It's getting hot here in Austin, and every once in a while I find myself longing for the mountains. The southern Rockies. Kay and I used to spend a lot of time in the mountains in New Mexico and Colorado.
Somewhere in the Black Range, in the northeastern part of the Gila wilderness, is the most beautiful spot I have ever been privileged to see, or perhaps ever will see. I will probably never find it again--not that I will look for it, I am not that foolish--a meadow covered with flowers up in the mountains, with hummingbirds all around, big Ponderosa pines upslope a little, and a view for miles the other way. I know roughly where it is, but I'd have to get there at exactly the right moment again, if I were ever to try to go back, which, as I said, I won't. It's better to find new places, and remember old ones the way they were.
I have no notes to reinforce, or falsify, that memory, but I just found some from 9 years ago in the Gila. Kay and Eve and I were spending the night at the Lower Scorpion campground near the touristy cliff dwellings. We were going to walk up to the cliff dwellings in the morning.
The campground was pretty empty because of fire danger. We shared the place with a big fella with a Minnesota Swede accent, who had a very modulated but resonant voice explaining with Scandinavian matter-of-factness the putting up of tents and other mysteries to his little daughter, who was maybe 4 or 5. Later he sang the doe, a deer, a female deer, re, etc. song to his daughter in a very good show-business voice. He sounded so much like Garrison Keiler I had to look twice to be sure it wasn't. It wasn't. He knew all the words, and the words to several other songs, children's songs, which he sang to the campground. His wife was small and quiet. They were enjoying their stay.
Two women who had been hiking all day came back, tired, heaving enormous backpacks onto their picnic table. One of them, after searching unsuccessfully for something in the back of their red pickup camper, leaned on the truck and put her head on her hands on the top of the tailgate. Cried.
A woman with red hair driving a big RV came in and asked in a distraught way if there was a phone at the ranger station. She had a German guy with her, who spoke no voluntary English. They did not smile and each got out of the car and went to a table and wrote in a journal, only occasionally speaking to each other.
Little moment of sharing the campground.
Towhees rummaged under the picnic tables. Stellars jays and towhees own the place. A raven flapped downriver until he found a thermal, then soared like a vulture, making a wooden croak noise like a pull-toy I had when I was a little boy, where the wheels drove a hammer that beat rapidly on the central dogshape plank soundboard of the toy when you pulled it.
Cicadas--one kind made an electric rising-falling buzz, one cycle per second. Another kind made a steady buzz/chirr that lasted about ten seconds, then trailed off.
Hollow whiff of another raven flapping close overhead, a noise like blowing across a bottle hoarsely, though more sibilant--the snick of a long knife separating the wind.
The wind in the pine needles would approach through the ponderosas, like a distant avalanche. Throaty whisper.
A fast white wingflash of a merganser, whiffling like a tumbling artillery round to a landing in the stream beyond some trees.
Eve and I walked up pretty close to 8 deer--they seemed contemptuous of our sneaking, when they finally looked up at us.
The rocks were from blackish purple (weathered, lichened) to pinkish white. Olive colored juniper. Ponderosas had red platy bark, sometimes blackish toward the bottom. In the distance, the dry leaves of the pines looked light smoky green. Oaks with black liveoak bark, striated with elongate diamond plates. They had light gray-green leaves, soft looking, not oakish looking at all.
Horehound, coyote gourd, white thistle poppy, sagey gray plant along river and road. Datura in flower near on cliffs.
Glowing cumulus in the evening.
Later.
White moth in the full moon light.
Next morning we walked up to the cliff dwellings. We were the first ones in. The gravel floors were neatly raked. The ranger came along and examined our footprints in a raked area. Asked us if we made all of them. Yes. He said he raked it because sometimes people came in after hours. "What do you do if you find tracks, examine the campers' feet?" Kay asked. He said "well, its an idea." Kay laughed, but it was not clear if he intended to be funny. He took his summer job pretty seriously.
We walked up to the hot springs on the west fork. A sign said the water contained organisms that might be harmful to your health, and not to get the water in your nose. We splashed around, probably got some up our noses.
Later I read more about the harmful organism, an amoeba that is usually fatal. Fortunately, it is very rare.
Slept cold again that night.
We went on to a more remote camping spot, but I don't have any notes for that. All I remember is seeing a giant bullfrog in a beaver pond, and realizing that the the silhouette he presented looked exactly like depictions I had seen of the God Tlaloc. A rain god.
Thursday, June 30, 2005
Wednesday, June 29, 2005
Rummie enjoying the war
For your edification and viewing pleasure, here is a picture of Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld in Iraq, riding around in a more or less impregnable rolling fortress called a "rhino runner" (available for the use of visiting VIPs and unavailable to our troops) which is designed to withstand heavy caliber machine gun fire, overhead airbursts and explosive devices up to 1,000 pounds.
Rummie has his war shoes on.
Rummie has his war shoes on.
Herons and other outdoor creatures
Here are several photos from my birdwalk on Onion Creek yesterday. With a certain amount of skulking, I got close to a snowy egret and a green heron.
Snowy Egret, hunting
It makes its move
Comes up empy, but dripping
This green heron did not want its picture taken, so it skulked away from me as fast as I skulked toward it.
Here is the same green heron, neck extended. Hardly seems like the same guy.
The rest of my birdwalk was enjoyable, but hot, and most birds were quiet and silent in the summer heat. As I walked back to my car, I passed a lady who had a very small scruffy mongrel dog with her which looked like a toilet brush with teeth, which decided as I passed to protect its mistress from whatever danger I represented, and which hurtled out growling and snarling fiercely till it hit the end of the leash and snapped back a couple of feet, at which point it continued with a slightly choked off version of the snarling and growling as it strugged at the end of the leash, saying, (translated loosely from dog language, as best I understand it) "kill, kill!"
Meanwhile the woman was saying, in a soothing and cooing voice, "Fluffy, be nice! _Fluffy_! Be _nice_!"
Fluffy was having no part of nice, and continued to scrabble as it was dragged away on the leash, strangling itself to get at me as we went our separate ways.
Snowy Egret, hunting
It makes its move
Comes up empy, but dripping
This green heron did not want its picture taken, so it skulked away from me as fast as I skulked toward it.
Here is the same green heron, neck extended. Hardly seems like the same guy.
The rest of my birdwalk was enjoyable, but hot, and most birds were quiet and silent in the summer heat. As I walked back to my car, I passed a lady who had a very small scruffy mongrel dog with her which looked like a toilet brush with teeth, which decided as I passed to protect its mistress from whatever danger I represented, and which hurtled out growling and snarling fiercely till it hit the end of the leash and snapped back a couple of feet, at which point it continued with a slightly choked off version of the snarling and growling as it strugged at the end of the leash, saying, (translated loosely from dog language, as best I understand it) "kill, kill!"
Meanwhile the woman was saying, in a soothing and cooing voice, "Fluffy, be nice! _Fluffy_! Be _nice_!"
Fluffy was having no part of nice, and continued to scrabble as it was dragged away on the leash, strangling itself to get at me as we went our separate ways.
Tuesday, June 28, 2005
Small but cumulative ways our press misleads
This morning I was reading an AP story about illegal immigrants "pouring into" the community of Sarco, Texas, "worrying many of the 40 residents and prompting some to join up with the controversial civilian border patrol group known as the Minuteman Project."
Now there is a real story here and a bogus one, or more accurately, a real story hidden deep within the bogus premises of the story.
OK, so we have AP reporter Abe Levy traveling to Sarco to get the real, on the ground skinny on the flood tide of mojados sweeping this beleagered community away. And, in passing, a little bit about the plans and a little example of the successful PR, of the Minutemen. Which is the real story.
But back to the bogus part. Levy places himself and his story in a community which is almost impossible to find, which last had a post office in 1923. The claim of "40 residents" is based on the 1990 census, and given the age profile of those 40 it's doubtful if half are alive today. It is down a tiny spur road, which may or may not be paved, off of a farm-to-market road running between Nowhere and Nowhere Else, Texas. It is not on the way to anywhere at all.
Levy, however, alleges that "the county also offers distance from border checkpoints, overworked law enforcement and easy access to jobs in San Antonio, Victoria, Corpus Christi or Houston." Technically, this is true. He has quietly switched from talking about Sarco, which is far from any major highways, to talking about Goliad County, (which Sarco is barely within). A main highway from the border to Houston does go through Goliad County.
But nowhere near our beleagered community of 40 counting some folks in the graveyard.
But let's go on. Where is the evidence of beleagerment?
"You used to be able to walk down the road for exercise or a child could ride a bike," said Sarco landowner Bill Parmley. "Now it's just like the Indianapolis 500."
Mr. Parmley has been out in the woods too long, I have to say. Or watching too much Fox News, more likely.
Here is more evidence:
Sooo... it seems the evidence, which I certainly have to say is not very impressive to start with, is all directly or indirectly from the mouth of someone who is a local Minuteman supporter.
Plus they asked for bread and Buelter's anonymous housewife, no doubt a Republican, gave them a stone. Called the Migra on 'em. I'd say that's certainly not news, in today's America.
But now we come to the real news in this so-called news story.
Evidently they are setting up shop here in Texas, in Goliad County--but not in Sarco of course--and currying favor with the locals by spreading rumors of a tide of illegal aliens. The choice of Goliad makes sense in that it has some historical importance for Texas racists as the scene of an 1836 massacre of Texans by the Mexican Army, plus the town of Goliad itself is big enough to rent office space and set up a fax machine. In an electronic age, you can send your email alerts from anywhere. Well, almost anywhere. I am not sure about Sarco.
And, given the completely uncalled-for existence of this so-called news story, we have positive proof of the success of their efforts. Mr. Levy actually traveled from wherever he lives to interview people in Sarco, Texas. How did that happen? Did he just drive down that road and knock on a door and hit news paydirt?
No. I'd guess he was working from a press release.
Now there is a real story here and a bogus one, or more accurately, a real story hidden deep within the bogus premises of the story.
OK, so we have AP reporter Abe Levy traveling to Sarco to get the real, on the ground skinny on the flood tide of mojados sweeping this beleagered community away. And, in passing, a little bit about the plans and a little example of the successful PR, of the Minutemen. Which is the real story.
But back to the bogus part. Levy places himself and his story in a community which is almost impossible to find, which last had a post office in 1923. The claim of "40 residents" is based on the 1990 census, and given the age profile of those 40 it's doubtful if half are alive today. It is down a tiny spur road, which may or may not be paved, off of a farm-to-market road running between Nowhere and Nowhere Else, Texas. It is not on the way to anywhere at all.
Levy, however, alleges that "the county also offers distance from border checkpoints, overworked law enforcement and easy access to jobs in San Antonio, Victoria, Corpus Christi or Houston." Technically, this is true. He has quietly switched from talking about Sarco, which is far from any major highways, to talking about Goliad County, (which Sarco is barely within). A main highway from the border to Houston does go through Goliad County.
But nowhere near our beleagered community of 40 counting some folks in the graveyard.
But let's go on. Where is the evidence of beleagerment?
"You used to be able to walk down the road for exercise or a child could ride a bike," said Sarco landowner Bill Parmley. "Now it's just like the Indianapolis 500."
Mr. Parmley has been out in the woods too long, I have to say. Or watching too much Fox News, more likely.
Here is more evidence:
A woman and her grandson spotted several men believed to be immigrants bathing in a creek, said Sarco resident Kenneth Buelter, a supporter of the Minutemen.
Another resident answered a knock on her door to find two men looking tired from long travels and requesting food and water. She called authorities and they were arrested, Buelter said.
Tire tracks are still visible in a right of way near Buelter's house, he said, from a truck speeding and believed to be carrying about 15 illegal immigrants.
Sooo... it seems the evidence, which I certainly have to say is not very impressive to start with, is all directly or indirectly from the mouth of someone who is a local Minuteman supporter.
Plus they asked for bread and Buelter's anonymous housewife, no doubt a Republican, gave them a stone. Called the Migra on 'em. I'd say that's certainly not news, in today's America.
But now we come to the real news in this so-called news story.
Goliad County has become an unofficial Texas headquarters for the Minuteman Project. Some residents welcome the volunteers. But their recent visit to set up chapter groups has also revived racial tensions in an area where Mexican forces famously killed Texas revolutionaries nearly 170 years ago.
Evidently they are setting up shop here in Texas, in Goliad County--but not in Sarco of course--and currying favor with the locals by spreading rumors of a tide of illegal aliens. The choice of Goliad makes sense in that it has some historical importance for Texas racists as the scene of an 1836 massacre of Texans by the Mexican Army, plus the town of Goliad itself is big enough to rent office space and set up a fax machine. In an electronic age, you can send your email alerts from anywhere. Well, almost anywhere. I am not sure about Sarco.
And, given the completely uncalled-for existence of this so-called news story, we have positive proof of the success of their efforts. Mr. Levy actually traveled from wherever he lives to interview people in Sarco, Texas. How did that happen? Did he just drive down that road and knock on a door and hit news paydirt?
No. I'd guess he was working from a press release.
Monday, June 27, 2005
Burning prose and the price of oil
Jim Kunstler is my favorite doom-sayer. He is now happy as a clam with the price of oil approaching $60. His latest rant is here.
He is one of the left-wing equivalents (he has a blog, unlike his counterparts) of the survivalists who used to stop shaving and take their families to Utah or Montana to hole up at the end of an illegal road in a national forest with a garden, some chickens, a couple of pigs, and a lot of guns. The trajectory of the right wing survivalists was that they would (very few, actually, and not recently) either get killed off by the FBI in armed stand-offs, or (much more often) starve out and go home, especially after the wife gets fed up with home-schooling 4 kids (or not schooling them at all) with no money and takes the kids back to her parents' house in Kansas City, or else they would grow old and even more strange back in the woods. Some are still out there, solitary and unfriendly.
Anyway, Kunstler is a terrific dystopian writer, who mixes blog-style invective with a vision of a world collapsing in disorder because of--peak oil.
Peak oil?
With Kunstler we have an underlying vision reminiscent of the one the survivalists used to have, of roving bandits and machine-gun fortified gardens, but an altogether different mechanism for its arrival. One that nobody understands. The price of oil. But he makes a good case for it.
But he has a different vision of a future world--self-sustaining, communal farming villages--to take the place of the present one, than the survivalist guys going crazy in the woods have.
Anyway, I think Kunstler and the other people talking about peak oil are probably right that it is either here, now, or very close.
Kunstler, though, thinks that our civilization is kind of--delicate, and that, at some point, due to energy scarcity, some critical part will fail, and it will all come crashing down. I suppose I'm inherently more optimistic.
My worry is very different from Kunstler's. He believes what we call civilization will simply collapse soon. (Actually, I am creating a straw-Kunstler--here and there in his message you hear an occasional outburst of the preacher shouting "fools, you still have time--change your ways now, and you will be saved!")
My fear about the economic emergency he foresees is not that it will lead to chaos and collapse--I think we are resourceful enough for that not to happen, or at least to deal with it when it does-- but that it will be used by Republicans the same way that a terror attack has been used, to inflame people's emotions toward the end of creating a new kind of America, one ideologically narrower and uglier, more unequal and unjust.
Bush has proved to be an expert at using catastrophe to further bad causes.
But maybe people are beginning to see what Bush is up to. The latest poll I read, over the weekend, showed that both democrats and independents had exactly the same view about Bush. Three fourths of them think he is doing a bad job. Not unexpectedly, 84% of Republicans think he is doing a good job. We have two Americas here, but those who think Bush is going in the right direction are a distinct minority.
He is one of the left-wing equivalents (he has a blog, unlike his counterparts) of the survivalists who used to stop shaving and take their families to Utah or Montana to hole up at the end of an illegal road in a national forest with a garden, some chickens, a couple of pigs, and a lot of guns. The trajectory of the right wing survivalists was that they would (very few, actually, and not recently) either get killed off by the FBI in armed stand-offs, or (much more often) starve out and go home, especially after the wife gets fed up with home-schooling 4 kids (or not schooling them at all) with no money and takes the kids back to her parents' house in Kansas City, or else they would grow old and even more strange back in the woods. Some are still out there, solitary and unfriendly.
Anyway, Kunstler is a terrific dystopian writer, who mixes blog-style invective with a vision of a world collapsing in disorder because of--peak oil.
Peak oil?
With Kunstler we have an underlying vision reminiscent of the one the survivalists used to have, of roving bandits and machine-gun fortified gardens, but an altogether different mechanism for its arrival. One that nobody understands. The price of oil. But he makes a good case for it.
But he has a different vision of a future world--self-sustaining, communal farming villages--to take the place of the present one, than the survivalist guys going crazy in the woods have.
Anyway, I think Kunstler and the other people talking about peak oil are probably right that it is either here, now, or very close.
Kunstler, though, thinks that our civilization is kind of--delicate, and that, at some point, due to energy scarcity, some critical part will fail, and it will all come crashing down. I suppose I'm inherently more optimistic.
My worry is very different from Kunstler's. He believes what we call civilization will simply collapse soon. (Actually, I am creating a straw-Kunstler--here and there in his message you hear an occasional outburst of the preacher shouting "fools, you still have time--change your ways now, and you will be saved!")
My fear about the economic emergency he foresees is not that it will lead to chaos and collapse--I think we are resourceful enough for that not to happen, or at least to deal with it when it does-- but that it will be used by Republicans the same way that a terror attack has been used, to inflame people's emotions toward the end of creating a new kind of America, one ideologically narrower and uglier, more unequal and unjust.
Bush has proved to be an expert at using catastrophe to further bad causes.
But maybe people are beginning to see what Bush is up to. The latest poll I read, over the weekend, showed that both democrats and independents had exactly the same view about Bush. Three fourths of them think he is doing a bad job. Not unexpectedly, 84% of Republicans think he is doing a good job. We have two Americas here, but those who think Bush is going in the right direction are a distinct minority.
Sunday, June 26, 2005
Modern dangers
Today's Austin American Statesman has a local story about Evelyn Davison, a Christian talk show host, who is suing her neighbor because she fell into the neighbor's garbage can.
The garbage can had been emptied, and dumped by the garbage truck crew so that it blocked Davison's driveway. Davison tried to move it and fell in, and had to be rescued by passers-by. Her hand got injured, and later infected, such that bones eventually had to be removed from two fingers and replaced with implants.
Davison's show is called "Love talk," and she also publishes the "Good News Journal," described in the Statesman as a patriotic and inspirational journal, distributed at local Walmarts.
The lawsuit is joined by Davison's husband, who wants damages for "loss of household services," not to mention "loss of spousal consortium," which the newspaper helpfully glossed as loss of sexual relations.
Wow. Bad injury.
Now I am actually not criticizing the Davisons' lawsuit, nor making light of their Christianity. The injury turned out to be serious, and cost them upwards of $100,000 in medical bills. I assume this is simply what has to be done in America to get medical treatment without becoming destitute. The neighbor has insurance, and apparently has no ill-will towards the Davisons.
I am simply taking this as a Sunday morning opportunity to share a human interest story revolving around my late wife Kay. Many years ago we lived in a shack next to Onion Creek here in Austin, and the shack, which was on high piers because of Onion Creek flooding, had a porch six feet above the ground. We had one of these giant roll-out-to-the-street garbage cans. But not giant enough.
It was Christmas, and Eve was about 10 years old and Anna was home, so there was lots to stuff to unwrap. Boxes. Wrapping paper. Once a week trash service. So, very soon, the receptacle is full and more bags need to be stuffed into it. Kay went out with a big sack of paper. Won't fit. Kay pushes mightily. Then it occurs to her that she can get up on the porch and jump down onto the top of the trash to compact it. No sooner had she thought this, than it was done. She was in the air.
She said events unfolded in slow motion after that, she was an observer along for the ride, but the laws of physics had taken over. The garbage can had wheels, of course. The sum of the forces operating on the can was such that the wheels rolled rapidly out from under Kay as she landed on the can with her full weight, her arms windmilling backwards, yodeling. I heard the cry, and the crash. I went outside and Kay was sprawled out on the ground and the trash can was five feet away from her feet and most its contents strewn between her and the can. I had no idea what could have happened--the scene made no visual sense.
She was OK--sort of. I helped her up and when she could talk she explained what happened.
She had landed on her tailbone, but fortunately the ground was soft, and she didn't break anything. But her tailbone was badly bruised, and she had back pain for a long time afterwards, and hobbled around several months.
She said she felt foolish the moment she left the porch, but--too late.
We had insurance. And besides, we had nobody to sue. Kay went to the doctor, and I think she tried a chiropractor when the physicians didn't help her back.
Eventually it healed itself.
I think I had loss of spousal consortium for about a week.
The garbage can had been emptied, and dumped by the garbage truck crew so that it blocked Davison's driveway. Davison tried to move it and fell in, and had to be rescued by passers-by. Her hand got injured, and later infected, such that bones eventually had to be removed from two fingers and replaced with implants.
Davison's show is called "Love talk," and she also publishes the "Good News Journal," described in the Statesman as a patriotic and inspirational journal, distributed at local Walmarts.
The lawsuit is joined by Davison's husband, who wants damages for "loss of household services," not to mention "loss of spousal consortium," which the newspaper helpfully glossed as loss of sexual relations.
Wow. Bad injury.
Now I am actually not criticizing the Davisons' lawsuit, nor making light of their Christianity. The injury turned out to be serious, and cost them upwards of $100,000 in medical bills. I assume this is simply what has to be done in America to get medical treatment without becoming destitute. The neighbor has insurance, and apparently has no ill-will towards the Davisons.
I am simply taking this as a Sunday morning opportunity to share a human interest story revolving around my late wife Kay. Many years ago we lived in a shack next to Onion Creek here in Austin, and the shack, which was on high piers because of Onion Creek flooding, had a porch six feet above the ground. We had one of these giant roll-out-to-the-street garbage cans. But not giant enough.
It was Christmas, and Eve was about 10 years old and Anna was home, so there was lots to stuff to unwrap. Boxes. Wrapping paper. Once a week trash service. So, very soon, the receptacle is full and more bags need to be stuffed into it. Kay went out with a big sack of paper. Won't fit. Kay pushes mightily. Then it occurs to her that she can get up on the porch and jump down onto the top of the trash to compact it. No sooner had she thought this, than it was done. She was in the air.
She said events unfolded in slow motion after that, she was an observer along for the ride, but the laws of physics had taken over. The garbage can had wheels, of course. The sum of the forces operating on the can was such that the wheels rolled rapidly out from under Kay as she landed on the can with her full weight, her arms windmilling backwards, yodeling. I heard the cry, and the crash. I went outside and Kay was sprawled out on the ground and the trash can was five feet away from her feet and most its contents strewn between her and the can. I had no idea what could have happened--the scene made no visual sense.
She was OK--sort of. I helped her up and when she could talk she explained what happened.
She had landed on her tailbone, but fortunately the ground was soft, and she didn't break anything. But her tailbone was badly bruised, and she had back pain for a long time afterwards, and hobbled around several months.
She said she felt foolish the moment she left the porch, but--too late.
We had insurance. And besides, we had nobody to sue. Kay went to the doctor, and I think she tried a chiropractor when the physicians didn't help her back.
Eventually it healed itself.
I think I had loss of spousal consortium for about a week.
Saturday, June 25, 2005
Another old friend gone: Chet Helms
Chet Helms died today in San Francisco. For a short while he shared a house in Austin with me and some other friends during his Young People's Socialist League phase. He was not a hippie at that time--there were no hippies, yet--he was one of the pioneers, in fact. He still tended to wear narrow-lapel suits bought for him when he was a Young Republican before his last spurt of growth, which thus made him appear taller and skinnier than he was, with his pants and sleeves too short. I have been trying to remember why he went to San Francisco in 1962, but I can't, though I am sure it was not to become a colorful, if not famous, hippie entrepreneur. I still can't really understand how that happened, since even in San Francisco in the sixties it would have been harder to find someone less suited for running a business.
But run a business he did. Chet and the Avalon ballroom, somehow represent the essence of the sixties to me.
A rumor got started a few years ago that he was dead, so Chet rented a hearse and got a coffin and was taken to a restaurant somewhere in San Francisco in the hearse where he had pallbearers ready, including Wavy Gravey. They opened the coffin. Chet had flowers and a cell phone on his chest. The phone rang and he got up and answered it and they had a party. I was not there but I am told this is true.
I hope it's this way again. But I am pretty sure it's for real this time.
Too bad he's gone. He was a good guy.
-----------------
Chet at home in San Francisco, summer 1967
But run a business he did. Chet and the Avalon ballroom, somehow represent the essence of the sixties to me.
A rumor got started a few years ago that he was dead, so Chet rented a hearse and got a coffin and was taken to a restaurant somewhere in San Francisco in the hearse where he had pallbearers ready, including Wavy Gravey. They opened the coffin. Chet had flowers and a cell phone on his chest. The phone rang and he got up and answered it and they had a party. I was not there but I am told this is true.
I hope it's this way again. But I am pretty sure it's for real this time.
Too bad he's gone. He was a good guy.
-----------------
Chet at home in San Francisco, summer 1967
Power corrupts
Power corrupts in little unexpected ways.
An Italian judge has signed warrants to arrest 13 CIA agents, all American citizens, for the kidnapping of Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr. Mr. Nasr was grabbed in Milan by the CIA, flown to Ramstein AFB in Germany, and then flown in the notorious torture Gulfstream to Egypt, where he was held and subjected to severe physical abuse. He was briefly released, but after he reported physical injuries in a phone call to his wife, he was disappeared again, and has not been heard from since.
This is a political embarrassment to the right wing government of Italy, which may very well have given unofficial permission for the CIA to do this.
There will probably be more fallout, as there certainly should be, but there was a small, telling item in the New York Times story that interested me. The CIA's kidnap crew operated pretty openly, and/or sloppily, and left an amazingly open trail of phone calls to CIA headquarters in Langley, hotel registrations, receipts, and the like.
They spent a lot of money. The CIA's torturers have a taste for luxury. Who would have thought? Specifically, in the week before the abduction, they spent $145,000 on hotel bills alone. Five star hotels. So $145,000 divided by 13, that's $11,154 per person for the week. Divided by seven, assuming seven nights--it may have been fewer--that's roughly $1,600 per night per agent.
Torture as paid for by the American taxpayer. After the abduction, according to the New York Times, "two of the officers took a few days' holiday at five-star hotels in Venice, Tuscany and South Tyrol," while the leader of the group apparently flew to Egypt to supervise the torture on-site.
The story mentions that some of the evidence was obtained from a villa in the Piedmont hills owned by one of the CIA agents. It is unclear whether this ownership was also financed by the American taxpayer.
I don't know why, but it was the high living that struck me as odd. But I guess it shouldn't. Torture corrupts. Power corrupts. Put them together, with an expense account and (by definition, with the CIA) total non-accountability, and you get--this.
One good thing, perhaps. The list of countries to which we outsource torture includes Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Pakistan, and Uzbekistan. The worst of these, Uzbekistan, where they like to boil people to encourage them to cooperate, has no 5-star hotels in the surrounding region. Hence, it is unlikely to be a popular destination for the abduction crew.
Or so I am guessing.
An Italian judge has signed warrants to arrest 13 CIA agents, all American citizens, for the kidnapping of Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr. Mr. Nasr was grabbed in Milan by the CIA, flown to Ramstein AFB in Germany, and then flown in the notorious torture Gulfstream to Egypt, where he was held and subjected to severe physical abuse. He was briefly released, but after he reported physical injuries in a phone call to his wife, he was disappeared again, and has not been heard from since.
This is a political embarrassment to the right wing government of Italy, which may very well have given unofficial permission for the CIA to do this.
There will probably be more fallout, as there certainly should be, but there was a small, telling item in the New York Times story that interested me. The CIA's kidnap crew operated pretty openly, and/or sloppily, and left an amazingly open trail of phone calls to CIA headquarters in Langley, hotel registrations, receipts, and the like.
They spent a lot of money. The CIA's torturers have a taste for luxury. Who would have thought? Specifically, in the week before the abduction, they spent $145,000 on hotel bills alone. Five star hotels. So $145,000 divided by 13, that's $11,154 per person for the week. Divided by seven, assuming seven nights--it may have been fewer--that's roughly $1,600 per night per agent.
Torture as paid for by the American taxpayer. After the abduction, according to the New York Times, "two of the officers took a few days' holiday at five-star hotels in Venice, Tuscany and South Tyrol," while the leader of the group apparently flew to Egypt to supervise the torture on-site.
The story mentions that some of the evidence was obtained from a villa in the Piedmont hills owned by one of the CIA agents. It is unclear whether this ownership was also financed by the American taxpayer.
I don't know why, but it was the high living that struck me as odd. But I guess it shouldn't. Torture corrupts. Power corrupts. Put them together, with an expense account and (by definition, with the CIA) total non-accountability, and you get--this.
One good thing, perhaps. The list of countries to which we outsource torture includes Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Pakistan, and Uzbekistan. The worst of these, Uzbekistan, where they like to boil people to encourage them to cooperate, has no 5-star hotels in the surrounding region. Hence, it is unlikely to be a popular destination for the abduction crew.
Or so I am guessing.
Friday, June 24, 2005
Daily life among the Aztecs, continued
I recently wrote about visiting a Walmart superstore. What gets bought and sold, and how it is bought and sold, tells us something about ourselves, or the ancient Nahuatl, or anyone.
Off and on I've been reading the Florentine Codex, a document commissioned by Bernardino de Sahagún soon after the conquest of Mexico. He learned to speak Nahautl and got native informants to tell him all about Aztec life. He translated it into Spanish, and the Nahuatl version has also--astonishingly--survived. In a way I trust his Spanish translation more than the modern English translation of the Nahuatl, because he was closer to his informants and could ask them questions to resolve uncertainties. But it's interesting to look at both.
I've already mentioned that the Aztecs have some things in common with us, like sacrificial mass death believed to be necessary for the world to prosper. But in other ways, they were a little different, and the differences are not necessarily all to Walmart's advantage.
Certainly the Aztecs give Walmart a run for their money in the diversity of stuff department.
What follows is another of Sahagun's lists (much abbreviated), this one the ordinary buying and selling aspect of everyday life. It fascinates me, and hopefully will not bore and drive away all my readers. It's based on the English translation of the Nahuatl, with occasional recourse to Sahagún's Spanish.
It's a list of people who sell things, with a little about what they sell. This list, unlike the previous one I put up, does not seem to be in any kind of meaningful order. A grab-bag of vendors. But we learn something about what the Aztecs cared about.
Each thing sold had its separate vendor. Obviously Walmart would have rendered the Aztec market obsolete pretty quick.
OK. First on the list is the seller of cotton capes, (presumably, blankets used as cloaks.) We get homespun advice along with the list. We should watch out for capes treated with maize flour, or with glue, evidently done to make them seem more substantial.
Next: cocoa bean vendors. The best cocoa beans are those sold separately, by region, from as far away as Guatemala. Watch out for seeds that look like cocoa beans, but aren't.
Corn merchants. The best maize is that which is sold separately, by color, kind, hardness, and region. Aztecs didn't like stuff all mixed together, at least not if intended to defraud buyers.
Bean merchants. The best beans were those all of the same color. Mixed beans, not so good.
Amaranth seed sales were separate from other grains. Oddly enough, although amaranths are chenopods, the Aztecs considered a seed from the Mexican prickly poppy to also be an amaranth. Prickly poppies are poisonous, but I don't know about the seeds.
ChÃa seed sellers.
Chili pepper vendors are described as selling "mild red chilis, broad chilis, hot green chilis, yellow chilis...smoked chilis, small chilis, tree chilis, thin chilis, and those like beetles." Plus many other kinds, listed by season and use, as well as appearance. Much like a Mexican market today.
Squash seed sellers.
Tortilla sellers. Now these folks are important, and they are given a good deal of space here. They sell not only the flat basic tortilla, but all manner of what we would call tamales and tacos, some made with meat, including rabbits, gophers, and tadpoles, some made with eggs, fruits and vegetables, some made with honey and flowers. Every shape, size, and flavor is described. I got kinda hungry--excluding the tadpole thing.
Castilian wheat bread sellers have a much shorter section, as befits a new and untested food.
More cape sellers, this time of agave fiber (highland Mexico was often cold. Cloaks were important). Then sandal makers. Sandals seem to in general have been made of woven plant fibers, with leather straps.
(Maguey fiber stuff today, much as in Sahagún's time. If you got cold enough, you might wear a cloak made of such material.)
Continuing:
Agave syrup sellers--I'd guess this is the maguey sap used to make pulque, a rural beer.
Cotton merchants. Basketmakers. Vendors of rabbit skins. Vendors of gourd bowls. Paper sellers, including maguey fiber paper and "Castilian" paper. Lime (the chemical) merchants.
Fruit and vegetable sellers. These important folks also sell tamales, obviously pre-prepared, made of the same fruits or vegetables for sale. Fast food for the Nahuatl. The fruit and veggie list is impressive, and includes some stuff the editors can't identify, and things we don't eat much now, like prickly pear cactus fruits.
Fish sellers. They sell shrimp, fish, oysters, turtles, big fish, little fish, eels, fish eggs, water worms, worm tamales, wormshit, and "worm flowers". It is unclear what worm excrement and worm flowers are, or even what the worm in question is. Also sold are tamales made of "water flies."
Meat sellers. The vendors are expected to personally either hunt or raise their products, which include turkey, venison, rabbit, hare, duck, crane, goose, mallard, quail, eagle, opossum, plus, by Sahagún's time, the Castilian animals. Watch out for meat vendors selling dog meat.
Wood sellers. Pottery sellers. Griddle makers. Salt vendors. Egg vendors. Obsidian vendors (with a reasonable description of the art of obsidian flaking). Medicinal herb sellers (huge list.) Reed mat sellers. Necklace sellers. Vendors of mirrors. Needles. Rubber. Brooms. Glue. Liquidambar, Tobacco pipes.
Vendors of tar, which was bitumen gathered from beaches, and smoked with tobacco, or chewed as chicle. Either way it could give you a headache. Chicle chewing was only for unmarried girls--grown women could chew chicle but if they did they were thought ill of. Men who chewed chicle were thought to be gay. Aztecs, like Americans, did not esteem homosexuals.
The "mountain chicle" vendor sold a plant substance that, unlike tar, did not give users headaches. Mountain chicle would be like chicle or chewing gum today.
Bag sellers. Sash sellers. Feather merchants, mentioned in my previous Sahagún post. Herb sellers, not medicinal, but from the descriptions, what we would consider salad greens. Atole vendors--atole would be a kind of cooked grits, but with more adventurous flavors than we would use in grits. Atole is still widely eaten in Mexico. "Fine chocolate" sellers, different from cocoa bean sellers. Chalk sellers. Saltpeter vendors.
Next in the list of vendors are what we might consider an oddity at Walmart, namely, procuresses. These women, who maintain their own establishments, are said here to be notorious for being verbally adroit at attracting guests. You are warned that they may rob you.
Next comes women who sell themselves, streetwalkers who "walk painted in the market place." They "walk back and forth along the road, circling constantly." Prostitutes are said to be proud and evil.
The Aztecs had a sex industry, like us, and disapproved of it, like us, more or less in proportion to the degree in which it flourished.
Last on this list is the tobacco merchant. Tobacco makes your head spin, aids digestion, and dispels fatigue.
--------
Florentine Codex drawing of a prostitute. There is a lot of symbolism going on here that the native artists did not explain to Sahagún, or put into the Nahuatl account.
Off and on I've been reading the Florentine Codex, a document commissioned by Bernardino de Sahagún soon after the conquest of Mexico. He learned to speak Nahautl and got native informants to tell him all about Aztec life. He translated it into Spanish, and the Nahuatl version has also--astonishingly--survived. In a way I trust his Spanish translation more than the modern English translation of the Nahuatl, because he was closer to his informants and could ask them questions to resolve uncertainties. But it's interesting to look at both.
I've already mentioned that the Aztecs have some things in common with us, like sacrificial mass death believed to be necessary for the world to prosper. But in other ways, they were a little different, and the differences are not necessarily all to Walmart's advantage.
Certainly the Aztecs give Walmart a run for their money in the diversity of stuff department.
What follows is another of Sahagun's lists (much abbreviated), this one the ordinary buying and selling aspect of everyday life. It fascinates me, and hopefully will not bore and drive away all my readers. It's based on the English translation of the Nahuatl, with occasional recourse to Sahagún's Spanish.
It's a list of people who sell things, with a little about what they sell. This list, unlike the previous one I put up, does not seem to be in any kind of meaningful order. A grab-bag of vendors. But we learn something about what the Aztecs cared about.
Each thing sold had its separate vendor. Obviously Walmart would have rendered the Aztec market obsolete pretty quick.
OK. First on the list is the seller of cotton capes, (presumably, blankets used as cloaks.) We get homespun advice along with the list. We should watch out for capes treated with maize flour, or with glue, evidently done to make them seem more substantial.
Next: cocoa bean vendors. The best cocoa beans are those sold separately, by region, from as far away as Guatemala. Watch out for seeds that look like cocoa beans, but aren't.
Corn merchants. The best maize is that which is sold separately, by color, kind, hardness, and region. Aztecs didn't like stuff all mixed together, at least not if intended to defraud buyers.
Bean merchants. The best beans were those all of the same color. Mixed beans, not so good.
Amaranth seed sales were separate from other grains. Oddly enough, although amaranths are chenopods, the Aztecs considered a seed from the Mexican prickly poppy to also be an amaranth. Prickly poppies are poisonous, but I don't know about the seeds.
ChÃa seed sellers.
Chili pepper vendors are described as selling "mild red chilis, broad chilis, hot green chilis, yellow chilis...smoked chilis, small chilis, tree chilis, thin chilis, and those like beetles." Plus many other kinds, listed by season and use, as well as appearance. Much like a Mexican market today.
Squash seed sellers.
Tortilla sellers. Now these folks are important, and they are given a good deal of space here. They sell not only the flat basic tortilla, but all manner of what we would call tamales and tacos, some made with meat, including rabbits, gophers, and tadpoles, some made with eggs, fruits and vegetables, some made with honey and flowers. Every shape, size, and flavor is described. I got kinda hungry--excluding the tadpole thing.
Castilian wheat bread sellers have a much shorter section, as befits a new and untested food.
More cape sellers, this time of agave fiber (highland Mexico was often cold. Cloaks were important). Then sandal makers. Sandals seem to in general have been made of woven plant fibers, with leather straps.
(Maguey fiber stuff today, much as in Sahagún's time. If you got cold enough, you might wear a cloak made of such material.)
Continuing:
Agave syrup sellers--I'd guess this is the maguey sap used to make pulque, a rural beer.
Cotton merchants. Basketmakers. Vendors of rabbit skins. Vendors of gourd bowls. Paper sellers, including maguey fiber paper and "Castilian" paper. Lime (the chemical) merchants.
Fruit and vegetable sellers. These important folks also sell tamales, obviously pre-prepared, made of the same fruits or vegetables for sale. Fast food for the Nahuatl. The fruit and veggie list is impressive, and includes some stuff the editors can't identify, and things we don't eat much now, like prickly pear cactus fruits.
Fish sellers. They sell shrimp, fish, oysters, turtles, big fish, little fish, eels, fish eggs, water worms, worm tamales, wormshit, and "worm flowers". It is unclear what worm excrement and worm flowers are, or even what the worm in question is. Also sold are tamales made of "water flies."
Meat sellers. The vendors are expected to personally either hunt or raise their products, which include turkey, venison, rabbit, hare, duck, crane, goose, mallard, quail, eagle, opossum, plus, by Sahagún's time, the Castilian animals. Watch out for meat vendors selling dog meat.
Wood sellers. Pottery sellers. Griddle makers. Salt vendors. Egg vendors. Obsidian vendors (with a reasonable description of the art of obsidian flaking). Medicinal herb sellers (huge list.) Reed mat sellers. Necklace sellers. Vendors of mirrors. Needles. Rubber. Brooms. Glue. Liquidambar, Tobacco pipes.
Vendors of tar, which was bitumen gathered from beaches, and smoked with tobacco, or chewed as chicle. Either way it could give you a headache. Chicle chewing was only for unmarried girls--grown women could chew chicle but if they did they were thought ill of. Men who chewed chicle were thought to be gay. Aztecs, like Americans, did not esteem homosexuals.
The "mountain chicle" vendor sold a plant substance that, unlike tar, did not give users headaches. Mountain chicle would be like chicle or chewing gum today.
Bag sellers. Sash sellers. Feather merchants, mentioned in my previous Sahagún post. Herb sellers, not medicinal, but from the descriptions, what we would consider salad greens. Atole vendors--atole would be a kind of cooked grits, but with more adventurous flavors than we would use in grits. Atole is still widely eaten in Mexico. "Fine chocolate" sellers, different from cocoa bean sellers. Chalk sellers. Saltpeter vendors.
Next in the list of vendors are what we might consider an oddity at Walmart, namely, procuresses. These women, who maintain their own establishments, are said here to be notorious for being verbally adroit at attracting guests. You are warned that they may rob you.
Next comes women who sell themselves, streetwalkers who "walk painted in the market place." They "walk back and forth along the road, circling constantly." Prostitutes are said to be proud and evil.
The Aztecs had a sex industry, like us, and disapproved of it, like us, more or less in proportion to the degree in which it flourished.
Last on this list is the tobacco merchant. Tobacco makes your head spin, aids digestion, and dispels fatigue.
--------
Florentine Codex drawing of a prostitute. There is a lot of symbolism going on here that the native artists did not explain to Sahagún, or put into the Nahuatl account.
Friday cat blogging: the daily lives of cats
Cat priorities. Our cats really focus on this
Grendel at his foodbowl
Likewise, his housemate Gray
Grendel at his foodbowl
Likewise, his housemate Gray
Jury comes to its senses
Every once in a while our system works. Sort of. If it really worked, June Brashares would never have been brought to trial for holding up a sign saying "Bush lied people died" during the Republican Convention. She was grabbed by two "floor whips" and physically and roughly hauled out, and then charged with assault.
The jury acquitted her after a two-day Manhattan trial yesterday.
One of the two men who carried her out claimed he received a cut from her high heeled shoes needing ten stitches to close.
Unfortunately for that claim, not only did all the witnesses agree Ms Brashares was barefoot (she had taken off her shoes to stand on a chair), but there was testimony that someone had gone back to get her shoes for her after she had been removed.
The prosecutor had compared her actions to someone disrupting a church service.
The jury didn't buy it.
Story is here.
The jury acquitted her after a two-day Manhattan trial yesterday.
One of the two men who carried her out claimed he received a cut from her high heeled shoes needing ten stitches to close.
Unfortunately for that claim, not only did all the witnesses agree Ms Brashares was barefoot (she had taken off her shoes to stand on a chair), but there was testimony that someone had gone back to get her shoes for her after she had been removed.
The prosecutor had compared her actions to someone disrupting a church service.
The jury didn't buy it.
Story is here.
Thursday, June 23, 2005
Why isn't the Downing Street Memo news?
I find myself reluctantly agreeing with Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist, when yesterday he said, with very reasonable asperity:
The media have either become part of the deceit apparatus, like Fox News, or they are too fearful to resist the new paradigm of what "news" is.
I am afraid it's true. News is now any fresh steaming pentagon lie, or the white house excreting a press release, or any fortuitous new forest fire of bigotry whose flames can be fanned--currently the anti-gay marriage nonsense, and anti-flag burning hysteria, but whatever new outburst of bigotry might break out, is grist for the Republican media's frenzy mill. Let's face it. We have now, for the most part, a Republican media in this country, or, at best, one neutered by Republicans. How could we fail to realize this, when "news" is Karl Rove burrowing out of the pile of corpses his master's policies have mounded up for us, to howl that democrats are unpatriotic.
"Unbiased" news would then be the act of splitting the difference between Karl Rove and the truth, between the lies and a mild protest against the lies, except that the media by and large are loath to even split the difference evenly, living as they do in fear that Karl Rove will point at them next.
As he will.
Thank God for the blogosphere. The left half of it. And the remaining independent voices in the media like Mr. Morford, who have not been bought or silenced.
...Of course Bush deserves to be impeached. But of course Bush will not be impeached, because impeachment requires a massive federal investigation and an act of Congress and the support of countless senators and representatives, and right now the GOP controls Congress with a little iron penis, and therefore any sort of uprising or scandal or suggestion of punishment gets immediately slammed down or scoffed away or buried under an avalanche of shrugs and yawns and neoconservative smugness. Isn't that right, Mr. Gannon? Mr. DeLay? Abu Ghraib? Gitmo? Saddam? Et al.
BushCo survived the illegal sanctioning of inhumane torture. They survived a gay male prostitute acting as a journalist. They survived Enron and Diebold and the rigging of the first election and they will survive Downing Street simply because all the people who should be on the attack about these atrocities all work for the guys who committed them.
The media have either become part of the deceit apparatus, like Fox News, or they are too fearful to resist the new paradigm of what "news" is.
I am afraid it's true. News is now any fresh steaming pentagon lie, or the white house excreting a press release, or any fortuitous new forest fire of bigotry whose flames can be fanned--currently the anti-gay marriage nonsense, and anti-flag burning hysteria, but whatever new outburst of bigotry might break out, is grist for the Republican media's frenzy mill. Let's face it. We have now, for the most part, a Republican media in this country, or, at best, one neutered by Republicans. How could we fail to realize this, when "news" is Karl Rove burrowing out of the pile of corpses his master's policies have mounded up for us, to howl that democrats are unpatriotic.
"Unbiased" news would then be the act of splitting the difference between Karl Rove and the truth, between the lies and a mild protest against the lies, except that the media by and large are loath to even split the difference evenly, living as they do in fear that Karl Rove will point at them next.
As he will.
Thank God for the blogosphere. The left half of it. And the remaining independent voices in the media like Mr. Morford, who have not been bought or silenced.
Wednesday, June 22, 2005
Susto
I was reading something recently about post-traumatic stress disorder in tsunami survivors. Evidently a lot of work is being done to deal with it, a very wise thing, I think.
I found myself thinking of a woman who probably suffered from this, and no one knew it. Nobody had heard of this disorder in 1970, as best I remember, although there was a growing consciousness that there was something bothering a lot of Vietnam veterans.
Moment Armistead was a smart, pretty and vivacious young woman, a student at the University of Texas who believed, as most of us did in those days, in Peace Corps style work abroad to help heal the ills of the world. I remember her as very idealistic, even for that idealistic time.
One day she came over to my girlfriend's house and was very excited.
"I've been accepted," she said "I'm going to Peru."
The program she had been accepted into, as best I can recall now, was a student exchange that had been going on for several years, whereby a batch of University of Texas students would spend a semester or two in Peru, and Peruvian students--mostly men in their late 20's, customarily obsessive womanizers and career leftists--would come to Austin. She was very happy.
"Hey, that's great," everybody said, "That's wonderful!"
She flew off to South America, with the others.
A year or so later, in 1971, I heard that she had become mentally ill during her stay, and had been sent back to the United States, and that she was now a resident of the state mental hospital in Austin.
Several months later I saw her, at a party. I think she still lived at the hospital had a pass to be out for the evening. She was looking wild and confused. Somebody asked her what had happened. She said she felt overwhelmed by the events she had seen. "Peru" she said, "is just such a terrible, terrible place..." She trailed off and didn't continue her sentence.
She had been there during the great earthquake in May of 1970. Sixty six thousand people died, many of them when a dam in a remote mountain valley failed, causing a huge flood that smashed down the valley through two towns, killing most of the people in its path. These towns were almost entirely wiped out. I can't remember all of her story now but I have the impression she joined in some kind of relief effort and saw the devastation at first hand. A couple of months later she almost took the same plane as a group of American high school students who were going to Cuzco. For some reason she decided not to go on that trip. The plane crashed and everyone but the co-pilot was killed. She was very disturbed by this. Somebody told me she felt guilty.
Sometime in her stay in South America, probably after these events, she experimented with ayahuasca, a violently hallucinogenic plant used by the Amazonian Indians. It is a very powerful drug used in religious ceremonies, and produces extraordinary visions. I have read that it is also used by healers called ayahuasqueros in the raw tin-roof shantytowns which had sprung up overnight like toadstools out of the heat and the mud as the jungle was cut down to extend cash-crop farming on the Amazon side of the Andes. I don't know how she got hold of the drug, or why she tried it, but it didn't heal her, and instead triggered psychosis, delirium and horror. There was no one to help her. And she did not return to normal. She continued having thoughts that made no sense to her, and visions and images came to her that terrified her.
When she was recounting this at the party she seemed very matter-of-fact, but extremely frightened, as if the story she was telling, and the audience, and the Austin back yard she was in, were all less real to her than the fright that suffused her body, and made her tremble, that you could see in her eyes. She spoke to us from a great distance, across this great interval of fear.
In much of Latin America there is a folk illness, whose symptoms of course are entirely real, called susto, which means fright. It is caused by the soul somehow getting detached from the body.
A few months later she jumped off the tower building at the University of Texas in Austin. It was the same building where a few years before, a former eagle scout named Charlie Whitman had succumbed to the desire to perform the electric scenario that probably came to him from a small tumor deep in his brain, to kill people by shooting down from a high place.
She took off her shoes and lined them up carefully on the balustrade before she stepped out into the empty morning air just as thousands of students disappeared into their classrooms, at 10 o'clock. Three seconds later she arrived, in a sudden impact of shocked flesh, on a concrete patio.
Only one person saw her fall.
I have this memory of her face, when she was excited about her trip. And I have this memory of a newspaper photograph of those shoes, neatly lined up.
And I wonder, if people had known what was the matter with her, could they have helped her? Of course, knowing what post-traumatic stress disorder is, doesn’t necessarily enable you to fix it, get the soul re-attached to the body.
I found myself thinking of a woman who probably suffered from this, and no one knew it. Nobody had heard of this disorder in 1970, as best I remember, although there was a growing consciousness that there was something bothering a lot of Vietnam veterans.
Moment Armistead was a smart, pretty and vivacious young woman, a student at the University of Texas who believed, as most of us did in those days, in Peace Corps style work abroad to help heal the ills of the world. I remember her as very idealistic, even for that idealistic time.
One day she came over to my girlfriend's house and was very excited.
"I've been accepted," she said "I'm going to Peru."
The program she had been accepted into, as best I can recall now, was a student exchange that had been going on for several years, whereby a batch of University of Texas students would spend a semester or two in Peru, and Peruvian students--mostly men in their late 20's, customarily obsessive womanizers and career leftists--would come to Austin. She was very happy.
"Hey, that's great," everybody said, "That's wonderful!"
She flew off to South America, with the others.
A year or so later, in 1971, I heard that she had become mentally ill during her stay, and had been sent back to the United States, and that she was now a resident of the state mental hospital in Austin.
Several months later I saw her, at a party. I think she still lived at the hospital had a pass to be out for the evening. She was looking wild and confused. Somebody asked her what had happened. She said she felt overwhelmed by the events she had seen. "Peru" she said, "is just such a terrible, terrible place..." She trailed off and didn't continue her sentence.
She had been there during the great earthquake in May of 1970. Sixty six thousand people died, many of them when a dam in a remote mountain valley failed, causing a huge flood that smashed down the valley through two towns, killing most of the people in its path. These towns were almost entirely wiped out. I can't remember all of her story now but I have the impression she joined in some kind of relief effort and saw the devastation at first hand. A couple of months later she almost took the same plane as a group of American high school students who were going to Cuzco. For some reason she decided not to go on that trip. The plane crashed and everyone but the co-pilot was killed. She was very disturbed by this. Somebody told me she felt guilty.
Sometime in her stay in South America, probably after these events, she experimented with ayahuasca, a violently hallucinogenic plant used by the Amazonian Indians. It is a very powerful drug used in religious ceremonies, and produces extraordinary visions. I have read that it is also used by healers called ayahuasqueros in the raw tin-roof shantytowns which had sprung up overnight like toadstools out of the heat and the mud as the jungle was cut down to extend cash-crop farming on the Amazon side of the Andes. I don't know how she got hold of the drug, or why she tried it, but it didn't heal her, and instead triggered psychosis, delirium and horror. There was no one to help her. And she did not return to normal. She continued having thoughts that made no sense to her, and visions and images came to her that terrified her.
When she was recounting this at the party she seemed very matter-of-fact, but extremely frightened, as if the story she was telling, and the audience, and the Austin back yard she was in, were all less real to her than the fright that suffused her body, and made her tremble, that you could see in her eyes. She spoke to us from a great distance, across this great interval of fear.
In much of Latin America there is a folk illness, whose symptoms of course are entirely real, called susto, which means fright. It is caused by the soul somehow getting detached from the body.
A few months later she jumped off the tower building at the University of Texas in Austin. It was the same building where a few years before, a former eagle scout named Charlie Whitman had succumbed to the desire to perform the electric scenario that probably came to him from a small tumor deep in his brain, to kill people by shooting down from a high place.
She took off her shoes and lined them up carefully on the balustrade before she stepped out into the empty morning air just as thousands of students disappeared into their classrooms, at 10 o'clock. Three seconds later she arrived, in a sudden impact of shocked flesh, on a concrete patio.
Only one person saw her fall.
I have this memory of her face, when she was excited about her trip. And I have this memory of a newspaper photograph of those shoes, neatly lined up.
And I wonder, if people had known what was the matter with her, could they have helped her? Of course, knowing what post-traumatic stress disorder is, doesn’t necessarily enable you to fix it, get the soul re-attached to the body.
Tuesday, June 21, 2005
Loose lips sink ships, or, the gulag word, revisited
Evidently while I was on vacation, Dick Durbin said Gulag in public.
Now, the Republican argument against saying gulag out loud, as I understand it, is that our gulags have fewer people in them than Stalin's, and the torture is more benevolent--after all, it is well known that we outsource the most severe torture.
I'm not sure either Republican view withstands scrutiny.
The "our torture is benign" gambit is very suspect, given that a number of our torture victims (or should we call them "clients"?) are known to have died while being benignly interrogated. Happenstance, no doubt. It was just their time, probably. But, unfortunately for the Republican cause, the coincidence of torture with death in several cases is hard to prove to be mere chance.
With regard to numbers, I am not sure the number of people disappeared into prison camps is what makes a gulag into a gulag, but rather the fact that the disappearances are extra-legal, and that if there is any legal recourse at all for the people taken away in the night, the legal recourse is a kangaroo court. A show trial.
But we have to be fair. So far, at least, we have put fewer people into our prison camps than Stalin put into his, though, again, in fairness, the Bush Administration seems very averse to giving us a head count--almost as averse to giving us hard numbers as to giving the imprisoned a genuine and fair trial.
But I will take it as a common sense given, that, as of now, our gulags house far fewer disappeared individuals than Stalin's did. Indeed I doubt if Dick Durbin claimed otherwise.
But even so, this gulag business is an issue that doesn't seem to want to go away.
If Rush Limbaugh's policy recommendation had been followed, that what happens in our gulags should stay in our gulags, none of this ugly problem would have arisen.
Now, the Republican argument against saying gulag out loud, as I understand it, is that our gulags have fewer people in them than Stalin's, and the torture is more benevolent--after all, it is well known that we outsource the most severe torture.
I'm not sure either Republican view withstands scrutiny.
The "our torture is benign" gambit is very suspect, given that a number of our torture victims (or should we call them "clients"?) are known to have died while being benignly interrogated. Happenstance, no doubt. It was just their time, probably. But, unfortunately for the Republican cause, the coincidence of torture with death in several cases is hard to prove to be mere chance.
With regard to numbers, I am not sure the number of people disappeared into prison camps is what makes a gulag into a gulag, but rather the fact that the disappearances are extra-legal, and that if there is any legal recourse at all for the people taken away in the night, the legal recourse is a kangaroo court. A show trial.
But we have to be fair. So far, at least, we have put fewer people into our prison camps than Stalin put into his, though, again, in fairness, the Bush Administration seems very averse to giving us a head count--almost as averse to giving us hard numbers as to giving the imprisoned a genuine and fair trial.
But I will take it as a common sense given, that, as of now, our gulags house far fewer disappeared individuals than Stalin's did. Indeed I doubt if Dick Durbin claimed otherwise.
But even so, this gulag business is an issue that doesn't seem to want to go away.
If Rush Limbaugh's policy recommendation had been followed, that what happens in our gulags should stay in our gulags, none of this ugly problem would have arisen.
Fine-tuning the truth, Republican style
The LA Times yesterday reported on another instance of the Bush Administration's belief that whatever they say three times is true.
According to the story by Julie Cart, "The Bush administration altered critical portions of a scientific analysis of the environmental impact of cattle grazing on public lands before announcing Thursday that it would relax regulations limiting grazing on those lands, according to scientists involved in the study."
The document written by the scientists said that the proposed relaxing of grazing rules would have a "significant adverse impact" on wildlife. The final document, as edited by Republican apparatchiks, expunged the previous wording and replaced it with the claim that the new regulations would be "beneficial to animals."
The following fairly straightforward conclusion was, equally straightforwardly, removed from the final draft. "The Proposed Action will have a slow, long-term adverse impact on wildlife and biological diversity in general."
Eric Campbell, a now-retired BLM biologist who wrote part of the report, put it this way. "They took all of our science and reversed it 180 degrees."
Another scientist involved in the report, Bill Brookes, a BLM hydrologist, now retired, said the proposed rule change was "an abrogation of [the agency's] responsibility under the Clean Water Act." This statement was removed.
"Everything I wrote was totally rewritten and watered down," Brookes said, "...Instead of saying, in the long term, this will create problems, it now says, in the long term, grazing is the best thing since sliced bread."
The LA Times did not explore any possible significance in the fact that the scientists who are pointing out that a BLM scientific report was thus doctored, are now no longer with the BLM.
Bud Cribley, the agency's manager for rangeland resources, spoke of the altering of the original science as "fine tuning."
Two percent of American beef cattle graze on public land. Apparently the ranchers who graze those cattle have more political clout than scientific truth does.
This seems to be kind of a pattern with this administration. If they don't like reality, they just change the wording, and, hey, the reality looks a lot better now. And certainly more pleasing to campaign contributors.
Sigh.
According to the story by Julie Cart, "The Bush administration altered critical portions of a scientific analysis of the environmental impact of cattle grazing on public lands before announcing Thursday that it would relax regulations limiting grazing on those lands, according to scientists involved in the study."
The document written by the scientists said that the proposed relaxing of grazing rules would have a "significant adverse impact" on wildlife. The final document, as edited by Republican apparatchiks, expunged the previous wording and replaced it with the claim that the new regulations would be "beneficial to animals."
The following fairly straightforward conclusion was, equally straightforwardly, removed from the final draft. "The Proposed Action will have a slow, long-term adverse impact on wildlife and biological diversity in general."
Eric Campbell, a now-retired BLM biologist who wrote part of the report, put it this way. "They took all of our science and reversed it 180 degrees."
Another scientist involved in the report, Bill Brookes, a BLM hydrologist, now retired, said the proposed rule change was "an abrogation of [the agency's] responsibility under the Clean Water Act." This statement was removed.
"Everything I wrote was totally rewritten and watered down," Brookes said, "...Instead of saying, in the long term, this will create problems, it now says, in the long term, grazing is the best thing since sliced bread."
The LA Times did not explore any possible significance in the fact that the scientists who are pointing out that a BLM scientific report was thus doctored, are now no longer with the BLM.
Bud Cribley, the agency's manager for rangeland resources, spoke of the altering of the original science as "fine tuning."
Two percent of American beef cattle graze on public land. Apparently the ranchers who graze those cattle have more political clout than scientific truth does.
This seems to be kind of a pattern with this administration. If they don't like reality, they just change the wording, and, hey, the reality looks a lot better now. And certainly more pleasing to campaign contributors.
Sigh.
Monday, June 20, 2005
Some views of Port Aransas
The beach is restorative even when littered with sargassum weed, which can be a visual and olfactory nuisance but provides birds and fish with a lot of food.
Port Aransas is a cheap and run-down Texas barrier beach resort, which thankfully can never be anything but that, thanks to longshore currents which keep the surf too low and the water too murky for high-dollar recreational facilities, and additionally guarantees the occasional unsightly episodes of sargassum piling up at the water's edge. Nature thus protects us from gentrification and expensive developmental blight. Cheap developmental blight will be naturally removed, over time, by storm and tide.
=============
View of the beach house (rented, of course. Do you think we are rich?)
View from the beach house
Entrepid birdwatcher, ready for birds to appear
View of the beach itself, at sunset
Inside beach house, clowning around with my daughter
Port Aransas is a cheap and run-down Texas barrier beach resort, which thankfully can never be anything but that, thanks to longshore currents which keep the surf too low and the water too murky for high-dollar recreational facilities, and additionally guarantees the occasional unsightly episodes of sargassum piling up at the water's edge. Nature thus protects us from gentrification and expensive developmental blight. Cheap developmental blight will be naturally removed, over time, by storm and tide.
=============
View of the beach house (rented, of course. Do you think we are rich?)
View from the beach house
Entrepid birdwatcher, ready for birds to appear
View of the beach itself, at sunset
Inside beach house, clowning around with my daughter
What exactly do right-wing Christians worship?
After several days at the beach, I am rested and ready to open a newspaper. So. Today's rant is thus occasioned by reading the Sunday New York Times Magazine article on fundamentalist views of gay marriage. Turns out that fundamentalist Christians consider homosexuality sinful. Who wudda thought? They claim, naturally, to love the sinner, but want to wipe out the sin. Or the disease. "Disease" functions here as an alternative word for sin.
We liberals are supposed to be tolerant. And I, personally, am. For example, I believe fundamentalists should be allowed to freely worship and proclaim their views, and proselytize in the streets if they wish. But for the state and its citizens to allow freedom of worship does not at all imply that we are all somehow obliged to not speak out against beliefs which, if acted upon, would lead to consequences any civilized human being will consider unthinkable.
So let's look at fundamentalism for a moment--specifically Christian fundamentalism.
God as imagined by fundamentalists was, and will be, guilty of the most monstrous genocides possible--assuming of course the Bible to be literally true, as fundamentalists believe it is.
We tend to fixate on their attacks on gays and on science and on women's rights, without noticing that the core of their religion is worship of a belligerent tribal deity, a wrathful stormtrooper godling overcome almost daily by something like road rage, a god with an anger management problem that makes Hitler seem like a choir boy. Such a god supposedly murders the entire human population of the planet, except for Noah and his family--plus he drowns most of the animals.
Because he was pissed. Nobody thinks about this story much.
If a human being committed such a crime, he would be thought the worst monster who ever existed. Most Christians and Jews, at least in modern times, have considered that this tale, and those like it, to be fables, and, if they think about them at all, derive metaphorical meaning from them, perhaps considering that the rain may be symbolic of affliction and the ark a symbol of fortitude--stuff like that. What else can civilized human beings do with such stories?
Fundamentalist Christians, however, believe it really happened, and, because they worship the deity in this story, are more or less bound by their ideology, even if not by personal wickedness, to approve of the crimes they imagine this deity committed. We decry the old Stalinists who followed--because they were blinded by ideology--the contortions of the Party line into incredibly immoral apologies for incredible crimes.
But we are too timid to speak up against other people, in this case Christian fundamentalists, who approve in principle of even greater depravities, and who in fact look forward, in their belief-system, to a re-creation of the Moloch-like planetary genocide they think was committed by the Old Testament God in ancient times, by their selfsame New Testament God, at the end of time.
What would we say to a group of Germans who were vying to make Germany once again a country giving its stamp of approval to the murder of six million Jews? We would say that the moral failure of people who approve of such criminality, like those who committed it, would be almost beyond human imagination.
So, then, what do we say of a group of Americans who are just fine with a far greater genocide, the killing of almost everyone on on earth--an event which they imagine to have been real--and who fall down on their knees before the author of it? And who want to make America a theocracy run according to supposed laws written by the very Horror they worship? And who want to see the destruction of mankind again, excepting of course the elect, who, not surprisingly, they consider themselves to be among.
(Well, one thing we would have to say of them, among many others, is that they are the Republican base. Red state fundie church folks. But I digress, as usual.)
Does the fact that the Horror they worship is simply a product of terrified and primitive imagination somehow make such worship morally acceptable? Obviously not. Is the moral problem of approving of the 40 days and 40 nights of deliberate death by drowning--a crime against humanity, shall we say, which is by no means unique in the catalog of mass killings supposed in the scriptures to have been committed by, or at the behest of, this same imaginary godling--somehow mitigated by the fact that the believers are too ignorant to know the belief is merely one among many fables of a tribe of ancient Middle Eastern herdsmen? Or, a little later in these same scriptures, that the ravings of the author of Revelations are the product of an unwell mind?
I would say no. To the extent that fundamentalists accept as articles of faith that the scriptures are both inerrant and literally true, these good folks, who like Nazi apologists may be exemplary friends, neighbors, and kinsmen, are in the truest sense morally decadent and a threat to everyone's well being.
We need to understand who we are dealing with.
The same freedoms which guarantee their right to worship, guarantees us the right to speak to the moral failure at the core of such worship. And I think our moral duty requires that we speak up.
Possibly some of them think that, by opposing them, we liberals are ipso facto advocating for them what many of them would advocate for us. This may cause them to, as they say, harden their hearts against us. But in all honesty, we need to realize that we are already fully demonized in their eyes, even as we have been meek and quiet.
What we need to do right now, I believe, is to calmly point out the moral implications of their beliefs. Many of these very believers do not, after all, approve of Hitler or Stalin, and some at least may be logical enough, or at least be _capable_ of the necessary logic, to see that the God they pray to is portrayed by their own holy book as guilty of things worse than Hitler or Stalin ever wished to do, or could have done.
In any case, our firm and vocal opposition to their creed, if based on the general moral consensus about genocide and mass murder shared by all civilized people and by most Americans and indeed by many fundamentalists themselves, cannot hurt a thing, and may turn some aside from the path of their folly--and may keep others from falling into folly. But we need to stop thinking that liberal tolerance somehow extends beyond tolerating their freedom to practice their religion, to remaining quiet in the face of their really morally flawed and profoundly dangerous religious ideas.
I am not, FWIW, a crusader against religion. And I certainly share the average liberal's aversion to falling into an obsessive objectification of fundamentalists as our Enemies, a different and evil tribe. But we can't escape the fact, and should not ignore the fact, that they believe incredibly stupid things that have really terrible moral implications, not to mention political consequences.
We need to attack those beliefs as vigorously as they attack evolution and abortion. Their beliefs are easy to attack. No one, in fact, can rationally defend them.
We liberals are supposed to be tolerant. And I, personally, am. For example, I believe fundamentalists should be allowed to freely worship and proclaim their views, and proselytize in the streets if they wish. But for the state and its citizens to allow freedom of worship does not at all imply that we are all somehow obliged to not speak out against beliefs which, if acted upon, would lead to consequences any civilized human being will consider unthinkable.
So let's look at fundamentalism for a moment--specifically Christian fundamentalism.
God as imagined by fundamentalists was, and will be, guilty of the most monstrous genocides possible--assuming of course the Bible to be literally true, as fundamentalists believe it is.
We tend to fixate on their attacks on gays and on science and on women's rights, without noticing that the core of their religion is worship of a belligerent tribal deity, a wrathful stormtrooper godling overcome almost daily by something like road rage, a god with an anger management problem that makes Hitler seem like a choir boy. Such a god supposedly murders the entire human population of the planet, except for Noah and his family--plus he drowns most of the animals.
Because he was pissed. Nobody thinks about this story much.
If a human being committed such a crime, he would be thought the worst monster who ever existed. Most Christians and Jews, at least in modern times, have considered that this tale, and those like it, to be fables, and, if they think about them at all, derive metaphorical meaning from them, perhaps considering that the rain may be symbolic of affliction and the ark a symbol of fortitude--stuff like that. What else can civilized human beings do with such stories?
Fundamentalist Christians, however, believe it really happened, and, because they worship the deity in this story, are more or less bound by their ideology, even if not by personal wickedness, to approve of the crimes they imagine this deity committed. We decry the old Stalinists who followed--because they were blinded by ideology--the contortions of the Party line into incredibly immoral apologies for incredible crimes.
But we are too timid to speak up against other people, in this case Christian fundamentalists, who approve in principle of even greater depravities, and who in fact look forward, in their belief-system, to a re-creation of the Moloch-like planetary genocide they think was committed by the Old Testament God in ancient times, by their selfsame New Testament God, at the end of time.
What would we say to a group of Germans who were vying to make Germany once again a country giving its stamp of approval to the murder of six million Jews? We would say that the moral failure of people who approve of such criminality, like those who committed it, would be almost beyond human imagination.
So, then, what do we say of a group of Americans who are just fine with a far greater genocide, the killing of almost everyone on on earth--an event which they imagine to have been real--and who fall down on their knees before the author of it? And who want to make America a theocracy run according to supposed laws written by the very Horror they worship? And who want to see the destruction of mankind again, excepting of course the elect, who, not surprisingly, they consider themselves to be among.
(Well, one thing we would have to say of them, among many others, is that they are the Republican base. Red state fundie church folks. But I digress, as usual.)
Does the fact that the Horror they worship is simply a product of terrified and primitive imagination somehow make such worship morally acceptable? Obviously not. Is the moral problem of approving of the 40 days and 40 nights of deliberate death by drowning--a crime against humanity, shall we say, which is by no means unique in the catalog of mass killings supposed in the scriptures to have been committed by, or at the behest of, this same imaginary godling--somehow mitigated by the fact that the believers are too ignorant to know the belief is merely one among many fables of a tribe of ancient Middle Eastern herdsmen? Or, a little later in these same scriptures, that the ravings of the author of Revelations are the product of an unwell mind?
I would say no. To the extent that fundamentalists accept as articles of faith that the scriptures are both inerrant and literally true, these good folks, who like Nazi apologists may be exemplary friends, neighbors, and kinsmen, are in the truest sense morally decadent and a threat to everyone's well being.
We need to understand who we are dealing with.
The same freedoms which guarantee their right to worship, guarantees us the right to speak to the moral failure at the core of such worship. And I think our moral duty requires that we speak up.
Possibly some of them think that, by opposing them, we liberals are ipso facto advocating for them what many of them would advocate for us. This may cause them to, as they say, harden their hearts against us. But in all honesty, we need to realize that we are already fully demonized in their eyes, even as we have been meek and quiet.
What we need to do right now, I believe, is to calmly point out the moral implications of their beliefs. Many of these very believers do not, after all, approve of Hitler or Stalin, and some at least may be logical enough, or at least be _capable_ of the necessary logic, to see that the God they pray to is portrayed by their own holy book as guilty of things worse than Hitler or Stalin ever wished to do, or could have done.
In any case, our firm and vocal opposition to their creed, if based on the general moral consensus about genocide and mass murder shared by all civilized people and by most Americans and indeed by many fundamentalists themselves, cannot hurt a thing, and may turn some aside from the path of their folly--and may keep others from falling into folly. But we need to stop thinking that liberal tolerance somehow extends beyond tolerating their freedom to practice their religion, to remaining quiet in the face of their really morally flawed and profoundly dangerous religious ideas.
I am not, FWIW, a crusader against religion. And I certainly share the average liberal's aversion to falling into an obsessive objectification of fundamentalists as our Enemies, a different and evil tribe. But we can't escape the fact, and should not ignore the fact, that they believe incredibly stupid things that have really terrible moral implications, not to mention political consequences.
We need to attack those beliefs as vigorously as they attack evolution and abortion. Their beliefs are easy to attack. No one, in fact, can rationally defend them.
Wednesday, June 15, 2005
And that's it till Monday
I'm gonna go on vacation for a few days, far from the blogosphere. My daughter and I will be joining some old friends at a beach house at Port Aransas on the Texas Coast.
Anyway, I may have time to look at comments before I leave tomorrow morning, but no more posts till Monday.
Anyway, I may have time to look at comments before I leave tomorrow morning, but no more posts till Monday.
And not far from my house...
A few days ago police shot dead 18 year-old Daniel Rocha who, according to several eyewitnesses, was lying face down on the ground when he was killed. The Travis County medical examiner confirmed that Rocha had been shot once, in the back.
The police report said that Rocha had engaged in a "violent struggle" with two of three police officers present. Sgt. Don Doyle threw Rocha to the ground, according to eyewitnesses who spoke to an Austin American Statesman reporter, and at that point officer Julie Schroeder shot Rocha.
Schroeder said that "she thought Rocha had taken her Taser during a struggle and was about to use it against her or [Sgt.] Doyle." (Austin American Statesman)
The medical examiner's report said that Rocha's body showed no marks consistent with a violent struggle. Rocha was 5 feet 5 inches tall and weighed 132 pounds, according to the medical examiner. He had a history of petty crime, including one charge of burglary and one of marijuana use.
Now this is normal news anywhere in America. So why am I talking about it? Mainly because this particular incident happened to occur near my house. And, as it happens, I recently posted a blog on a seemingly senseless police use of tasers during a traffic stop. In it, I referred readers to a video clip of police cruelly tasering a woman who was slow in getting out of her car.
Police justified that particular cruelty, and others like it, on the grounds that it prevents shootings--like this one here in Austin.
But wait. We can't have this both ways, um, can we? Well, police, apparently learning from the example of day-in and day-out Republican brazenness in American politics, have decided that they can.
If someone gives you lip, taser the hell out of them. Or, alternatively, if two of you are trying to subdue a strapping 5 ft. 5 in. youth and you have him face down on the ground, and decide for whatever reason to shoot him in the back, you can say, hey, I thought he was going for my taser.
All I can say is, whatever happened to the idea of using--handcuffs? This would seem to be a situation made-to-order for that procedure.
The police, again learning from what they see in national politics, promise to conduct an investigation of themselves. They also "have developed plans to reach out to residents of [the] Southeast Austin neighborhood" to calm growing anger. They are passing out fliers and planning on having the police chief go to neighborhood meetings once thewhitewash investigation is complete.
Street memorial for Daniel Rocha
The police report said that Rocha had engaged in a "violent struggle" with two of three police officers present. Sgt. Don Doyle threw Rocha to the ground, according to eyewitnesses who spoke to an Austin American Statesman reporter, and at that point officer Julie Schroeder shot Rocha.
Schroeder said that "she thought Rocha had taken her Taser during a struggle and was about to use it against her or [Sgt.] Doyle." (Austin American Statesman)
The medical examiner's report said that Rocha's body showed no marks consistent with a violent struggle. Rocha was 5 feet 5 inches tall and weighed 132 pounds, according to the medical examiner. He had a history of petty crime, including one charge of burglary and one of marijuana use.
Now this is normal news anywhere in America. So why am I talking about it? Mainly because this particular incident happened to occur near my house. And, as it happens, I recently posted a blog on a seemingly senseless police use of tasers during a traffic stop. In it, I referred readers to a video clip of police cruelly tasering a woman who was slow in getting out of her car.
Police justified that particular cruelty, and others like it, on the grounds that it prevents shootings--like this one here in Austin.
But wait. We can't have this both ways, um, can we? Well, police, apparently learning from the example of day-in and day-out Republican brazenness in American politics, have decided that they can.
If someone gives you lip, taser the hell out of them. Or, alternatively, if two of you are trying to subdue a strapping 5 ft. 5 in. youth and you have him face down on the ground, and decide for whatever reason to shoot him in the back, you can say, hey, I thought he was going for my taser.
All I can say is, whatever happened to the idea of using--handcuffs? This would seem to be a situation made-to-order for that procedure.
The police, again learning from what they see in national politics, promise to conduct an investigation of themselves. They also "have developed plans to reach out to residents of [the] Southeast Austin neighborhood" to calm growing anger. They are passing out fliers and planning on having the police chief go to neighborhood meetings once the
Street memorial for Daniel Rocha
Tuesday, June 14, 2005
Open letter to Texas Governor Rick Perry
Governor Perry recently invited homosexual Texan military service personnel not to return to Texas after their tour overseas if they don't like the way we treat gay citizens. Here is my open letter to the Governor (which I faxed to him--if I get a reply I'll post it.)
----------------
Dear Governor Perry:
In your recent public suck up to your right-wing extremist base, where you removed your vestiges of moral clothing and revealed a naked bigot--and an uncommonly ugly sight it was, I might add, one that will give well-brought up children nightmares--you asked gay veterans to just relocate elsewhere if'n they don't like the way we do bizness down here in God's country.
I am sorry to have to point out, though, that your extremist base, most of them reveling in Old-Testament certitudes, such as one which requires that we kill homosexuals rather than merely exile them, will not be satisfied by your diffident invitation for gays to voluntarily exile themselves from our great state.
Leviticus is very clear on the matter. You gotta realize that you cannot call yourself a Christian in front of your howling evangelical voter base and get away with ignoring Scripture's clear call for the ultimate penalty. Now as a stopgap measure you might possibly get away with demanding that gays voluntarily sew pink triangles on their clothes while you guys find a way to implement Leviticus, but I don't think your base will be patient with a lot of shilly-shallying around in the deliberative phase. It's all or nothing in right-wing extremist land.
I'm thinking that with your pansy-like call for _voluntary_ exile, you'll come up with nothing. Maybe worse than nothing. Pols who live by scripture, die by scripture, so to speak. You've got the Texas Republican version of a fire-breathing moderate thinking of throwing her hat into the ring, and she is bound to snap up the votes of the less Biblically-literalistic church folks, plus--and you gotta watch out for these-- the votes of all the sinners, many of whom have not chosen exile, and not just the gays either.
So you're not a shoo-in, in other words, especially if you fall between two stools, or, to mix metaphors (but hey, your end of the political spectrum has never been strong on metaphors anyhow), if you are not completely in bed with your voter base. But then--wait--oh, never mind.
Cheers,
Jim McCulloch
----------------
Dear Governor Perry:
In your recent public suck up to your right-wing extremist base, where you removed your vestiges of moral clothing and revealed a naked bigot--and an uncommonly ugly sight it was, I might add, one that will give well-brought up children nightmares--you asked gay veterans to just relocate elsewhere if'n they don't like the way we do bizness down here in God's country.
I am sorry to have to point out, though, that your extremist base, most of them reveling in Old-Testament certitudes, such as one which requires that we kill homosexuals rather than merely exile them, will not be satisfied by your diffident invitation for gays to voluntarily exile themselves from our great state.
Leviticus is very clear on the matter. You gotta realize that you cannot call yourself a Christian in front of your howling evangelical voter base and get away with ignoring Scripture's clear call for the ultimate penalty. Now as a stopgap measure you might possibly get away with demanding that gays voluntarily sew pink triangles on their clothes while you guys find a way to implement Leviticus, but I don't think your base will be patient with a lot of shilly-shallying around in the deliberative phase. It's all or nothing in right-wing extremist land.
I'm thinking that with your pansy-like call for _voluntary_ exile, you'll come up with nothing. Maybe worse than nothing. Pols who live by scripture, die by scripture, so to speak. You've got the Texas Republican version of a fire-breathing moderate thinking of throwing her hat into the ring, and she is bound to snap up the votes of the less Biblically-literalistic church folks, plus--and you gotta watch out for these-- the votes of all the sinners, many of whom have not chosen exile, and not just the gays either.
So you're not a shoo-in, in other words, especially if you fall between two stools, or, to mix metaphors (but hey, your end of the political spectrum has never been strong on metaphors anyhow), if you are not completely in bed with your voter base. But then--wait--oh, never mind.
Cheers,
Jim McCulloch
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