I listened to the news and tears welled up. Another crisis where the highest casualties will be innocent civilians.
Money,
power,
oil.
A lethal trifecta.
It has begun
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Category Archives: war
The Test
COB (colleague of blogger) is tired of my doom and gloom. (Really? I thought it part of my magnetic personality. . . .)
And that, in and of itself, is shocking, since COB was discussing that the end of the world could occur on December 21, 2012. Something about the Mayan calendar, Nostradamus and planetary alignments. Not that COB BELIEVES it, or anything. But he was just putting it out there.
Probably to stack the odds before he dared me to be hopeful and cheerful for one month. ONE MONTH.
In case you didn’t read carefully enough, I was challenged to be hopeful and cheerful for one month. (COB is a poker player and probably has side bets on whether I will sink into despair in 5 minutes, 10 minutes or 2 weeks.)
I think it is funny that people are talking about the end of the world being in 21 months away, since Japan lies devastated (and its nuclear rods laid bare) by an earthquake and then tsunami, Libya is in civil war, Bahrain and Yemen are in chaos, the Ivory Coast is a bloodbath, we are in two wars, our deficit is out of control, the recession hasn’t ended for most Americans and we have a dysfunctional Congress, and on and on and on. Sounds like the end of days now.
BUT, I digress, comme d’habitude.
Back to sweetness and light and kumbaya. A dare is a dare and I have my pride. So, forget the images of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Forget images of breadlines during the Depression. Forget the daily carnage for an acre or two of oil fields. I am going to be happy, hopeful and cheery, Gosh darn it.
So, here is what I did today to make good on the dare:
- When I was at the gym, I didn’t tell the stinky man that he was curling my nose hairs, as we took turns on the same machine.
- I made sure that all elderly, infirm or pregnant people on the bus had seats. (Yes, I know I am too pampered to hang with humanity, but the recession hasn’t ended.)
- I swore to POB (partner of blogger) that I would take a time-out from the 24-hours news REcycle, where the object is to scare us more than to provide information. (Note to self: If Wolf Blitzer or Anderson Cooper is at the nuclear power plant in Japan, it can’t be releasing THAT much radiation.)
- I kissed and hugged my son, as I asked G-d (and whomever else with power over these things) to protect him from the chaos.
Not bad for my first few hours of Blogger-High-On-Happiness.
At the shores of Tripoli
Nero, Caligula, Hitler, King George, Idi Amin. These are the names of some leaders who were raving lunatics. They were vicious, evil and certifiably coo-coo.
But Moamar Qadafi really takes the madman bloodlust to a new level.
Does anyone else think he talks like Charlie Sheen and looks eerily like Michael Jackson (odd skin tone and propensity toward make-up).
Except that we mechanisms to deal with a psychotic Hollywood star or a dead and alleged pedophile pop-star.
Qadafi will not leave voluntarily. He will savage his people to stay in power.
A no-fly zone cannot be a unilateral US action. It is hard to enforce and, if we engage, we have to be in for the long haul. Forget what Dick and Rummy told us about easy-win, easy-out strategies in Iraq. Stupid then; stupid now.
President Obama is pursuing the right strategy to make the military re-think killing fellow Libyans. John Wayne McCain is being contrarian. How many wars can we fight? If the US steps in overtly, it gives Qadafi leverage as a revolutionary against imperialist powers.
We have a moral obligation not to allow the slaughter. But we have to be intelligent about it. We have to look before we leap.
May Allah bless and save the Libyan people.
lucky
I hopped a cab tonight because I really, really, couldn’t deal with the humanity that crowds the subway. Well, actually, it was late enough that the trains wouldn’t be crowded, but still. There was a chill in the air (frigid, perhaps) and I needed to get home. A long-ish day. Not like the “old days” but then again I am not in my 20s or 30s any more (barely still in my 40s).
The cab driver was talking on the phone. His driving skills were basic: if your foot is not on the gas (accelerating in a way that gave a born-and-bred Manhattanite motion sickness), then your foot must be on the brake.
Ok, so I needed him off the phone and off the gas pedal. Hmmm. I struck up a conversation.
“Where are you from?”
“Sudan.”
“What do you think of the elections?”
“I don’t think it will change much. There will be fighting.”
“Are you from the north or the South?”
“North. Independence won’t change anything. People will fight each other now in the South. Many different peoples.”
“Same problem in the North?”
“Government there is strong. So, no fighting in north.”
I offered “brutal” as a more apt description.
He said, “way of life there, not here.”
I had no response to that simple statement of relief and admiration for this country. I asked him what he thought about Egypt.
“Now the world knows what has been happening there.”
I was silent. Maybe I should have known before. I just didn’t think about it.
He offered up, “no one speaks to police. too much bribes and danger. not here, government is less corrupt.”
I had never thought of our government in terms of lesser corruption. Not the superlatives we were raised to expect of our government. But he meant it as a true compliment.
My world view, turned on an incline — “less corrupt” as a compliment and an ideal.
Another lesson in life from a stranger.
Protesters in Egypt
I am following the events in Egypt. As I understand the situation, there was long simmering unrest about the irreversible decades-long slide into poverty and human indignity.
Then, the harshness of life for one-third of the country crossed a line. People took to the streets no longer fearful of the repressive regime because there was nothing more to lose.
I hope, naively for sure, that there is an orderly transition to representative government. But not a government that looks like ours; the government must be authentic and legitimate within Egyptian history and culture.
I think about these protesters and then I think back to the 2000 election in the US, where the voting irregularities, and finally a Supreme Court decision, effectively awarded the election to George W. Bush even though Al Gore won the popular vote. Americans didn’t take to the streets. Why? Because we were rich, comfortable and had too much to lose by unrest. Hey, I was angry but I didn’t really do anything but talk.
If we knew then what our nation would look and feel like 8 years later, would we have, should we have, taken to the streets to protest the fraud and the Supreme Court’s ruling? Still, probably not.
And even thinking we might trivializes the determination and the courage of the protesters who are standing up against poverty, repression and hopelessness.
Politics, Politics
Ok, the rant is building, building, building . . . here it comes!!
I liked the State of the Union address. The President could have touted that he saved the car industry, that he kept the country from economic free-fall, that the US and Israel disrupted Iran’s nuclear capabilities, but he didn’t. I think he should have because America needs to remember all that he has accomplished. But that is because I am partisan. I think he struck the right tone as willing to make principled compromises. Besides, he had one hour to say all things to all people. Hey, now that’s a reasonable expectation.
The sign that he did a good job was that he was being pilloried by MSNBC, CNN and, even without watching it, FOX.
Oh, and, apropos of nothing, Speaker Boehner has a bad body colorist.
In the GOP retort, Paul Ryan said investment is a code-word for spending. It is not. There is no code. Investment is spending. When I invest in real estate, stocks, etc., I am spending money, with an eye toward making a good return on my investment.
So, the three things that distinguish the GOP and the Democrats is who should do the spending, on what and how much.
I believe in spending on education and innovation. I believe that these will provide a good return on the money invested. The GOP believes that investment should be made by private enterprise. How private enterprise would have developed the Internet and GPS or will develop high speed railways and clean energy without government grants is beyond me. And should we abolish public education? No, but the GOP wants to starve it so that the little money spent on it would be a waste.
We pay the least amount of taxes of the industrialized nations. Before WWII, tax rates had some people paying 80%. So everyone, chill out on taxes. Remember the GOP spent willy-nilly (not a usual phrase for me) on two wars and kept it outside the budget so that the American people wouldn’t know. So, now, NOW, we have to worry about taxing the top 2%? Did you ask me? If you did, I would tell you to keep my tax cut and buy some muzzles for the Tea Party legislators. Now, that is a good investment. Do you think it is really tea? It is a dry weed-like substance. We should try rolling that “tea” and seeing if smoking it give us delusions of intelligent impact on the national discourse, too.
Paul Ryan seems like a lovely guy but I was distracted by his perfect hair and a little freaked out by his Biblical references. And why is your part half way between the middle and one side? Isn’t that radical?
Rep. Ryan said something like our regulations were fine, it was just the corporate and governmental evil-doers that stole our prosperity. But, wait, that happened BEFORE President Obama was president. Remember, that Decider guy? Yeah, that one. He was running the show. And, wait for it . . . he is a Republican!!! Omigod, how embarrassing, Paul. Still, with that gaffe extraordinaire, your hair did not move.
And, will you stop about small government? There are 300 million of us. We need hordes just to pave roads and administer social security and Medicare, run the military and veterans benefits. You don’t mean to scrimp on these things, do you Paul? You even referred to the days of Lincoln as an example of small government. Those crazy, high energy, innovative days when were no fair labor laws, children worked 14-hour days, no food or product safety laws and, oh, yes, no truth in advertising or disclosure by companies. So we could die in the factory, die from rotten food or poisonous products or lose our life savings to corporate con men. And, as a student of history, you know that our nation went through boom and bust cycles every decade because of the inability to regulate the unbridled greed of speculators and market makers.
Oh, yes, sign me up, Paul, for your vision of America. Or I guess I could just go to a third world nation for the same experience.
My mother’s words . . .
“My poor baby, if I could have it for you, I would!”
My Mom would say this in a soothing voice whenever one of her children was sick, be it mind, spirit or body. I say that now to my son whenever appropriate. And I mean it, for all loving and nurturing, yet practical, goal oriented reasons.
My son had an upset stomach last night (no fever or other symptoms). He started feeling sick at 9pm when he was already in bed, at around the same time the Jets were a lost cause and Janet2 was cleaning her kitchen floor (because the Patriots WERE OUT OF CONTENTION — these digressions are getting worse).
POB (partner of blogger) and I dutifully took turns in the night soothing him when he woke up and giving him Children’s Tums. Because I was just recovering from a thrown-out back at around the same time our son got sick, POB did more turns initially. Each time he woke up and I went in (and freaked him out by yowling in pain), I would rub his head and back and say Mom’s magic words that always comforted me. He would eventually drift off for 45 minutes or so. And I would roll out of his bed and crawl to my room so as not to scream in pain and wake him. Of course, that woke POB, so I probably did more harm than good despite all loving intentions.
3am rolls around and he is up and really, really feeling bad. I go in, because I know POB has to get up in 2.5 hours and I can stretch my alarm until 8am if necessary. He is really feeling bad and I say Mom’s magic words and, lo and behold, like a miracle swept in from the sea, he vomits all over me and then runs to the bathroom for the other end of the story, so to speak.
Nothing makes you feel more mom-like than having your child yawn in technicolor all over you. I cleaned up and started to strip the bed and hose everything down. (At this point, POB was up and ready to crank up the washer/dryer.)
Our son has a strong stomach for all that to have stayed in for six hours.
I couldn’t help thinking that if he were able to give it to me at 9pm, my system would have expelled everything in 5, maybe 10, minutes and we all would have been happier and all have gotten a good night’s sleep. Instead, today, our wiped-out son stayed home, I was essentially in traction and POB had to be nursemaid to two babies at once.
Do you think Mom ever had the same thoughts about wanting to be sick instead of us, or am I just a diluted (and deluded) version of her?
Tragedy on so many levels
In Tucson, many are dead and injured as a result of a deranged man with a deranged message.
Let’s put aside the left blaming the right and whether it is foreseeable that a lunatic would do this. That conversation will get us nowhere and misses the point.
I think it is more worthwhile to wonder why politics is a bloodsport these days in a way that we haven’t seen since in perhaps a century.
Let’s think instead about how our politician are so invested in being right that they vilify the oppositional view and the integrity of its proponents. In 2008, when Michele Bachmann said that then candidate Barack Obama and Michele Obama were “anti-American” because they hold views different from hers, that is a code that our country is being infiltrated by enemies. Think about it, she said that the likely 44th President was the Manchurian Candidate of the movies. And in the movies, a lone gunman (the good guy) kills the Manchurian Candidate.
Then Sarah Palin has a website that has a target on Rep. Giffords’ district (“in the cross-hairs”) for some reason or other. Or the famous, Palinism: “don’t back down, just reload” or something like that. Words have meaning, even if you try afterward to refudiate them.
This is war-speak. And in war, enemies are killed, and our soldiers come home to heroes’ welcomes (ideally). But war produces body-bags, brutality, starvation, desperation and carnage.
Is that the fevered pitch we want in our national discourse? So, let us speak gently and with respect when we debate. Even if we have to fake it.
Let’s set some ground rules:
- A socialist and tea-party member can love this country and protect the very institutions of government that make us strong.
- It isn’t about being right; it is about building a consensus and keeping this country great.
- Political defeat is hard to take but you can’t take your marbles and go home or start threatening people.
- The media does more to stoke the divisions than provide any useful information.
- If our nation tacks to the left or right, some people will not be pleased, but they must always remain the loyal opposition. (It is hard; I know. I had to endure the policies of George Bush and Dick Cheney and even some of President Obama’s policies I don’t like).
- Exemplifying and practicing the principles of this nation are essential for this country to move forward in one piece and in peace.
Oh, The Rapture
Ok, according to ebiblefellowship.com, “we’re almost there!!”
Almost where? Almost to the Day of Rapture when G-d’s Elect will ascend to Heaven. (I tried to use a Heavenly color.)
May 21, 2011, to be exact.
Then, a great fire will consume the rest of the earth, in October. I guess it is too much of a transportation headache to transport everyone (down?) to Hell, so G-d is just going to throw lighter fluid on an out-of-control oil well or something.
I know this is terrible, but I keep singing Blondie’s song “Rapture” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnhKPw2NXIw (with a little Jim Morrison mixed in for a full apocalyptic/conspiracy theory montage).
SO, I don’t get what happens on the day that the Rapture begins.
G-d will rule the Earth and G-d’s followers will abide by those rules.
Ok, according to the Christian theology, G-d already rules and these believers follow the rules.
Will G-d reward them with “life”?
They are already alive. Eternal life? As long as you stay young, because aging is not for the faint of heart.
Is it just that G-d will rid the universe of the rest of us?
The Christian thing to do would be just to ignore us.
To be honest, I would like to have that strength of faith. I would like to believe in a Great Benevolence that will save us. Because I do believe that this world could be destroyed, except I think the end will come because of human action.
I guess if Hell will be a place on Earth (in either scenario — theirs or mine), I should cancel that airport limousine I reserved for the End of Days. Because Hell is coming soon to a place near you — check newspapers for times and listings.
WikiLeaks made the world way more dangerous.
Mr. Wikileaks, the self-appointed arbiter of world politics, is a cyber-terrorist and not a crusader. But the information is not revelatory; but its publication is like yelling fire in a crowded theater.
And really, is the world a safer place because we know that a diplomat thinks Silvio Berlusconi is feckless and a womanizer? Or that Quaddafi travels with a voluptuous nurse? This suggests that Mr. WikiLeaks is out to embarrass people and not to save the world.
And does the world (and specifically terrorists) need to know that the US is SECRETLY (oops, WAS SECRETLY) trying to secure some of the Pakistani nuclear arsenal? And did anyone doubt that the Afghan government is corrupt to its core?
To review. Before this weekend, we knew, among other things, that:
- China is our biggest creditor;
- China can be an immense military and economic enemy if threatened;
- China views North Korea as a buffer between it and the Western sphere of influence in the Korean peninsula;
- South Korea is one of our biggest trading partners and buyer of US goods and thus key to our economic recovery;
- North Korea is ruled by lunatics and they have a nuclear arsenal;
- Iran probably has or is about to have nuclear weapons making the Middle East evermore the powder keg of the world;
- Secretly every ruler in the Middle East hates Ahmedinejad and wants Iran disarmed;
- The US cannot afford to fight another war; and
- Hamid Karzai and his merry band of traffickers run one of the most corrupt governments in one of the most ungovernable areas of the world.
Now we know that:
- The US and South Korea are planning for a united Korea (assuming North Korea implodes) allied with the US which will freak out China;
- Some Middle East countries (other than Israel) hate Iran enough to want the US to attack;
- Iran is really close to having nuclear weapons; and
- Karzai’s brother regularly shakes down countries and is paid millions of dollars in unmarked bags.
Net Gain: Zero Information.
Net Loss: Now countries may have to respond with harsh words, sanctions or firepower because delicate diplomatic balances have been disrupted and bonds of trust breached. Gee, just what we needed.
Ramifications: In this world, this diplomatic crisis could as easily result in political breakthroughs or peace or devolve into war and/or global economic collapse.