Watch the YouTube video below and drink a shot every time Ann gets it wrong. You’ll be soused in no time.
November 3, 2011
November 2, 2011
Visiting Vancouver: Asian fusion & marijuana dispensaries
My granddaughter Mena is a sixth-generation Undocumented American. Her great-great-great grandfather came over to California from China for the gold rush and stayed on to help build the transcontinental railroad. But then, back in the 19th century, EVERYBODY in California was an Undocumented American. And, today in Vancouver, I also learned about documented and undocumented Canadians as well. And also about documented and undocumented marijuana users.
Vancouver is a magnificent “Jewel of the Pacific” type of city in the grand old tradition of Shanghai, Valparaiso, San Francisco and Sydney — built overlooking water, it has an interesting history, a cosmopolitan population and lots of trees. Vancouver is a beautiful city — with an element of Asian-fusion to it that also makes it interesting, exotic and chic.
At Vancouver’s exquisite Sun Yat-Sen Classical Garden, I learned a lot about ancient China. First I learned that scholars were highly regarded there back in the day.
“The most highly-honored class of people in ancient China were its scholars,” commented a museum docent. “And next in order were its farmers.” Did I hear that right? Somebody actually honored farmers way back when? They must have been referring to some ancient Chinese agribusiness CEOs. Nobody I know of has ever honored mere farmers, the people who feed us each day.
“The third category to be honored were the artisans.” Apparently arts and crafts were really big in old-school China. And apparently the last, least important category of importance in bygone China days were the corporatists.
In ancient China, however, this four-tier categorization obviously didn’t work out so well over the long run — but at least they tried. Here in America, a country that is supposed to be a democracy, corporatists are obviously kings — and 99% of us know how badly that arrangement is working out.
Next, I learned that every Chinese scholar’s garden must have four basic ingredients — a building, a plum tree, a pine tree and some bamboo. “But what about Feng Shui,” I asked the docent. The four principles essential to having good Feng Shui (usually translated as “harmony”) in one’s life are safety, beauty, organization and comfort. “This scholar’s garden is certainly beautiful and safe and definitely organized — but is it comfortable?” I asked. Would I just want to flop down, kick off my shoes and watch television here? Not.
“The comfort that scholars got from their garden was in its beauty,” replied the docent. Oh.
I also learned that in modern-day Vancouver, 25% of its population is between the ages of 18 and 25 — because students from all over Asia come here to study English. “And just before Hong Kong was taken over by mainland China in 1997, many Hong Kong residents moved here and bought condos in downtown Vancouver,” There is also a large Japanese and Tibetan presence here, giving this city a real feeling of Asian-fusion, cultural diversity and Pacific Rim internationalism.
Next I went off to Vancouver’s large Granville Island farmers’ market to honor some farmers by buying a peach.
By now I’ve been traveling for over 2,200 miles and my knees and right ankle were really hurting, forcing me to forgo visiting the famous Capilano suspension bridge’s cliff walk and tree house. “Why don’t you try some medical marijuana to ease the pain?” someone then suggested. Medical marijuana is legal in Vancouver? They don’t have drug cartels and drug lords running it up from Mexico with AK-47s like they do in the States?
“Of course it’s legal here. We are a civilized nation.” Except, perhaps, for Steven Harper — Canada’s answer to folks like Bush and Reagan and Obama and Blair.
So off I went to a doctor and showed him a medical report on my knees and ankle, and also showed him my nifty blue handicap sticker which I love so much that I’m thinking of having it tattooed on my arm. Then the doctor asked me a few questions like, “How did you get injured?” So I told him about falling down some stairs in the Peace Corps in South Africa back in 2007. And then, after asking me about how easy it would be for older people to join the Peace Corps (pretty easy), he signed a paper saying I needed marijuana to ease the pain, and I was good to go.
Next on my tourist agenda is going to be a trip to a marijuana dispensary. Should I do this? Will it help? Is medical marijuana expensive? Will it make a good souvenir? I’m about to find out!
PS: Speaking of Feng Shui, I just gotta mention that the corporatists who currently control both the government and the economy back in the States have not created any beauty or comfort or safety or organization in America (nor any democracy either). American corporatists have bad Feng Shui!
Let’s do something about that.
Perhaps we also need to occupy Congress, the White House and the Supreme Court as well as Wall Street — in order to bring good Feng Shui back into our lives.
What a great slogan to chant that would be. “Beauty! Comfort! Organization! Safety!”
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October 29, 2011
When hard work does NOT pay off: Ukrainian POWs in Canada
Republican billionaire fat cats always keep telling us that if we, the great unwashed, unemployed uncouth 99%, would just stop grumbling, get off our fat asses, go out and Get A Job, then everything would be all right and we would all be fat cats like them. Nah. The deck has already been stacked against us — and by the very same fat cats who are dealing the cards. Obviously.
In real life, hard work doesn’t necessarily pay off. Just look at what happened to Ukrainians in Canada for instance.
Up in Banff National Park, there is a small bronze monument out in the middle of nowhere, by the side of the road. It is a statue of a single Ukrainian farmer — but it could have been a statue of any one of the rest of us 99%.
“Back in the 1880s,” someone in Banff recently told me, “Canadian railroad companies began an advertizing campaign in Britain that glowingly portrayed the wonders of life on the Canadian prairies to the gullible Brits — and then a bunch of British settlers were unceremoniously dumped off out in the middle of nowhere after having been promised free farmland. But one year later, when railroad officials came back to see how the settlers were doing, half of the Brits were dead and the other half never wanted to see Canada again.” So much for truth in advertizing.
“Not deterred, however, the railways then made the same promises to a bunch of farmers in Ukraine and they too got dumped out on the cold windy prairie. But when railroad officials came back a year later, this time the prairies were thriving, everyone was happy and there was even extra produce to sell. Their hard work had paid off.”
Or had it?
“By the time World War I arrived, British-Canadians had become so jealous of Ukrainian-Canadians that large numbers of Ukrainian-Canadians had been rounded up and thrown into concentration camps near Banff.”
There’s a moral here somewhere — that hard work doesn’t necessarily pay off? Or that one should never trust the fat cats.
So next time that Republican oligarchs start calling us lazy because we’re not rich like them, think about all those poor hard-working Ukrainian-Canadians who lost their land because someone else, not them, was in charge of their government. And then act accordingly.
PS: After visiting the upscale town of Banff (aka “Be Aware — Nothing’s For Free”), I headed off to the legendary Lake Louise, which is, actually, surprisingly small. And then I actually walked on top of an actual glacier. Amazing. Peaceful. Awesome. Now I understand why Tibetans are so spiritual. You can’t help but think about Love and Beauty and the Mystery of Life when you’re surrounded by the stunning silence of an ice field.
After that, I stopped by Jasper, another Canadian version of Aspen or Vail. And its acronym is “Just Another Shopping Paradise Extracting Revenue.” Then on to Kamloops and Sun Peaks, aka “Sales Up, New Property Expensive, Please Erase Austerity, Keep Spending”.
PPS: While many of our One Percent are happily off taking High Tea or heli-skiiing in Banff, what are the rest of us up to? Fighting to preserve the pensions and Social Security benefits that our hard work has earned us? Looking for work in an economy where there are four job-seekers for every one job? Watching our homes go into foreclosure?
What, for instance, is Scott Olsen doing right now?
PPPS: I’m still trying to find some mainstream media outlet to sponsor me to go over to Iraq and write about troop withdrawals. The military won’t let me in without a mainstream sponsor — even though the Lone Star Iconoclast is willing to sponsor me and I’ve been there before.
Come on, MSM, man up and sponsor me! How is America’s 99% going to ever know what is truly going on over there if coverage is only limited to media giants controlled by the good old One Percent? Or is that exactly the point.
I’ve still got until Thanksgiving to find a sponsor and get over there. Come on, guys! Send me! And I promise to send back all the news fit to print!
October 25, 2011
Seeking solace: High Tea in Banff & the ghosts of PTSD
After finally arriving in Banff National Park the other day, I treated myself to high tea at the famous historic high-tone Banff Springs Hotel. Now this is the right way to camp!
Joining me for high tea at the hotel was an up-and-coming young filmmaker named Holly Chadwick. Chadwick is currently in the process of editing her new movie, “Seeking Solace,” a film whose plot revolves around the sad stories of two post-war veterans who have returned home after fighting in two of America’s bloodiest corporatist wars. One vet had fought in Iraq recently and the other had fought in Vietnam years ago — but both of them struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Over scones, Devenshire cream, cucumber sandwiches and Earl Grey tea and looking out through a huge picture window next to our table at one of the most majestic scenes on the planet today, Chadwick and I discussed PTSD. And then, after high tea was over and it became obvious that there were no more petit-fours to be had, Chadwick then took me back to her artist-in-residence studio at the Banff Center to show me some of the clips from her new movie.
Most of the clips that I saw were about her characters’ nightmares — the horrible nightmares that war veterans so often suffer from after returning from battlefields.
Veterans apparently relive their wartime past experiences again and again in their dreams. And then, all too often, these same returning vets attempt to commit suicide — either consciously or subconsciously. According to the Army Times, 18 U.S. veterans actually attempt suicide per day. Others kill themselves less obviously by getting into automobile accidents or falling asleep while smoking or taking up extreme sports. “Suicide by Cop” also seems to be a current favorite with PTSD vets.
America is hemorrhaging all too many returning veterans’ lives. Chadwick’s movie deals with some of these problems.
“After making this film, have you developed any theories with regard to how to better recognize, treat and cure PTSD?” I asked Chadwick. Obviously she had given much thought to this subject and hoped that her film might supply some of the answers — or at least start getting more people to discuss and focus in on one of post-modern America’s most critical problems. By making this film, it is Chadwick’s intention to raise America’s awareness regarding this vast epidemic of misery.
“The basic plot of my film,” stated Chadwick, “revolves around what happens when the ghost of a Vietnam veteran comes back to haunt the protagonist, a female soldier who had witnessed carnage in Iraq. But Vietnam vet’s ghost is a helpful ghost.” Good. Vets need all the helpful ghosts that they can get — because sometimes constantly dosing PTSD sufferers with medication up to their eyeballs just isn’t enough.
I have read where serotonin-adjusting chemicals can sometimes help vets recover from PTSD — but can sometimes also drive them further over the edge as well.
“So what exactly do you think will help vets recover from PTSD?” I asked Chadwick. Besides ghosts, of course.
“One of the main things that appears to help them is peer support — someone who can honestly say, ‘Been there. Done that. And I got better’. Plus time helps. And a healthy, safe environment. Positive reinforcement. And also a sure sense that they also have a bright future as well as an unbearable past.” Then perhaps having meaningful jobs waiting for them when they return might really help. Fat chance of that!
And Chadwick and I both agreed that participating in any act of creativity may also help PTSD veterans to recover faster.
“There is research that shows that learning both math and music help with strengthening connections between different parts of the brain — and so studying math and music may also be beneficial in helping with PTSD,” said Chadwick.
How ironic is that!
In the past several decades, our government has been taken over in a bloodless coup by corporatists who are making their biggest profits from war. And taxpayers’ money that would have ordinarily gone to help returning vets to become artists and musicians and filmmakers and writers and such is now being siphoned off to pay for more and more wars — and these wars in turn create more PTSD.
Almost all of the money that should be going to help our vets to recover from PTSD is now being generously showered down upon the war industry — the very people who are currently busy CREATING more and more and more PTSD, far faster than anyone can cure it — a vicious cycle.
But hopefully Chadwick’s new film may help out.
PS: Here’s a link to Chadwick’s webpage if you would like to see some rough clips from the film and a prototype trailer as well: http://seekingsolace.net
PPS: Speaking of ghosts, Marilyn Monroe used to stay at the Banff Springs Hotel back in the day, when she was filming “River of No Return” with Robert Mitchum. And I think that I also might have seen Marilyn’s ghost flit by me as I ate my petit-fours and scones for High Tea. Perhaps she too suffered from PTSD — after they shot Kennedy?
PPPS: Now that Obama is allegedly shutting down all American military bases in Iraq, I am starting to get all nostalgic for my time spent over there — embedded in various forward operating bases, command outposts, transit airbases and dining facilities throughout Iraq.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m totally glad to see all these bases be abandoned (or at least to be turned over to Blackwater, which is apparently the new plan), and would even love to see America’s other hundreds of bases throughout the world close down too. But, Geez Louise, how I would love to go back and write an article saying farewell to Iraq — and to do it now, before everything that I remember there disappears forever. Me and Ernest Hemingway. My own personal Farewell to Arms.
And I bet that many soldiers who have served in Iraq in the past and are still serving there now will know what I’m talking about. One really does get nostalgic for the U.S. military experience in Iraq — such as experiencing close comradeship with others, the excellent skill-based knowledge of your compatriots, the fact that one actually has a job and gets actual benefits — and, of course, the D-FAC! But not the killing. That only brings on PTSD.
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October 20, 2011
Occupy Venice CA Photo Report
Occupy Venice CA includes a tribute to America’s fallen warriors
Tents, flags, and protest signs mark the Occupy Venice site
Gondolas are often used for decoration in Venice CA
The scene at Occupy Venice CA was rather subdued on the afternoon of Thursday October 20, 2011, but the encampment on the Venice Circle offered some photo ops and so the Coolpix was pressed into service.
Is Che the patron saint for Occupy Marina del Rey?
Occupy Venice CA
[Note: In an attempt to achieve humor, portions of this column have been fictionalized (it is up to readers to do their own factchecking to discern what has and what has not been fictionalized).]
(Venice CA) The Occupy Wall Street demonstrations have been gaining increased media attention recently (although some lackeys in the conservative propaganda branch of the media have taken to blatant mocking the spontaneous combustion of citizen outrage) and so the World’s Laziest Journalist went to Marina del Rey (on the Western edge of Los Angeles County) to contact and interview the leaders of the Occupy Marina del Rey (CA) at their secret rebel encampment. Unlike the other Occupy protests around the USA, the one in Marina del Rey makes a concerted effort to avoid journalists and we had to switch to stealth mode to talk with the folks who have been trying to reverse the trend of politicians, bankers, and capitalists collaborating on the fleecing of the middle class, in that area of county owned land.
For fifty years the media has been reporting on the cozy financial relationship between the politicians and the developers, but (alas) the trend continues to gain momentum to this very day.
There is no publicized, centralized location for the Occupy Marina del Rey protesters where the police can focus their efforts to discourage the voters’ discontent. The rebel forces in Marina del Rey have tended to pattern their efforts more along the lines of the Occupy the Sierra Maestro Mountains. Many years ago that protest, in a small Caribbean Island Nation, may have, inadvertently, provided the paradigm for the more visible various Occupy Wall Street clone protests springing up around the USA in the Fall of 2011.
We talked with the leader of the Marina Rebels (formed in the late Seventies) known to his followers as “el Jefe,” and he pointed out that the new Occupy Protesters who say that they “aren’t going away” will need at least a decade to establish the priorities for their demands and develop a dialogue with the opposition.
The Marina Rebels have been stymied at every move by the capitalists who dictate their agenda to the local politicians and stifle any attempts to gain converts by managing the news and thus coercing the locals into becoming “sheeple.”
El Jefe brandishes a copy of the October 20, 2011, issue of La Opiniõn newspaper and points to the lead story that details the allegations that the S-Comm program (according to Aarti Kohli at the Warren Institute at UC Berkeley) puts electronic tracking devices on undocumented foreigners in the USA and challenges the columnist saying: “Bet ya didn’t know about this, didja?”
We had to admit that we must have missed that story in our efforts to monitor the news emanating out of that school in the SF area.
El Jefe calls the fascistic politicians, who let developers deplete citizens’ bank accounts via sordid and assorted devious schemes, by the word “Batista” which we assumes means people born out of wedlock. He uses the word as a metaphor for a dictator who has a very cozy relationship with the capitalists and should be replaced by someone via legitimate democratic means or somehow.
The more traditional protest at Occupy Venice (CA) epitomized by a small encampment at the Venice Circle echoes the various bigger protests in places like New York City, San Francisco and Los Angeles, but the Marina Rebels prefer to conduct their efforts via law suits. The leader of the Marina Rebels is quick to ask the visiting columnist if he knows the details of the dispersal of the Bonus Army in Washington D. C. a few years back. We replied: “Didn’t Douglas Macarthur do a superb job of extending ‘interline courtesy’ and limiting the number of fatalities of protesting WWI veterains, to an extremely acceptable small number?”
“Evidently,” el Jefe responded, “Macarthur was intent on running interference for Ronald Reagan and establishing a precedence for the kind of harsh response to demonstrators which the California governor would condone when he said ‘If it takes a blood bath to end this dissention on campus, let’s get it over with.’”
We asked if the leader of the Marina Rebels thought there would be a heavy handed government move to help convince the protesters to abandon their efforts. “You had to be blindfolded while you were being brought here. Draw your own conclusions.” He continued: “Didn’t your mother teach you that all’s fair in love, war and politics?”
Then he pointed to the front page of the Los Angeles Times October 20, 2011, edition which had a lead story about an FBI investigation into allegations of beatings in the jail facilities.
“The protesters who compare their commitment to non-violence to Gandhi’s methods may soon want to read Albert Camus’ ‘The Rebel’ because in effect they are forcing a binary choice on America: ‘change your ways’ or endorse fascism . . . one more time. Based on America’s past history, we think we know which way the capitalists’ police force will be told to handle the problem. Camus wouldn’t have expected a Pollyanna ending to the protests, so why should I?” He paused and then asked: “How are the ‘No Justice; No BART’ protests going?” He paused and then asked another question: “After the 1968 Democratic Convention who was put on trial? Was it the cops or the kids?”
When we pulled out our Nikon Coolpix camera some of the rebels pulled out pistols. El Jefe motioned me to put the camera away. “Go over to the Occupy Venice site if you want to take photos. You can’t take any here.”
He chuckled and then added: “We have been conducting our fight for about thirty five years. We may not live to see the Promised Land where rents are fair, but we will continue fighting until we win or the day we die. Che Guevara said: ‘Whenever death may surprise us, let it be welcome if our battle cry has reached even one receptive ear and another hand reaches out to take up our arms.’ We hope the Occupy sites succeed and achieve all their aims but they should know that it may take some time to wear the capitalists down.”
Then he ended the bearded leader added: “It seems that efforts to shame the capitalists into repenting is a bit more optimistic than this old cynic is ready to expect.”
Now the disk jockey will play “Until the end of time,” and the Stones songs “When the whip comes down” and “Street Fighting Man.” We have to go check and see if there is an “Occupy Santa Monica” and see how well it is going. Have an “In it to win it” type week.
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October 19, 2011
With Liberty & Justice for All: My dude ranch experience in Montana
America really is one freaking large country. Just driving across Montana has completely worn me out. Plus they’ve got lots of cowboys and Indians in Montana. And buffalo too. I met an Indian in Glacier National Park the other day and asked him what he preferred to be called. “Probably Native American would be best,” he replied.
“How about ‘First American’ instead?”
“Works for me.”
Then I went off to this dude ranch near Kalispell and the dude in charge there made me recite the Pledge of Allegiance before I was allowed to eat my dinner. Sure, why not. Actually, I just LOVE America’s wonderful Pledge of Allegiance — especially the part that says, “With liberty and justice for all”. Liberty and justice for everyone! Yay. Liberty and justice for all First Americans — and liberty and justice for everyone else who has come here ever since. Liberty and justice for all of us.
“Liberty and Justice for all”. Now is that such a hard concept to grasp?
And if you’re still having trouble grasping the concept, check out this article on the subject from Forbes Magazine: http://www.forbes.com/sites/toddessig/2011/10/16/the-contrasting-psychologies-of-occupy-wall-street-and-the-tea-party/2/
It also seems to me that the more people here in America claim to be flag-waving patriots and the more that they try to shove the Pledge of Allegiance down our throats — the more likely these very same people, in direct inverse ratio to their proclaimed patriotism, will deliberately ignore the part of the Pledge that says, “With liberty and justice for all”. But guess what, guys. You can’t have it both ways.
And then I crossed the border over into Canada. Apparently some newspaper in Canada recently took a big survey regarding who Canadians themselves would pick as the most wonderful Canadian of all. And guess who Canadians picked hands-down by a huge margin? Tommy Douglas. “Tommy who?” you might ask. Do Americans even know who Tommy Douglas even is? Heck, do Americans even know who Canada’s current prime minister even is?
I myself thought for sure that Canadians would pick Wayne Gretzky to be Number One — but apparently not.
Anyway, Tommy Douglas was the man who was single-handedly responsible for creating Canada’s national single-payer healthcare system. See? Travel broadens.
And travel broadens literally too, of course, because Canada’s Thanksgiving is celebrated a whole month earlier than America’s Thanksgiving due to the fact that Canada’s growing season is shorter than ours and their harvests come in earlier than ours — and, as a result, I get to celebrate TWO Thanksgivings this year. And eat two pumpkin pies.
My next stop is Banff National Park.
PS: As I was sitting in a honky-tonk dive bar on Montana/Alberta border that was trying desperately to pass itself off as a duty-free shop, and eating a Magnum bar and listening to Willie Nelson, a thought suddenly occurred to me.
“What if, during the Reagan administration, our Ronnie had actually decided to be a true patriot instead of the sell-out he was, and he had stood up to Big Business and said, ‘For every job that gets outsourced to some third-world country for cheap labor, America should impose a tariff on the resultant returning products equal to the difference in the amount of wages paid to their guys instead of to our guys?’”
That would have been a brilliant thing for Reagan to do — or for Nixon, both Bushes or Clinton to do. Or even All Gore for that matter (if his election hadn’t been stolen by corporatists, the unholy one percent). And not only that, but imposing these tariffs would have been totally and completely patriotic.
But it’s still not too late. Obama could still do it. “Liberty and Justice for All,” Obama! Liberty and justice for the people who voted for you. Yeah right.
PPS: Every time the INS and the state of Arizona hassles an undocumented American, it also violates our Pledge of Allegiance. Isn’t it illegal to violate the Pledge? Is the Pledge of Allegiance actually a law? Can undocumented Americans actually take the INS and Arizona to court for violating the Pledge?
And when Congress added the phrase “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance back in 1954, exactly what was their intent? That Americans should obey God’s “Thou shalt not Kill” clause? Or how about obeying the part that says “Thou shalt not Steal”? And did Congress intend that, like Jesus, we should throw moneychangers out of the temple?
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October 15, 2011
Outsourcing the dirty work: Seattle, horsemeat & eye trouble
Just three days before I was supposed to go on a two-week camping trip through the Northwest, my eyes started to burn and hurt. And then my vision started to get blurry. Yikes! So I immediately got all upset and rushed off to the doctor — but also started comparing my own vision problems with those of America’s vision problems as well. I am not alone. America’s vision has also gotten pretty blurry recently.
For far too long, we Americans have sat back and placidly allowed just one percent of our number to own 99 percent of our money. And, as a friend of mine in Poland recently wrote me, “Democracy is incompatible with capitalism as long as the three richest people in a ‘democracy’ have more money than the gross national income of the world’s 48 poorest countries.”
So I went off to my optometrist, got acupunctured, bought herbal eye remedies, stuck prescription drops in my eyes, packed up my computer and went camping anyway — hoping that my vision (and my country’s vision too) would somehow miraculously clear up.
The first stop on my tour of the Northwest was Seattle and the famous Pike Place Market, where someone had told me that they sold horsemeat. According to traditional Chinese medicine, eating horsemeat is good for one’s eyes. But I couldn’t find any there. Apparently you have to go to Asia or Europe to find horsemeat to eat. All they sold in Seattle was salmon.
But that’s okay. I really didn’t want to eat horsemeat anyway. Who the freak would want to eat horsemeat? Horses are our friends!
“Here’s the story on horsemeat,” said someone I met while drinking coffee in Seattle (everyone drinks lots of coffee in Seattle, BTW). “It is illegal to slaughter horses in the United States — so they are all rounded up and shipped off to immense slaughterhouses in Canada.”
Hey, that sounds like America’s foreign policy for the last decade or so. Outsourcing slaughter. The Multi-National Coalition helped the Pentagon slaughter folks in Iraq. Israeli corporatists help American corporatists slaughter women and children in Palestine. UN “peacekeepers” help the Bush-Obama administration slaughter Afghans. And NATO is happily helping American oil companies slaughter civilians in Libya. Plus American corporatists are now keeping their fingers crossed that Israeli corporatists will soon be slaughtering Iranians for them too.
Like America outsources its slaughter of horses, the corporatist “one percent” that now owns Washington also outsources its slaughter of people.
But not all Americans think that the butchery of human beings — either here or abroad — is a swell idea. And in the city that gave us Grey’s Anatomy and the Space Needle and Starbuck’s, “Occupy Seattle” is now in full operation — right down the street from the historic 1999 WTO protests.
And then the next day I went off to visit “Occupy Spokane” too. Perhaps America is finally getting its vision back after all.
PS: In the misty Cascade mountains lies the small town of Leavenworth — not Leavenworth, Kansas, home of the famous prison where Bush, Cheney, Obama and half of Wall Street clearly belong, but Leavenworth, Washington — a cute tourist replica of some small town in Bavaria.
When the railroads no longer stopped in Leavenworth, Washington, and the logging shut down, people there were hurting so they thought of a gimmick to get themselves through the hard times — and went Bavarian. Now Leavenworth is a regional tourist attraction with an Octoberfest and a Christmas-tree-lighting festival and everything. See? You don’t have to make war on strangers in order to survive economically these days.
But I gotta admit that the “Occupy Leavenworth” movement consisted mainly of me. Everyone else was too busy wearing lederhosen and eating bratwurst.
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October 7, 2011
Am currently trudging around the woods in Canada…
…and will write all about it when I get back. But in the meantime, here are some links to my photos of glaciers and Montana and trees and High Tea! Not in chronological order, BTW.
Canada: The last glaciers: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150308111716618.334479.519281617&l=4de702352e&type=1
High Tea and Seeking Solace in Banff: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150306500551618.334228.519281617&l=dacc6d668d&type=1
Does Canada have cool clouds or what!: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150305239946618.334001.519281617&l=276b8c30f2&type=1
Montana: On the road again…: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150302624661618.333451.519281617&l=82439571db&type=1
Across Washington state by wagon train:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150301539496618.333183.519281617&l=e42ed69e7c&type=1
“Nothing around me but Rockies and sky…” https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150306500551618.334228.519281617&l=dacc6d668d&type=1#!/photo.php?v=10150303747686618
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September 29, 2011
The Search for the World’s Greatest Bridge
Sydney Bridge
The Golden Gate Bridge
Would anybody in their right mind, put all their stuff in storage, give notice to the landlord in the Mar Vista section of Los Angeles thereby becoming homeless, and then go running off to Australia in search of material for their blog?
Obviously using a left-handed shirttail grab to save a fellow’s life in Sydney will make for a great page or two for the memoirs, but would people want to read a column online detailing how such a maneuver stopped a fellow who was in the falling down stage of inebriation from attempting to stand on a precipice that was four floor above the street and urinate into the void? When he decided to redirect his efforts to a nearby potted plant and fell face first into the bush, didn’t that constitute saving his life? Some of the more immature travelers thought it might have been hilarious to let him try his face-plant efforts from on top of the fence that would have provided a more majestic visual than the crass spectacle of the “watering” of the shrubbery did
A large number of books and several magazines find eager audiences willing to spend money to read about far away places with strange sounding names so why is it that the Internets hasn’t spawned a digital Kerouac? Can crossposting columns on Digihitch lead to a book deal? Would “No good blog goes unread” be the corollary for “No good deed goes unpunished!”?
What if a fellow traveled extensively and then boldly asserted that the Golden Gate Bridge in the San Francisco area was more photogenic than the Sydney Bridge? That might stir up one or two posts in the comments section challenging the contention, but (hypothetically) do any potential readers in Concordia Kansas really care about determining which of the two is a better photo op? Wouldn’t they be more interested in getting the final score of the Friday night high school football game?
Would it be worth all the time the time, effort, and expense required to get photos of the two contenders, just to push a troll in the King’s Cross Section of one of the bridges’ home towns into going to all the trouble of posting an “au contraire” message in the comments section?
Isn’t that like the moment in “Rebel without a cause” when James Stark (James Dean) asks the other guy: “Why do we do this Buzz?” The answer was “We gotta do something.”
Since that first step of walking out of the apartment building in Los Angeles happened on October 1 of 2008, we’ve been thinking about the way things have changed since then.
Many Americans pay for a tour to a foreign country and come back with enthusiastic accounts of forming friendships on the trip . . . with their fellow American travelers. Business men who get paid to go to Australia usually get to stay at a chain franchise hotel and get to mingle with other businessmen from around the world.
When they come back to the USA folks will ask: “What are the Australians like?” and those folks will reel off a list of Kodak moments (such as shots of Bon Scott’s statue in Fremantle) and spout travel platitudes.
Staying in Hostels we did not encounter very many fellow Americans nor did we get a chance to chat with many Australians. We mostly got to talk to fellow vagabonders from throughout the British Empire plus a goodly number of European youths. We made an effort to talk to Aussies so that we could blog our reply in more detail to the “What are Australians like?” question.
If you love New York City (and who doesn’t?), you will feel quite at home in Sydney, but are New Yorkers just like the folks in Concordia Kansas? The Sydney vs. Perth debate is very similar to the rivalry between New York City and the City of our Lady Queen of the Angeles (AKA L. A.).
At a hostel in Kalgoorlie, (the Word spell check challenges the name of that city in the W. A. [AKA Western Australia]) you are more likely to encounter a Kiwi seeking work than a person from Sydney.
Regional loyalty is an interesting phenomenon. Somebody in Australia thought it would be better to reshoot episodes of “The Office” with local geographical references rather than showing reruns of the American series (which was inspired by a series in England).
If the Aussies make a joke about Skimpie’s being the most famous saloon in Australia would that be better than a reference to the Amereica’s best corner bar? When Johnny Carson was hosting the Tonight Show from a studio in New York, he helped Hurley’s achieve that distinction, but now that he’s gone and Hurley’s is too; what is the most famous gin mill in the USA?
Australians make as much of a fuss about the Melbourne Cup as Americans do for the Kentucky Derby. Can your American neighbor who has taken a tour of Oz tell you when that race is held?
One of the most popular tourist attractions in Australia is the National War Museum in Canberra. Americans who visit it can learn during World War II, just as the Australians were preparing for an invasion by Japan, the Americas won the Battle of the Coral Sea and the Battle of Midway in rapid succession and thereby crippled the Japanese military’s plan to plant their flag on Australian soil.
Australians we met made efforts to explain that they loved America and Americans for preventing the Japanese invasion, but they disagreed with what George W. Bush was doing with torture, invasions, and attacks on personal liberty.
We went to an (American) Election Results (Why does America insist on holding their elections on Melbourne Cup Day?) viewing party at the University of Sydney and the tumultuous reaction to Obama’s victory seemed genuine. When the polls closed at 9 p. m. on Election day, on America’s West Coast, it was 3 p.m. Wednesday in Sydney.
Lately as we notice that while some beautiful Indian Summer days in Berkeley indicate that Winter is drawing neigh, the jacaranda bushes will soon be blooming in Sydney and their country will prepare to celebrate Christmas in the traditional Australia way, i.e. in a bathing suit on the beaches from Bondi to Cottesloe
In late October of 2008, Australians were very enthusiastic about the election of President Obama and we can’t help but wonder if “change” has occurred in their assessments of America’s leader. Hmmm. Would it be better to go back to the University of Sydney to watch the 2012 Election results get posted or should we try going to Harry’s New York Bar in Paris to see the reaction there?
Being a cynical self-subsidized American political columnist means that ultimately that decision will be up to the World’s Laziest Jounralist and no one else will get to participate in the final results. Which brings us back to Buzz’s question in “Rebel Without a Cause.”
At Christmas time in 2008 we recall one evening sitting in the smoking and drinking area of a hostel in Fremantle Western Australia chatting with some young ladies from Stockton England (Home of the Northern Blues) and they asked this columnist why he had gone to all the effort to travel there.
Seeing the Fords, Ferraris, and Chaparrals compete at Sebring had been fun. Going to the Oscars™, Emmys, and Grammies had been a real hoot (should we double back on our tracks and see if they have changed much since Nixon was in the White House?). We had asked John Wayne for his autograph and gotten a business card with a reproduction of his signature. We gave our autograph to Paul Newman. We flew in the Goodyear blimp.
Would a blogger have to be crazy to try to attempt to do something with a blog that Robert Louis Stevenson, Joseph Conrad, and Jack London didn’t achieve with their books? We explained that we were searching for a colorful character who had been everywhere and done everything. The Brits enthusiastic response was to say that was precisely why they had come there and that was why they were glad they had met the World’s Laziest Journalist.
In all the intervening days we’ve lost track of the “on the road” aspect of our quest for material for the columns we write. It seems that we have settled into a routine of bashing the Bush-Obama political agenda. Now we have to ask ourself another question. “Why (allegedly) do more sailors jump ship in New Zealand than any other country in the world?”
In “A Personal Record,” Joseph Conrad wrote: “I had given myself up to the idleness of a haunted man who looks for nothing but words wherein to capture his visions.”
Since some music will now always remind us of our trip to Australia, the disk jockey will now play Bobby Bare’s “Five hundred miles away from home,” Johnny Cash’s “Live at Fulsome Prison” album, and the 1812 Overture (what will the Western Australia Symphony Orchestra play at this year’s Christmas Concert under the stars?). We have to go check the expiration date on our passport. Have an “I remember it well” type week.
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September 26, 2011
The ultimate intimate experience: Holding hands
Anyone can have meaningless sex. Guys go to prostitutes. Ladies can pick up one-night-stands in bars. And then there’s rape. I rest my case. But to experience the ultimate in human intimacy and contact, you just can’t beat holding hands.
According to the ancient Japanese medicinal art of Jin Shin Jyutsu, hand-holding is a healing act as well as an act of intimacy. So you get 2 for the price of 1 here.
Many studies have shown that in order for babies to thrive — or even to survive — they must have human contact, skin on skin. And what makes anyone think that we ever outgrow that need?
You just can’t have meaningless hand-holding. You can’t rape a hand.
Holding the hand of another human being will humanize them — and will probably humanize you in the process too.
Hand-holding is the best medicine. So just do it.
Not only that but imagine if, instead of dropping bombs on Baghdad, George W. Bush had just told Saddam Hussein, “If you don’t immediately give me all your oil, I’m going to threaten to HOLD YOUR HAND!” Perhaps if that had happened, we would have re-written history — and all too many American vets would also still have their hands today.
And what if Barak Obama had simply told Muammar Gaddafi, “Here’s the deal. You give me all your oil and I promise to hold your hand twice a day for a week in return.”
Let’s train our Marines in various hand-holding techniques. After all, since God and Allah are two words for the same person and Christians and Muslims alike honor the non-violent teachings of Jesus, a Prince of hand-holding himself, then even the Taliban would be pleased.
And as for Congress? Hand-holding would work well here too. Instead of Congressional representatives making asses of themselves by always trying to legally steal from the public coffers rather than doing their jobs? They could all just join hands in a big circle, have a Kumbaya moment and then get back to what really matters — serving the folks who elected them.
No wonder people always shake hands.
And as a public service to humanity, I am hereby offering to hold YOUR hand for 20 whole minutes — for only 20 dollars. That’s a magical dollar per minute. Such a deal! You’ve heard of the famous Hugging Saint of India, right? Now you’ve got the famous Hand-Holding Saint of Berkeley as well.
Just don’t ask me to hold hands with a Koch brother. Yuck!
PS: Speaking of prostitutes, for many years I worked as a substitute teacher at our local juvenile hall. The boys were mostly in jail for gang-banging. The girls were mostly in there for prostitution. But on the whole, most of the inmates were bright kids — and these were only the ones that got caught.
Imagine how much smarter the ones who got away with it must have been.
I always said that if any of these kids had been born into a middle-class family in the suburbs, they would have been competing to get into Harvard instead of competing to get into the best gangs or competing for the best pimp.
PPS: Has anyone but me started to notice that lately one of the major budget line items in America these days doesn’t go toward repairing infrastructure or making improvements in our lives by pooling money so that we can get services at a group rate that we otherwise couldn’t afford individually — or even line items going toward educating our children so that future Americans won’t all be dumb-asses.
One of the top budget line items these days seems to be dedicated to financing police riot squads that beat up America’s protesting citizens. Democracy at work here? I think not.
Just today, for instance, there were protests at UC Berkeley over outrageous tuition hikes, protests on local public transit because transit cops keep shooting people, protests over the illegal lynching of Troy Davis, and protests on Wall Street about taxpayers getting raped by the banks. http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/allison-kilkenny/38581/more-footage-of-occupy-wall-street-troy-davis-protest
There seems to be a new trend here. On any one given day somewhere in America, people who are expressing their displeasure with corporatist rule are getting beaten down.
And the act of beating down all these disgruntled American citizens is getting freaking expensive! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-s0De7aTIc&feature=share
Wouldn’t it just be cheaper to go back to being the way we were in the old days — before banksters, corporatists and happy lobbyists began to openly run our country?
Plus just think of all the money we could save by not having to constantly pay out for riot gear and police overtime — if all these demonstrators and police would just sit down together and start holding hands!
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September 23, 2011
My 9-11 detective novel: Investigating the broken chain of custody of evidence
At the recent BoucherCon (http://bouchercon2011.com) murder-mystery writers’ and fans convention held in St Louis this year, I’m still getting all fired up by the “Who Dun It” question.
When we first arrived, everyone who attended was given a ton of free books — nothing better than that. Then at one event I attended, they honored Robert Randisi, an excellent crime-novel writer who, among other things, has written 550 books. “At one point, I could finish an entire book in only three days,” he told me later, “but I’m getting older now and can only manage writing a couple of books a month.” The man wears out four keyboards a year, he types that fast. Genius.
Next, I went to an interview with Charmaine Harris, a gentle kindly well-mannered typical Southern lady — who also just happens to write vampire books. She is the creator of that hot new HBO series, “True Blood”. And she doesn’t feel bad about killing off any of her characters either, “because it’s fun to write death scenes.” But sometimes she resurrects them if she likes a particular character a lot. “In vampire mysteries, you can always do that.” Plus her kids now think that she’s actually cool.
Then I went to a panel discussion on how to write books in the post-9-11 era. That was interesting, sure, but I think perhaps that the panelists missed one very important point.
One author stated, “I’m British. We are used to terrorism in Britain. But Americans before 9-11 lived in LaLa Land.” Too true.
Another author said, “People have an arc to their lives and some of them who worked at the Twin Towers never finished that arc. And that’s one way of approaching a book on this subject. But whatever you write on this subject, someone is going to misinterpret it. No matter what you write, you will be in for a kicking by someone because 9-11 is still too fresh and too new. Like Vietnam, we have to distance ourselves from the event before it can be approached through literature unemotionally.”
A third panel member said, “With all the coverage it has received, there is little to add to the actual event per se — but you can tell individual stories about people who were involved.” Another author was disgusted by the rampant commercialism of the recent tenth anniversary events.
One of the authors also said that, “As writers, we have chosen to make things up in order to put life events into perspective. So isn’t it our duty to write about 9-11? It is our job as writers to make sense of things that happen. And things have changed irrevocably after 9-11. It’s much darker now. For instance, we all had to go through security lines at the airports in order to get here. Writing has become much darker since then.”
Someone also commented that, “It is the job of a writer to take you where you cannot go in real life. The best example of this is still ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’. If you can’t be inside a war, this books shows you the absolute horrors of war. Your characters can bring these events to life and give your readers a better feel for what it was like on September 11, 2001.”
Another comment: “Detective novels are written at street level — which is why detective novels don’t work for big-themed events.”
And, “The real book waiting to be written is about how we now live in a world where there is always a war — where for young Americans, being a soldier is now a common career choice. And returning soldiers are now becoming a new under-class, violent, perhaps with drug problems. You could also write about what happens when the vets come back home.”
These are all good observations. But no one on the panel nailed it regarding what could possibly be the greatest detective story of all, the ultimate Who-Dun-It — who was really responsible for 9-11. For all too many thoughtful American citizens, this question has never been answered satisfactorily. So I started outlining my own detective novel on this subject.
“Jane Stillwater, hard-boiled NY private detective, was hired by a mysterious stranger to investigate what actually occurred on 9/11/01. Stillwater was dubious abut this assignment but started rounding up the usual suspects — the Saudis, Osama bin Laden, the CIA, Dick Cheney and George W. Bush.
“Stillwater, just another street-level down-on-her-luck gumshoe, had grudging taken on this difficult task for several reasons — her love of justice, her love of country, being patriotic as hell, and her burning desire to finally discover once and for all what actually had happened at the Twin Towers that day — but, most importantly, her rent was due and this huge new retainer would keep her landlord from throwing her out in the street.
“The first thing Stillwater did was check out the chain of custody of evidence: What kind of evidence was involved here and who had been in charge of it. ‘Time to start doing some legwork,’ she sighed, starting with obvious — the New York Stock Exchange. Who had bought up all those put-options on United and American stocks right before 9-11? The banks? Weapons dealers? Oil companies? The Saudis? The Cheney-Rumsfeld-Papa-Bush rat pack? Who had motive, means and opportunity? Dead end trail there. The chain of custody of evidence had been broken.
“Stillwater would have just loved to have grilled Osama bin Laden about 9-11, but the chain of custody trail was broken there too. Now the only ones who can give OBL the third-degree are some fishes.
“Next Stillwater went out to the landfill at Fresh Kills to see if she could find any evidence from the WTC building material itself. Clearly the chain of custody had been highly contaminated here. Burial in a landfill will do that. Plus how can one maintain a chain of custody of evidence after it has been hauled around Staten Island in a dump truck?
“‘What about all those airplane black boxes?’ Stillwater next asked herself. Maybe she could get her hands on a Black Box? But apparently American citizens’ right to know stops somewhere far short of the chain of custody of evidence here. And, frustrated, Stillwater couldn’t get a hold of any videotapes of a plane hitting the Pentagon either.
“But what about that L.A. Times report that Mohammed Ata and others had been training at U.S. military installations? That Saudis were flown out of the country after the attacks? Or the bizarrely-coincidental NORAD training exercises staged the very same day? Who even HAS the chain of custody there? And, since the chain has obviously been broken many times, then who broke it?
“Next, Stillwater tried to put a tail on Dick Cheney — but that trial led nowhere. That trail was as covered up as a Yeti in a snowstorm. That trail was cold. And unbeknownst to Congress, Cheney had already put a shadow government in place just hours after the attacks. How could Stillwater possibly shadow a government that was already a shadow itself?
“Next Stillwater tried to check out the air traffic controller interviews right after the attacks. Broken chain of custody of evidence there too. They’d disappeared without a trace.”
So. How is my new 9-11 crime novel going to end? Can’t tell you that! Because if I did, I would be instantly labeled a conspiracy theory nutcase instead of the next Dashiell Hammett. Or else I would have to be killed. So you’re just gonna have to wait until after my new book comes out (if I can ever find a publisher, that is.)
No wonder nobody ever writes murder-mystery novels about 9-11!
PS: The next exciting and wonderful BoucherCon http://bouchercon2012.com/ convention is going to be held in Cleveland, Ohio, in 2012. See you there! And maybe we’ll be able to see Cleveland’s congressional representative Dennis Kucinich there too. He’d fit right in at BoucherCon — because Rep. Kucinich is absolutely the best crime detective in the U.S. House of Representatives today — or ever! http://kucinich.us/index.php.
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September 20, 2011
Libya & NATO: The biggest murder mystery of all
Here I am, off in St. Louis, Missouri, attending the 41st annual BoucherCon convention http://bouchercon2011.com/, a hugely entertaining and highly informative gathering of over 1,800 murder-mystery writers and their fans. It’s pretty much crime-novel heaven here. I bet you would love it.
The first thing I did after arriving in St Louis was to take the MetroLink in from the airport and chase chickens around my friend Patrick’s back yard. Then I went off to attend a BoucherCon panel discussion on why murder mysteries are important.
“Crime novels give us the freedom to explore characters’ deepest dimensions,” stated one author — was it Colin Cotterill, Sara Paretsky, Laurie R. King, Joseph Finder, Ridley Pearson, Robert Crais, Val McDermid, Charlaine Harris or Kelli Stanley? I forget. “They also give us a chance to express values, uncover the truth about past occurrences and to pursue social justice. Mystery stories are the voices of social justice today.” Hey, that’s deep.
Then another author stated that, “Writing about killing off bad guys or getting revenge on them is cheaper than therapy….” And probably better than Prozac.
So after listening to all these authors go on and on about how wonderful their craft was, I decided to try my hand at writing a murder mystery myself. Here it is:
“As winter approached, all of Europe lay under a chilling black haze of economic free-fall. Greece was hovering close to the nightmarish throes of bankruptcy. Britons were rioting like soccer fans because they were upset by all the Victoria’s Secret ads they had watched on TV without having the money to buy enough push-up bras to keep themselves from sagging (economically speaking). And jobs in America were disappearing like popcorn at a B-movie.” So far, so good.
And now that I’ve luridly described the crime scene, all I have to do now is track down the bad guys who are causing all this misery and then put them in check. Means, motive and opportunity, right?
However, at this point my exciting new crime novel begins to go off the track and wanders into a tangled web of smoke screens thrown off by the bad guys — who are now committing another horrendous crime somewhere else in order to distract attention from their original crimes. Aha. The plot thickens.
“Before brave Inspector Stillwater can finish solving the crimes in Europe and America, the bad guys have gone off and bombed Libya!”
Hey you guys, no! I’m supposed to be bringing you to justice here, not letting you run hog-wild off in the Sahara, becoming serial killers yet again and cold-bloodily slaying even more people and even more seriously ruining the economies of Europe and America!
The cost of even a few of those deadly NATO bombing raids on Tripoli alone could have put Greece back on its feet for a year or employed every jobless guy in Florida and Ohio between Christmas and the 2012 election.
“Now D.I. Jane is really up against it. Now she has to find and apprehend these bad guys for committing even more heinous crimes. Will just a single street-level detective be able to stand between the Free World and crime sprees on an unimaginable scale?” And will I also be able to find a mainstream publisher for my book? More than likely not — even though there’s definitely a lot of mystery and murder in my story. And definitely a lot of bad guys.
But this book probably wouldn’t sell very well anyway. Why? Because what self-respecting murder-mystery fan would ever believe for an instant that so many Europeans and Americans would be so stupid as to be so complicit in all these crimes — turning a blind eye while these truly evil bad guys get away with the Crime of the Century.
What decent crime-fiction fan in their right mind would ever believe a plot that allows evil bad guys to steal hundreds and hundreds of billions of tax dollars and then waste them on murdering complete strangers in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and Libya — while our own economies are being murdered back home? That just wouldn’t make sense.
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September 17, 2011
Afghanistan: A war fought with flesh and bone
Stop it! Just stop it! Haven’t we seen enough raw meat and sinew and bones sticking out of raw human flesh in Afghanistan yet? Apparently not.
The war in Afghanistan is not being fought with IEDs, Stinger missiles, helicopters, M-16s, F-16s, AK-47s or even drones. The war in Afghanistan is being fought with twisted ligaments, broken cartilage, seeping bone marrow, bloody intestines and bits and pieces of human eyeballs and brains — hamburger meat that used to be Taliban, school girls and American GIs.
How long will this madness go on? Until all of Afghanistan looks like the meat counter at Safeway?
Americans and Taliban alike, have you no shame?
I am currently in St. Louis, Missouri, to attend BoucherCon, a murder-mystery convention being held at the Grand Renaissance Hotel. At least in crime novels we only read about blood and guts. We don’t go out and spew them all over the landscape like all the American and Afghan Hannibal Lector wannabees in the Middle East are now doing on a daily basis.
How can anybody claim to be human beings — let alone patriotic or religious human beings — with their hands elbow-deep in the body parts of babies?
Speaking of which, on the plane to St. Louis I sat next to a sleeping baby. “That baby sure is good,” I commented to his grandmother.
“Oh that’s because he travels on airplanes a lot. He’s been across country from San Diego to Washington DC and back at least 15 times.” Really? A one-year-old jet setter? So, me being me, I just had to ask why.
“Because his daddy was in the military and got injured in Afghanistan. He’s now in Walter Reed Hospital.” I hope that he wasn’t injured too badly? “He has lost three out of four of his limbs.”
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September 12, 2011
Jane Fonda on aging: “We’re now living 40 years longer”
Recently Jane Fonda gave a talk here in Berkeley, touting her new book about aging gracefully — and she pointed out to us that suddenly Americans are now living longer than ever before and that our bodies are now being asked to function 30 or 40 years longer than they had been originally designed to do.
This situation reminds me of what has happened to many 1953 Chevrolets down in Cuba — forced to perform 40 years longer than Detroit had intended. However, Cuban cars have now buckled down to the job nicely. But the Cuban cars are only able to do this because they are well taken care of.
Are Americans also taking good care of their bodies? Hardly. A lot of American bodies have been subjected to all kinds of lack of exercise and junk food and will be lucky to keep on running even for 40 or 50 years at all. However, if you keep your body properly tuned up, according to Fonda, old age can be the best time of all. Now that’s good to know.
Remember about 15 years ago when no one knew hardly anything about menopause? And then, because so many Baby Boomer women were about to go through it, we suddenly all wanted to know what to expect. And then suddenly menopause came out of the closet, Gail Sheehy wrote a book about it and then we all knew what was what.
Well, now Jane Fonda is exploring the uncharted country of Old Age for us too.
“As I got older,” said Fonda, “I asked myself, ‘Why isn’t anybody talking about it?’ So, since I love to do research, I began to research old age. I am currently experiencing old age — but it doesn’t define me. I knew that this research was important because there’s currently no road map, no new way to look at old age. But, while it can be hard if you have infirmities, Alzheimers or are poor, many of us can take incredible advantage of this new length of time we now have.”
As so many of us are living longer than most people have ever lived before, Fonda has written a book called “Prime Time,” that promises to supply us with a handy and practical guide for navigating this whole new territory. Good for her.
“But it is easier to be old and have money than it is to be old and be poor,” Fonda added. Hear that, all you greedy smirking hand-wringing corporatist bastards? Hands off our Social Security or we’ll all chase you down the street with our walkers and canes!
Don’t mess with us old guys.
PS: At the beginning of her talk, Fonda’s opening question to the audience was, “Who remembers Blue Fairyland?” I do! “When Tom Hayden and I lived here in Berkeley,” she continued, “we were part of the Blue Fairyland pre-school cooperative. In fact, there are ten pages of notes in my FBI file just about Blue Fairyland alone.”
My friend Suzie Lydon used to send her daughter to Blue Fairyland back when her husband was the drummer for Janis Joplin and we all hung out with the Floating Lotus Magic Opera on Woolsey Street. Good times.
Fonda also talked about how QVC, the shopping channel, had recently cancelled her show due to bomb threats that they had received. At first she had been crushed but then the cancellation brought out the fight in her. Fonda also talked about her past experiences in Hollywood, her upcoming movie spoken in French, and her current and past work on behalf of Vietnam veterans. Plus she still does a lot of mountain-climbing and also has a boyfriend. Plus, with the help of exercise and Botox, she really looked good.
Wow. I hope that I will be able to grow old that gracefully — except, of course, for the exercise and Botox part. I like the natural look better — and much prefer lying in bed reading murder mysteries over spending hours on a Stairmaster — because apparently my right ankle and knees didn’t read Fonda’s book in time and thus couldn’t realize that they were spozed to last 40 more years.
PPS: After the Berkeley hippie/music/art scene started to fall apart at the end of the 1970s, Suzie Lydon became a heroin addict and wrote an outstanding and inspirational book on the subject, entitled “Take the Long Way Home” http://www.nytimes.com/1993/10/24/books/why-do-i-feel-so-ashamed.html. I recommend it highly for those who want to know more about what motivates heroin addicts and how to understand their crazy drive to rock bottom.
As Suzie told me later at a Labor Day picnic in Tilden Park back in 2003, “I am probably the only full-on, down-and-dirty heroin addict I know of who has actually lived to tell the tale and also has the literary training and skill to write about what that particular hell was actually like.”
September 9, 2011
Honoring 9-11: Time to audit the CIA’s incestuous relationship with Al Qaeda
Hmmm. Is it true that America’s Central Intelligence Agency pretty much invented, trained and funded al-Qaeda back in the days of Charlie Wilson’s secret war on Afghanistan? Or is that just another urban legend?
According to BBC News, “…Bin Laden left Saudi Arabia in 1979 to fight against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The Afghan jihad was backed with American dollars and had the blessing of the governments of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. [bin Laden] received security training from the CIA itself.” http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/155236.stm. And apparently Bin Laden received approximately three billion dollars in venture capital start-up funds from the CIA.
How come the CIA never gave three billion dollars to me? Ain’t I more deserving and lovable than OBL? Humph.
Is it really true that there was NO al-Qaeda in Iraq until good old Shock and Awe gave birth to it — as a deadly branch off the CIA-created al-Qaeda tree? Or is that just another urban legend?
According to Reuters, the CIA recently stated that as of June 2011 there are currently still 1,000 al-Qaeda operatives now in Iraq — even after eight long years of deadly warfare, possibly a million people killed and over a trillion dollars spent. http://in.reuters.com/article/2011/06/09/idINIndia-57605920110609
But how many al-Qaeda operatives were there in Iraq before Shock and Awe and the CIA and Paul Bremer worked their magic? There were ZERO al-Qaeda operatives in Iraq before 2003, according to recent Pentagon reports released to CNN. Zero, zilch, nada. http://articles.cnn.com/2008-03-13/us/alqaeda.saddam_1_qaeda-targets-of-iraqi-state-iraqi-state-terror-operations?_s=PM:US We spent over a trillion dollars to put al-Qaeda into Iraq? Why that’s approximately three million per operative! Good job, CIA.
Then last spring Americans started hearing rumors that the “rebels” in Libya were not only CIA-created but also comprised of Al-Qaeda-connected operatives as well. Or is that just another urban legend too?
According to a recent article in Global Research, “Some 1500 jihadists from Afghanistan trained by the CIA were dispatched to fight with the ‘pro-democracy’ rebels under the helm of ‘former’ Libya Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) Commander Abdel Hakim Belhadj.” http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=26351
According to Pepe Escobar of the Asian Times, Abdel Hakim Belhadj is a known al-Qaeda asset. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cs0DPb8d-Yg
And now we are getting intimations that the CIA and al-Qaeda are working together in Syria too. According to Global Research, ibid., “The Libyan model of rebel forces integrated by the Islamic brigades together with NATO special forces is slated to be applied in Syria, where Islamist fighters supported by Western and Israeli intelligence have already been deployed.” The CIA and al-Qaeda are now bonding in Syria too? Or perhaps that is just another urban legend?
We have also been told that al-Qaeda was responsible for the the destruction of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Or is that another urban legend as well.
According to an FBI wanted poster, OBL has never been sought in connection with the bombing of the World Trade Center http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/topten/usama-bin-laden. And Osama himself denied any connection to this terrible disaster until four years after the fact, perhaps hoping to buzz up his sagging terrorist image in the press? So that he wouldn’t have to just sit all alone in his lonely hidey-hole in Abbottabad, watching past promo triumphs of himself from back in the day.
According to an interview with al-Qaeda’s top guy dated September 28, 2001, OBL had stated, “I have already said that I am not involved in the 11 September attacks in the United States. As a Muslim, I try my best to avoid telling a lie. I had no knowledge of these attacks, nor do I consider the killing of innocent women, children and other humans as an appreciable act.” http://911review.com/articles/usamah/khilafah.html
Are we actually supposed to believe Osama? Hell no. But that’s what he said. And if al-Qaeda really was responsible for 9-11, you would at least expect them to be doing a chicken dance. And you would definitely expect an apology from the CIA for being a parent to these nasty kids.
But let’s assume that al-Qaeda was responsible for 9-11 (and not Dick Cheney — who actually did have means, motive and opportunity). If so, then the CIA is still on the hook.
According to an article from ThinkProgress.org, “Former Clinton and Bush White House top counter-terrorism adviser Richard Clarke alleges in an interview for a radio documentary commemorating the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks that then-CIA director George Tenet and other top CIA officials withheld intelligence on two al Qaeda operatives living in the United States that ended up taking part in the attacks.” http://thinkprogress.org/security/2011/08/12/294748/clarke-cia-withheld-intel-cover-up/
We have been told again and again and again that al-Qaeda members are the BAD GUYS. Yet here, apparently, is America’s own CIA, intimately linked and tied to these Bad Guys again and again and again. And some fairly cogent proof has been offered again and again and again that these rumors are true. And yet NO ONE in America seems to questioning what is going on here? Huh?
In honor of the sad tenth anniversary of 9-11, as patriotic America citizens who love our country and resent like Hell having had it attacked — in light of these circumstances, do we not OWE it to ourselves and our fallen fellow citizens to freaking investigate and AUDIT the CIA — and its alleged incestuous relations with al-Qaeda, aka The Bad Guys?
Isn’t that the least we can do?
Or was 9-11 just another urban legend as well?
PS: And what would be the CIA’s motivation for lying down with dogs and getting up with fleas all these times (at the cost of millions of lives, including many of our own)? Here are two clues:
Today’s quote from my Franklin Planner sez, “There’s enough in the world for everyone’s need, but not enough for everyone’s greed.” Greed. Greed appears to be the top motivator for the CIA — not love of country.
And here’s a headline from an article by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Chris Hedges that pretty much spells out the CIA’s “modus operandi” in black and white (or at least in pixels): “America to the World: We want Everything — If You Stand in the Way we’ll Kill You.”http://thinkprogress.org/security/2011/08/12/294748/clarke-cia-withheld-intel-cover-up/
Actually it’s not we Americans who are saying that. 99.9% of us don’t in any way benefit from any of this pillaging and killing. Only corporatists benefit — corporatists and their enforcer, the CIA. The rest of us appear to be merely zombies, cats-paws, victims and suckers. http://www.cracked.com/article_19402_6-mind-blowing-ways-zombies-vampires-explain-america_p2.html
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