fahrender

The Difference Between Eichmann and Dick Cheney

2009-05-16T21:20:00.000-07:00

America is in denial about how ill it is. Too few people have anything like moral clarity. We have no stomach for what needs to be done. Americans evidently believe that it's better to "move forward" instead of treating a fatal disease. One wonders how big the pile of evidence, how heinous and dramatic the crimes must be for people to take action. We had an election last year. Change was promised. It's not happening. And as the days and weeks and months go by the likelihood of actually addressing our illness lessens. The probability of the destruction of our national principles and ideals becomes more certain. There is such a thing as the point of no return and it is very close.
Hannah Arendt wrote the term Banality of Evil. Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz probably personify this concept most completely but Dick Cheney is the one strutting the stage at the moment making the case that what happened was necessary, and that it was for the safety and good of the nation.
Adolph Eichmann was more of a functionary, a faceless bureaucrat that few would have known before his capture and trial in Israel. Although better known, David Addington, John Yoo or Alberto Gonzales and Douglas ("stupidest fucking guy on the planet") Feith are more like Eichmann in the heirarchy of things.Cheney is more like Goebels: unrepenant and arrogantly defending the evil that he engineered and orchestrated.

If we do not bring him down, and everything he represents, the United States of America will be a failed nation.

Sergeant John M. Russell Stayed The Course

2009-05-12T10:21:00.000-07:00

In Viet Nam some officers got fragged. It was a criminal thing to do even though sometimes it was understandable. Sergeant Russell committed a terrible crime but he is obviously insane. George W. Bush weazeled out of Viet Nam, didn't even finish his National Guard requirements in Alabama. Dick Cheney simply had more important things to do. Donald Rumsfeld served in the military but was finished with active duty before Viet Nam came around.
Sergeant Russell stayed the course in Iraq. He is the legacy that Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld have bestowed on us. They willed and demanded this war. Their callous ineptitude, lack of foresight and moral indifference set up this scenario. Sergeant Russell is not alone. There are many other soldiers who are mentally and emotionally damaged, especially amongst those who have served multiple combat tours. Some are still in Iraq or Afghanistan. Some are back in the States and we will be a long time enduring the consequences of what was started eight years ago. We need to help the soldiers. They deserve every bit of medical and psychiatric help that is available. They deserve our concern and understanding.
There is a good deal of talk about torture these days and what it consists of. To send a soldier to a third tour of duty in Iraq is something akin to torture. To fail to create an infrastructure to properly care for soldiers who are put into such misery, stress and agony is criminally irresponsible.
I am highly skeptical that Bush, Cheney or Rumsfeld will ever be held accountable for what they have done but for those of us who care, we can at least remember who they are and what they did every single time another incident like this happens.

We should never forget, and history will, most probably, not let us.

Do The Right Thing

2008-10-31T06:24:00.000-07:00

Obama may or may not be what America needs. I don't pretend to know. Americans seem to have decided that they don't want John McCain, much less Sarah Palin, but that of course depends on what one means by "Americans". I don't intend to say that one kind of American is more authentic than another. I believe that it's important to recognize the value of all people who live in the US, citizens or not, and all American passport holders, wherever they may at the moment.
I do believe that there is a certain criterium for acting on what is in the best interests of the country. Democracy is fraught with difficulties and irritating restraints when it comes to getting done what needs to be done. Voters often feel helpless when our country is headed in the wrong direction and we need to remember that our power is limited. The one thing that concentrates the mind of politicians, each and every one, is feeling that their constituents have decided to end their tenure. The most true, singular expression of how to bring about change is: "throw the bastards out."
It doesn't matter which party is in power, if any party stays in power for very long it will become so corrupt and immoral that a change will be needed. That of course is where we are today. American citizens need to throw out any party that fails the majority of Americans as badly as the Republicans have over the past eight years. In fact, the Republicans have been bad for most Americans for the past twenty-eight years. During this time they have held the executive branch of the federal government for twenty years, and the Congress for most of that time (six of the last eight, and such a strong minority of the senate for the past two years that the razor thin majority the Democrats hold at the moment is virtually useless).
This is a major part of the reason why America is such a mess now. And we, the voters are responsible as well. We have been "asleep at the wheel" for most of the past thirty years. The Republicans have proven good at deception and demagogery. They have been masters of controlling the media and snake oil salesmanship. And we have allowed them to have their way. Finally, it seems to have caught up with them.

Americans need to throw the bastards out. They need to give Obama a try and sixty Democratic Senate seats (Lieberman doesn't count. he is worse than worthless) and a whole lot more H of R seats. Otherwise the remaining Republicans will find ways to continue to impede any meaningful change. If we elect Obama and give the Democrats a working majority in Congress we must then watch carefully what happens and raise hell if good decisions aren't made.
If our country isn't moving in a better direction by 2011 we need to get ready to throw the bastards out again. No party deserves the loyalty of American voters unless it truly works in the best interests of at least the majority of it's citizens. If a new Congress doesn't serve us well we need to dump it at the first available opportunity. This is our only recourse. If Americans don't take a passionate interest in what they do and hold them accountable the Democrats will fuck up just as badly as the Republicans have. All of them need to know, they need to live in the knowledge that Americans are paying attention to what they are up to. Eternal vigilance is imperative.
Obama may prove to be a fine president, or maybe not. We must measure his performance. We cannot simply elect him and say, "OK, it's yours, now handle it" and stop paying attention. At the same time we must realize that he will not be able to work miracles. The challenges that he will face will be monumental. However, if he proves disappointing and ineffective, and if Democratic lawmakers prove to be scoundrels, we must be ready and willing to throw the bastards out again.
See you on Tuesday.

the end of America as we knew it

2008-06-24T23:53:00.000-07:00

hyperbole is overrated. most of the time i try to stay away from it, but irony is something else. in these times it washes over us on a daily basis. maybe America has always been more dream than something tangible but at least for most of the past 200 years there was something there that gave hope to a lot of people around the world.
it's going away now, that hope, that idea, so beautifully and intelligently conceived and synthesized at the beginning of the nation.

say goodbye.

remember it well.

maybe in the future the quaint notion of democracy and the rule of law and the belief that government should serve the people, rather than only the most powerful and ruthless, will once again have a chance to become real.
for now, the Congress is throwing out the Fourth Amendment and habeas corpus. they're doing it willingly, stupidly, for a mess of pottage. the stupidity and venality and ignorance and cowardness of these people once again makes itself apparent. America is broken. it's over. George Bush and Dick Cheney and the Republican Party with the help of far too many "Democrats" did it.

Osama bin Laden couldn't have asked for better.

heading east

2007-07-14T09:37:00.000-07:00

waiting in the station
the whistle, watery and languid,
then beeps, then motion
a guy sits opposite
he eats no sooner than he sat
an apple and a ham sandwich,
the electric whine ascends
like the air raid sirens.
four russians enter, huffing
with baggage and nice clothes

flow

2007-07-14T09:10:00.000-07:00

the Beatles look out at me from across
an aisle of forty years
the green blurs past

Jena receding in the distance
a bach,
a steeple

Dieter still wants the Deutschmark back.
the arm opposite
has Escher's impossible triangle
tattooed on it

i have a memory of you
who loves the turquoise blue

normandie, may 2007

2007-06-02T13:39:00.000-07:00

i found a bullet in the ocean
fused to a rock,
moved in and out by the tide
for sixty-three years, less a week or two,
i had to wonder
if it passed through some young body
and then
waited for me
for validation,
for recognition,
for affirmation ......

beethoven bird

2007-04-08T01:47:00.000-07:00

he's there
spiking my ears insistently
bam badam bam badam
crisply
hammering that silver
ringing
through the still bare branches
no kettle or horn
could do it better

Respite

2006-12-15T23:04:00.000-08:00

i don't call myself a writer. i haven't quit my day job, which occupation has kept me thrashing about fairly steadily for the past month just trying to keep up with the day to day of things. hence, no posts here at my little bit of electronic pixelturf. and now i find myself suddenly free for a couple of weeks, during which to dredge through the gray matter porridge and examine what i find:

there's a kind of wild look in her eyes
an alertness testing phenomena
reading the movements
skeptical of surface
still capable of laughter
but starting to know that
all's not sweetness and light

she's not there yet
not enough has happened to break that spirit
even though damage has been done
the fire
the blows
the toughening
the apparent narrowing of options
takes its toll

it may be too late
that's what usually happens
read the tea leaves
take a random walk amongst the numbers
by all means be realistic. be practical!

too old to get close
i just observe
my wings of desire folded,
i know better.
my ears listening
aiming for empathy, or maybe just thoughtfulness
we're not in this together
that's for sure

streetwalker

2006-10-27T02:17:00.000-07:00

i'm not a pavement princess or anything like that. life's been a little easier on me, plus i don't have the equipment or the appeal that would make it work. so i walk the streets for other reasons. i'm still discovering this place which is very old, but new for me. dresden would be a great location for filming scarey movies. cobblestone streets full of four storey, neogothic and jugendstil architecture. all manner of houses with domed turrets, filagreed facades, wrought iron art nouveau fences, and trees all about. amazing stuff, if you like that sort of thing, which i do. it's really quite far from george w. bush's idea of america and the 21st century.

i keep walking around the city, for now mostly in my own part of town, venturing farther and farther bit by bit, trying to really make it my own, at least in the sense that i have a really good idea of where things are and what they look like. yesterday though, i kept thinking about the elections coming up in less than two weeks and i had one big question that i couldn't shake loose. i couldn't answer it:

how could any self-respecting american, anybody with a sense of fairness and decency, any adult with a brain, and awareness of what has gone on in america and the world for the last seven years, how could any such person vote for anyone, republican or democrat, who has enabled the bush administration to create the incredible odious mess it has created since january 2001? i am nearing seventy years of age. i have voted in almost every election since dwight eisenhower was president and i have never seen anything as bad, not even remotely as bad, as what we have witnessed the past six years. and the truth is that we really don't know the full story yet as to just how bad things are.

is there no level of corruption, immorality, criminality and incompetency which will bring every american to their senses? is there no number of useless deaths of our own women and men in iraq and afghanistan sufficient for every american to say, "that's it. this has got to stop." ?????? not to mention the number of iraqi dead. innocent, civilian children, women and men. not terrorists or insurgents. just people with the bad luck to have been born in the wrong place at the wrong time. how big and blatant a lie has george w. bush to tell for everybody to start publicly refering to him as "that liar"?

"we have never been 'stay the course'. " ?????? really? never? (it has been documented that he made this claim at least 28 times.)

what every american needs to fully comprehend and act upon is this: we really don't have much say so in what our government does. we really don't. but we do have a responsibility to do one thing and that is to VOTE THE BASTARDS OUT. that is the one thing that gets their attention. the one thing they fear. and it applies to Democrats and Republicans. putting a label on yourself as Democrat or Republican does not make you an honest, decent, intelligent person. and putting either of those labels on doesn't make you immoral or a criminal or stupid either. it doesn't prove anything. it's just like saying that you're a Christian. it's what you do and what you are willing to say that proves what you are. when politicians do bad or stupid things then they need to be held accountable. they need to be thrown out of office. that is our responsibility.if we don't throw them out then we become guilty. just like them. we become collaborators in corruption, greed and murder. it is ironic that George W. Bush uses the term "evil doer" because he is an evil doer on a grand scale.

can any Republican vote for these people now? if they have any sense of decency they can't and won't. if they can't in good conscience vote for a Democrat, fine. they should at least have the self respect to stay away from the polls.

if there was ever an election that cries for a mandate it is the election on November 7, 2006. i won't bother naming every Republican congressman that deserves to be ousted but Jean Schmidt in Ohio and Jerry Lewis and what's-his-name Pombo in California are three. In the Senate, Joe Lieberman and George Allen are two, and there are six other races where the Democratic candidate should be elected (Missouri, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Montana and Ohio). will the Democrats prove to be worthy of our trust? i won't even hazard a guess. if they prove not to be, then they must be thrown in 2012. but in ten days we must, as a nation, make our voices heard. we must say "This has got to stop. Now."

no more, no less

2006-09-09T01:58:00.000-07:00

send her in
to soften them up
make them imagine
they're ready whatever happens

cool
eyes searching
measured tones
understated awareness

hint of smile
touch of vulnerability
then it's over
door closes

epiphany

2006-09-09T01:37:00.000-07:00

a lost soul by choice
though not defiantly
facing some truth
unavoidable
necessary

does he, losing it,
find?
(not triumphantly though)

passing through a resonance
murmuring yes, hears

you're alone
like all the others

frontier

2006-09-09T01:18:00.000-07:00

it's a little unnerving
finding you no longer feel
all those things you used to

it's not exactly
that you don't care
yet you seem empty, and
don't know why

maybe it's too late
pointless
even though you'd like it to be
as it was

the world around you seems the same
but you're not.

dresden in august (2006)

2006-08-02T08:16:00.000-07:00

any time one moves to a new country, and with it a new culture, there is a period of time when one is under a certain kind of stress. there is the need to become accustomed to a new language, new traffic rules, new foods, being viewed by the people around you as noticeable and different, and so on. i have visited germany a number of times and have some friends here and a number of acquaintances. i've tried to learn a bit of the language but i cannot say that i have even got all the basics thoroughly organized in my mind. nevertheless, i go forward with some optimism that my literacy will increase over the coming months.

i have been in dresden just three weeks. i make regular efforts to find the places to get the basic things one needs to exist, and perhaps a little more. one of the things i do to get my bearings is to walk the neighborhood where i live. it has an adequate supermarket, a bakery, a butcher shop, a barber and so on. my most favorite spot is the suppenbar. they have four to six kinds of soups there (open weekdays only) and it's very tempting to get a soup takeout for supper five times a week. i have pledged to myself to work on the spare tire which somehow decided to attach itself to me over the past three years. this is new. up until 2003 i could eat all of anything i wanted and never change dimensions. in that year however, while living in sudan, i developed giardia and lost about twenty pounds before i realized i had more than an irritated stomach. in an effort to regain my normal body weight i gained such momentum that it seems that my days of carefree eating are over (sigh), and so i'm making a fairly serious effort at dieting to return to some semblance of my former self. i'm a bit skeptical of the outcome but still reasonably persistent after ten days.

along with walking the neighborhood and making journeys about the city by tram to investigate and discover what i can, i've also been reading. i started with frederick taylor's "Dresden - February 13th 1945". it's a recent book which means to dispel claims that more than 100,000 people died that night. according to his research it was something like 30,000 to 40,000. even so he doesn't try to belittle the horror or immensity of it all. the reduced numbers are still staggering. he also maintains that there were a number of factories supplying to the war effort and offers information about that as well. claims to the contrary, that there was nothing here of strategic military value, were asserted by the nazis, and then by officials of the german democratic republic. regardless of the truth of falseness of this information it is true that the vast majority of those who died that night were the elderly, women and children.

there is a substantial number of old, beautiful structures which exist today in dresden. some of them are here today because they were carefully and lovingly rebuilt over the past sixty years, most recently the frauenkirche, for which many individuals and many countries made contributions. most notably, the people of the city of coventry, england contributed to this rebuilding. coventry was severly bombed by hitler's luftwaffe so the people there knew quite a bit about what dresden experienced. along with the rebuilt buildings, some of the old buildings which can be seen today simply managed to not be destroyed in the first place.

if you arrive in dresden by train you see nothing of past splendor at first. when you come out of the station you see nothing beautiful at all. what you see are a lot of unimaginative boxes of steel, glass and concrete which were built on the ruins of the bombing. walking due north right through the middle of the city you can tell where the bombers went. more "modern" boxes mark the places where bombs wreaked their destruction. and as you travel through some of the areas adjacent to the city center you can tell where the hellish fire storm spread outward, or more bombs fell but with a lessening concentration of them. there are blocks of buildings in socialist, unimaginative slabs planted here and there.

where i live, a short tram ride from the center, there are a number of buildings built around 1900. the neighborhood is quite pleasant and almost all of the houses there were created with a lot of attention to detail and what was, at least a hundred years ago, considered beautiful. but here as well are some newer buildings, many of which rose on the ruins of a firebombed house. what many people in the west don't know about the thousands of people who died in dresden however is that many of them did not burn. the fires were so huge, over such a large area of the city that the oxygen was sucked out of the air and most people who died, in fact, suffocated.

the kind of hellish bombing that dresden endured was endured by many cities in western germany during world war II. what didn't happen to the cites and people of western germany was some forty five years of communism after the end of the war and the bombing. george bush need not wonder why the people of germany have not been enthusiastic or impressed about his ridiculous and tragic misadventure in iraq. many of them still remember what it was like to endure the horror of being massively bombed.

today on the strassenbahn there was a young man wearing a t-shirt. when i got on the tram it so happened that i was standing near enough to touch him. on his t-shirt an outline of the u.s. was printed on the back. the shape of the outline was filled in with an american flag. beneath the graphic there was a list 30 or so countries with a year marked after each one beginning in 1946 and coming up to the present. over the graphic was written "WORLD DOMINATION TOUR - COMING TO A COUNTRY NEAR YOU!" today, in many places of the world people fear us. and not without reason.

in the night

2006-07-20T12:27:00.000-07:00

my world has become animated by you,

the you,

of my stimulated imagining, which

is not the actual you. i have

only glimpsed that you, small fragments,

movements, murmured exclamations,

a musing, now and again.

i riff on the imagination of you

making up what i don't, and may

never know.

you know who

2006-07-20T12:22:00.000-07:00

cool, you are

you like the turquoise blue

the green 4,

that burning yellow orange you,

you brought me

lemon ginger tea.

enroute to strasbourg

2006-07-20T12:14:00.000-07:00

how does beauty know to be like that?

hair like botticelli, face...capable of anything!

there are moments when i exist.

the internet shop in dresden

2006-07-19T04:09:00.000-07:00

i've been on the road since the 24th of june. the month of june i spent preparing for this journey, packing boxes and mailing them, or moving them to a storage locker in dundee, oregon. it's a routine i've done a number of times in my life, seven since 1990. i can't help it, i'm a "weltbummler".
for the first time, however, i did it all myself. i sorted through all the stuff, packed the boxes, filled out all of the paper work necessary these days for mailing stuff, especially stuff going out of the country. it's always quite a challenge, moving, but enlightening as well. you have to look at everything and remember when you got it or what it's history and memories are, and whether you need it where you're going or whether it's worth storing. i got that done finally, the day before i left oregon. had my last meal with my son and his family and had goodbyes with them. i had goodbyes with a new friend as well. we'd just gotten to know each other in the last month. one of my ongoing thoughts is where that might have lead had i not been leaving. maybe not far, but you never know, really.
my first stop was paris, to see a friend i knew ten years ago and a former student who's busy learning about documentary film making. both lovely women, one french, the other brazilian. i had to see the rodin museum as well, and an exhibition of david smith's mostly steel sculptures. then it was on to berlin.
i arrived in berlin right in the middle of the germany vs argentina world cup match. the city was electric with football. when i got to my u-bahn stop an unforgettable sight and sound fascinated me. a creature standing underneath the u-bahn platform was playing a fiddle, holding it like a cello. he wore a percussion instrument around one leg and he was dancing. the music sounded ethereal, and like nothing i'd ever heard. i felt as if i was hallucinating on the drugs he must have taken. some kind of aura emanated from him that startled me. all this amidst the other sounds of the city. a couple of minutes later the friend i was to stay with in berlin met me and lead me to his apartment where we watched germany finish off argentina and then we walked the streets of east berlin.
next i went to dresden and started getting my flat organized. after a couple of days i went on to visit friends in bavaria, ate good food, climbed two mountains (the kind that don't require any equipment except decent shoes) and walked in some fascinating fields and forests. the wild plants, grasses, butterflies and flowers can't be described properly, at least not by me, but they transported me into a connection with nature i have rearely felt before. i began to understand how people imagined the idea of fairies.
i came back to dresden to get myself ready for work and when it suited me i walked the city streets and wondered about all the dead souls, lost in one night more than sixty years ago.
a couple of days ago i finally discovered the internet shop in the underground passage next to the hauptbahnhof. i have to resort to it as the computer in my apartment isn't connected yet. today about six or seven very interesting women came into the room in short order. they were of various sizes and descriptions, but something about them made me think they had something in common. then i remembered that there is a table dancing club just across st. petersburger strasse, opposite the railroad station. in the middle of the day they can stop by and communicate with a different world. internet shops are interesting places for we weltbummlers.

memorial

2006-05-27T11:00:00.000-07:00

we are torn asunder. we need to honor the dead. we must be loyal and supportive of our women and men in Iraq and Afghanistan. yet most people know, and are willing to say, that the war is wrong. we can no longer, in good conscience, go about our daily lives thinking that there is any possibility of good resulting from the war in Iraq. we have failed to learn the lessons of history and we are condemned. in this case we have repeated the mistake of attempting to defeat an insurgency in a country without a proper strategy, without enough means and without understanding the history and culture of the place. we are condemned, having repeated the mistake we made in viet nam.

the whole premise of the neocons is now completely exposed and revealed to be both immoral, bankrupt and unconscionably evil. george w. bush, dick cheney, donald rumsfeld, michael ledeen, douglas feith, paul wolfowitz, alberto gonzalez and william kristol are evil fools and deserve our greatest contempt. they also deserve to be sent to the Hague and tried for crimes against humanity.

if we do not stand up against these men, if we do not stand up to them we too deserve the contempt of the world. if we do not bring charges against these traitors to the American heritage, these arrogant fools who have trampled on the Constitution, if we do not confront them and see to it that they are brought to justice we will dishonor all who have died to protect us. if we let it all pass unpunished, memorial day will cease to be an honoring of dead soldiers. it will become a mourning of a disgraced nation.

sleep

2006-05-25T09:03:00.000-07:00

sleep is the place where it all comes out. sleep parades before you who you really are, your deepest longings, your greatest fears, frustrations, and desires. most often in the morning i wake in a tangle of grogginess no matter how many hours of rest i've had. sometimes i wake in the night and i have to force myself to remain in bed, to return to the land of nod, my mind racing with some crazed idea that urges me to get up and write or do something which i know will cause me grief later in the day when i'm in the middle of going about my more-or-less mudane life and suddenly realize how weary i am or how confused my thinking has become from lack of sleep the night before.

i don't often recall my dreams. in earlier years the themes of those i did remember usually had to do with being pursued, or being naked and attempting, unsuccessfully, to hide from others. those were the dreams with fear as fuel. in later years i dreamt of dealing with a class of unruly students and the fear of losing "control". very seldom have my dreams been lengthy or complicated. at least the ones i recalled upon waking. many times i would wake remembering only a brief fragment of something. often as not this frament would melt and evaporate rather quickly.

i was a sleep walker and a sleep talker. one night my mother looked on with great apprehension as i walked down a folding stairway from the attic of our house where i had a small room. i then proceeded to the living room where i lay down on the couch and remained until morning.
some years later, at the barracks at the submarine school in new london, connecticut i sat up in my bunk one saturday night yelling "beer, boys! beer! beer!" at the top of my lungs. variously, at other times in my sleeping career one of my wives or lovers would relate to me the next morning some choice bit of nonsense i had uttered out of the blue black night before.

dreaming, it is said, is only part of sleep. what must happen during sleep when we aren't dreaming? could it be a kind of death from which we can be resurrected by someone's touch or voice, a rumble of thunder or the sound of rain?
whatever it may be, i relish those hours in the other world, at the same time knowing that i resist succumbing to the call.

tides

2006-05-12T12:32:00.000-07:00

two weeks have past since i wrote here. i am pulled this way and that. it's not unpleasant, but accomplishments and the attention to some of my own, personal responsibilities are at risk in the meantime. i feel i should write more here. i need to do more preparations for my move to germany in july. i should also be painting, or at least making collages. instead i allow myself to wander through the day, doing this chore or that and man the blog barricades.
i am a minor player at "firedoglake" but it consumes my time and thoughts far more than i should allow. however, the perilous condition of our country at this moment, the importance of speaking out about it, giving encouragement to my colleagues there, the necessity to address those elsewhere who could admonish and restrain, who could speak truth to power and say no to the dismantlement of our fundamental values demands it.
i have to say that America has become shortsighted. we, as a people, are actually mentally ill. we are swollen on self-indulgence, fearful beyond any realistic assessment of the dangers we actually face, and, it seems, suffering from amnesia.
we have forgotten what we used to cherish. we are willing to surrender our liberties for some illusion of security that can never exist, and certainly does not exist at this time.
we are myopic, to an astonishing degree. we do not think it important to pay attention to what is going on. we just say that the president can handle it, and so the president feels completely free to walk all over the constitution, with impugnity. we prove ourselves unworthy to keep all that was given us, fought and sacrificed for over more than two centuries. all of this will be lost, or at a minimum, besmirched and degraded, and we deserve for this to happen unless we stand up now and say no.
the "firedoglake' community has done this. we have repeatedly called attention to the lies and power grabs, the ignoring of the law,the fecklessness of the president, the malicious intent of his cabinet, the smarmy sycophancy of the congress. we will continue to call attention to this unbelieveable venality. would that others will join us, and the congress hear us, but even if they don't we will continue, because it is the right thing to do.

weather memory

2006-04-28T06:52:00.000-07:00

yesterday was cloudless. after the months of rain ended four weeks ago such a day becomes noteworthy. consciousness is stimulated. "remember this!" it says. the word halcyon comes to mind. it was calm and golden. there seemed to be almost no wind, yet the day felt mostly cool.

last night i was able to leave my bedroom window open. my body didn't warn me against it, and it was right.

i wake earlier now. now, in the sense of, now that it's spring and accellerating towards summer and, now, in the sense of now that i'm older, past some milestone after which one's body says, "o.k., even though you've only slept six hours, you might as well get up." it's not always that way, even now, but much more often than earlier in my life. i'm more conscious of light as a stimulus now. when daybreak approaches sleep retreats. thirty years ago it was at least possible for me to sleep until noon. no longer.

the increase of daylight in april in oregon is palpable. in russia the increase of light lifts you up and drives you forward, creating a kind of delightful panic. it's first noticeable much earlier in the year, however. in february, in fact.

the russians have a festival at the end of february called maslinitsa. it's a goodbye to winter. foreigners don't understand. the temperature is -10, there's snow on the ground, and you're saying "goodbye" to winter? a bit premature, eh? what most innostrani don't get is just how much the daylight is increasing, day by day.

in mid-december, the sun rises in moscow at 8:45 or so. at 3:30PM the sun is setting. at the summer solstice there is still light in the sky at 11 o'clock and by 4:30AM the sun is peeping again over the horizon. the building up of light energy from february to june is a profound factor in the character of the russian people. spring there doesn't mean warmth, as western europeans understand the word, it means more light. eventually it does get warmer, of course, but the wait is longer.

i never made it to st. petersburg during "white nights" but i can say that moscow, for the whole month of june, moscow at night, is deeply romantic.

if you want to start a war.........

2006-04-26T22:52:00.000-07:00

this will be mostly another quote. if you want to test yourself, read it before looking at the attribution. my guess is that you will be surprised.

"My opposition to war is not based upon pacifist or non-resistant principles. It may be that the present state of civilization is such that certain international questions cannot be discussed; it may be that they have to be fought out. We ought not to forget that wars are a purely manufactured evil and are made according to a definite technique. A campaign for war is made upon as definite lines as a campaign for any other purpose. First, the people are worked upon. By clever tales the people's suspicions are aroused toward the nation against whom war is desired. Make the nation suspicious; make the other nation suspicious. All you need for this is a few agents with some cleverness and no conscience and a press whose interest is locked up with the interests that will be benefited by war. Then the "overt act" will soon appear. It is no trick at all to get an "overt act" once you work the hatred of two nations up to the proper pitch."

i'm familiar with propaganda and even how it was used to start the war in viet nam as well as several other wars. even so, it took my breath away to read the above quote which so clearly describes how America was whipped up into a frenzy to invade iraq. no, everyone wasn't fooled by george and his puppetmasters but many people were. the quote was written by henry ford, more than fifty years ago! ford was a brilliant man. he changed america in some important ways. he had at least one malevolent aspect however: he was a virulent anti-semite and was greatly admired by hitler. i suppose that one lesson we should learn from this is that intelligence does not preclude evil any more than beauty does.

my other reflection is that reading ford's words brought to me again, just how vulnerable we as a people are. we let bush and cheney and rumsfeld and wolfowitz take us by the hand and then push this nation over a cliff. should we ever again trust any of these men about anything?

fahrender: April 2006

2006-04-26T15:43:00.000-07:00

fahrender: April 2006

weatherman (the second)

2006-04-26T12:43:00.000-07:00

willamette valley agriculture includes a lot of nut tree orchards, fruit orchards and is a major producer of grass seed. in recent years it has become a serious wine making area. even the french have come around to check out what's going on. a german friend eagerly anticipates my every visit to bavaria because he knows that i will be bringing a bottle of "hood river" marionberry wine for him. i do it so he will be willing to put up with me. that particular wine is an amazingly delectable dessert wine. it's very smooth and just sweet enough. dieter usually just drinks it without anything. and he makes it last. it's that good.

i'm not a wine connoiseur but, as they say, "i know what i like." mostly french and italian reds and some german rieslings. i don't know much about what weather is needed for good wine grapes but in the valley the summers are fairly dry. the days don't necessarily get very hot until july and even then the nights can be wonderfully cool. perfect for sleeping, or whatever else you might want to do.

not so in the sudan. a cool night there would be anything below 95 degrees. the afternoons are beastly. that kipling verse about only mad dogs and englishmen going out in the noonday sun was written about india, i believe. it would apply perfectly to sudan. the weather in sudan imposes a structure on one's life. i usually got up at 4AM , showered, dressed and ate breakfast. that left me enough time to walk to school which took about 25 minutes. this simple act of walking was my sole opportunity to do physical activity, the only time in any twenty-four hour period when one could move about, outside, in air that wasn't stifling, without the punishing heat of the sun searing your skin, and i relished it. the work day ended at 2 or 3PM. i didn't get a car in sudan and i didn't dare walk home at that time of day because of the heat. that meant taking a tuk-tuk, one of those three-wheeled carts with a rag top and a lawnmower engine that are pervasive across the middle east, india, where they are made, and southeast asia in general. that's how i got back to my apartment. most days i would then go inside and not come out until the next morning unless it was to go to the market or do my laundry.

the months of december and january afforded the one welcome change to this routine. those two months were cooler in temperature. in fact, during december and january people from northern europe, canada and the northern half of the u.s. might even enjoy a few days in sudan. the days are invariably sunny and the nights are cool. cool enough that one might wear a sweater from midnight to 7AM. and the haboobs, or dust storms are rare in winter.