Farewell Angelina

This is a bit of fiction I wrote in college. I'm rather fond of it, but anyone who has a suggestion is welcome, in fact requested to comment. I don't consider criticism as intrinsically negative.

It begins with a familiar melody, telling a story from an unfamiliar world...

Farewell Angelina the bells of the crown

Have been stolen by bandits I must follow their sound

The triangle tingles; the music plays slow

But farewell Angelina the night is on fire and I must go.

There is no use in talking and there is no need for blame

There is nothing to prove everything still is the same.

A table stands empty by the edge of the stream

But farewell Angelina the sky is changing colors and I must leave

The jacks and the queens they forsake the courtyard

52 gypsies now file past the guard.

In the space where the deuce and the ace once ran wild,

Farewell Angelina the sky is folding; I’ll see you after a while.

See the cross-eyed pirates sit perched in the sun

Shooting tin cans with a sawed off shotgun

And the corporals and neighbors clap and cheer with each blast

But farewell Angelina the sky is trembling and I must leave fast.

King Kong, little elves, in the rooftops they dance

Valentino type tangos while the heroes clean hands.

Shut the eyes of the dead not to embarrass anyone

Farewell Angelina the sky is flooding over and I must be gone

The camouflage parrot he flutters from fear

When something he doesn’t know about suddenly appears

What cannot be imitated perfect must die

Farewell Angelina the sky is flooding over and I must go where it is dry

Machine guns are roaring puppets heave rocks

At misunderstood visions and at the faces of clocks

Call me any name you like I will never deny it

But farewell Angelina the sky is erupting and I must go where it is quiet.

Farewell Angelina

We had left the main camp late in the afternoon because I had wanted to ask the Lady Angelina to marry me. I am not a nobleman and although I will certainly be at least a Commander in the army someday it would still have been an affront to her honor to be asked for her hand in public by a commoner. I was going off on campaign soon; the Alleman were already raiding in the east. But I had decided that I loved the Lady Angelina and I knew I had to ask her before leaving on campaign because I would lose my nerve otherwise.

She looked so beautiful as we rode a mile or so from camp to a glade I’d found scouting before we stopped for the night. The Bells of the Crown hanging in her hair like musical gems gave off giggling tingles whenever she tossed her hair. I could hardly speak as we entered the glade and the sunset shone off her face, I had no eyes for anything or anyone but her, more foolish me. In my anxiety I bent down on one knee almost before we’d really come beside the stream with the fallen log. I stared into her surprised eyes and asked the question I’d learned by rote, knowing I wouldn’t be able to think.

“My love, will you become my wife?”

She screamed.

She screamed again and turned to run. Only then did I see the men approaching from behind her. As they reached for her I went to whip out my blade but a sharp pain at the back of my head put me on my face in the edge of the stream. Before my eyes cleared, before I could even roll over there were two men sitting on me.

“The first of you who makes another sound will eat their own tongue before we leave,” the voice was raspy and lilting. “We don’t mean you any harm milady, we only need those bells in your hair.”

When I heard this I was furious, this scoundrel was going to steal the Bells of the Crown and probably sell them to some noble who would use them to shame the King or else hold them ransom for a ridiculous price. I started bucking and squirming but all it got me was a kick in the groin, which of course shut me up.

It by no means cooled me off though, especially when they proceeded to lay hands on the Lady Angelina, taking the bells from her by force.

“You coward, no man with honor would treat a woman so—“ I stopped abruptly when a knife slid lightly along my neck, drawing blood shallowly and nearly cutting my jugular. I tried to slow the pounding of my heart, the pressure through my veins, anything to gain another micrometer from that slicing edge. I could feel the painful burning of the lightly sliced skin already beginning to throb in my brain.

“But I am not a man of honor Lieutenant Graves; I have been spying on you and I knew that you would be coming here tonight, I followed you from camp, I’ve been listening to your most intimate moments for months, knowing that you were the key to separating the Bells from their owners just long enough to snatch them.

“Ah, my dear, I am afraid I have ruined what was supposed to have been a very special moment. You should never have worn your lady’s Bells without her permission. I know because it is my way that she will not fault you. But the guilt will be intense. Hmm,” he smiled to himself, “no, not a man of honor at all.”

It was less than a minute before they were gone. They smashed my horn before leaving and galloped off without touching our purses or the strongbox on the wagon.

The moment they were out of earshot I was up and running after them. As I ran I shouted direction to the Lady Angelina to send men after me with a horse and my armor. I still remember her face, tear stained and still full of fear, but as I ran off into the night I saw her face grow determined and she turned to the wagon. The last time I saw my beloved Angelina she was marching over to the mule without even gathering the picnic basket from the ground.

The road the bandits took ran west; back the way we had come, away from the castle and its garrison only a day to the east. I chased them on foot for an hour before my squad game pounding up the road behind me. I didn’t even let my men stop to wait for me to mount up, only caught up with them a minute later. The bandits had followed a small cart path north and east, directly into the setting sun when the main road curved south around a set of hills.

The sun set in an orange blaze of fire that fueled my drive to find to bandits and I drove the horses hard those first hours. But in the twilight, I had to slow the men and in the end I had to call a halt when the trail could no longer be made out even though we climbed down from the saddle to try.

My squad was three twenty-man teams. The first team carries lances and broad swords and their horses are heavily plated. The second team carries large shields and one-handed battle-axes. They also have horses outfitted for a charge. The last team carries bows and broad swords. The bows are long for horse bows, meant for use while the horse stands still and the horses themselves are much more lightly armored so that the team can move quickly. You’ve never seen a more disciplined bunch than my boys; there wasn’t a sound from man or horse through the three-watch night. For all the bandits knew they had gotten away free as Scotts.

All night I sat up and kept an eye on my men. Well, I told myself that was what I was doing. Really I was replaying the encounter with the bandits over and over again in my head, first the lights sparkling off the Lady Angelina’s eyes, her spreading the blanket then me grasping her arm and sinking down to one knee. Was that a flicker of movement I should have seen? A clink of chain mail rustling?

I don’t know how many times I told myself that it didn’t matter if it was my fault, that what had happened had happened and now my only choice was to follow the lost Bells. My Queen had charged her serving maid Lady Angelina with the protection of those bells and I intended to see that what I had allowed to be lost was returned. But that didn’t help ease my guilt, especially when I thought how I had let these bandits interrupt our privacy, my farewell before going off to campaign, my proposal.

I thought of Angelina, I worried whether she would have answered ‘yes,’ I wondered how she would greet me when I returned the next day with the bells. The King would probably reward me with a small title, recovering the Bells of the Crown was no small thing after all. I scolded myself for thinkng of the advantage. Ha.

I never did sleep that first night; I kept thinking I heard the bells tingling in the night. It was never repeated but it would get me thinking through the same old circle of guilt. When I finally calmed my mind and settled down near sleep I would hear it again and start listening for it, but my mind would always wander and then quiet before the bells would ring again. The moment I could see my hands I began rousing the men, first my sergeants then going down the row waking each and whispering the day’s orders which began with absolute silence until otherwise ordered. We had been no more than half an hour behind the bandits when we made camp and they could not have gone much farther than us in the pitch dark of an overcast night even if they’d scouted the area beforehand. If they had been following me for a long time they probably had a hideout here but it was likely not their headquarters.

The true headquarters would be farther from the capitol: I have still never heard of another bandit incident within one hundred miles of the capital. Well, not in the last two hundred years. They would be going back to their true headquarters today if they could, but if I could find them before they left I could have the Bells back in the castle before the King even had a chance to hold court. No one would ever need to know they had been stolen; they don’t come out in public except at court.

Sure enough a half hour tracking on foot brought us to a secret trail and after scouting the area I surprised the bandits at their breakfasts. In the end I killed twelve and captured captured fifty-two of the outlaws, but a small group, no more than six escaped out of a second exit to their hideout. The bells escaped me. I sent the squad back to the castle with the prisoners. I collected all the papers I found in the leader’s tent and read them as I set out in pursuit of the bells with a dozen chosen men.

The papers contained many assorted maps, some of the area, which we put to good use in our pursuit. We realized they were heading for the King’s forest to the north by tracing our path on the map and we even chanced some shortcuts and gained nearly an hour by my guess.

We kept right on their tail like this for three days, sometimes losing a few minutes, sometimes gaining, always scheming, always pressing, but they were forever out of reach just at the next ridge.

I soon wished I’d brought more men and especially more mounts. I knew I couldn’t simply ride off across the kingdom with my unit but I still grudged the loss of manpower when I came upon fired bridges and toppled trees that had to be cleared. Lady Angelina had made quite a scene when she arrived in camp all windswept and calling to arms. Speaking to Angelina in private the King told her that he had decided he could not spare any units from the campaign but that he charged me directly with retrieving the Bells in the name of the Crown.

Lady Angelina, being clever as well as beautiful left this meeting with the King knowing that I could not hope to retrieve the Bells without soldiers and a horse and knowing that the King would never dispatch them. But I had given an order for her to deliver as she shrewdly saw and as the order to bring you a horse did not in any way keep your men from going on campaign they, at least, if not the rest of the king’s soldiers had to follow you. Such technicalities of logic are easy to forgive if one acts first then appologizes where permission might never have been granted.

It was thus that I had first been rescued from my sprint. A full rank would have let me surround and capture the horn that first morning but I had to respect the King’s word, I had to return my squad quickly to the capitol so they could go on campaign even if I did not lead them. They left the bandit redoubt as the sun rose and were aparently less than an hour behind the King in returning to the city. In the confusion of the Queen’s long welcoming ceremony no one even noticed their coming despite the fifty-two prisoners in rough armor and rich jewelery.

I felt badly for my men. I’d stripped the squad of most of it’s backbone, I’d left two talented recruits and a veteran of middle yerars in charge of teams of underseasoned men who were more frightened than anything at the prospect of going out on campaign. Unless they got a few more talented recruits to replace the dozen I’d taken as escort on my quest those boys would break like a stick if they faced any heavy units.

But I could not think of that. I had to retrieve those Bells, even more so now that I had the King’s command, but I didn’t need any more encouragement. The dozen ment I brought with me made it two to one odds in my favor instead of six to one against and there was time to replace fifteen men including the one dead and two seriously injured from the fight with the bandits. The squad would have a full roll by the time the King called muster.

We followed on our quarry’s very heels for four days before there was any real change in the routine of the chase. Late on the fourth day the terrain began to change, the forest to thincken and the land to roll in low hills. We began to encounter patrolls of soldiers who loomed on the hilltops threateningly and kept us from going past for fear that they were truly hostile.

I found a map of the area deep in the pile of maps; on it was marked a castle near the edge of the King’s forest. Using the map and some luck we snuck past the patrols and onto the castle grounds. I left my men guarding the exit by which we’d entered and followed the sound of bells on the other side of the castle. Sneaking past a pair of bandits patrolling I came to a place where I could here the bandit leader’s raspy voice.

“…Now, highness we have made a bargain regarding this little goodie and what you have paid me already is lost I’m afraid since my nw employer offered me three times as much money. And that is not the only thing which is lost to you,” a strangled cry brought me around the corner in time to see the Prince, filled with arrows, fall to the ground. Five bandits stood behind him lined up executioner’s style. One of them spit at the body and the rest laughed.

I was on them before they knew it, even before I knew it, and they fell to me in my rage like stalks of corn. I managed to take the Bells and I killed the remaining five bandits who attacked the Lady Angelina but the bandit leader got away once again and I, having attracted the attention of the bandits on duty guarding the castle was forced to cut my way back to my men past the two men I’d avoided before. That was the only encounter I had though and we slipped out of the castle and mad a run for it.

We were pursued of course by the patrols and we had a few close calls and we lost a man and two more took significant injuries. But finally came a time when I was sure we had lost our pursuit. I brought the company to a halt by a stream where I could wash the dried blood from my hands and bandages could be changed.

It began to rain as we ran from the castle, a hesitant drizzle building to a steady rain, which soaked everything to the bone. I’m told the King had a planned festival the evening he heard that his son had been killed and rather than call it off and go into moruning he only delayed the start of the festival so he could write a new commencement speech. The long and short of the speech, as I have heard it recounted is to say that I, Captain Graves am wanted for the treasonous murder of Prince Gerald and the thrft of the Bells of the Crown.

I tried to return to the castle. I arrived carrying the Bells of the Crown for all to see and presented them to the King with my version of events, but a man with a familir rasping voice, a councelor to the King interrupted me before I had the chance.

“Silence, lying dog,” he called me, ”You hve spun a pretty tale my friend, but we here have all seen the body of the Prince and it has been beheaded with a sword, not shot full of arrows. I have had enough of your lies, for returning the Bells you have earned yourself your life, but you are forthwith banished from this kingdom now and hance.”

Just like that I was chased from my home and the only master I ever served. With never a chance to tell them that this was the true bandit, without even the chance to see my Lady Angelina I was run from the capitol and hounded all the way to the border in the driving rain.

These days I fight for a new King, he has accepted my allegiance because he knows I am an effective commander, but I will never be a General as I might have in my true King’s army. My new King does not trust me though, he has heard both sides of the story and though he claims to believe me, I know that he will never trust me enough to give me a real command of armies.

I have fought in two wars against my old King. Apparently my name has become a common curse word in his domains, a very foul description for traitor. There are always plenty of commanders willing to fight me, the great betrayer, but none has ever beaten me and my King has lost ground to my new master year by year. It seems like I’m constantly at war now, either in the West against my old King or to the south against the Goths.

I know not how my lady sees me these day, she has probably married some rich courtier who lies through his teeth like all the rest and she likely hates me more passionately than any other in the capitol. As far as I’m concerned she can call me any name she likes; I will never deny it. I’m only tired of it all, tired of the war, tired of fighting the good fight for the other side.

I hate being a foreigner in a strange land. These court intrigues have broken me, left me a shattered hulk of a man. I fight because it is what I was born to do, but really all I want is to go off somewhere beyond the plots and beyond the fighting. When the rain comes down these day my thoughts turn back to those happy days returning from the King’s forest, still stupid enough to think I would be a hero when I returned, still thinking I was a hero.

But there are no true heroes, even the ones with the right intentions are only playing martyr in the end for the cause of someone else’s power. This is Farewell my Angelina, I wanted to write this to you, I wanted you to know my side. You have probably not even read this, merely tossed it in the fire, but I wanted you to have the chance to hear it anyways. Someday soon I will not be coming back from war, no man’s luck can last forever, after all. All I ever want out of this life is that you will mourn my passing and not find pleasure. Maybe in another time, another life we will have better luck, better time together, but I cannot bear the thought of you hating my memory through the long years of your life. I simply could not bear it.

Project for the New American Century

This is written by a woman named Mary Alice, it was handed to me by an unrelated woman on the street in Santa Barbara, who'd cut and pasted it from Ms. Alice's blog into a 1/3rd page flyer, and is a nice little entre into the murky world of the truth about what happened during the George W. Bush presidential administration.

The blueprint for our current foreign policy was being written back in 1992 by then Defense Secretary, Dick Cheney. His writings set out a new doctrine that called for U.S. power in the twentieth century to be that of an aggressive and unilateral approach that would secure American dominance of world affairs by force if necessary. This “peace through strength” policy has been unfolding from the day Bush Jr. took office: the strategic planning of it was done during the Clinton administration with funding from the military-industrial complex, energy companies, and right wing foundations. Over time, those working on these new plans evolved into PNAC, established in 1997 with members Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz at the helm.

In September 2000, the PNAC updated and refined Cheney’s original version into a new report entitled: “Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategies, Forces, and Resources for a New Century” calling for unprecedented hikes in military spending, American military bases in Central Asia and the Middle East, toppling of non-complying regimes, abrogation of international treaties, control of the world’s energy sources, militarization of outer space, total control of cyberspace, and the willingness to use nuclear weapons to achieve “American” goals. This plan by the neo-conservative or neo-con think tank, PNAC, shows Bush’s cabinet intended to take military control whether or not Saddam Hussein was in power and says the U.S for decades has sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security, revealing that a premeditated attack on Iraq to secure a regime change was planned even before Bush took power in January, 2001. The lengthy blueprint for U.S. global domination can be accessed, albeit in truncated form since 2003, at Project for the New American Century’s website. Search Google for more information.

BITTER - The saga of the American working class and Barack Obama

Just for the moment, let’s forget “bitter”, we’ll get to it, but just for the moment, let’s focus on the part that actually is pertinent, which is the voting against their own self-interests.

The awful truth is that for too many years, the Democratic Party has ceded working class voting blocs to the Republican Party; yes, because the Republican Party favors gun control, and yes, because the Republican Party toes the most fundamentalist religious ideological line, and because working-class, i.e. less educated persons (voters) are more likely to value these issues, that’s not a value judgment, it’s simply a quotation of statistic.

But the unfortunate thing is that in doing so, the Democratic Party leave uncontested the very real truth that working class voters are voting against their own self-interest, because the same party that toes the line of religious ideological fundamentalism is also the party of cutting taxes, and the working class is demonstrably the prime beneficiaries of the social programs that must be killed in order to cut these taxes.

So, why do they generally vote Republican?

It is because they are bitter, but it is especially because their bitterness has been misdirected by efficient propaganda from the Republican Party which faults the party which promises a better life through robust government programs because these government programs either never materialize, or because they do not work. But the reality is that the reason these government programs never materialize has little to do with a lack of commitment on the part of Democrats, and everything to do with resistance and obstructionism from the Republican Party.

In California we have recently seen the reality of this self-feeding propaganda maneuver. Governor Gray Davis was recalled in 2003, ostensibly because he consistently failed to pass a budget. The reality of who was to blame for these budget failures because clear two years later, when Arnold Schwartzenegger “failed” to pass the California budget because of resistance from the same exact same group of lawmakers who had opposed Gov. Davis’s budgets, The California Republican Party.

Voters do indeed become “bitter” when their government fails to act, or fails to fulfill the promises is has made. Because of an overall right-leaning undercurrent in the media of the last 20 years, it has been possible to cast the failures of Democrats to pass the measures they want as a failure of government in general. If government does not work, the Republican premise posits, then obviously the party that favors a smaller government is the party that is best suited to running the government: at least individuals won’t be wasting tax money on social programs that don’t do anything.

The underlying fallacy should be obvious, but that’s not the way TV works. You see only what they decide to put on screen, so if they only tell you half the story, you can be excused for thinking that there is no second half to the story.

It is because of resistance from Republicans that social programs don’t get funded. Think of SCHIP, think of Social Security, think of Medicare, the FDA, the FTC, EPA, and the VA. Of course government will not work when more than a third (often, over the past 20 years, more than half) of the elected representatives of the government have a vested interest in keeping it from working.

For the past 20 years, the less functional the government, the more likely Republicans have been to be elected. It is no wonder the voters who are most in need of support from the government are bitter.

My plan

I try, and I want to do it more all the time, to live in this world, not as if it were merely $1200, 16 hours and some jet lag from here to Great Britain, but as if it were 12,000 miles, 3 gallons of petroleum, 500 gallons of jet fuel (which I must, in fairness, attribute the lot of to myself, because I can never know when I am the one passenger making the difference between 19 flights and 20 flights per day by British Airways from Los Angeles to London in any given tourist season). This is not to mention my consumer's responsibility for the building and maintenance of this air craft. In fact, it is fair to say that the more I travel by air, the greater responsibility I own for the sustenance and expantion of the industry. Think of the amount of metal that goes in to all of that skin, frame, wings, engines, moving parts, and all the little miles of wiring that run throughout the entire structure of the plane; think of the energy used in mining, extracting, shipment of the metal itself. Think of the manufacture from raw metal into alloys, then into actual products, think of the test flying, the movement from producer to buyer, and all of the myrriad trips it has taken between it's virgin flight and the time you board, think of the portion of that infrastructure that you own, and then you decide wether to fly to another continent twice, three times, four, but really, even just once a year for an entire lifetime. It just seems like more than one person's share. And granted, not every one person on this earth actually recieves the share they are due, but that in no way justifies anyone taking so much more than their own share.

If I ruled the world...

A Bit of Cknowledge From My Pop

My Dad contributed this little gem of information this morning:

Because glass is actually a liquid, it is never as sharp as when it has just broken. Because liquids flow, and pull themselves into round through capillary action, the edge will immediately begin flowing back onto itself, blunting and widening and rounding to a smoother point. Even 20 minutes later, apparently, according to my Pa, it won't be nearly as sharp as it had been when freshly broken.

Food for Thought

Jack Johnson

By now we say if it's a war for peace it's the same old game, but do we really wanna play?
We can close our eye's; it's still there. We could say it's us against them. We could try but nobody wins. Gravity has got a hold on us all.

Question

There are times when I feel like posting a whole bunch of things at once, but don't, because I ought to post every day. And if I convince myself to wait, write one now, and write another after midnight, I often end up writing the long one now, finishing it up around 1:07 AM, and going, crap, now I can't write the other one, even if I can still remember it. Now, the time, I'll mention, is not an issue, I like to be up late late at night. Everything is very still at night. Anyways, the point is, so what? So what if I post two different blog posts on Sunday, March 30, 2008 and they're listed that way in my table of contents. Often as not, I don't post anything the day before, and I'm just as likely to completely blow off the second one altogether and not post anything on the next day as I am to either write it, save it, and post it later, or to save it and write it thirty-six hors later, since I'm not likely to start writing something at 12:15. So, bottom line, I'm going to be making a few postings tonight. If I don't write anything for three days afterward I'm sure you'll understand. But who knows, perhaps writing more separate posts will translate to more production, and I have heard, though I have never experienced it, that productivity can feed on itself so perhaps soon I'll be writing six posts a day. Sure.

Wow, a lotta news

Well, there are a lot of things to talk about happening all at once right now.

Personally, I have just spent two days in Ventura County Jail.

Nationally, Hillary Clinton has stumbled quite ostentatiously, and undercut her argument that she is the toughest candidate.

But more important than any of that: in Iraq, the Iraqi army, in its first major independent offensive, are moving against the Al Mahdi Militia! I'm surprised, actually, and I think Muqtada al Sadr and his organization might be surprised as well, meaning they might be vulnerable.

No one is really paying attention to what is happening in Iraq, now anymore than usual, but the Iraqi army is moving into strategic positions in Basra and, from what I hear, Sadr City, the neighborhood in Baghdad that has been the real nucleus of the violence coming from the Shi'a side of the sectarian divide.

In the past six months, the so called "surge" has, I must tell my Liberal friends, worked to reduce violence perpetrated by the advantaged, minority class, the Sunnis. But for the much more populous, much lower wealth Shi'a population, the driving factor behind the violence has been untouchable politically and, probably, militarily.

It is clear that the American Army cannot move into Sadr City at acceptable casualty rates. It says something about the state of the Iraqi Army if it is constituted to take on friendly threats to stability. The Mahdi army is ostensibly friendly to the regime in power in Iraq now. But it is fundamentalist and hostile to elements of the population of the Nation, and therefore a threat to the larger nation that the regime controls. If the Iraqi army takes and holds Sadr City and Basra, they will be well on the way to having a strategic advantage in maintaining peace independent of the American Army.

I don't want to be labeled an optimist, but I feel like this could be a decisive battle in actually pervading democratic government throughout the country of Iraq. I have said it before though, General David Petraeus knows the difference between winning engagements and winning wars. I think the war could be won and the democrats could win a huge majority in the congress and the presidency and America will really cement a pretty bright future.

The Presidential RACE

I've finally come to understand something. It's about the candidacy of Barack Obama. Everybody talks about how great it has been that he is a black candidate who transcends race, and that really IS great. But what makes him even more special, even more important to our history is that fact that, even in transcending race, he never fails to be fundamentally BLACK. It is a wonderful thing that liberals in America will someday soon be able to unite behind a truly inspiring candidate, and that for the first time ever in the History of the world, that candidate is of African descent.

In this light, I cannot blame Hillary Clinton for having made her candidacy a referendum on Feminism, although I can and do still think she ought to be ashamed of herself for the condescending attitude she has taken towards her opponents, almost ALL of whom have been really spectacularly qualified for the post of President of the United States. What is really shameful is the way she has taken a field of candidates that, when I looked at them standing on stage during any of the various debates they held together, it made my bleeding Liberal heart swell to the edge of bursting with pride in the generation of leadership coming of age this election; Clinton has treated them all like petulant playacting children. This is a group of nine (more fairly seven) really, really good leaders, Clinton included, leaders who, if unified, can move this whole country in an incredibly revolutionary direction, a direction completely opposite to the disastrous path we have been treading these last 20 years. Yet Clinton has painted them all as inept, unprepared, unready to face the challenges that SHE WOULD NEED THEM TO HELP HER MEET, in the unlikely event that she were to become president.

Sadly, it is SHE who is unready to be president. A president is a LEADER. Not THE ruler, not the most powerful person in the world, but the first among equals, the leader of the most powerful nation, the most powerful government in the world. Hillary Clinton tries to DO IT HERSELF, and in the end, she cannot DO IT HERSELF, she cannot do ANYTHING without the aid of a willing and motivated congress.

Why was Bill Clinton's presidency derailed? Is it because Republicans threw every slander they could think of at him? NO. I know this will strike the reader as a strange statement, seemingly at odds with the obvious reality. But the truth is that Republicans could have thrown any slander they wanted to at Clinton, and it would have had about as much effect as throwing mud against a brick wall, if Clinton had not squandered his party's majority in Congress IN HIS SECOND YEAR IN OFFICE. No Democratic congress would have impeached a democratic president over a drop of CUM on an intern's dress. It never would have happened. So I maintain, that his trouble in office, is HIS OWN DAMN FAULT.

But that's besides the point. ANY of the democratic candidates would have pursued historic changes in the course of American government. And either of the current contenders represents an historic change in the demographics available to the office of the presidency. Expansion of the availability to aspire to the presidency either to black Americans or female Americans would be an UNPRECEDENTED change in the demography of the office. And it just happens to be Black America's turn. That's no indictment against feminism, nor against Hillary Clinton, that's just the way the cookie has crumbled. Obama is a LEADER. Clinton is a conqueror. Sadly, she is a conqueror who has never successfully conquered a substantial opponent. She lost the fight for Universal Healthcare in the 90's, the only fight that ever reached it's conclusion, and she ran unopposed for senate after Rudolph Giuliani dropped out of the race when a scandal that she had nothing to do with bringing to light made his candidacy untenable. She is now losing to Barack Obama. She is about as successful a general as the emperor Octavian, who, granted, was a good emperor; beloved, stable, able, and successful. But never because of his fighting skills, he never won an important battle, he secured the principate by entirely other means. I'm not saying she would not be a good president. I'm just saying that she should wait eight years for another turn at it. Now it's Obama's turn.

Let's have this conversation about race. Let's welcome the opportunity to examine the way life is for black people in America. It was GREAT that Obama was able to go this long in the race without having to make his candidacy about the fact that he is black. But now that it is an unavoidable issue, LET'S DO IT. No one would be better suited to it that he is. I can't wait to see John McCain try to pin his ears back for his skin color. John McCain will GET HIS ASS KICKED in that fight. Let's see Barack Obama debate Mr. Bomb Bomb Bomb, Bomb Bomb Iran, let's DO IT. Hillary Clinton, and her supporters with her, ought to be ashamed of themselves for obstructing the country from having this argument. We can and will get to the women's movement in due time, of that there is no doubt. WE NEED THIS ONE NOW; they should be ashamed of themselves for delaying it.

So I've Just Had a Thought

Well, between writing that title and beginning these words, I've seen a news story that seems to throw my own thoughts into crisis, but I turned on the news to a story about the possibility or the likelihood of a Clinton Obama or an Obama Clinton, so-called 'dream ticket', which, I was going to point out, ought to be no sweat to Clinton as, particularly for a woman, she is not really getting old. Obama, on the other hand, is rightly considered far too young to want to be Hillary Clinton's Vice-President, as he can do plenty more good for himself and for his ideology, in his present position as a senator, than as a Vice President to a strong President.

There is no question that Hillary Clinton would be a strong president. I think, though, that there is equally little question that Obama would be the same. Either one would be able to get particular things done and would fail to get other things done. Hillary though, would make a great Top Advisor type to a sitting president, a spectacular two headed foreign policy delegation (her and Bill that is), and would still be vigorous enough to be a great Vice President-to-President candidate at the end of eight years.

But unfortunately a top advisor to Senator Obama has made inflamatory statements about Senator Clinton, so that might become a problem, ego-wise that I, unfortunately did not really think we would get down to. I guess I can still hope this will come to be seen as a 'water under the bridge' event, but I'm not sure Hillary Clinton is a 'water under the bridge' sort of person.

Florida

So, I guess one of the reasons I haven't been posting lately is that I feel like I don't have much to write about right now. But I know I ought to put a little down every now and then anyways just to keep this thing from going stale. Also I know its good for an aspiring writer to write a little bit every day in order to sharpen his or her skills, and I've never been good at disciplined daily anything, so I'm tryin hard to get into this as a habit.

Anyways, I'm on family vacation in Florida, my first time ever in this state, which is exciting. Aside from one of my sister's softball tournaments in Tennessee, I've never been to the south. And I know the peninsula isn't really very southern (I've heard that the farther south you go in Florida the farther north you go in perspective) but still, it was pretty dern cool to get off the plane to find the baggage handlers all talking to each other in Creole!

I'm serious, I swear. I honestly couldn't believe it myself. It didn't seem possible at first. I figured it must be Spanish and they were Cubans, but no, it really was Creole. Other than that, everything about Ft. Lauderdale has seemed completely sterile, just like every other place in the country, but just that little flash of authenticity was really cool.

Tomorrow we're gonna go to Little Havana in Miami, which should be just a bit more unique, but so far, the Miami 'burbs are just like the DC 'burbs, Long Island, Moorpark, or Downers Grove. More black people I guess, but I only notice that because there aren't any black people in California. Well, none outside Richmond and Compton anyways.

So I'm gonna go. I'll try to write about Calle Ocho before bed tomorrow, but who knows if I'll have the will. Peace and Love all.

Written at Dusk, 2/8/08

The Catholic Church tells me that the earth is flat, but I know it to be round, for I have seen its shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in shadows, than in the entire Catholic Church.

~Ferdinand Magellan

The moon is so beautiful tonight, and you can indeed see the shadow on the dark side quite distinctly contrasted between the bright silver sliver of the lighted side and the still bright sky while the light of the sun remains for a few minutes more in the western sky. Even though Magellan either misinterpreted the shadow, which is actually the surface of the moon that never sees the sun, or he was talking about a lunar eclipse which is indeed the earth’s shadow on the moon, the beautiful apparition in the night sky made me think of his wicked little remark as I sit here at an outdoor restaurant patio tonight.

Peace and Love

The Editors of the LA Times don't like me

I was going to write this as a letter to the editors of the LA times, but the reality is that they're a right of center fascist pandering rag, and their editors don't tend to like the perspective I try to bring into their opinion section. So instead I'm just going to publish it here, where it can be read or not read by as few or as many readers as care to do so (I still haven't gone to the trouble of learning to use the traffic tracking function I added a few weeks ago, so I don't really know what that number constitutes).

On February 5, the Times ran an article titled 'Did Marines Kill Wildly or Not?', in which they continue their coverage of the court of inquiry into the actions of the Marine unit which allegedly fired into civilian crowds without provocation or justification after an IED explosion near one of their Humvees while on an unauthorized patrol in southern Afghanistan.

Near the end of the article, a Sergeant in the unit, thinking that he's making an ominous prediction that justifies his behavior, says that in the future, "I would hesitate to shoot my gun...knowing I would have to go through this fiasco."

As I had written it in my draft meant for the LA Times, a grateful nation and his entire general staff respond, "Good! Great! That's all we're asking; that you, a professional combat soldier, a U.S. Marine, perhaps the most highly trained general infantry in the history of the human race, would risk your life one fraction of a second longer than any lesser soldier would in order to gauge weather you can really justify firing your weapon.

In doing so, you not only obey the rules of engagement you were trained with and laws of war you are legally bound to obey, you protect your mission and your country, in addition to yourself. In fact, in not doing so, you may reduce the immediate risk to yourself, and I do stress 'may,' but in the long term you increase the risk to yourself, just as American soldiers in Vietnam were at increased long term risk because of the atrocities they committed in the name of self-preservation three decades ago.

I don't pretend to understand the stress of combat. I am grateful to Sgt. Heriberto Becerra-Bravo and all of his comrades for the risks they take to secure me the luxury of that ignorance. But I do know, as I have studied it in greater detail than they, that both their mission and their immortal honor are at stake in that small difference.

The fact is, that small hesitation will rarely be necessary, as in most circumstances, it will be abundantly clear that they are under attack. But in that small fraction, be it ten percent, one percent, or one tenth of one percent that their hesitation results in their realizing that they need not fire their weapon, they do more service to their country and to their mission than they do in entire live-fire combat episodes.

I personally with to express the respect and honor, uncharacteristic as it is of my political ideology, in which I hold the Marine Corps, and the entire U.S. Armed Forces, but we expect better than the conduct unbecoming an American of any stripe, rank or role that Sgt. Becerra-Bravo and his unit exibited.

Life is Strange

I don't know what it is. Life is just strange.

I got a DUI a few months back. It's a long story, but I'll try to summarize.

I was going out to the bars in Santa Barbara with my cousin Rosalina as we do pretty regularly. She's one of my favorite weekend companions because we have a similar outlook on partying vis a vis how much is acceptable and what kinds of things are ok to do. The plan was for me to leave my car at her friend Natalie's house, and to crash on the couch there at the end of the night.

As it turned out, though, I got into an argument with Natalie's roommate, also named Natalie, and she kicked me out of the house. What did we argue about? That's the long story, but it has to do with the fact that I got kicked out of a bar for saying something that I should have had every right to say, and that she took the female bartender's side in the matter.

Well, Natalie had called me a cab when she kicked me out, but I couldn't take it, because my car was parked on the curb there and I had to work at 8:00 am, the math just did not work for me to get up, get back to the mesa and get to Ojai in time. Leave aside the fact that my cousin had gone home early in the night, presumably to make love to her boyfriend, and the only other place I might have counted on to sleep was off limits because the last time I'd crashed at my Nono's apartment without prior warning, I'd nearly given him a heart attack.

So I drove home. I know it was stupid, but based on the rule of thumb formula I knew I was close to the limit and I figured I'd be alright if I was careful. As it turns out I was indeed close to the limit. I know because I was breathalized, I had a BAC of .09%. The limit, by the by, is .08%. Basically if I hadn't finished my drink before getting kicked out of the bar I'd have been alright.

Anyway, why do I tell this story now? I'm staying at my cousin's house again the last few nights because I've been volunteering for the Barack Obama primary campaign. Saturday night we went out to the bars, and in the course of the night we met up with Rosie's friend Natalie, who just happened to be hanging out with little Natalie.

No biggie, I convinced myself that I'd just cold shoulder little Natalie and try to have a good time anyways. Life had other ideas.

Almost immediately on meeting up inside EOS, a nightclub just off State St. we all went to the bar and I bought a round of drinks because it was my turn (it didn't really bother me that little Natalie got a drink because that's the nature of buying a round, it's about alcoholic karma, not about only buying drinks for the people you like). Rosie and her friend Natalie grabbed their drinks and walked off to the dance floor to dance, but little Natalie grabbed my arm and held me back to ask if we were "cool".

"Whatever," I told her, knowing it was the closest thing to an apology I was likely to get. "I don't particularly think you acted very fairly toward me, but I don't hold any grudges."

Well, we talked about it, and I have to admit, just the fact that she brought it up, without any hesitation or sense of trying to avoid the issue made me more inclined to forgive and forget. I figured that in truth I hadn't been blameless, I'd definitely not been very nice, etc. In the course of talking about it we had both told each other straight out that we were attracted to each other, and eventually, after we'd both sort of admitted fault and more or less expressed regret for out part of what we'd done, we ended up making out!

Yeah, I felt a little bit stupid and easily manipulated, but then again, I made out with a girl I'd liked when I'd first met her, and the reality is that it's not like its her fault that I got a DUI, it's just her fault that I didn't have a couch to sleep on. I'm the asshole who decided to get in my car and drive that night. I don't know, in a way it's totally messed up and neurotic and sad and even a bit masochistic, but in another way, it's kind of just totally reasonable and makes sense. Part of the whole reason we'd gotten as pissed at each other as we did was because of the sexual tension between us, it was sort of natural, after we forgave each other that we would hook up pretty immediately.

Anyways, life is just a ridiculous story. My Nana liked to say, before she died, that the only difference between reality and fiction was that fiction had to make sense.

Ok, sorry. I'm back on the horse

I was waiting for a friend from high school who is Pakistani and had just come home from touring the entire country to send me a personal review of his trip and of the atmosphere there. I saw him during the winter holiday and I e-mailed him, but he never seems to have gotten around to writing it up, and I confess I let things get away from me and didn't make posts long after I'd given up waiting for his.

I have been writing though. I'm working on a novel, if I haven't said so before, and I've been making a lot of good progress on it lately. I recently killed a character for the first time though, and I've since been dealing with the consequences.

It's funny, maybe more so to me than to anyone else, how I refer to it as if I was really the character's murderer, but I really am responsible for the death, in a manner of speaking. On the one hand, I've always had the good luck to feel like the best of my stories write themselves, as if I were only reading them out of the ether of existence and transcribing them as I go. But on the other hand, I must take responsibility for the fact that I do, in fact have a climax I'm working toward, and that if I were simply writing without trying to fit it into the story I want to tell, I might never have had to kill this man.

I mean, he's a totally ancillary character anyways, I only give him a name three pages before I kill him, and in point of fact I have killed villainous characters before. But this character is a friend and colleague of the more central characters I have familiarized the audience with so far, and so the consequences of his death appear in the thoughts and hearts of the others, who must deal with the loss of a friend.

The more realistic you're trying to make your story, I think, the more you have to behave as if your characters really are flesh and blood creatures, who react to the world you spin around them according to the chemical laws we all follow: how is their brain wired? how does x event make them feel? Are they angry? Sad? Turned on? Obviously it's unlikely that the event I'm talking about would result in my characters being turned on, even though death is known to be aphrodesiatic for others of the same species who witness or give testimony to it, and of course, there's the fact that in a company of 100 soldiers, plus eleven corporals and an unspecified number of officers, the statistics show that roughly a dozen of them will be homosexual, I'm just not prepared to have that reality assert itself in my story yet.

So what I guess I'm getting at, is that, in a way, a lot of story really does write itself. You, as the writer, do make certain decisions on the trajectory of the story, but in the course of making those events believable, you are bound by the circumstances you've already fashioned to write probably four pages on cruise control for every one of actual creativity you produce. I bet Gabriel Garcia Marquez didn't have this problem as much. He didn't have to make his characters actions believable, the whole point was that they were demonstrably caricatures of reality.

But in the end, I'd say that being a novelist had made me more credulous that there is a creator of the universe. I mean, once you set one law in motion, all you have to do is sit back and watch, maybe tweaking things every once in a while, in order to get the results you want. DNA for instance. Once the properties are worked out, all you have to do to get the species you want is, you know, blow the wind here, land a comet in the gulf of mexico there, and voila! Elephants! Sorry, most people would say 'voila, humans,' but the human ego, as the anthropologist on Colbert Report suggested last night, does not need any more stoking.

Peace and Love. I'll try to keep posting regularly, now that I am back on the horse.

An Exchange of Gifts With a Beloved Friend

Hiya! This is an exchange I've had in the past few days with a good friend of mine and sometime debate partner Matt Harder. I hope he doesn't mind that I use his words.

It began with one of the quotations that shows up on screen when you die in a video game I'm playing right now called Call of Duty. I wrote this e-mail to Matt, whose opinion I always value, but who I know to be an avid liberal and pacifist, whose opinions are usually opposed to mine, though from an excess (as I would see it) of progressive ideology, not because we're that different in our moral beliefs:

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature, and has no chance of being free unless made or kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.

John Stuart Mill

Not an accusation. Simply an appeal for response or comment.

Peace (the state of being where nothing CURRENTLY HAPPENING is worth war),
George


Matt replied with the following:

There is no way to peace; peace is the way.

Gandhi

What is disgusting about Mill's quote is the assertion that fighting is only done trough war. Ghandi and Abdul Ghaffar Khan (Muslim) achieved the independence of their entire countries through peaceful protest. Through soul power. They fought and stayed morally unfractured through PEACEFUL means and were successful. Something is manipulating you into defending aggressive, corrupt, destabilizing, and barbaric actions and for your own mental and spiritual stability you should identify it and attempt to listen instead to truth. Pray and listen to truth and it will tell you a different story I promise you that. I believe that you know that war is counter-productive. Allow yourself to acknowledge that you already know it.

And I replied this morning, this holiday morning, with the following tidings of comfort and joy:

Matt

No sir.

Ghandi could not have done what he did without the British press. I don't know anything about Abdul Ghaffar Khan so I'll wikipedia him. Ok, so the thing about Ghandi and Ghaffar Khan in this situation is that John Stuart Mill's words "the exertions of better men than themselves" apply to them in the positive way. They are the better men. Better men than the British soldiers who beat them. Better men than the British Parliament who enslaved them. You're absolutely correct that fighting does not have to mean war. Ghandi did indeed fight, but you need to remember that Ghandi was a man of his time. He could not have existed two hundred years before he did, that is, could not have existed before the democratic age or at the least before the enlightenment. A printing press was absolutely critical to the work that Ghandi did. He used this weapon masterfully, and anyone who says that he achieved what he did through non-violent means is fooling himself. HE HIMSELF was not violent, and neither were his followers, but he absolutely USED the violence of the British against themselves. Absolutely, his weapon was his righteousness, but he also manipulated the British with actions where he knew what the outcome would be. Think of the episode where he caused thousands of his followers (and himself, I don't mean to suggest that he was not above suffering what his followers suffered) to be systematically beaten when they approached (and I don't know the story well enough) whatever place that had been deemed off limits to natives. He knew in advance what the outcome would be, just as you know what the outcome would be if thirty-five thousand people were to march systematically up to the front entrance of Los Alamos.

But the important point is that under a monarchy or god forbid a despot, where the media is either censored or non-existent, Ghandi's methods WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN EFFECTIVE. In fact, Abdul Ghaffar Khan is an incredibly ironic example, because if ten thousand people were to gather for a non-violent protest march in Northwest Frontier Province today, thirty or forty of them would be blown to bits by another "Khan" who holds court there now. Two hundred miles south and east, tens of thousands of people have been protesting their government non-violently for a year and a half now. The result? An entirely symbolic victory, and a step backward in terms of everyday freedoms and press freedoms. What is different about today than sixty years ago? Simple. The region that was once ruled by a democratically elected (though not local) government, in now ruled by a local (though not democratic) dictator. Which one if preferable? Admittedly, probably the native dictator. But even better would be an uncorrupted local democratic government, which, and you mark my words, will only happen in one of two ways, either A) the press regains its freedoms and is able to rally the population to action once again, or B) la revolucion! (most likely in the form of a coup d'etat, which uses violence or the threat of violence to take over the government).

War is only one manifestation of the willingness to fight. I am not deluded. Mill does not claim that the only "better men" are the warriors, he only claims that sometimes there are no other means of effective manifestation than war. At such times, fighters must be warriors or must support the warriors or they are not fighting, they are only masturbating and making themselves feel better that they have resisted even though the resistance was ineffective. We can dispute the times that do call for war, what the prerequisites are. We cannot dispute the need, sometimes, for war. Peace, I said, is the times when nothing currently happening is worth going to war to solve. Peace was the circumstance of India. Peace is not the circumstance of Sudan today. Or Chechnya. Or Burma. Or Northwest Frontier Province, Pakistan. What would Adolf Hitler or Josef Stalin have done to a peaceful protester? They would have laughed and called him a statistic.

Peace and Love. Merry Midwinter Reaffirmation of Human Connection with Lots of Lights and Thoughtful Gifts and Family Gatherings.
George

I Got My First Comment!

So that's cool. It's good to see that at least someone has looked at this page.

Anyways, right now I'm thinking about the Israeli Palestinian conflict.

Did you know? The Arab representative to the Paris Peace Conference that was part of the negotiations to settle World War I AGREED to the cession of Palestine to Britain FOR THE EXPRESS PURPOSE of settlement by Zionist Jews? The concession was repayment for British assistance in throwing off the rule of the Ottoman Empire (the affair that made "Lawrence of Arabia" famous) during the war.

It's called the Faisal-Weizmann Agreement, and it seems to me that it ought to be the basis for lasting peace agreements in the Middle East. Instead it is the first of a ridiculously long line of agreements made between Arab leaders which they later break with seeming impunity.

Now, I'm not saying that the United States doesn't have a history of broken treaties in its own history. But pointing fingers at each other solves nothing. American leaders should abide by both past and future agreements themselves, I don't argue with that. But that still doesn't change the fact that Arab leaders should abide by past agreements.

So basically what happened is this. In signing the agreement, Faisal, who was the son of the King of Hejaz, the region that contains the holy cities of Islam, Mecca and Medina, wrote a signing statement. Notice that I don't say two of the holiest cities, or any absurdities like that. THE holy cities of Islam are Mecca and Medina, just as THE holy cities of Christianity are Jerusalem, Rome and Istanbul and THE holy city of Judaism is Jerusalem. Just as THE holy city of Buddhism is Lhasa. Jerusalem has NOTHING to do with Muslim-ism just as Tyre and Sidon have NOTHING to do with Christianity even though Jesus fed people there and it is the place where Peter proclaims Jesus the son of God. The fact that Mohammed dreams of a trip to Jerusalem is no more consequential to the chronology of Mohammed's life than the fact that Jesus walked on water at Bethsaida. You don't see monumental wars being fought over Bethsaida, do you? Fuck, no! They're fought over Jerusalem, and not because it's a holy city. They're fought over Jerusalem because Jerusalem is the strategic military strongpoint of the most important regional hub of transportation and commerce in the entire world. In plain English, Jerusalem is home to the most important Army/Airforce base ON THE PLANET.

So, having ceded rights to this crucial position because he was the representative of the resident dominant powers to a summit of the Global Dominant Powers, i.e. Democratic England, France and the U.S.A., Faisal sought to make sure that he would get what he had been assured he would be given. His signing statement reads; "Provided the Arabs obtain their independence..."

Now, granted the rest of the statement says things like "If the slightest modification or departure should be made...not be then bound...void and of no account or validity...I shall not be answerable...", which is the basis for his abdicating the agreement eventually, since the independence of 'the Arabs' as Faisal saw them, was not effectively done until Syrian independence in 1936, not completely done until 1946 when Britain and France relinquished their claims to Jordan and Syria respectively (and even so, Aden in Yemen remained under British rule until 1967). This is why I say it should be the BASIS of Middle East peace. It can't be returned to, although all of the conditions have now been met. But the basic principle, that Britain get control of what is now Israel in order to give it to Zionist Jews, and that France have similar influence over Lebanon, should be respected. Each of Israel's neighbors should sack up and give citizenship to the Palestinian refugees they've been isolating and exploiting for sixty years, the borders should be established on the banks of the Jordan (perhaps with federated autonomy for the West Bank and Gaza, that seems fair to me, though it would probably have to be in two states, not one combined), and Arab, Persian and Pashtun countries should stop fomenting revolt in Israeli territory. The west will have it's guaranteed access to the Indian Ocean, the Arab World will have it's autonomy and complete self-determinism, and peace can happen. Of course, that's only going to happen over decades, because despotic rulers always seek to expand their borders and spheres of influence, and Syria, Iran and to a lesser extent Egypt will be slow to acknowledge the rationality of this settlement, but I personally think it's what's going to happen.

A lot of people think that Israel is being uncompromising and unreasonable. I think that's not on. It would be like two partners agreeing that a four acre plot they own together should be split into two acre plots until all of a sudden once the agreement is made, one of them says, "wait no, I think I should get three acres and you should have one." Who's being unreasonable? The partner who won't compromise on a 1.5, 2.5 acre split, or the partner who won't accept the original 2/2 agreement? In short, I'm in favor of Israel settling every inch of land West Bank residents can't defend. It sounds brutal, and people will probably think I'm a monster, but in my opinion, it's the leaders of the Muslim world who are being monsters and the Palestinians are the victims of their territorial grasping. Obviously they're innocent, the Palestinians, but Israel, although I don't have to LIKE their methods, is well within their rights to do exactly what they're doing.  It's the Muslim leaders who have put the Arab Palestinians in the line of fire, just the way its Muslim terrorists who put civilians in the line of fire by shooting at troops from someone else's house.

The Experiencial Wisdom of Richard Nixon

I just heard this on Keith Olbermann, it's a quotation from Richard Nixon.

"It's not the crime that brings you down. It's the cover-up."

Thought it seemed like good advice. Cheers!

The Way It's Supposed To

I'm so incredibly proud to tell you all that our country still works the way its supposed to.

It's a bit of a relief really. I was afraid the doomsday forecasters might be self-fulfilling their prophesies by convincing my comaraden that Hillary Clinton was insurmountably ahead in the party polls and that she could actually compete with a Republican in a general election.

Thank GODS liberals are smarter than the average American, freer, and more independent thinkers. They cannot be told how to vote no matter how much idiotic corporate lobbyists and evangelist preachers wish they could.

But the truth is that no matter how much Democrats want to win the White House next year, above all, they want a DEMOCRAT to represent the Democratic Party, not another Vampire dressed up like a Bald Eagle. More than anything else, we must see a DIFFERENCE between the two candidates next year if we are going to win the election. The greater the difference, the better. The nominee for the Democratic party doesn't even really need to show up to a debate with the Republican nominee next year. All he has to do, if he is sufficiently different from them, is run against the Republican Party and George W. Bush. Enough said. He'll win.

The era is ended when the only Democrat who can get elected is the one who looks like a Republican to the untrained eye. Bill Clinton won the Presidency in an era dominated by the Republican information machine. Republicans dictated the debate, Republicans chose the issues that got attention.

No longer is that the case. This very medium, that I am writing and apparently no one else is reading, is part of that. The very nature of corporatized media is skewed to the right. The fucked up part is that most journalists, like most Americans, are liberals. That's right. I said it. I'm the only one who has the balls to say it. Most Americans are Liberals. And there absolutely IS a "liberal media bias". How? Why? It's simple. The vast majority of journalists are college educated, they understand the principles of journalism, like checking your facts, confirming sources, getting comments from both sides of a controversy. The dirty secret of life is that the more you know, the more you want to know. Republicans, as with conservatives all over the world, thrive on silence, on disinformation, misinformation and apathy. That is why the first thing George W. Bush torpedoed when he got into office was the education system. So educated, fair journalists are biased against Republicans. Truth and reality is biased against Republicans. And most of all, the very nature of information distribution is biased against Republicans.

On the other hand. Hillary Clinton was also right when she claimed that "vast right-wing conspiracy" had undermined her husband's presidency. Whiny, but right. What is this, you say? If the media is biased for liberality, how can a Right-wing conspiracy be in operation. Well, that would be because newspapers, television networks and national radio corporations are owned and operated by RICH PEOPLE. So despite the fact that the actual people collecting and writing the stories are by and large liberal, the stories that end up getting covered by their outlets are chosen by conservatives. Editors are hired by owners whose interest is in selling as much media as possible with as little informational content as necessary. Editors choose topics and issues that make conservatives looks good, edit out as much content as possible that makes conservatives look bad, and voila, your morning newspaper.

Unfortunately, information is gaseous. More than that it is wave matter, not particulate. It cannot be contained, it gets out. "Truth will out!" said a better poet than me, and its true. Galileo's truth could not be contained half a millennia ago, and Al Gore's truth could be imprisoned no better in our time.

Our country is designed to react to the waves of information. Pressed back for a time it may be, but as any one who played with their bathwater as a child will know, it always comes out around the side, stronger than it was before, mounding higher than it had before, reaching further up the side of the tub than it really can sustain before receding toward the equilibrium where it belongs. It is absolutely true that liberalism has its own drawbacks. Bolshevism did not work, it resulted in Soviet dictation. Jacobinism failed as well, it resulted in Napoleonic dictation. But a measured, balanced, calm and rational dealing with life, the way the United States Constitution proposes; results in a clean, relaxed, refreshed and hygenic body politic, just as a calm, quiet soak in the bathtub results in the same for a human body.

I still support John Edwards, I think he is the best balanced, best overall candidate for the Democratic nomination. But I would not be overly distressed if Obama were to win. After all, who could have trouble getting excited over the first black president? But GODS I can't wait to see Hillary Clinton get her wrinkly, starched white ass kicked in the Iowa caucuses and her entire candidacy go down in flames as it deserves. The Junior senator from New York will remain the Junior senator from New York, the post she is most suited for, and the American people will have a leader they can trust. Finally. As they deserve.

The Teddy Bear's Courage

Hi guys, I'm back.

I've kind of been lagging on making posts lately, but now is definitely the time for me to get back to it. Yesterday, Friday 30 November, 2007, the Muslim sabbath, thousands of Sudanese persons in the capital Khartoum rallied to demand the execution of a British teacher whose students named a class mascot Muhammad.

Keep in mind that Muhammad and all its various derivatives and spellings is the most popular name in the Muslim world. It is on the top 50 list of most popular names in ENGLAND AND WALES. The basic truth is that if a black or Muslim teacher had allowed their class to name a teddy bear Muhammad, it would not have been remarked upon. Don't give me some shit that a Muslim teacher wouldn't name a Teddy bear Muhammad, that's bullshit.

The Sudanese government, known war criminals, although no evidence solid enough to indict has yet been documented, is scapegoating this woman in the hopes that enough popular resistance to so-called "western interference" and "insensitivity" can marshal enough UN doubt and/or sympathy to rationalize their refusal to approve UN peacekeeping engineers from Norway, Sweden and Denmark, units critical to the safety of the mission and therefore possible deal-breakers for the entire viability of the mission.

I remind you that the Sudanese government is not only a state sponsor of terrorism, it also condones, supports, and most likely engages in slaving, slavery, genocide, ethnic cleansing, and
intimidation. These are crimes they repeat on a daily basis in Darfur, evidence of which could not possibly be concealed if the UN mission is ever allowed to deploy. The motivation for the government of Sudan to whip its subjects into a frenzy against non-Muslims is clear. What is NOT clear is why the British government, and the American government as well, has still not responded, and why the populations of said countries are not demanding intervention.

No matter how staunch a neo-conservative you are, no matter how Machiavellian a politician, you cannot possibly justify the strategic interest in non-intervention. The marginally useful anti-terrorism intelligence they provide, the (admittedly) substantial oil resources, which are mainly in the South of the country anyways, cannot possibly be of substantial value to excuse inaction. The south of the country would welcome a US sponsored, railroaded UN declaration of independence for the region anyways, given that the majority population is non-Arab, and even for the most part non-Muslim. The Arab-Muslim government which rules from the north, has oppressed the south for decades, fighting a rebellion that only grew over time until forced to grant the region semi-autonomy. Before Darfur, the mujahedeen militias the government arms were raiding south instead of west, and because southerners are "infidels", they enslaved the civilians of the villages they raided in massive numbers most westerners never imagined. The only reason the south was included in the borders of Sudan in the first place was because the modus operandi of evacuating colonizers was to leave a minority ethnic group in control of an impoverished majority, on the assumption that this would keep the governments dependent on western support for the future. With the coalescence of pan-Arab identity, and the rise of an autonomous China, this strategy is no longer operative in Sudan anyway, so there is NO REASON to sustain the regime in Khartoum for another second.

I understand that western governments are fearful of a repeat of the Moghadishu incident more commonly known as "Black Hawk Down." But that's a completely unjustified fear. Mogadishu was planned as a surgical surprise assault, where tactical superiority required only enough firepower to secure a palace compound for an hour-long mission. It is only because the element of surprise was compromised that a chopper was brought down and the mission became a pitched battle in the streets with militiamen and armed civilians mobilizing and operating.

In this case there was no need for surgical force, even if surprise were used. Overwhelming firepower was called for in assaulting the prison and securing a perimeter in Khartoum (too late now that she's been moved to a secret location though) for as long as the extraction might have taken.

At any rate, it's not really the lack of military or substantial governmental response that bothers me, its the lack of self respect shown by westerners in not objecting on this woman's behalf. We have forgotten WHY we believe in democracy. Most of us think that we believe in it only because we were born into it, but that is not the case. Democracy is the result of trial and error over the course of 5000 years, and more, of cultural and social development. It is the greatest, fairest and most just system of government the world has ever known, and if that is sad to some of you, its because you've never lived under any other system and never had the decency to look into where we came from or how others must live even to this day. I'm not saying its spectacular, anywhere close to perfect nor absolving it of its responsibility for the evils it commits. I'm simply telling you, and I'm right, that it commits fewer than any other system ever. EVER. Fewer than nomadic, than tribal, than Iroquois, than Tibetan, fewer than Athenian or Republican Roman, than Solomon's Israel, and a damn sight fewer than Mohammed's Arabia. So get off your damn high horse with your "we're a better culture than to respond to such insults."

Look another group of humans in the eye, have the confidence to recognize the inferiority of their system, the decency to credit their innate ability to learn and the compassion to demonstrate our better way. Most of all, have the courage to believe that there is a truth and there is a falsehood in this world, in this life, and that defending it is not justified, but mandated.