgery. Steve and Leah and their daughter Hannah were there, too. It was a joint celebration of Enma & Steve’s birthdays. Enma’s was several weeks back, but she was in the States then.
It’s Friday and I have barely moved all day. Slept till after 1, had coffee and cereal, watched Al Jazeera and then moved to the computer. After I finish this I’m going to pick up a book and read quietly for a while. I’ve gotten to where I love simple peace and quiet. I’m adding a few other sites to my list there on the side.

http://www.crooksandliars.com/, http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/

http://www.dailykos.com/

These three are liberal political blogs. What a surprise, huh? Since I have personalized my Google and Yahoo home pages this is content I can have there and just click on it go. Easy.

http://www.slate.com/

This is a magazine that was started by Microsoft and so when I personalized my MSN homepage, I signed up to get several of their newsletters in my Hotmail. Microsoft has since sold it to the Washington Post, but I still get the newsletters. TP (Today’s Papers) is a great one. It gives a summary of the major news from the major newspapers. Today In Slate is good, too. It gives the major stories in that days’ Slate and you can just click on the links to read what you want. Below is one from today’s issue. It’s a good read.

The Four Unspeakable Truths About Iraq by Jacob Weisberg

http://www.slate.com/default.aspx?id=2161385&nav/tap1

The site below is cool because it combines and links reviews from thousands of sources for everything from music to DVDs to games. Just go to the site and click on what you want to see reviewed. It’s easy.

http://www.metacritic.com/

Well, enjoy the weekend. I plan to. Cheers.

Welcome to March

2007-03-05T18:17:00.000+04:00

What to say? And so it’s March. Working and getting by on the usual. My sister, Jennifer, and my niece, Morgan just celebrated birthdays this past week. Enma just returned from the States where she was visiting her sister, who is recovering from surgery, and so we’re going to celebrate hers and Steve’s birthdays this Thursday at the Thai restaurant at the Al Ain Palace Hotel.

At the link below you’ll find an excerpt from the new book Nemesis by Chalmers Johnson. A year before the attacks of Sept. 11, Chalmers Johnson warned that decades of secret U.S. operations overseas would bring disaster at home. Johnson talks about his book Nemesis, and what he calls the last days of the American republic. It’s worth a read.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7623461

This is an interesting piece explaining the different aspects of the insurgency in Iraq and the limited options the US has.

The Iraqi insurgency for Beginners by Kevin Berger

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/03/02/insurgency/

Here’s a cool piece from the host of Real Time on HBO, which I’ve never seen. He used to do Politically Incorrect for ABC.

Christians crusade against cancer vaccine by Bill Maher

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/03/02/hpv/

And if you live in Abu Dhabi or the area and need any computer work done then go to this site. http://www.samtechcomputers.com/
Sam has an office by Zayed University and he'll fix any computer problems you have and won't charge you an arm and leg to do it.

Oh, and just so you know, running a school, it’s not as easy at it looks.
Cheers, Jack

Tuesday Brief

2007-02-27T19:22:00.001+04:00

Just a few things I thought you might like. Since Hillary is untrustworthy and Obama is too inexperienced, I have no one to vote for. If Hillary would give the speech on the link below I might rethink my great dislike for her.

The Speech Hillary Should Give by Gary Kamiya

http://www.salon.com/opinion/kamiya/2007/02/27/hillary_speech/

The next piece is a pretty disturbing one. It highlights how we’re losing the so-called war on terrorism. How many wars can one president lose at one time? At the moment, we’re at three and counting.

Watching Afghanistan Fall by Matthew Cole

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/02/27/afghanistan/

This last piece is the second one I’ve read along these lines this week. Basically what they’re saying is that the “chatter” has risen to pre-9/11 levels again and just like last time the Bush, uh, government is ignoring them. Now, the issue is not flying airplanes into buildings, but setting off a nuke on American soil.

Apocalypse Now by Paul Slansky

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-slansky-/apocalypse-now_b_42118.html

Oh, and by the way, if there's anyone out there blind and ignorant enough to still believe anything, anything the Bush, uh, government says, post a comment and include your address. I'll call 911 for you.

A Typical Week (not) Part 2

2007-02-26T19:27:00.000+04:00

Last week ended as a not so typical week, but I’ll finish this post off anyway. On Wednesday, work was total chaos and in the middle of the chaos I found out that some important paperwork I need to complete my new contract is still stuck in the Ministry here. And I’m bumping up against the wall on a few items like my residence visa and my rent (which is usually paid yearly). If any of you knew my Dad, you know that he was angry a lot. I’m not really like that, but when I do get angry and frustrated it ain’t pretty. I had 3 arguments with two different people in the space of fifteen minutes, then typed up an angry fax that I ran over to the admin block to send to the Ministry, before leaving work for the day. I think the Major gets upset when I get angry and he was trying to calm me down. Anyway, when I left work on Wednesday with a 3-day weekend ahead, I was nobody’s sweetheart. So, when work is stressful and I’ve heard my name called about 100 times too many during the course of the day and I’m also angry and frustrated, I put the wagons in a circle.
Basically, I hid out all weekend. I put down the serious book I was reading, Against All Enemies by Richard Clarke and dived into detective fiction. I like to escape. I read Do Unto Others by Jeff Abbott, the first in the Jordan Poteet series. Then I moved on to The Bite by Michael Crow, the second in the Luther Ewing series. Both great reads when you want to escape. I watched four episodes from the new series of 24, up to where Jack’s sister-in-law and Milo are on the run from Jack’s father’s bad guys. I watched Dreamgirls, which I ended up really liking. Jennifer Hudson deserved that Oscar. I watched several old episodes of Absolutely Fabulous, played on the internet and slept.
Hopefully this week I’ll get those papers out of that Ministry, pay my rent on Thursday and finally get to open that 12-year old bottle of Jameson’s I have in the cabinet which I bought to celebrate signing the new contract. We live in hope.

Brief Tuesday

2007-02-20T18:52:00.000+04:00

I'll finish the second part of a typical week over the weekend. It's for friends and family who have never visited me and probably never will. Just to give them an idea of life in the UAE. Anyway, if you live and work in the UAE you might want to check out a site called SearchMe , the address is http://www.searchme.ae/ and if it's in the UAE you can search the site and find where in the UAE to go and get it or do it or eat it. It's free and well worth a visit. The link is also on my list of Places I Visit.
Another link there is to BitLord. Just click on it and then download the software. One version, the one I use, is free. Just use the search function to find the CD you want, check to make sure the small bar on the right is green all the way across and then download while you go watch TV or cook or whatever. Free music and it's safe. No spyware. They also have movies and TV to download, but I don't have a DVD burner so I haven't bothered. I work with a guy who gets a lot of films from the site.
If you despise President (god how that sounds) Bush as much as I do you should check out this article on Salon.

Is There Life After Bush? By Gary Kamiya

http://www.salon.com/opinion/kamiya/2007/02/20/after_bush/

It's an interesting take on hating Bush. Also, if you're at the Salon site you might check out The Blog Report. This gives short shots from lots of political blogs from the right and the left and you can click on the links to read the entire post or visit the blog.

http://blogreport.salon.com/default.aspx

A Typical Week

2007-02-19T19:46:00.000+04:00

A Typical Week

Okay. This is ex-pat life. Sunday starts at 5:30 am with a shower, breakfast, coffee and the first cigarette of the day all while watching CNN International. It’s called multi-tasking. I was running a little late and didn’t get out the door until about 6:40. Had to pick up two teachers over by the French Embassy because the one who drives has his car in the shop. Usually I listen to music very loudly on the hour drive to work, but Sunday I had to make conversation. Work is busy, period, end of story. I’ve been working on hammering out a new attendance and academic policy for our section’s different programs. Spent most of the day on that. Leave work a little before 2 pm and the drive home. Arrive home about 2:30. Try to find a place to park. Eat lunch while reading the paper and watching CNN. It’s called multi-tasking. Then one of my favorite parts of the day. My nap. Wake up about 5:30. Down some iced tea, wash up, get dressed and grab 2 weeks of laundry. Over to the same laundry I’ve been using for like ten years. I don’t own a washer and drier. No way, uh uh. I mean $50 a month does all of my washing and dry cleaning. Then drive over to the Lebanese Roastery for coffee (ground fresh), olives and nuts. Then down to Spinney’s for the weekly shopping. People say Spinney’s is too expensive and it is a little more expensive than say Carrefour or the Co-Op, but it’s damned convenient. There’s a liquor store, a book store, card shop, magazines and pork—all under one roof with easy parking. Pork is only available in a couple of supermarkets and at hotel restaurants. And at Spinney’s you can buy everything from French pate to Iranian caviar to fresh fish, lamb and, of course, hamburger helper. Put it all in the car, drive home and really fight to find a place to park. That was one of the things I liked about this area when I first moved here about 6 years ago. Parking was easy. Now they have several new buildings under construction and that takes up several parking spaces and they’re also doing something with the water lines, so that takes up even more spaces. Get it parked and mule the crap upstairs. It’s just turned 7:30 and on Sundays CNN shows an “International Edition of the Daily Show”. I switch on the TV loud and listen to it while I put the groceries away in the kitchen. A little before 8, I pour myself a Jameson’s and lie down to watch my soap opera, “Coronation Street” and then eat the dinner I picked up at Spinney’s deli about 8:30. I’d taped “Footballers’ Wives” the night before and watched that. Then I did the washing up, shaved, got everything ready for work and poured myself a nightcap and got in bed to drink that and read Against All Enemies by Richard Clarke.
Today, Monday, had to drive the two teachers in again. Picked them up by the French Embassy. It had rained during the night. This has been one of the wettest winters I’ve ever seen here. It’s great. Drive to work. Work in the Major’s office most of the day putting the finishing touches on the attendance/academic policy thing. He’s very particular about the format. He’ll spend hours on font colors and size and layout. Then drove home and did the usual lunch, newspaper, CNN thing. Then my nap. Woke from my nap about 5:30, poured some iced tea and got on the computer. No errands to run this evening. And now it’s almost eight so it’s time to pour a Jameson’s and watch “Coronation Street.” Later.

Thanks Mark

2007-02-16T18:53:00.000+04:00

Thanks Mark

Mark is an old friend who’s always giving me shit about something. Sometimes I deserve it and sometimes not. We don’t stay in close contact for various reasons, one being that I’m a bit of a slacker. Another being that he was working in Bangkok, then in China and now he and his wife and daughter are in Kuwait, a little closer to me. I wrote him an email about an upcoming trip to Abu Dhabi he and his family were planning and when he wrote back he dumped on me for not having posted on my blog for months and months and months. In a way I was flattered that he had bothered to check, but I also knew he was right. It was just one more thing that I’d let go and hadn’t kept up. So, here’s an attempt to start posting again. Thanks for that one Starry.

Now, here comes the part where I whine a bit and rationalize why I haven’t been blogging. A little over a year ago I was in a nice quiet little corner of the Institute where I was teaching specialized English for other training courses. While it could get busy, I see now that it was never really that busy. I wasn’t asked, I was told, that I was being moved to the English Language Section of the Institute to become the English Language Coordinator over the several different programs they have there. Life changed then. I had a job with bigger responsibilities. I’ve always tried to avoid those as much as possible. And I had a learning curve to climb. Suddenly I was giving bad news to people and saying “no” to people and managing things, mostly putting out fires. It’s taken me a while to get used to it. Luckily, the head of the Section is an Emariti Major who is one of the best people I’ve ever worked for. I still do the odd bit of teaching when there is a specialized course in my old Section, basically because I’m the only one who knows the technical material well enough to teach it. Other than that I’m in meetings, writing reports, planning courses, placating teachers, etc. It’s been a change.

What have I been up to since April? Work, mostly, is the best answer. On my summer vacation I stopped in Frankfurt, Germany for five days or so. It was miserable. The weather was just scorching and the hotel didn’t have a/c. The city itself seems like it could be fun, but the weather just made it unbearable. Back in West Virginia I helped Mom get a new car, a Honda Civic, and spent a lot of time with her and my sister Jennifer, brother-in-law Kent and niece Morgan. Also set up a retirement fund with Merrill Lynch. We did the usual dinner with Carol and her daughter Krista was visiting with her new husband and two children. Carol is a great cook. Jennifer, Morgan, Mom and I took a long weekend trip up to Amish country in Ohio. We had a really nice time. I booked us into a hotel that had stables so we did some horseback riding. We ate a lot of fattening food and shopped. The countryside there is gorgeous.

Then we had a family reunion with my Dad’s side of the family before I flew back to Abu Dhabi. I hadn’t visited them in several years. There was no real reason for that other than not making myself take the time to do it during the month I have home. We had the reunion in the backyard of my Great Aunt Sissy’s house. My Dad’s brother, Uncle Pat was there along with my cousins Norma Jean and Emma Lee. It was really great to catch up with them again. This year I think we’re going to do the same thing with Mom’s sister, Aunt Betty, and her kids and grandkids.

I missed the usual Christmas Eve with Phil and Enma and Christmas Day with Steve and Leah because I was down with the flu. There was a very bad strain of it going around and I caught it twice, the second time I actually missed a day of work, which I never do.

For New Years I flew to the UK with David and Lorin to spend a few days with David’s brother Peter in his little village of Cherlton Bishop near Exeter. It was a break I sorely needed. We stayed in small B & B just across the lane from Peter’s cottage (thatched roof). Jean and her husband Ron operate the B & B and they are really nice people and Jean is a great cook. They retired from farming and now operate the B & B. I recommend it highly. I fell in love with the village. It was nice and peaceful and relaxing and the countryside beautiful. New Year’s Day we trained back to London. David and Lorin flew out to Canada the next day. The next day I slept in late and didn’t do much of anything. The following night I had tickets booked for a play, “The Woman In Black”. It was basically a two-man play, a ghost story, and they had staged it brilliantly. It was a nice evening. After the play I had dinner near the theater and then took the Tube back to the hotel. On my last day I did a little sightseeing, St. Paul’s Cathedral and the London Museum. Then I met Phil’s brother, Stephen, for drinks and then dinner in Soho. Flew back to Dubai the next day. It was a nice break.

Since then I’ve been involved in getting onto the new contract system at work. It’s been a bit of a stress but I think I have it all sorted and should be moved onto the new system by end of this month. The Major has been a really big help. Other than that it’s just been work and a few evening out on weekends. Usually about one weekend a month I visit David and Lorin in Sharjah. We always end up drinking in Dubai. No surprise there, though.

Most of my earlier postings on my previous blog were related to politics, mostly American. Truthfully, I’ve lost most of my anger about that. The current government has gone beyond humiliating and incompetent and sleazy to the point where it is just a total and sickening disgrace. When will this Bush nightmare ever end?

Okay, that’s enough for this round. I’m going to make an attempt to at least make short postings on a regular basis. We’ll see how that goes. Wish me luck.

Do One Thing Chapter Two

2007-02-16T17:49:00.000+04:00

Sorry! I've been away from this blog for a long time. An upcoming post will go into all that. Anyway, here is the second chapter of the novel I started posting here last year. This is all I have written on it and haven't had the time to take more writing courses in which I'm deadlined to write. If you enjoy this, let me know. Maybe I'll make the time to dig out my notes and get back to it. Thanks, Jack.

Chapter 2

I was happy with my decision to come back here, I thought while driving home from work the next night, the windows open and a cool breeze coming down the river valley. I was born and raised about 30 miles from here, out in Wayne County. When I was a kid, coming to Huntington was a big deal—a trip to the big city. The Huntington I returned to, the Huntington of 1984 glowed dimly as only a shadow of its former glory. A lot of the industry had closed up or moved away, and a lot of its citizens had left, too. The other day I saw a line out the door, down the block and then around the corner snaking from the Unemployment Office on Fourth Avenue. It was like that.

Still, Huntington was a good place for a fresh start. I could speak the language. The cost of living was never that high. Marshall University is a quiet place to study, has a good reputation and is about the only thing in the city still growing. Huntington is part of the Tri-State Area, bordering Ohio and Kentucky on the Ohio River. Sometimes, in the early evening, I’d walk the two blocks to the river and study for my tests and watch the river traffic.

When I got to work that afternoon, Jamie called me into her office. Naturally, it was about the Emmons fire and Luke Mason. She wasn’t angry, but I hadn’t thought she would be. She poured us coffee and handed me a cup. She sat down behind her desk and pulled her long, blonde hair behind her shoulders. I was on the chair in front of her.

“All right,” she opened. “Let’s talk about this.”

“Okay,” I sipped the coffee and got out my smokes, “but I’m sure you know more about it than I do.”

“Not unless you’re keeping secrets.” She watched me light one.

“I’m not keeping secrets,” I stated firmly. “You talked to Mr. Bacon, right?” She nodded her answer and I continued. “So you know I had no idea that I bought the house from Mason or that he owned the old Emmons place. Mr. Bacon’s lawyer found the house for me and it was all handled through the agent here. Mason’s name wasn’t even on any of the papers I signed. It belonged to some company. I knew none of the details of any of it. I swear.” And raised both palms in the air.

“Okay, okay,” she smiled. “Mr. Bacon confirmed all that, so it’s true, I know, still. There’s a lot of coincidence here.”

“Yeah, there is,” I shrugged. “Detective Fletcher wasn’t that happy about it either.”

“Mark is a good detective and he’s straight. He’s just doing his job. I haven’t talked to him since you two talked.”

“I’d say he’s still checking out Luke’s apartment.”

“How well did you know Luke?” I couldn’t exactly tell from her voice what she was really asking.

“I met him at the tenants’ party I threw when I moved in and took over the house. Maybe saw him 5 or 6 times on the stairs. There was a girl with him a couple of times.”

“And you don’t know his story?” She asked, sipping her coffee.

“His story---no.”

Jamie seemed to know just about everyone in Huntington. Maybe she thought it was part of her job. She put her long legs up on the desk and started Luke’s story. Luke’s mother had been the only heir to the Emmons’ fortune, which at the time had been a pretty big one. Luke’s father was a doctor and didn’t know or care that much about money and business, so he got his brother, a lawyer, to work with his wife and deal with all the estate business. There were factories, warehouses and rental property—and some other investments outside the area.

On the 14^th of November 1970, an airplane carrying the Marshall University football team, coaching staff and some rich supporters crashed while trying to land at Tri-State Airport in a thunderstorm. Everyone on board, including Luke’s parents and older brother, were killed. There were no close relatives on the Emmons side of the family left, so the uncle, the lawyer, took Luke in to live with him and his family. Luke would inherit everything. As probate over the will and the settlement of the estate got started, it turned out that there was nothing much left to inherit. It was almost all gone, except for a few properties and then the house I bought, which had been where Luke had grown up, and the huge old Emmons home place up in the hills above Ritter Park.

Every agency around came swooping down to snoop around. From the city police to the SEC, they all looked and asked questions and read documents and none of them could find the money. What they found was that over the years Luke’s mother had been selling everything off, a little at a time. There were documents with her signatures. The money, if any of it was left, was never found.

One of the company’s accountants committed suicide early on in the investigation. The police never established that his suicide had anything to do with the missing estate money. They checked everything with the accountant’s name on it, everything he’d touched and he didn’t have the money. Suspicion really fell on the uncle, but he let them look at everything he owned and all his account details and he didn’t have the money either.

He and his wife raised Luke as their own son. He gave Luke anything he wanted, best clothes, best car, travel, anything. He was paying for Luke’s university. Luke said he wanted to be a doctor, like his father.

“Damn.” I put out my second cigarette and ran a hand through my dark hair. “Not a very pretty story. And now the kid is dead, too. That family has sure been through it. Did you know them?”

“No, not really. I met the uncle and his wife a few times at parties. They seemed nice enough.” Jamie recalled. “Luke, well, Luke was a good-lookin’ kid, but he always seemed kind of sad and moody—but then, that’s understandable.”

I looked her square in the face, my brown eyes seeking out her blue ones for a few beats. “I have mixed feelings about this, Jamie.”

“Mixed feelings? Why? You didn’t even know him.” She leaned forward against her desk.

“I didn’t have a chance to tell you this part. He came to me for help.” And that landed between us like a lead balloon.

“When? What kind of help? Did you tell Detective Fletcher?” She fired questions at me.

“Just let me finish, okay? I wasn’t home when he came by, I was working. He left a note on my door saying he needed help with something, no details. I went down there as soon as I got home. I was tired and had been up all night and I thought maybe it was a busted water pipe or something. I knocked and knocked—nothing. Went back upstairs, telephoned him. It rang and rang—nothing. I put a message on his machine to come see me anytime. Then I wrote a note and went down and put it on his door. I never got to talk to him. The next night was the fire.” I poured that out quickly.

“What about the detective?”

“I told him what I just told you and gave him the note. He bagged and tagged it.”

“Okay then, you’re clear.”

“I feel a little guilty, Jamie,” I was probably blushing a little when I said that. “The guy came to me for help and I wasn’t there.”

“You, you feel guilty?” She shook her head. “I know your history, Cooper. Mr. Bacon gave me all your details.”

“Just because I was a little wild back in the day doesn’t mean I don’t have feelings and that I can’t feel guilty.” I argued.

“Now is not the time to get a conscience, Coop. There was nothing you could do to help the kid. You’re a security guard, for god’s sake. Your name is already in this too much as it is. Stay out of it. Let the police handle it. Hear me—loud and clear. Stay out of it. I mean that or I’ll make some real problems for you. Understand me.” I understood her.

There were several lights on in the house when I got home. It was a little after eleven. I parked the car, unlocked the front door after checking the mailbox and headed up the stairs, quietly. My apartment is the old attic, now the fourth floor.

As I hit the second floor, the door to five slipped open and Ethan stood there. His sandy brown hair was messed up and he was wearing a T-shirt and jeans, barefoot. He pushed his glasses back up his slender nose with a hand holding a beer bottle. I didn’t need to see that to know he was drunk.

“Ethan?” I started toward him.

“Shithead,” he slurred.

“What?” I couldn’t help but laugh.

“You sent that detective here,” he said.

“Come on, let’s go inside.” I turned him around and led him inside, closing the door behind us. I sat him on the sofa and then reached behind it to open the window. The place was really smoky. I took a chair next to the sofa.

“Ethan, I’m sorry,” I looked him in the eyes. “He would have talked to you anyway, just think about it. His father lives here on this floor and I’m sure he’s seen you with Luke.”

“Luke’s dead,” he said and lowered his head trying hard not to cry. “And I can’t find Molly.”

“Who’s Molly?”

“His girlfriend,” he answered, sniffing. “I don’t really know Luke all that well. He’s not very friendly, to tell the truth. I know Molly. She was in my freshman English class and we became friends--.”

“Okay, okay, hold no now for just a minute,” I wanted to slow things down. “This Molly was Luke’s girlfriend and you two were friends? I don’t remember seeing her around here with you.”

“She’s a grad ass—like me,” Ethan said. “We’d be on campus all day and her apartment was closer than mine, so usually we’d hang out there. She was here a few times, you just probably weren’t around. She met Luke here about a year ago and they started dating. I was surprised, because they aren’t alike at all.”

“Okay, then, what do you mean you can’t find her?”

“What the hell do you think I mean, Coop,” he snapped. “I’ve looked everywhere, called everyone. No one’s seen her.”

“Maybe she’s somewhere you don’t know about,” I offered. “Her boyfriend just died—maybe she went to her family or to his family.”

“We’re like best friends, Coop.” He finished the beer and set the bottle on the coffee table. He used the back of his hands to push the water away from his blue eyes. “She may not even know he’s dead. If she knew, she’d be here, with me. I’m sure of it.”

“Okay, Ethan, okay.” I light a cigarette.

“I know what’s going on,” he spoke softly in an odd monotone. “Some of it, anyway.”

“What do you mean?”

“And I didn’t tell the cop. I was afraid to.” He turned to me. “I sent Luke to you for help. He came to me first, but I don’t know anything about that kind of crap.”

“Wait, what kind of crap?”

“Protection, security, you know.”

“Luke thought he needed protection?”

“Yeah, and it looks like he was right. Why didn’t you help him?” Ethan’s pain edged into his voice.

“Ethan, I tried to reach him, I swear. I was at work. I got home and found his note and went to his door and pounded on it and pounded on it. I tried to call him on the phone. He didn’t answer. I left messages for him to come to me anytime.”

“You were on night shift?”

“Yes. You know I do three of those one week a month. That was my week. Now, I’m back to three evenings a week,” I explained.

“Yeah, I did know that,” Ethan admitted. “I forgot.”

“Now, what do you know about this and why didn’t you tell the detective?” I demanded.

“It’s about some money, a lot of money, that Luke was supposed to have inherited from his parents. You remember the Marshall plane crash----,” he began.

“I know all this. My boss filled me in on most of it.” I stopped him. “It’s old news.”

“Something, and I don’t know what, made Luke believe that it was all a lie. He believed that someone--and either he didn’t tell me or he didn’t know for sure yet who it was—had stolen the money. He wanted them to get caught and punished and he wanted his family’s money back.” Ethan seemed to sober up a little as he focused on Luke’s story.

“And that’s why he wanted protection?” I sounded unconvinced.

“No, well, yeah, but something happened last week,” Ethan paused for a second. “I don’t know what. Luke didn’t tell me and Molly wouldn’t either and Molly tells me everything. Whatever it was scared Molly, really scared her, and she doesn’t scare easily.”

“Okay. I still don’t understand why you didn’t tell the detective any of this.”

“I don’t know.” Ethan whined. “For one thing I wanted to talk to Molly first so she could tell me what to say. Besides, that’s the first time in my life I ever talked to a cop. I was nervous. I didn’t really trust him, anyway.”

“All right,” I nodded and put out my cigarette and thought about what to do. Also, Jamie’s words had been clear. “Make some coffee, Ethan. I’m gonna use your phone.”

“Hi, it’s Coop, has Jamie left yet?” I asked the secretary. “Well, see if you can catch her. Tell her I need to talk to her,” I replied to the fact she’d just walked out the door. I could hear Rhonda, the secretary, drop the phone and run out the front door, calling Jamie’s name. Then a few beats later I heard her push back through the door and clomp over to the phone.

“She’ll be here in a minute, Mr. Blevins. She was just pulling out when I caught her.” She sounded breathless.

“Thanks Rhonda, I owe you one.”

“Just doin’ my job. Oh—here.”

“Hello Cooper what’s wrong?” Jamie snapped.

“I’m fine, thanks. How are you?”

“Stop being a smartass. What’s wrong?” She snapped back.

“Oh, you’ve got a rendezvous, at this hour?” I couldn’t help it.

“Cooper.” She warned.

“I think you’d better swing by my place before you go home—and bring Detective Fletcher with you. Ring the bell for apartment number five. It’s on the second floor.” I could hear her pull in her breath, pre-attack.

“Weren’t you listening to me? I told you--,” she started but I interrupted with what I’d learned from Ethan, how I’d learned it and that he hadn’t told it to Fletcher.

“Don’t you think the police should know?” I asked her. “It could be important.”

“No, no could be, it is important—you’re right.” She paused. “You did the right thing in calling me. Thank you. Sorry I jumped on you.”

“No problem, boss.”

“I’ll track Mark down and we’ll be there soon. Mark won’t be happy this guy lied to him.” She stated.

“Well, Jamie,” I got out the knife and butter. “He didn’t really lie. He just didn’t tell him everything. His friend was dead and he’d never talked to a cop before, he was nervous. Besides, all he knows is second hand stuff—what they told him. He’s not really a witness to anything. Try to get Mark to go easy on him, please, as a favor.”

“I’ll try,” she said and hung up.

Ethan and I sat and talked for about half an hour before they arrived. He told me that he and Molly would finish grad school next summer and neither one had any idea where they’d work. Luke had been pre-med and had two years left before he could start med school. He described Luke as a stuck-up, self-centered jock and he was pretty sure he was cheating on Molly. On the other hand, Molly was really cool and down-to-earth, sweet. I’d always had the feeling that Ethan was gay, but hearing him talk about Molly gave me the impression that he had a crush on her. Ethan was finishing his second cup of coffee when they buzzed. I went down to let them in. It was almost midnight and I was tired. I’d avoided the coffee because I wanted a good night’s sleep.

We exchanged greetings quietly and I shook hands with the detective before they followed me up the stairs. I told them most everyone was already asleep and to walk quietly. The older tenants always complain about the younger ones. We entered Ethan’s apartment and I closed the door behind us. Ethan wasn’t in the living room. I had them sit on the sofa and I went to check the bathroom and then the bedroom. The bedroom window was open, the one that lead to the fire escape. Ethan was gone.

Do One Thing (Chapter One)

2006-04-16T19:04:00.000+04:00

Okay, here's the first chapter of a novel I started while taking an online creative writing course a few months ago. The course is with the Gotham Writers Project and this is the second course I've taken with them. They have a cool website and both instructors I've had were quite good. More chapters will come later, hopefully.

DO ONE THING

Chapter One

Naturally, just as I put shampoo in my hair, the doorbell rang. Just a minute, I called out before I pushed my head under the water, rinsed out the suds and reached for a towel. A quick attempt at drying off, before putting on my robe, as I dripped water across the hardwood floor to the door.

“Mr. Blevins?” The somewhat familiar guy in the suit asked.

“Yeah---Cooper. And you—I’ve seen you around—you’re Mr. Fletcher’s son, right? Sorry, I was in the shower.”

“Well, I’m not really here as Mr. Fletcher’s son. I’m Detective Mark Fletcher.” And he sounded serious.

“Oh, mmnnhh. Then you’d better come in. Have a seat. Just give me a minute.”

As I closed the bedroom door and climbed into a pair of jeans and a T-shirt my mind flipped through possibilities, but nothing really fit. I own and manage this old mansion that was turned into apartments years ago. I’ve made sure everything is up to code. I’m studying for my GED so I can start classes at the university in the fall. I haven’t had any trouble with the law since just before I did my third and final trip into rehab and that was over a year ago in California. I also work part-time at Bacon Securities as a guard and we did have that fire a couple of mornings ago. Maybe it has something to do with that. I opened the door, mostly clueless.

“Okay, sorry about that, but I have to work in about an hour,” I said moving to the chair across from the small sofa where he was seated.

“No problem. I’m sorry to bother you but this shouldn’t take long. It’s about Luke Mason,” he dropped that as he opened a small notebook.

“Luke? What about him?

“When was the last time you saw him?”

“God—let me see, over a week ago, at least. I’m not really sure. But,” I left the chair and went to a bulletin board on the wall by my desk. I took a thumbtack from a post-it and carried the note to the detective. “Two mornings ago when I came home from work, this was on my door.”

“Mr. Blevins. I really need your help on something. Please call as soon as you can,” the detective read the note. “And?”

“Well, it sounded urgent so I didn’t even change out of my uniform. I went down to knock on his door. No answer. I tried several times, thinking he was asleep, it was 7 in the morning, but he never answered. I came back up here and tried to phone him—no answer, so I left a message on his machine. Then I wrote a note and went down and put it on his door.”
“I saw it,” the detective interrupted.
“Then I came back up and went to sleep,” I continued. “When I woke up and had some coffee—about 2 probably, I tried him again. Nothing. I’ve tried off and on since then—the same, nothing.” I made a gesture with my hands and returned to the chair to light a cigarette.
“He wrote ‘Mr. Blevins’—that’s pretty formal. You didn’t know him very well?” The detective asked, making another note.
“Not really. I’ve only been here about 6 months. I’ve spoken to him in the hall a few times, that’s about it.” I shrugged.
“Is it unusual for him to leave you a note like that?” He watched me answer.
“For him, yes. The older tenants get upset easy over a leak or something and they can get dramatic and all. I never had anything like that from Luke before.” I watched his eyes as he moved to make another note.
“About Luke Mason, he was found dead yesterday. We’re quite not sure what we’re looking at yet. Maybe murder.”
“You’re kidding, right?” I shook my head. “I mean, I didn’t really know him, but still, it’s pretty hard to believe.”
“Yep.”
“He seemed like a really nice kid, never any trouble. He just doesn’t seem the type.”
“What type?”
“To end up killed.”
“Ever known anybody who got murdered, Mr. Blevins?”
“Not really, no,” I lied to his face and he didn’t seem to catch it.
“Did Luke have many visitors?” He returned to the questions and his notebook.
“I really couldn’t say for sure, but no one ever complained about him. He never had any loud parties. No pot smell in the hall. There was a girl I saw him with a few times, but I never caught her name,” I paused for a second. “He did seem to hang out a little with the guy in five, Ethan Adkins. I just saw them together a few times. Ethan’s a grad student and he’s tutoring me for my GED.”
He made a quick note of that. “Quit high school, huh?”
“I was gonna be a daddy. I joined the military. None of it worked out. Old news and a long story.”
“Sure,” he nodded and reached into his inside jacket pocket and pulled out an official looking paper. “This is a search warrant. I thought rather than make a big scene and jack the lock or something, you might have a spare key so we can do it quietly. I’ve already got the lab boys printing the door.”
“I’ve got one,” I replied, not sure whether to give it to him or not.
“Have you ever used it?”
“The key? Nope. Never even been inside the place. If there were ever any problems I guess he took care of them himself. When I painted the other apartments, he said his was fine, that he’d done it himself a year ago, so I didn’t argue with him about it. He was paying the rent and all. I’ll get you the key.” I decided and started to get up from the chair when he threw out another little item.
“There’s something else.” His voice was firm and curious.
“Okay.” I sat back down.
“You and Jamie Freeman from Bacon checked out an alarm at the old Emmons place two nights ago, right?” He stated facts.
“Yeah,” I answered curiously.
“I already talked to her, but I just want to hear it again from you.”
“Okay,” I shrugged as he watched closely. “Let me think. The alarm tripped just after midnight. Jamie, she’s in charge, called it in and spoke with an officer--.”
“Officer Harris,” he offered.
“Okay. He told Jamie they had their hands full with a few things, for us to drive up and check it out and call him back. So, we grabbed the keys and drove up there. You know where it is?”
“Was,” he said with a slight smile, or maybe that was a smirk.
“Okay, was.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Anyway, the place is—was huge. She was driving. I got out and opened that huge old gate and we drove to the front of the place. The back door alarm was the one that had been tripped. We did a sweep of the grounds first. We turned on the floods and also used flashlights. We spent at least an hour doing that. We found a few animal prints but nothing human. And it’d been raining that day so the ground was soft. We didn’t find anything. Not even a used rubber or empty beer can. The back door was still locked and there was no sign of any disturbance back there at all. Jamie’s good—she’s been doing this for a while.” It’s so much easier to remember things when you’re sober.
“I know her,” he said, smiling widely this time. “And she is good. Also, takes no shit.”
“True,” I smiled. “We could see the floor was covered with dust and if someone had been walking inside, we’d see their prints. So, we went in the front door. My God—we were in there until after 3:00. We checked every possible nook and cranny. No one had been in the house for a long time. As we were getting ready to close up and leave, Officer Harris drove up. He said we hadn’t called and just wanted to check on us. He and Jamie talked and he said he’d have someone drive by a few times just to check. And we left.”
“And by five o’clock the place had burnt to the ground,” he said without expression.
“Okay, yes, but we checked everything, everywhere,” I countered, sounding a little defensive.
“I know you did.”
“Then why all the questions?”
“That’s where Luke Mason’s body was found. In the ashes of the house.”
My face dropped. “You’re joking, right?”
“No joking, Mr. Blevins.”
“What the hell was he doing there?”
“You don’t know?”
“No, what?”
“He owned it.”
“Oh, come on. He owned that huge old place? Why the hell was he living here then?”
“You really don’t know any of this, do you?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“And I don’t know how you can buy a house from someone and not even know his name.”
“You’re not making sense to me, detective. I’m sorry.” I light another cigarette.
“He owned this house. You bought it from him.”
“Oh, come on.”
“No, really,” he closed his notebook. “How did you come to buy this place?”
“My lawyer in California worked with a realtor here. I only signed the papers,” I paused for a second. “Are you sure?”
“Oh yeah, I’m sure.”
“Why didn’t anyone tell me?”
“Who?” “The other tenants, maybe.”
“They didn’t know. A company---.”
“TTH Holdings, right?” The name clicked into my head.
“Yes, they thought a company owned it.”
“So, why were you so surprised I didn’t know?”
“I wasn’t, not really. Just checking the water. Detectives don’t like coincidence and there are a couple of pretty big ones here.”
“True.”
“And everything you said checks out. My Dad has nothing but good things to say about you,” the detective said with a slight smile. “He says you take better care of this place than anyone ever did. And I can see it. And Jamie says you’re a good worker, straight. Why don’t you get the key and I’ll search his place?”
“Sure.”
After I closed the door behind him, I poured the last cup of coffee and turned off the pot. I sat in the chair that looks out over Third Avenue and watched the street and thought about what I’d just heard. Mostly, there were just more questions. After I got settled in here several months ago, I had a tenants meeting where I introduced myself and listened to them talk about problems with the building and what they’d like to see done to improve it. That was the first time I saw Luke and just about the last. I’m busy and I don’t bother tenants unless there are problems and he never seemed to have any. I don’t even know what he did. If he was a student or worked or what. He seemed to have money, a nice car, nice clothes.
Detective Fletcher is right, though. There are a couple of pretty big coincidences hanging around and they always attract suspicion. I’d bought this house from him, even though I didn’t know it at the time. He was also my tenant. He had come to me for help, someone he didn’t really know at all. That part was pretty odd in itself. Maybe it was about a totally different matter. Who knows? And, I was at the scene of his murder just hours before it happened. I know I didn’t do anything wrong, but that’s not the problem. I came here to this little university town in West Virginia to get away from it all, not to be looked at by the police for a possible connection to a murder. It doesn’t make me nervous, but I don’t like the general feeling of it all. I looked at the clock and got up from the chair.
I rinsed out the coffee cup and put it in the sink and then went into the bedroom to shed the jeans and T-shirt and put on my little gray Bacon Security uniform with the black shoes. I’ll talk to Jamie when I get to work and she what she has to say. She’s lived here all her life. She’ll know all the dirt. And maybe I’ll mention it to Ethan the next time we study. Just to get an idea of how this all adds up, if it does.

Better Weeks

2006-04-16T18:43:00.000+04:00

It's been over a week since I've had time to even think about posting something. Work last week was hell, just one of those weeks that are best forgotten. Over the weekend, David and Lorin and their friend Pat came down from Sharjah on Thursday and stayed the night. We had dinner at Hemingway's at the Hilton. Very little about Hemingway's really changes and I find it's my favorite place to go for a bar meal. The music isn't too intrusive and you can carry on a decent conversation and the crowd isn't too rowdy, until much later in the night. Most of had the huge burgers and they were great, even if they are now only a once a month treat for us over-50's. On Friday we went over to Phil and Enma's flat for Phil's birthday. There was a nice crowd there and the food was great as always.
I finished Carter Beats the Devil. It was a very good read. The writing was very strong and the plotting and pacing were quite good. Opening with President Harding visiting Carter the Great's magician show in San Francisco and his dying the same night to the new invention of television, the book was an entertaining mix of history and fiction. Turned to detective fiction after that with The Skeleton Room by Kate Ellis. It's a series with the police detective Wesley Peterson, so I started this series with about book 6. I hate that. Still, the characters are strong and interesting, with personality, and the setting is Devon, England, which adds a bit to the plot. It also is a mix of history and fiction with strong writing and fast pacing, although the plot at times got a little bit convoluted. I'd try another in the series, though, just to give it a chance. I just started Folly by Laurie R. King. I'll let you know.
Well, it was another bad week for the Bushies and for America. One can only shake one's head and hope that the country can survive. I have my doubts. America is in the midst of its own internal holy war and it looks like the bad guys are winning. It will mean the end of the American Dream, you know that don't you. Why intelligent people still feel the need for the god mythology is beyond me, but if they need it, okay, no problem. But when it's used to damage others lives and as a means of government, it's unforgivable. It's sad when the news bits showing the Bushies appear to be a parody of themselves. I saw Karl Rove referring to Iran's president as nuts for believing he had a halo on when he addressed the UN some months back and for believing that he has some sort of divine knowledge. If you changed the name of the country and the president, Rove could have been talking about his own boss. Oh well. That's the way it is.

Trying Again And...

2006-04-06T22:19:00.000+04:00

This is my second attempt at a blog. The first one was not free, for one thing, and also I was never really happy with the format I began and then continued with my postings. Most were lengthy political rants against Bush and government, which have been repeated over and over to where most people just wish they'd go ahead and put him and all his gang in prison and rid our country of this blight. Anyway, this one isn't quite as fancy as the old one, but I want to try a different approach to this one and then we'll see how it goes. Oh, there will still be politics, don't worry. But I just want to see what else I can do with this medium. It's Thursday night here in Abu Dhabi, almost 10:30. Thursday and Friday are our weekend. I slept obscenely late today and thought of going to the beach, but then it clouded over and I just decided to do a few projects around the flat that I've been putting off because I'm basically pretty lazy. In about an hour or so I'll make my nightcap and settle down to read in Carter Beats the Devil by David Glen Gold. I'm really enjoying it after the murder mystery I just finished. It qualifies as legitimate literature. It opens with President Harding's death just following a show by the great magician Carter. I have no clue if this is based on fact or not and have been meaning to do a search and find out, but haven't taken the time. Anyway, after that opening, it backs up to tell the story of Carter, his early family life and his rise to fame. Houdini plays a role in all that. I read a review of a biography of Houdini not long ago and wish I could remember the title. I'd like to read it. Just read online that Libby is saying that Bush authorized the leaks to the press in the run-up to the illegal war in Iraq, possibly including the Plame leak. How much is finally going to be enough? Good night and good luck.