October 10, 2006
K-Bombs
So North Korea says it has The Bomb. And there's a few thoughts that keep running through my head.
1) What right do we or does any of the international community have to tell any individual country that it cannot have the bomb -- the same weapon that the US, Russia, the UK, France, China, India, Pakistan, and Israel have? I mean, depending on your world view, virtually every country on this list is seen by others somewhere in the world as being a destabilizing and aggressive nation. What gives us or anyone else the right to tell another country -- any country -- that it cannot possess the same weapons that we and seven other nations possess? I'm not saying that nuclear proliferation is good, or that I like that Kim Jong-Il has a nuke, but I am unclear as to which standard the world uses when deciding who is "allowed" to have a bomb and who is not.
2) That question aside, I think we all agree that a nutjob like Kim Jong-Il having nuclear capability is not a good thing. But does anyone really believe that sanctions are going to deter him or North Korea? I mean, this is a guy who's been starving his own people to death for a decade now, who's been too crazy to be afraid of the United States, South Korea, Japan and China. Do we really believe he's going to shudder in the face of sanctions and tigers and bears, oh my?
3) In his State of the Union Address in 2002, Bush proclaimed that North Korea, Iran and Iraq constituted an "Axis of Evil." In the years since, Iraq has become a training ground and home base for the terrorists who would attack the United States (helped along greatly by Bush's disasterous and ill-conceived invasion); Iran has defied the international community repeatedly and continues to enrich uranium; and now North Korea has the bomb.
And yet this chucklehead, his Dr. Evil of a Vice President, his ignoramus party, and the cletus-sheep who constitute red state America still want you to believe that it's George W. Bush and the Republicans who are better able to make you safe. This is roughly the equivalent of a .000 hitter arguing that he should bat clean-up in Game 7 of the World Series.
Posted by Christopher at 06:02 AM | Comments (2)September 22, 2006
A Tale Of Two Reporters
It was the best of sports. It was the worst of sports.
Two reporters doggedly pursue a story involving a sport's biggest name, a player closing in on the most hallowed record in all of sports, yet who cheated to get there, knowingly and willingly taking performance enhancing drugs and illegal steroids. They do a thorough job of reporting, they get their facts right, and even the President of the United States tells them that they've done a good job in their crusade to get the story right and expose the player for the cheat that he is.
One baseball player perjures himself in front of a federal grand jury, directly lying and telling the jury that he has never knowingly taken steroids despite having been on a regimen of steroid cocktails for the past three years. He's arrogant, aloof, practically dares the government to come after him, and continues to treat every single person in baseball -- from teammates to reporters -- as unwelcome cockroaches on the white carpet of his life.
And yet it's the reporters who are going to jail.
Not only is this a mockery of the spirit of the law, it's a continuation of the war against the press that's been fought by the US government for the past six years at least. (It's U.S. attorneys who chose to bring charges against the reporters.) Investigative reporters need sources to do their work and expose corruption or wrongdoing. Those sources need to be confidential in some cases, and when they are confidential those sources need to believe that their cooperation with the journalists will never be revealed. If that trust chain is broken, investigative reporters will not be able to do their job. (Perhaps that's what this government really wants.) This matters to you whether you care about baseball or not; curtail investigative reporting by continuing to throw reporters in jail, and that reporting dries up. And as ESPN's Wright Thompson wrote,
One of those stories might be about a plant polluting your neighborhood or a corrupt school district that is supposed to be educating your children.
The message sent by yesterday's sentencing is clear. Commit wrongdoing, and you can escape consequences. Expose wrongdoing, and you'll be punished. "Nobody is above the law," U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White said in sentencing Mark Fainaru-Wade and Lance Williams.
Nobody, it seems, except for Barry Bonds.
Posted by Christopher at 07:26 AM | Comments (0)September 17, 2006
Folding Like A Cheap Accordion
So what messages have been sent by this week's events?
1. If anyone outside of the Islamic community criticizes the religion or points out the unfortunate truth -- that the faith has been highjacked by those who would use it as an excuse for the exercise or acquisition of power -- there will be indignant and self-righteous anger from the worldwide Muslim community.
2. Many of these protests will turn violent, and Muslim leaders will do little to stop it, claiming instead that the violence is justified because of the "insult" to their religion.
3. The Western world will fold like a cheap accordion like a terrified third grader handing over his lunch money to the playground bully.
I'm trying to keep an open mind, really I am. I'm trying to remember that bin Laden and other Islamic extremists are specifically trying to draw us into a religious "Islam vs. the West" war, and trying to take the kind of reasoned analysis that this article in a Malaysian publication does.
But I'm really growing rapidly tired of the thin-skinned, itching-for-a-fight, even-any-hint-of-criticism-is-grounds-for-killing-somebody attitude that seems to pervade the "Muslim street." I'm getting sick and tired of watching the West limit its own long-cherished and long-valued commitments to free speech and free expression just because if it strays from the "Islam is peace" mantra, there will be riots and demonstrations from Lahore to Damascus, and somebody somewhere's going to be threatened, firebombed, or worse. I'm really starting to feel like the Muslim world's loudly proclaimed desires for peace and coexistence are little more than croccodile tears and "want a Hertz donut?" kind of moves.
I don't want to feel this way. And I'm the kind of westerner -- internationalist in outlook, educated, generally sympathetic to their complaints in the Middle East, and vehemently opposed to the presidency and policies of George W. Bush -- who's most needed by the Islamic world to avoid the kind of closed-minded and eased entry into the kind of Holy War the Wahabi'sts and al Qaeda want. But by behaving like thin-skinned playground bullies, over and over and over again, they're losing me. Fast. And I suspect that if I've finally grown tired of this crap, most Americans did a long time ago.
The way to stop a bully isn't by handing over your lunch money today and having him come back to bloody your nose again tomorrow just because he knows you're afraid of him. The way to stop a bully is to let him know you're not afraid, and to pop him one in the nose if he doesn't understand. You stop a bully by standing up to him. I kind of wish the Pope had remembered that this week. I kind of hope the West doesn't forget it the next time. (And if there's one thing in the world we can be sure of, it's that there will be a next time.)
Posted by Christopher at 12:18 PM | Comments (3)September 13, 2006
September 11
Obviously, like everyone else I was aware that Monday was the fifth 'anniversary' of 9/11. Being in New York, there are reminders every day - from the still raw 'hole in the ground' at the Trade Center site, to the ubiquitous radio ads reminding listeners that abandoned packages and backpacks could be bombs, that we are still under threat, and exhorting us "if you see something, say something."
A couple of years ago, I did my requisite elegy for 9/11 post. I can't pretend to have been as deeply affected as so many New Yorkers obviously were; no one I knew was in the Towers that day. Nor was I as indirect a victim as many Americans not living in New York or DC; I knew people in the Pentagon (none who died, thankfully), it took more than 24 hours to locate my brother and my best friend, the two cities attacked were my current residence and my adopted hometown, and the planes that hit the towers took off from the city I went to school in. While I did not lose any friends that day, the places attacked weren't just distant places somewhere else in my country; they were all of the homes I had known to that point since leaving the state I grew up in. It felt more directly, you know, personal I guess is the word.
Every year on that date I get the same hollow feeling in my core, one that somehow is deeper than the one I get whenever I'm in the city and still find myself looking for the WTC as a landmark to orient myself by, and deeper than the one I get whenever I drive past the Pentagon during my visits back "home" in DC. And you know how, when you're going through a painful breakup, there comes a point where you just get sick of feeling so terribly and decide that you don't want to feel the pain anymore, and you sort of choose to take your emotions and your life back? I'm kind of getting to that point with the date of September 11. I don't ever want to forget it -- anyone taking that sentiment as one of disrespect or irreverance is missing my point. I just want to take control back, to claim that day back on the calendar as one where it's okay to be in a good mood, or to do something fun, or to just be American in every way, good and bad, and go about my life. In short, I want that day back.
I want to take it back from Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. I might have to take off my shoes and skip bringing shampoo in my carry-ons, you sons of bitches, but I will not live in fear of you, and you no longer get even one of the 365 days in the year to dominate my thoughts. Your attempt to bludgeon and intimidate me has failed; I am an American and I'm not going to cower or mope on that day any further. September 11 is mine -- is ours -- and I am taking it away from you from now on, you cowardly bastards. May you rot in hell.
I want to take it back from my government and the ruling party, which has politicized the attacks to no end for its own selfish political gain incessantly for the past five years, and has used it as an excuse for invading an unrelated country, for approving torture and flaunting the Geneva Convention, and for a crackdown on the very civil liberties and freedoms that our attackers resent so deeply. I'm an American too, Mr. Bush -- one who served in the military, by the way, unlike most of your hawkish war cabinet -- and you can't marginalize me or paint me as unpatriotic anymore by using the broad brush of September 11, behaving as if that day didn't mean as much to me just because I don't agree with you. September 11 belongs to all Americans, not just the ones who think like you want them to -- and I'm taking it back from you.
I want to take it back from those who would have life come to a stop and standstill because of that day. It was very obviously the greatest tragedy our nation has ever experienced -- 3000 innocent civilians died that day -- and I don't mean to minimize or diminish it. But we owe each of the dead the respect of going on with our lives, and making sure they did not die in vain. The fact that five years later there is still wrangling and arguing over the site of the tragedy, and no memorial erected yet because the city, the families, the architects, the land developers, and whoever else can't stop squabbling about what memorial is sufficient long enough to actually erect a monument or memorial is a shame. It's embarrassing. And while New Orleans mayor Nagin chose his words poorly, his point still remains: it's five years now, and it's time we stop being petty, start to rebuild, and get a memorial in place where people can go to remember.
Life did not stop on September 11, 2001. In many ways it was altered, but the world kept turning. It is our greatest responsibility to those who perished in the attacks to not let the terrorsts win even a little bit -- and if we don't go on with our lives even on that date, then they have won a small victory. It's one I am determined not to let them claim. Reporter and writer Christopher Hitchens wrote an editorial in the New York Daily News on Sunday September 10, on the subject of whether to make September 11 a national holiday. He opposes it, and I couldn't agree more with his reasoning.
We have already embarrassed ourselves - and begun to bore the people of other countries - by describing the atrocity as "an attack on America." More than 80 nationalities, as well as many people of all faiths, were numbered among the victims of what was actually an assault on civilization. To commemorate it as a "national" day would be to miss a large part of its point. And to call it a "holiday" would be to degrade it even further. How long before people would start asking each other - as they now do for Memorial Day - say, "What're you doing for the Sept. 11 long weekend?"
He's right. We can't argue that 'islamofascists are waging a war against civilization' in one breath while proclaiming September 11 as the day America was attacked in the next, unless we really mean to imply that America = civilization (something that no one who's watched Jerry Springer, Jackass, or any of the umpteen reality TV series would likely care to argue!). And I can think of no greater insult to those who died than for the date to become a trivialized excuse for a second long weekend in a row. Not that the activities of such a weekend -- beach house rentals, picnics and barbecues, romantic B&B getwaways, etc. -- would be an insult; to the contrary, I think that claiming that date back on the calendar by engaging in everyday life activities would be the best way to honor them.... we're still Americans, we still do what we do, and the terrorists didn't change any of that. But let's do that without acting like we need to bring the world to a stop in order to do so. We don't need a holiday; we just need to go about our lives.
I will not forget those who died in the attacks of September 11, 2001. But I am taking the date of September 11 back. I'm an American, and it belongs to me again. And there's nothing that al Qaeda or anyone else can do about it.
Posted by Christopher at 07:41 AM | Comments (3)August 19, 2006
Fetch The Comfy Chair... Now... CONFESS!
Okay, does anybody really believe that that freak arrested in Thailand really kllled JonBenet Ramsey?
I mean, don't get me wrong; he deserves the death penalty just for having an unnatural obsession with this case and with little girls in general (he married a 13 year old once, had it annulled, then married a 16 year old... god, what is wrong with Alabama that they even make this legal in the first place?) But if he killed JonBenet, then I killed the Lindbergh baby. (That was 1932. I was born in 1968. Just had to be clear that I was using exaggeration for rhetorical effect and not really confessing.)
But there's something that's inescapable about the Ramsey case, whether this joker is ever convicted of the crime or not. Let's just say for the sake of argument that the Boulder cops got their man, and this guy really did commit the murder.
That may make the Ramseys not guilty, but it sure doesn't make them innocent.
You can't be entirely innocent of a crime -- some crime, if not the crime -- if you take perverse pleasure in dressing up your five year old daughter and parading her around like a circus freak made up to look like a runaway French call girl more than a decade older than she really is. There is something very wrong with parents who dress their little six year old up like a Vegas showgirl, or whose lives and need to compete are so pathetic that they have to pressurize their children in the sick world that is child beauty pageants. Based on how they treated that poor little girl and the other outfits they put her in, it's not a stretch to me to think that the Ramseys would have thought it "cute" to send a seven year old JonBenet out for Halloween in satin hot pants, layers of makeup, and having her go trick-or-treating as a streetwalking hooker.
Maybe they were involved in her murder. Maybe they weren't. Maybe they're implicated and maybe they're absolved of active participation in this crime. We may never know. But the Ramseys weren't innocent. Not with the way they handled that little girl. And no confession from a sick pervert -- whether true or bogus -- changes that.
Posted by Christopher at 04:43 PM | Comments (1)July 25, 2006
Fool Me Once...
To most objective observers, it's becoming clearer with each passing day that the Israeli government is out of control. A full scale invasion isn't enough... now they're bombing UN peacekeepers.
The Israeli government is aided and abetted, of course, by it's weak-willed brother Fredos in the US administration, who lack the courage or will to put a stop to this onslaught, and who have the audacity to criticize Syria for arming one side while openly arming the other in the conflict. Do as we say, but not as we do; just yet another example of Bushian hypocrisy. And by the way, if the Bush Doctrine is that the US has the right to invade nations whose efforts threaten their neighbors and destablize the region, when does the US invasion of Tel Aviv begin?
To borrow an analogy from Linkmeister... okay, we get that the neighbors' dog has snuck into your yard over and over again, pooped on your lawn, and badly bitten you and your children. No one's saying the neighbor's a good guy. But is the solution really to take a bulldozer to his house after walking into his children's bedrooms with a can of gasoline, a lighter, and an acetylene torch? This is an overreaction on a tragic and historic scale. From 1947 through about 1980, the blame for the conflict in the middle east lies squarely on the shoulders of the Arab countries... but since then, the Israelis have done their damndest to even things up in the blame department.
Oh - and to any US citizen who would outright dismiss the Arab argument about Israel's rights ... I hope you're willing to give your house, your land, and everything on it to Native American tribes. See, the land you live on historically belonged to them... and they have been victims of hatred, persecution and genocide too. So if we're going on a people's historic presence in a place, and their people's history of victimization at the hands of the rest of the world, then your house now belongs to the Cherokee Nation, or the Sioux, or the Seminole or the Narragansett. You've got a week to move. What's that you say? You don't think that's fair? You sympathize with the Native Americans' plight, but you didn't personally steal any land from them, and you've worked hard for your home? Too bad. You have nowhere to go? Not the Native Americans' problem. Get out. You have a week.
Now tell me that the Arab/Palestinians have no cause to resent Israel's presence. Much of it is rooted in religious or ethnic hatred by the Arabs, yes. But not all of it. Not all.
And no, I am not suggesting that Israel should or must tolerate terrorist incursions and attacks from hostile organizations that take refuge with Israel's neighbors. But the sad thing is, Israel's conduct has now ensured the creation of the next generation of terrorists in Lebanon, the Palestininan territories, and elsewhere in the middle east. When a nation is doing this to your people, it's all too easy to listen to the voices of hatred.
This is a lesson the US has learned all too painfully in Iraq; due to our short-sighted and foolhardy invasion there, we have succeeded in breeding an insurgency that shows no signs of slowing, and created a new generation that hates us even more fiercely and desperately than the last. We bungled in Iraq, badly, and we will be paying for that mistake for decades.
Rather than observing and learning from our mistakes, the Israeli government has chosen to repeat them in bulk in the supersized 256 ounce jar. Their conduct in the past month has ensured that a new generation of Arabs will have blood vendettas against Israel, having lost their families to Israeli bombs while the US stood idly by, fiddling while the last chance for peace in a generation burns. And don't think our inaction is going unnoticed... that generation of haters will fix on us as well. We're letting it happen, and they will not forget.
We do not owe the Israeli government blanket support for any action they choose to take, no matter how badly it inflames the situation or harms international peace. You love your brother, sure... but if he is stealing from your wallet, sleeping with your wife, and punching neighborhood children, you don't say, "Well, he's had a hard life, and he's my brother, so it's okay."
It's time for the US to take our first stand against Israel's government since the 1956 Suez War. Rarely, if ever, has the need to do so been more clear.
Posted by Christopher at 10:11 PM | Comments (4)July 16, 2006
Can't We All Just Get Along?
There's a war on. That part's not news, because there's almost always a war on somewhere -- especially in the Middle East. This one's particularly sad, because it never should have started.
Obviously, I support Israel's right to exist, and to defend itself. However, I'm pretty sure I don't support the idea of starting a full-scale invasion that involves the bombing of airports and civilians over three kidnappings. (And to think, just a few weeks ago we were near an agreement where Hamas would have recognized Israel's right to exist. Think we'll ever get that close now?) I'm saddened that so close to a potential breakthrough in the peace process, Israel has chosen to overreact so heavily and has deliberately escalated the situation there.
Then again, after the last few years, I don't have a whole lot of sympathy left for Hezbollah, Hamas, the Palestinians, or anyone left on the other side either. Doubtlessly, Syria and Iran have been egging Hezbollah on, thriving on the instability in the region for their own interests (has anyone heard much about Iran's nuclear program in the past week?). As angry as I am about Israel's conduct, it's awfully hard to feel that their opponents have been all that wronged -- or to feel sympathy for them if they have been. Has anyone forgotten the video of Middle Easterners dancing in the streets when news of 9/11 hit?
I'm frustrated that the US apparently will march in lockstep with Israel in the UN, no matter what the Israeli government does or how it acts. We get led around by our noses -- with a combination of "democracies stick together" mentality and a faith-based belief that even questioning the policy of their government is tantamount to betrayal -- and lend credence to the often-spoken belief in the Middle Eastern "street" that the US plays favorites.
I'm saddened that civilians on both sides are dying because of angry and foolish men in "leadership" positions. And I'm saddened that we never seem to learn. Any of us.
Posted by Christopher at 10:24 AM | Comments (1)June 29, 2006
Let God Sort 'Em Out
Anyone else besides me just completely sick of the Middle East? It's virtually impossible anymore to find white knights or good guys over there; the world could be excused for throwing up its hands and exclaiming in exasperation that no one in that part of the world wants peace anyway, so we're going to write you all off and let you kill each other.
This week's events are more of the "same as it ever was" that you always get in that part of the world. Early in the week, there were reports that Fatah and Hamas were about to ink an agreement that implicitly recognized Israel's right to exist. Not the solution to everything, but certainly a positive step in bringing stability to the region. So naturally, this week Israel has escalated military action in Gaza, conducting multiple missile attacks and making mass arrests (including about 20 Hamas members of the Palestinian cabinet), in response to the kidnapping of a soldier. This action virtually assures that Hamas will dig its heels in, revert to its militaristic, terroristic roots, and whatever window might have been opened with the tentative agreement is likely closed.
This isn't a rant against Israel. I'm sure the next time, Israel will make some conciliatory move, and it will be the Palestinian side that reacts with some action that will slam the door shut on peace and ensure more fighting and bloodshed. It just seems to be the raison d'etre in that part of the world to take olive brances, fashion them into spears, and impale one another with them. Doesn't matter which side you're on. The only constant is an element on each side that simply does not want peace under any circumstances other than complete and total victory.
And that's exhausting to many of us in the rest of the world who would like nothing more than for the Star of David and the Crescent to be raised together in peace.
(Oh - and for the record... despite the presence of extremists on both sides who argue that you cannot even criticize the actions of a government without it somehow reflecting prejudice against the governed, I am neither a Zionist nor an anti-Semite... just as it is possible to criticize the US government's actions without being anti-American, it is possible to criticize the Israeli government without being anti-Israel or anti-Semitic, and it is possible to criticize the Palestinian Authority or Parliament -- or the actions of extremist groups among the community -- without being anti-Palestinian or anti-Arab or anti-Muslim.
I know far too many "Israel is/the Palestinians are always right" types who simply will not accept any other position than 100% lockstep agreement. To those on each side, I say, you'll find no quarter here. To my mind, both sides have earned equal criticism and neither side is above reproach when it comes to making peace work. Extreme jingoism -- whether here in the States among conservatives, or among Israel's supporters, or in tsupport of Palestinians -- is something I disdain and always will, no matter its source. Everyone is open for criticism, at any time, for anything.)
Posted by Christopher at 05:09 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBackJanuary 29, 2006
Requiem
It's not often that I stumble across a story in the news that actually brings a catch to my throat -- you know, curmudgeonism isn't just a blog persona, it's a way of life. So when one comes along, it sticks with me. And in this case, it also makes me mad.
Sean Keel was a 34 year old man living in San Francisco. He had a wife, and two young daughters, one four and the other five months. Sean hadn't had an easy run in life -- he had spent some time in a court-ordered rehab program -- but he had completely turned his life around, sobering up for four years now to focus on his wife and daughters; he and his wife just bought a house, and he was even able to buy his wife a used-but-tricked-out BMW for Mother's Day. By every report, he was a gentle and loving father who doted on his wife and daughters.
Unfortunately, last week a couple of thugs decided that car was more important than a good man's life. Sean was shot and killed in a carjacking at 2 am last Saturday night as he left his job at a valet parking service. That's sad enough, but what takes this story from tragic to heartbreaking is the reaction of Keel's four year old daughter to her daddy's death. Coping and grieving in ways that make sense to a four year old, the little girl has been calling her father's cell phone and leaving messages for him... messages he'll never return.
Dan Abrams of MSNBC covered the story in his program on Thursday... and it was quite possibly one of the most emotional segments I've ever seen on the news. As the girl's cell messages aired, Abrams was visibly shaken, and it looked very much like he didn't want to be dragging the widow onto national television; this was one instance where the media actually looked like it had a conscience. I warn you... if you click on the link and launch the video instead of just reading the story, be ready to have tears well up. If Vanessa Keel's messages -- and both the pain and the strength of his wife Rosa -- don't reach you and break your heart, then you don't have one to break.
I have two reactions to this story, the first being somewhat primal. I know there are a number of good, convincing arguments against the death penalty -- it's used arbitrarily and far more frequently in cases with minority defandants, DNA evidence is revealing that in some cases, the law gets it wrong and innocent people are jailed for crimes they didn't commit and one day soon we're going to execute someone innocent -- and I admit to being swayed by many of them. But it's for cases like the Keel murder that the death penalty was invented. If anyone has ever deserved to die for their crime, it's the punks who chose to end this man's life for a set of expensive rims. Seriously, I don't care that it's suspected that the murderers are teenagers; there's nothing in those "kids" worth saving. Fry them, with extra juice.
Secondly, I have to wonder why this isn't front page news -- why Sean Keel's photo isn't on the front of every newspaper and every cable news network isn't devoting hours of nightly coverage to the latest developments in the case. Outside of the Abrams report and the Bay Area media, it's slid quietly under the radar. Maybe it would help the media if Sean Keel were a young, rich, blonde like Natalee Holloway, and not a black man.
See, this is what I don't understand; Natalee Holloway's case, while sad and certainly tragic, is one in which a rich kid was allowed to go off with no adult supervision, got herself drunk and ran off with some total stranger late at night in a foreign country without telling any of her friends where she was going; what happened is hardly unexpected and might have been prevented by better judgement in any of a half dozen places along the timeline of the case. Sean Keel went to work, worked hard, and was trying to come home. Why is the Holloway case considered so much more newsworthy? I'm not one to read racism (either subtle or overt) into every circumstance, but I have to think this is a prime example of a subtle form of it. It's not right, and the national media ought to be ashamed that the Keel case isn't even a fraction as prominent nationwide.
Anyone reading from California who should stumble upon information that could be of any use to the police, please call 415-575-4444.
Posted by Christopher at 12:52 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBackDecember 14, 2005
Time Magazine's Person Of The Year: Mudge's Nominee
It's about that time of year again - when Time magazine announces its Person of the Year. We were talking at lunch the other day at the office about who it might be for 2005. (I could have sworn I'd already seen Time's Man of the Year cover... but then I realized it was just Ann Coulter.)
Anyway, as the discussion progressed, at least one end of the table quickly came to something of a consensus. So I'm not being entirely original in my nomination here -- to those Mudge readers who were at the table, don't go gettin' all uppity and snarking that I stole your idea, because I'm giving credit now that it's not entirely my thought (though I did come up with the original idea that led to our consensus). But in my mind, there's only one real choice for Time's Person of the Year for 2005:
Mother Nature.
The overwhelming thread that ties the biggest news stories of 2005 together is natural disasters. We began the year reeling from the impact of a devastating earthquake and the resulting tsunami in the Indian Ocean. More than 200,000 lost their lives, and we may never know exactly how many died. In late August, Hurricane Katrina -- one of the most powerful storms ever recorded in the Gulf of Mexico -- wiped a major American city of half a million people virtually completely off the map; New Orleans may never recover, and the US Gulf Coast along Mississippi and Alabama has been similarly devastated. A few weeks later, the fourth largest city in America, Houston (with a metropolitan area of about 4 million people), was virtually entirely evacuated in anticipation of similarly powerful Hurricane Rita. And in late October, a massive earthquake leveled areas of Pakistan and India, with estimates suggestion more than 100,000 lives lost.
One year. Millions of lives ended or forever changed. Four of the biggest stories of the entire decade. All related to weather or nature. Yeah, Mother Nature had herself quite a 2005. If the Person of the Year award goes to the individual who, for well or ill, impacted the news the most in the course of the preceding year, then Time has no choice but to designate Mother Nature as the 2005 "Person" of the Year.
Posted by Christopher at 07:04 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBackDecember 11, 2005
Conspiracy Theories
Recently in a social situation, I was having a conversation with a woman who seemed from all appearances and indications to be completely "normal." She was witty, funny, interesting to talk to, and I was enjoying the conversation. Somehow -- and I honestly don't remember how now, because the tangent that followed was so bizarre -- the conversation got into freedom and democracy in America. (I think that in response to something she expressed disapproval of, I might have said something to the effect that, "It's a free country, right?" It was honestly that innocent and random a conversation starter.)
Suddenly, this to-all-other-appearances normal woman began launching into a veritable Canterbury Tales of conspiracies against freedom in this country. I mean, she got them all in there: how the U.N. is evil and was set up specifically to oppose the US Constitution, how a cabal of "bankers" (we all know where she was going with that, even if she didn't say it) through some Banking Manifesto thing control money and power in this country, how 9-11 was an inside job carried out by the government (in order to preserve the power structure set up by the bankers, don'tcha see?), how the government hides global warming, and how in fact "they" are so powerful that they can control the weather -- Katrina was deliberately steered toward New Orleans, y'see, in order to create a crisis and mess that would require large government contracts to fix (contracts that would be given to powerful defense and oil interests, which are in turn controlled by the bankers). As she continued her magnum opus, I started looking more intently at her. I was trying to figure out whether she had a little tinfoil hat hidden somewhere on her person that would block the radio waves. But until that conversation, the woman seemed totally normal -- we'd had a couple of hours' conversation at that point, and she'd carried it off without any indication that she believed that a giant "They" were out to get her.
This wasn't my first exposure to conspiracy theories; after having spent three years on the staff of a board that investigated the Kennedy Assassination, I've seen or heard almost every conspiracy theory you could ever dream up -- in fact, if you were to invent one right now, I've probably spent at least 10 minutes on the phone with someone who already believes it. But while some conspiracy theories are way out there and stretch the bounds of sanity (for example, some folks in New Orleans apparently actually believe that the levees there were bombed by the US goverment in an act of attempted ethnic cleansing against black Americans... and no less a public figure than Spike Lee has endorsed the theory), there are plenty of others that millions of sane, normal, otherwise intelligent Americans believe in.
For some, it's the persistent belief that JFK was murdered by factions within the government. For others, it involves aliens and Roswell. In the 50s it was the "Red Menace" and the belief that Communists had infiltrated the pillars of the US government. Today, some choose to believe the liberal media myth. Some believe that homosexuals are out to recruit their children. Others buy that the UN is an agent of "one-world government" and is designed to subvert the sovereignty of the United States. But whoever you are, it's a stone cold lead pipe lock that you believe in at least one conspiracy theory. That doesn't make you insane -- it makes you normal in this country.
For example, I believe with every ounce of my being that Big Oil met with Dick Cheney as early as February, 2001 (meetings Cheney has sued to keep secret, btw), and that the subject of those meetings was discussing the dividing up the spoils of Iraqi oil after a US invasion of Iraq. I believe that Cheney came to power intending to invade Iraq for the oil profits, and that had 9-11 not happened or UN inspections had definitively revealed no WMDs in Iraq, Cheney and Bush would have found another justification for an invasion. To some, it might sound incredible or even crazy to suggest that a US administration came to power specifically intending and desiring to start a war for oil profits... but I believe it as much as I believe my name is Christopher, and there is nothing that anyone could ever say to convince me otherwise. I readily concede that it's a subjective belief, rooted in my own world view, but it's what I believe.
But that's the whole point: that whatever our world views and subjective outlooks, there is something that drives most of us to believe in conspiracies. And it just makes me wonder what it is that's lacking in our own lives that drives us to believe that malevolent forces amass against us, somehow always remaining just on the periphery of our view. I suppose that humanity's desire to project control of our lives and fates onto a power greater than our own and just beyond our ability to prove it shouldn't surprise me; that's sort of the nature of religion, isn't it? But at least religion presupposes a benevolent power that tries to guide us or steer us toward good. (In theory, anyway. What human beings do with the concept is another story.)
But for some reason, so many of us if not all of us feel a subconscious need to believe in a collection of forces amassed against us, conspiracies designed to keep us from learning something, achieveing something, or freeing ourselves from something. Why is that? We are a nation founded on the image (if not the reality) that anyone can do anything, a nation where the core of the quintessential "American Dream" is that even those born into nothing can, through hard work and perserverance, move up to become the wealthiest citizen in town. Whether it was the Horatio Alger stories of fiction, or the lionizing/romanticizing of stories like Cornelius Vanderbilt building an empire from his start ferrying people across rivers, or Bill Gates dropping out of Harvard to start Microsoft, or even of Sergey Brin and Larry Page starting the colossus that became Google in a garage in Menlo Park. We venerate the individual's ability to rise above in our culture. So why do so many of use choose to believe in organized actions that prevent us from doing so?
I guess it's easier to blame a faceless "They" for things we're unhappy with -- or to ascribe more sinister and evil intent to those we don't like than perhaps is really there. Facing an ugly reality is easier if there's someone or something to blame for it. Which brings to mind this idea: if I were a sociology student going for his Ph.D., I might do my dissertation on the nature and spread of urban legend and conspiracy theory through American society over history. I'm willing to bet that during difficult or frightening times, new conspiracy theories have sprouted like dandelions on a sumer lawn -- and belief in conspiracy theories becomes far more pervasive.
Then again, as the old saying goes, "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not after you." It could be, I suppose. The world might really be as oligarchichal and sinister as our popular belief make it out to be. But failing proof of that, it would seem that conspiracy theories stand as sort of the anti-religion -- the stimulant of the masses.
Posted by Christopher at 03:11 PM | Comments (11) | TrackBackOctober 09, 2005
All Shook Up
The devastating earthquake along the Pakistan-India border reminds us all once again of how fragile our lives and our planet really are. Relief efforts are already underway, and I'm sure they'll be ramped up in the days ahead. Of course, our thoughts and hearts are with the victims of this disaster.
20,000 dead in an earthquake. Up tp 1000 killed in a mudslide. A major city wiped from the map by a hurricane. 150,000 killed in a tsunami. You know, it's a good thing I'm not one of those end-of-the-world religious nuts, because if I were I might be convinced that this was it.
Posted by Christopher at 01:38 PM | Comments (9)September 03, 2005
One Last Katrina Post
As horrific as the scenes are from the Gulf Coast, life must and does go on for all of us, even as we try to help in any way we can, and even as we're still flabbergasted that something like this could happen in the United States of America. So I'm going to go back to blogging about whatever strikes my little fancy from now on. But a few final thoughts about Katrina:
1) Our Katrina Relief Fund: Guys, between pledges on this site and those I was informed of via e-mail, our community has directly given at least $800 for hurricane relief. That may not sound like much in the face of the gargantuan need right now, but think of how much more it is than what any of us donated individually. Thank you all for your generosity.
2) Conspicuous Absence. Nearly every facet of American society has rolled up its sleeves and opened its hearts to the disaster happening down south. Donations to the Red Cross have topped $200 million, and it hasn't even been one week. In the story I linked to about the Red Cross, you can see that insurance companies, financial companies, technology companies, and retail companies are stepping up to help with donations. The airlines are shuttling people out of New Orleans now. I've read of electric utilities around the country sending technicians to the Gulf Coast to help restore power. The NFL, NBA and Major League Baseball have all donated $1 million -- and Deion Sanders of all people just called every professional athlete out and challenged them to step up to the table. The entertainment industry had its first telethon last night, and there are a dozen more benefits and concerts scheduled in teh next week. Everybody's jumped in.
But wouldn't it be nice if the oil companies -- who now get to gouge us for upwards of $4.00 a gallon for gas, and for whose profit we went to war in Iraq -- would make a more significant contribution? Here's an idea: between now and the end of 2005, 1 cent of every gallon of gas sold in the United States should go to hurriane relief. They're jacking us $3.41 a gallon here in New York, and it's only going get worse; why not make it $3.42, and donate that penny to relief efforts?
The average American uses 500 gallons of gasoline per year. That's an aggregate average, so it includes those who don't drive and those too young. There's about 280 million Americans. We have 1/3 of the year to go... about 167 gallons for each of us. One cent per gallon comes out to $1.67 for every man, woman and child in our country. I'm no mathemetician, but when I whip out the calculator to check this, $1.67 times 280 million comes out to more than $467 million. All from one penny per gallon more, on prices that are already artificially inflated anyway. Even if my math's off by a bit, there's no question that one cent per gallon would raise hundreds of millions of dollars to help -- and I doubt very much that for this cause, Americans would mind paying an extra 20 cents every time they fill up.
What's the holdup? ExxonMobil, BP, Shell, ChevronTexaco, ConocoPhillips... what say you?
3) Regarding the government's response and Bush trying to deflect blame by criticizing the relief efforts as inadequate, I have only two thoughts.
First, as PSoTD points out... in all of modern history, can you name any other leader of any nation who, when faced with a national crisis and disaster of a massive magnitude, took two full days to come off of vacation and either go to the site of the disaster or return to the seat of power? Anyone? Bueller?
Second... FEMA's in charge of doing homeland security evacuations as well as handling natural emergencies. Anyone out there feel as confident this week that you'd be safe and the government would have its (stuff) together if, say, a dirty bomb went off in your area? Makes you wonder what the Bush administration's been doing with all that Homeland Security funding since 2001; they clearly weren't using it for training.
Posted by Christopher at 10:29 AM | Comments (4)September 02, 2005
Mayor Nagin
Not the mayor from hell; the mayor of hell. This might be the first time I've ever heard a politician drop his guard so publicly and just be a real human being in an interview. You've never heard passion until you listen to this interview. And when, at the end, the mayor and the two radio hosts break down in tears... it'd be understandable if you did too.
Posted by Christopher at 02:48 PM | Comments (0)UPDATE: Katrina relief
Just wanted to give you all an update... the other day I posted that we should all give $50 to Katrina relief, in the sense that all of us could help more than one of us. I'm proud to report that between those who've commented and those who've contacted me privately, our community here on this blog has now contributed at least $550 to aid our fellow Americans when they need us. And because of you, my little $50 has turned into our $550. And I think we ought to be proud of that.
Thank you.
Posted by Christopher at 02:36 PM | Comments (5)September 01, 2005
The Big Queasy
The first half of this week, we saw the worst of Mother Nature. The latter half, we've seen the worst of human nature.
In 48 hours, New Orleans has become a living, oozing animation of The Lord Of The Flies. With conditions there appalling and frustration turning to desperation, the trappings of civilization have quickly fallen away, leaving man to his most primitive and savage nature. And the disintegration has called up some of my most primitive and savage emotions.
I've watched first in sadness, but then with increasing anger, the looting and disgusting conduct of those remaining in New Orleans. The argument that people were desperate and trying to survive held up so long as people were looting foor, water, blankets and shoes. But when people started stealing cameras and televisions, the people taking them became nothing more in my eyes than thugs and criminals, people with far less of my sympathy than they'd had just hours earlier.
When people began shooting at rescue helicopters, unleashing sniper fire on hospitals, raping women in the streets, setting fires in the Superdome and shooting Guardsmen there, my disgust turned to rage. You can't argue "survival" anymore -- shooting at rescuers, trying to kill people, rape, and arson aren't survival necessities, they're just criminals and the absolute bottom of society showing just how animal-like they can be, my thought went. And I have to admit to you, as awful as it is to say, there's a part of me that feels like these people aren't deserving of rescue -- that I don't want to give my money to people who've given themselves over to the most savage of human instincts. By the time I heard of the snipers firing on hospitals trying to evacuate the sick, I even started IMing friends:
Shoot. To. Kill.
I even made a few comments that perhaps we should have the Red Cross and FEMA stop everything, pull out, let them drown (since they sure seem to want to, firing on those trying to help them), let the flood waters wipe everything clean a la Noah, and save their money and resources for a rebuilding effort. Drop a bunker buster on the Superdome and let them play caveman if they wanted to. And never mind the arguments about race and class - those are flimsy attempt to excuse uncivilized behavior. New York has poor, and we're the most diverse city on the planet. On 9/11, no on rioted, no one looted, and no one shot at rescuers. New Yorkers of all classes and of every race of humanity drew together, not came apart at the seams. So part of me just doesn't want to even hear any argument trying to explain or excuse the behavior we've seen in New Orleans since Tuesday -- because they don't, uh, hold water.
But that's only part of me. Because I started thinking about the whole thing. And for starters, it's dangerous to generalize the entire remaining population on the actions of perhaps a quarter of them. More importantly, though, I started really thinking to myself about the answer to one question:
What if it were me?
What if it were you, Christopher, who was facing dehyrdration and hunger, who had been forced to sleep near backed up sewers, who'd just lost your home and possibly family members or pets, who'd watched flood waters continue to rise, who was running out of dry land, who had sat for four days in 90 degrees and 90 percent humidity, and who was probably at least somewhat physically sick from exposure to all the toxic sludge in the water? What if it were you, Christopher, who had been watching people die (literally) in front of you for days, and who had been made to sleep near the corpse of your loved ones? Now it's you who is dehydrated, hungry, sick, and perhaps mentally impacted from the last few days -- either from sleeping next to corpses, or from post-traumatic stress disorder. How do you react, Chris?
I can pretty much assure you that if I were of sound mind, I wouldn't be firing a gun at anyone who wasn't threatening me or my family; I wouldn't be raping anyone, or stealing more than I needed to live. I have to think I'd pretty much draw the line at making sure I had food at water. But that's if I were of sound mind. If I'd been through everything that the people in New Orleans have been since Monday, I don't know what kind of mind I'd be in... both mental illness and physically illness might be ravaging my system and impacting my judgement. Would I behave as savagely as what we've seen in New Orleans? I sure hope not. But I don't know for sure. I suspect that if you are really honest with yourself, you don't know for sure how you'd react either.
In the meantime, whichever side of the argument you fall, please don't forget that there are all kinds of people who are not looting or firing on rescuers... and they need our help. Please do what you can.
Posted by Christopher at 11:47 PM | Comments (3)August 30, 2005
Come Hell And High Water
I'm sure I'm not the only one using that post title, but it's the only one that fits.
I am simply speechless at what's happened in New Orleans. Not to minimize the tragedies occuring in Mississippi and Alabama -- they're horrible in their own right and the loss of life and property is devastating... but to see New Orleans, one of America's most historic and defining cities -- a major city of 500,000 people and a metropolitan area of more than a million -- effectively erased from the map... it's beyond anything I have words for. This is a catastrophic event the likes of which our nation has never seen -- a disaster of biblical proportion.
1,000,000 people homeless. A city rendered uninhabitable for weeks at the minimum, potentially months or even years. 80% of the city under up to 20 feet of water. Literally every single soul in the city being evacuated. New Orleans is a ghost town that's not on a Hollywood set -- it's real. Only this time, it is reality that is beyond our imagination.
If you haven't already, please donate to the Red Cross to assist our fellow Americans who need our help. The phone number is 1-800-435-7669. If you're not comfortable giving to the Red Cross, here are some other charities that are helping. Here's a challenge to everyone out there... we'll start small, and see where we can go from there.
I'll donate $50 tonight -- not even close to enough, but it's a start. I'm asking everyone who's reading this to match that donation. Or if that's a bit much for you, give what you can afford. There's not that many of us -- I lost much of my audience when I took my break this spring -- but if even 20 of us give $50, we can say we raised $1000 for Hurricane Katrina relief. If you want to remain anonymous, feel free... but if you care to leave a comment that you're answering this challenge, I'll keep a running tally of what we raise. People need our help. Let's do our best for them.
August 06, 2005
Hiroshima: 60 years on
Sixty years ago today, the United States dropped the world's second atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan (the first having been exploded in the New Mexico desert near Alamagordo). Approximately 115,000 people were killed instantly, and tens of thousands more died in the bomb's aftermath.
I don't hold the same views regarding Hiroshima as many of the leftward bloggers I've read in the last few days. Of course the incident is a grim and tragic reminder of the horrors of war; of the dangers we face in a world pervaded by nuclear weapons; of man's inhumanity to man. All of that's true. But I think it's either naive or unfair to try and look at a sixty year old incident through the moral prism of an age several generations beyond. It's not historically dishonest, but it's not completely kosher, either.
The facts of the case were these: the US and Japan were at war -- a war started by Japan with a sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. The entire world was at war, and it was one of the few times in history when those claiming that democracy and freedom themselves were at stake were not guilty of hyperbole. The Japanese people had been trained to resist to the last person. Ending the war without the bomb meant an invasion of Japan that might have cost one million American lives and many millions of Japanese lives.
Do those facts justify what happened at Hiroshima? Perhaps; perhaps not. I don't know. All I know is that for me to look upon those events from the perspective of a 2005 world view and trying to cast a moral judgement on it would be disingenuous. I wasn't there. I didn't sit in the White House having to choose between a horrific new instrument of war that would kill hundreds of thousands in mere seconds, and an invasion that would cost potentially 8 million lives before it was over and would scar and weaken the entire world for years to come. Had I been the one in the chair making that call, I would not have had a 40 year Cold War, a Cuban Missile Crisis in which the world narrowly averted annhialation, or the fear of terrorists using nuclear tactics on innocent civillians to reflect upon and use as the prism through which I considered that decision. All is not fair in love and war; there are rules. But to look back on that moment as a black mark on our conduct, for violating rules that had not yet been written? I'm not sure I can go that far.
Those on the US left who would call it a "war crime" seem unfortunately silent about the Bataan Death March, the commission of atrocities against the Chinese in Manchuria, or the ruthlessness and cruelty of Japanese POW camps. Those on the US right who would defend the decision as wholly justifiable under the conditions of war seem willfully ignorant of the images and films of the tremendous human suffering caused by the detonation of the bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Whatever the ultimate judgement that history and the Almighty may pass on the moment, only one thing remains incontrovertible: sixty years ago today, 115,000 people died, and the world forever became a much more frightening place. It's a sad and somber anniversary no matter which prism you look through.
Posted by Christopher at 11:27 AM | Comments (1)July 07, 2005
Calling London
Today, we're all Britons. Our hearts and thoughts go out to our friends in London.
Posted by Christopher at 10:21 PM | Comments (2)
