DON’T BLAME ME; I’M FROM MASSACHUSSETS

Raven was singing in the garden while I was splattering bacon grease on myself in the kitchen. Some folks always choose the better part—as in the biblical story of Mary and Martha, the latter who was always “busy about many things”.

“This coffee is not delcious. Too much cinnamon.” Raven pushes his cup aside. “Who is this guy, George McGovern anyway? It says here he was the Democratic presidential candidate in 1972.”

That he was, Rave. An ill-fated campaign. Nixon was running for re-election, pulling dirty tricks like mad in his best style. McGovern was against the Vietnam war, so he looked like a real alternative to more of the same with Tricky Dick. Unfortunately, his first running mate bit the dust almost immediately because it came out that he had been treated for depression.

“How could any sane person not have been depressed, that’s what I´d like to know.” Raven bites into his peach jam-slathered toast.

We’re talking about the 70s, guy. When taking a pill for depression was hypocritically regarded as the same as dropping acid. Anyway, that candidate was jerked from the ticket and replaced by Sargent Shriver—one of the Kennedy clan who’d been running the Peace Corps, and my dissertation adviser, Harvey Swados, was recruited to write his speeches. A thankless task, but Harvey had to make the sacrifice to try to knock out Nixon—not to mention that a racist Alabama governor named George Wallace was making another run at the White House. We were living in Springfield, Massachusetts and drove up to Amherst to vote for McGovern.

“Springfield. The home of the Basketball Hall of Fame, right?”

It’s only claim to fame, probably. I didn’t know you were a basketball fan, Rave.

“I’m not. Too short. But I like sports trivia.”

All sports are trivial. Anyway, we voted because although we knew McGovern was not going to win, our polling place was an auction house in North Amherst and I wanted to preview the weekend’s selection of stuff.

“A bit cynical, aren’t we?”

Rave, I was trying to run an antiques business. Give me a break. McGovern lost, and because Massachusetts was the only state he carried, we printed up bumper stickers that said: Don’t blame me; I’m from Massachusetts. Unfortunately, Harvey Swados died a month after the presidential election. Writing political speeches literally killed the novelist.

“Ah. Politics killed the wrong person. But the bumper stickers were a good way to weasel out of the blame for Nixon. Didn’t he have to resign?”

Of course he did. But Rave, why did you bring up McGovern in the first place?

“Because he has a piece on the Common Dreams site. Republished from the Washington Post. It’s called A More Constructive Internationalism.”

What does he say?

“Basically, he takes offense at his being called anti-internationalist. Something like that.”

Because he opposed the Vietnam war?

“Maybe. It’s not too clear. Anyway, he gives a list of activities he’s done which he feels indicate his internationalism—especially his work to reduce global hunger. Not exactly a resounding success there, but…And goes on to say:

‘I am opposed to the Bush doctrine of "preemptive war" -- what heretofore has been known as aggression or invasion. I am also opposed to congressional resolutions that give the president a blank check to go to war when he pleases.

I have always thought America to be the greatest country on earth. One of the reasons I think so is because of our great founding fathers, including Thomas Jefferson, who spoke of "a decent respect to the opinions of mankind." Is there any doubt that the opinion of mankind was overwhelmingly against our wars in Vietnam and Iraq?’”

No doubt in my mind, at all, Rave. That’s why I am so angry and concerned about the US government’s completely blowing off world opinion.

“He also makes a little jab at Bush’s neo-Hitlerism:

'We don't measure a nation's internationalism by the number of troops it sends to other countries. By that test, Adolf Hitler would be the greatest internationalist of the 20th century. I might add thatI would not have won the Democratic presidential nomination in 1972 -- winning 11 primaries, including the two largest states, New York and California -- if I had been perceived as an isolationist. I also believe that if the disgraceful conduct of President Richard Nixon during that campaign had been known before the election, I would have been elected. If so, I would have led as an internationalist unafraid to use force in the national interest.'

Seems like he’s saying not to blame him. Is he from Massachusetts?”

No, Rave. From South Dakota. But South Dakota doesn’t look as good on a bumper sticker.

"Sounds like it's in the middle of Nowhere. Sort of like here." Raven looks very sly.

I think I see where you're going, Rave. Forget about Don't blame me; I'm from Puerto Angel....

HASTA AQUÍ LLEGUÉ

“So,” Raven takes a bite from his ersatz croissant (from Panadería 5 Regiones) “Castro has finally responded to José Saramago´s ‘Hasta aquí llegué’ commentary.”

I think standing up those 3 kidnappers against the wall and calling in the firing squad may have been an extreme reaction on the part of Castro. But I also remember when I was a child in the 50s there was a lot of controversy about the death penalty because of the Caryl Chessman case.”

“Before my time, I’m afraid. Don’t we have some jam for this bread?”

Check the refri, Rave. I am looking for something in Internet about Chessman for you. He was given 2 death sentences for a 1948 crime that charged him with being a kidnapper and rapist, and was finally executed in the gas chamber in San Quentin in 1960. He always claimed that he was not guilty. But the climate of the 50s was not apt for rebellious guys like Chessman, who was a pretty good writer, too. They basically slapped the kidnapping charge on him because since the Lindbergh baby kidnapping, it was a capital offense. Ah, here we have a quote from him:

“I learned too late and only after coming to Death Row that each of us ever must be aware of the brotherhood of man . . . . Circumstances may compel us to become our brother’s keeper; I think we destroy something in ourselves when we become his executioner.”

“He’s right about that.” Rave spreads some peach jam on his bread. “So he wasn’t really a kidnapper?”

It was a very intolerant time, Rave. Joe McCarthy was ranting and raving every day about Reds under the bed, in Hollywood, in the military, in Congress—you name it, Reds were in it. The Rosenbergs were electrocuted in Sing Sing in 1953 for supposedly passing atomic weapons secrets to the Russians. People were building backyard bomb shelters. It was a climate of mass hysteria. Caryl Chessman was too rational, too much of an individual. Somebody—I don’t remember who—said he was executed for being a smart ass.

“Sounds very much like this moment. And we also know that Bush presided over the execution of 153 people in Texas before he actualized his plan to preside over The World. So why has he been beating the pan about Castro’s government shooting 3 guys who were trying to get to the US in a little boat?” Raven scrapes the scraps of his eggs, delicately, into the garbage.

Because they were going to the US, I’m sure. If they had been heading for Venezuela, I am sure Bush would have applauded Castro’s sentence. As he applauded his own decision to lethally inject black and hispanic prisoners in Texas.

“Good point. And the stiff prison terms they gave the dissidents?”

Obviously, the US has a lot of guilt around that, as they gave the green light to those folks.

“And money, and tvs and other stuff, too.”

Apparently. So Saramago thought or felt that Castro had over-reacted, had gone too far. That dissent should have been allowed. And he said “Hasta aquí llegué” in the sense that this was as far as he was going, that he could not go along with Castro´s recent decisions—even as a long-time communist and supporter of the Cuban Revolution. Then he said a few days later that he was not withdrawing his solidarity from the Revolution. Frankly, I am confused. I can understand his being against the death penalty and against having political prisoners, and why he emotionally singled out Cuba for his disappointment. But maybe he should have thought it over before making a public statement. What did Castro say?

“Castro says :

‘Saramago is a good writer. It really hurts us that he hasn’t understood a word about the realities that the world and Cuba are living. He should have expressed his disagreement, but he shouldn’t have said anything to feed the agression of the US government against Cuba, nor offer arguments that would be received with delight by the brutal imperialist system that’s trying to justify an agression against Cuba.’

What he goes on to say is perhaps more important:

‘Something more worrisome—Saramago, and some others who have acted in good faith seem completely unaware that the planet is marching rapidly towards a global nazifascist tyranny. I am sure that he let himself be carried away by a moment of anger and disagreement which clouded his capacity to reason. Also, maybe a passing element of self-importance and vanity—nothing extraordinary in a good communist accustomed during many years to calumny and diatribes who has suddenly been elevated to the Olympus of a Nobel Prize.’”

Other people have said that Castro made a bad decision because he is senile, Rave. It doesn’t sound to me that he is. He is younger than Saramago by a few years, if I remember correctly. Maybe the point is that all of us oldsters should be talking less than we are?

“Okay…I’ll bite. Why?” Raven looks unsure.

Maybe if we had taken the world situation more seriously, had read the handwriting on the wall—so to speak—things would not have gotten to the point where it’s the Law of the Jungle.

Raven shakes his head. “I think I have mentioned before that the jungle is a peaceful place because it doesn’t have people in it.”

Bad word choice, sorry. I am trying to say that we all share the guilt of allowing what Castro very rightly has called a global fascist tyranny to take place. That it’s not just the moron Bush and his gang of petrocriminals who are to blame—but all of us who allowed them to come to power thinking that arrogance, stupidity, greed and violence could not possibly be institutionalized.

“I have also mentioned before than your species has not adapted very well to the realities of this planet. And is therefore bound for extinction. As I am bound, at this moment, for the beach.” Raven wings it from the windowsill.

Thanks for making my day, Rave….

HANDWRITING ON THE WALL

Raven is having a down day. So am I, for that matter; I didn't even get up to make our cups of earl grey until almost 11. Raven just picked at his mushroom and serrano chile omelet, and took his sweet roll out to the garden.

*************
Raven hears the roar
as the great incoming waves
gobble up the beach,
and he sees the sand shrinking.
Even as he watches it,

the ocean expands
its territory; inch by
inch it spreads across
the land with no intention
of receding. Now he knows

how the mammoth must
have felt when he saw the ice
approaching closer--
until it covered him up
like a fly trapped in amber.

Raven, though a bird,
has always lived on the land;
as pedestrian
as they come, he sees the sea
as an enemy taking

away his back yard,
sweeping him into the street
to scrap with the gulls
for his livelihood. Raven,
scavenging for ideas

on the beach, feels waves
erasing his best sources
and leaving tide pools
in their place. He knows that he
is becoming obsolete.

YESTERDAY CUBA, TODAY IRAN

Despite the bluster on the part of the Bush Gang in regard to:
first blowing Syria out of the desert and
then Cuba out of the water,
the reality of Iran’s enormous oil and gas reserves has situated it in the cross-hairs of the Petrocriminals as the real next target for invasion.

Supposedly, Iran has been developing nuclear weapons in the reactor at Natanz.
Wow, are they fast!
That installation was just visited 3 months ago by the General Director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed el Baradei, who reported nothing illegal or even unusual....
Now the Petrocriminals announced in The New York Times that Natanz is an “obvious” nuclear weapons factory!

I am really beginning to wonder if the US public has been so brainwashed by its government and its mass media that it no longer has 2 digits to rub together to make an IQ....

Raven is not at all optimistic. He feels if they had to invent fire again, they wouldn’t be able to rub 2 sticks together either.

PRO CUBA

Raven and I are really busy this week, and tomorrow we will be showing "La revolución no será transmitida"--new documentary from Ireland about last year's brief "golpe de estado" in Venezuela that took Hugo Chávez out of the presidency for almost 48 hours--so that means preparations....

However, we are very concerned about the increasing saber rattling on the part of the Bush Gang in regard to Cuba--the one country in this hemisphere which has kept the imperial monster at bay for 44 years--as well as Otto Reich's delusions of grandeur about becoming the neo-nazi Reich-chancellor of Cuba. Here in Latin America many intellectuals have jumped on the bandwagon to protest the latest threats against a sovereign nation. You may add your name to that protest by going into this web site:
www.porcuba.cult.cu

Indicate at the top of the page that you want English, then click on SIGNATURES to fill out the form.

The following is the text of the protest statement:

TO THE CONSCIENCE OF THE WORLD

The international order has been violated as a consequence of the invasion against Iraq. A single power is inflicting grave damage to the norms of understanding, debate and mediation amongst countries. This power has invoked a series of unverified reasons in order to justify its invasion. Unilateral action has led to massive loss of civilian life an devastation of one of the cultural patrimonies of humanity.

We only possess our moral authority, with which we appeal to world conscience in order to avoid a new violation of the principles, which inform and guide the global community of nations. At this very moment, a strong campaign of destabilization against a Latin American nation has been unleashed. The harassment against Cuba could serve as a pretext for an invasion. Therefore, we call upon citizens and policy makers to uphold the universal principles of national sovereignity, respect of territorial integrity and self-determination, essential to just and peaceful co-existence among nations.

Mexico, April 2003

The Bush Gang is playing the board game of RISK with our planet.

Raven: "They are also not playing with a full deck. Stop them."

THE USUAL SUSPECTS

Raven is grumpy this morning. We had french toast for breakfast (freedom toast, if we were in Washington, D.C.), and Raven hates french toast. He feels that soaking perfectly crunchy bread in a batter of milk and eggs and then frying it is a barbarity—and drenching it all in maple syrup is the final straw.

“The Final Solution, precisely”, Raven indicates as he pushes his plate away. “This is as close as it gets to Terrorism by Food.”

Surely you exaggerate, Rave—the annals of war are filled with run-ins with spoiled food, c-rations and other culinary culprits. On some Pacific islands during World War II there was cannibalism. Not to mention what has traditionally been served up in prisons.

“I suppose Guatanamo fare is not worse than this, but I think we could be eating better.”

What does it matter, if we can’t stomach what’s happening in the world? Rumsfeld has tipped his hand, and now we can expect Phase Two in Iraq: The War against Terrorist Networks.

“Maybe you could open a fast french toast eatery there”, Raven snickers.

I could be part of any of the network of terrorists he’s swearing to hunt down, I suppose. And about as legitimate as any group he’s identifying, too. It’s all a bit retro—probably more appropriate for the Algerian National Liberation Front, circa 1955—but as we talked about a couple of days ago, the 50s are back with a vengeance: North Korea, McCarthyism, the Military-Industrial Complex as Public Enemy Number 1.

“What about poodle skirts and hula hoops?”

They don’t need to retread those frivolous elements to create a diversion—they have the Patriot Act so they can put the screws to anyone who doesn’t conform to their standards of citizenry. They can barge into Chinese restaurants, stand the customers up against the wall for hours and drag undocumented Mexicans out of the kitchens and slap them in mini-Guatanamos with impunity—all the while shouting, “Don’t you assholes know we´re at war?”

“So, who’s next on the menu?”

Well, in the fifties the French blamed the terrorism in Algeria on Tunisia and Egypt. Robert Fisk mentions that in his piece in La Jornada today, “¿Terminó la guerra?”. He says that Rumsfeld will put the blame for the terrorism in Iraq (read: shiite resistance to the US military occupation) on Iran and Syria.

“Rounding up the Usual Suspects, in short.”

Right. Play it, Sam. Again.

Raven may be black, but he’s no Dooley Wilson. But then, I doubt that too many people would mistake me for Humphrey Bogart....

A NEW CAPER

This morning the sky is overcast above the bay. I walk to an Internet café past a number of rundown tour buses; clearly, it’s the end of the four day Labor Day “puente”. Tomorrow it’s back to work for all of us who have been loafing these days away. Raven, on the other hand, has been busy.

*****
Raven, that rascal,
has a new trick up his sleeve:
he is going to
start a business flying
his customers to heaven.

It sounds outrageous,
but he believes it will work.
Who am I to rain
my reservations on his
parade, when he reminds me

that people have shelled
out millions just to pretend
to be astronauts?
Raven is offering more:
A chance to interview God—

To ask Him or Her
the Big Questions: the meaning
of our existence
on this petroleum-cursed
planet; what really wiped out

all those dinosaurs;
if the Chicago Cubs will
win the World Series
before the world ends—the stuff
everyone wants to know, but

is afraid to ask.
And if God doesn’t exist?
Raven doesn’t care:
if there’s a heaven without
God, someone will step forward

and pay him double
for the chance to pretend to
be God—or to take
over up there. After all,
dictators go for a dime


a dozen down here.
Raven is cackling with glee
at his cleverness:
he’ll make himself a fortune
whether he wins or loses.

And the rest of us?
Raven is convinced that we’ll
get what we deserve—
that next we’ll be lining up
to take his charters to hell.

Y DEJA VU ALL OVER AGAIN

Today is a quiet day for Raven and me. Tea instead of coffee. Soft-boiled eggs for me; bread and cheese for Raven.

We have been reading and discussing a book I brought back from Caracas: “Mensaje sin destino” (Message for No One in Particular?) by the historian Mario Briceño-Iragorry. The book was written in 1950 to address the crisis of Venezuela—primarily that of cultural identity—and includes, at the end, some pointed commentaries in regard to the “grand crisis of the universal civilization” which could easily have been written this morning, and which Raven and I have decided to translate:

“To find a way out of the problems of our world, it would be necessary ‘that people begin one day to separate themselves from the present, and to look for the way to disappear from it, advises Maritain. It would be necessary to turn our backs on the world of lies in which we live…If we believe in justice and equality and liberty as normative possibilities, let’s not cultivate injustice, nor celebrate inequality, nor even less serve plans which try to enslave people. If we talk about a Christian society, let’s install the fraternity, charity and justice which form the essence of Christianity, and let’s help our neighbor to live in such a way that he sees in us the realistic expression of a fraternal world. In this way we will have the peace sought by the same people, and not the armistice imposed as a balance of fierce forces of empires.”

“We just need to update to the singular,” Raven opines: “Empire—not empires.”

Don Mario continues:

“This past July (1950), while the Security Council of the United Nations was debating the problems of the world and inviting the peaceful nations to go, along with the great powers, to punish the North Korean aggression, I was walking one evening in a park off Riverside Drive, in New York. The plain folks gathered there uniformly demonstrated in their luminous faces the most intense joy—facing the marvellous spectacle of an exceptional sunset, whose blazing colors were more majestic that the architecture of the skyscrapers. I, too, enjoyed my part of the sunset; but I thought with grave sadness about the imminent war and the terrible bomb that could destroy tomorrow, in one minute of scientific barbary, the proud expression of the constructive power of the human intelligence. I thought about the uncertainty of man’s destiny and the madness with which certain financial interests proclaim the war as a favorable circumstance for their profits….”

I don’t think we need to update anything in that last part, Rave. More than half a century later the script is uncannily the same. Even North Korea as one of The Usual Suspects.

“Yeah, and it says here that the book prevented Don Mario from being given a visa to visit an old friend who was very ill in the US.”

They didn’t give a visa to Hugo Chávez, either, until he had been elected President.

“Guess they have it in for Venezuelans who tell it like it is. Although Don Mario was apparently no prophet in his own land, either. Not long after the book was published, in 1952, he entered the electoral fray as a candidate for Congress. Then the traditional electoral process—aka golpe de estado (military coup) forced him into exile in Spain. He returned in April of 1958, when the dictatorship fell—but died less than two months later.” Raven looks up from the book. “Don’t you suppose he died of a broken heart?”

Rave, how could he not have? My heart is very heavy after reading this, and seeing that nobody listened to him. How many times will we go down the same road to Bagdad?

“If the Mayans were right, only as many times as can be fit into the next 8 or 9 years.”

And if we follow the advice of Maritain, and distance ourselves from the present?

“That sounds very much like the question, If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there to witness it, does it make a sound?”

Raven looks vaguely smug.

I think it does, Rave. The problem is we are deaf.

Sometimes I like to have the last word, too….

TAKING ANOTHER CRACK AT THEM

“I can’t believe this!”

Raven is furious. He slams his coffee cup down on the table, and turns away from the computer screen.

Now what’s happening, Rave? Or do I want to know?

Raven levels a beady gaze at me.

“I sure as hell didn’t want to know. Remember the story we talked about yesterday?”

The people who were protesting the US soldiers living in their school? Who were shot?

Raven turns back to the screen.

“Precisely. Listen:

‘Residents of Falluja, 30 miles outside the capital where 13 people were killed in a rally late on Monday night, said U.S. troops shot dead two more people during a demonstration on Wednesday.

U.S. Maj. Michael Marti told Reuters that members of a convoy returned fire after shots were fired at them from a crowd outside a U.S. command post. He said soldiers counted "potentially" two injured Iraqis.’ Imagine! They protest because the soldiers shot them and they shoot them again!”

They shot different people, apparently. What does he mean, “potentially injured”?

“Beats me. It goes on to indicate the presence of Rumsfeld:

‘In Baghdad Rumsfeld held a meeting with Jay Garner, the retired general in charge of American efforts to rebuild the country and launch a democratic government.

Garner told reporters after the meeting that the media should concentrate less on anti-American protests and more on the way U.S. forces had toppled Saddam with relatively little damage to Iraq's infrastructure.

"We ought to be beating our chests every day," he said. "We ought to look in a mirror and get proud and stick out our chests and suck in our bellies and say: 'Damn, we're Americans'."

I think that is very possibly the single most outrageously stupid and arrogant statement I have heard in this lifetime, Rave.

“It’s high enough on my list that I’m ready to reincarnate to the next one right now.”

Raven always wants to have the last word. This time, I believe he deserves it.

THE LATEST IN HORROR—FOR BREAKFAST

Raven is eating an unusal breakfast: leftover linguini. Clearly, he finds it entertaining eating it strand by strand.

At the rate you’re going, Rave, that pasta will last you all day!

“I’m slow,” he admits, “but determined. It distracts me from the waves of nausea that plague me while I’m reading the latest news from Iraq.”

Oh no. What’s the latest US war crime?

“Speaking of which, a group of Iraquis has asked for the arrest of General Tommy Franks for, precisely, war crimes. They have presented their accusation to a tribunal in Belgium. But, on to the latest horror:

‘U.S. soldiers opened fire on Iraqis at a demonstration in the town of Fallujah, 30 miles west of Baghdad—after being shot at with automatic rifles by some in the crowd, a U.S. officer said Tuesday. The director of the local hospital said 13 people were killed and 75 injured.

Col. Arnold Bray of the 82nd Airborne Division, who gave the U.S. account of the clash, said at least seven Iraqis were hit by gunfire but could not confirm the reported deaths.

Dr. Ahmed Ghanim al-Ali, director of Fallujah General Hospital, said there were 13 dead, including three boys no older than 10. He said his medical crews were shot at when they went to retrieve the injured, which he said numbered 75 people.

The demonstrators reportedly were protesting U.S. troops' presence in Fallujah. But some townspeople said the protest was held by students aged 5 to 20 to ask the soldiers to leave the school they were staying at so classes, scheduled to resume Tuesday, could take place.’”

I see. They already want to make sure that the people are ignorant by shooting the people who want to have their school open. Next they’ll want to make sure all the women are barefoot and pregnant, I suppose.

“There’s more:

‘U.S. troops in the town are headquartered in the school, and some in the crowd fired on the schoolhouse, Bray said. The al-Jazeera television station, quoting local residents, said the U.S. troops opened fire after someone threw a rock at the school.

Edtesam Shamsudeim, 37, said her 45-year-old brother died in the gunfire. She was shot in the leg and her husband was wounded.

"We were sitting in our house. When the shooting started, my husband tried to close the door to keep the children in, and he was shot," she said at the hospital, sitting in a chair with a bandaged leg, surrounded by some of her children. Their clothes stained with bloody handprints.

"Americans are criminals," she said.’”

Great image Bush and The Gang are creating in the hearts and minds of people around the world. I might as well have bloody handprints on the cover of my passport, Rave.

“One of the benefits of being a bird is being as free as one. We don’t need passports." Raven sucks down another strand of spaghetti. " We also don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing.”

(Sigh.)

THE DEVIL YOU KNOW....

Raven is pecking thoughtfully at his toast.

Penny for your thoughts, guy.

“I was feeling a big blast of pity for the human species. I think it’s the only one where masochism is considered an acceptable lifestyle.”

What gave rise to this?

“Argentina. Where masochism has become a form of mass hysteria. Did you look at the results of the presidential election?”

No time, Rave. I was thinking that another country’s president—one who specializes in washing underwear—should be here helping with my laundry so that I could do things like read the news!

“Ah, The Leo of Your Dreams. Fat chance when it shows him here running around in Brazil. In Argentina they are going to have a run-off election—and it looks as if Menem could end up sitting in the prseidential chair again! Listen to the editorial from La Jornada (loosely translated, of course):

“When it seemed as if all possible catastrophes had taken a crack at Argentina and that nothing worse than what it has suffered up to now in the present century could happen, the verdict of the ballot boxes placed Argentinians before the perspective of a an historical, political and moral involution that could take them right back to the origin of their tragedies: a new presidency of Carlos Saul Menen, the maximum in corruption, the most unscrupulous privatizer, the most frivolous and irresponsible politician—and the principal culprit, in the eyes of the majority, of the socioeconomic nightmare that’s currently beating the crap out of the country.”

Beating the crap out of the country?

“I told you it was a loose translation. It says there were 21 candidates, and that although the voter turnout was around 80%, no candidate received more than 25% of the vote.”

Okay, how does that put Menem back in the Casa Rosada?

“He and Nestor Kirchner were the two who received the most votes, so the runoff election will be between the two of them. Both are “peronistas”, apparently. Incidentally, didn’t they have any whole grain bread in Pochutla?”

Juan and Evita must be spinning in their sarcophagi, Rave. The whole grain bread wasn’t fresh. If you had wanted it for playing carambola, it would have been fine—but for eating, no.

“Too bad. Anyway, I am looking at this situation in Argentina and seeing the handwriting on the wall: even when they have options they seem compelled to make the same bad choices. Over and over.”

Maybe they believe that the devil they know is better than going with an unknown element. Even if that devil put them in the hell they are living in now.

“Look, no bird—no matter how bird-brained—would make a choice like that. It’s not a choice that insures survival. I think your species is doomed to extinction.”

Which sounds bad. But maybe it isn’t really—if pathology implies extinction maybe there is hope for a fresh start?

Rave shrugs. He’s not putting his money on that....

¿Y EL FUTURO DE MANIQUEISMO?

Raven has had a short life, but his historical memory is very long. And because of his canny grasp of the Past, he’s nervous about the Future.

“You know,” he turns away from the computer screen and picks up his coffee cup, “I would like to be optimistic. I just don’t know if I can be.”

Well, Rave, I hear you. I believe most of us would like to think that the polarization that is being generated—the critical mass of positive energy that is gathering against the plan of the Bush Gang to grind the world’s population into chorizo and soak it in oil—will eventually prevail.

“That the Real Good will stand up against the Real Evil—and not be suckered by the Doublespeak of cynical bastards?” Raven sips his coffee, puts his cup back down.

Right now Manicheism is on pretty shaky ground, I think. Ever since George W. said we were either with him or against him. But dualistic thinking does allow us to draw the line against the intolerable.

“Careful. Didn’t Bush Padre draw a line in the sand against Saddam Hussein—somewhere back in the Dark Ages?”

In 1990, I think. We’re still in the Dark Ages, Rave. Looking for the Light at the End of the Tunnel. Trying to be hopeful.

“Here’s a hopeful guy. Writing in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Phil Steger—executive director of Friends for a Non-Violent World says:

‘The time is coming when regimes that threaten the peace and security of the world's people will be promptly and peacefully removed from power by the nonviolent, political force of the people. It might have happened in Iraq. It will happen in America.’”

There isn’t much time though. Either 8 and a half years or 9 and a half, depending on whose calendrical correllation from the Mayan to Gregorian calendars you choose to believe. After that, even if the new consciousness does prevail, we won’t have an Iraq. Nor an America.

“If the choice is between being oil-soaked chorizo and having a peaceful process of regime change, I am inclined to be optimistic.” Raven shuts down the computer, goes to the sink and rinses his coffee cup.

You and Winston Churchill, Rave.

“How’s that?”

Churchill said he was an optimist because he didn’t see the point in being a pessimist and continuing to live. In those terms, I guess I am an optimist, too....

MUSICAL REGIME CHANGES

Raven has been listening to a cd of intense Venezuelan music by Cristóbal Jiménez. Which means I have been listening to it, too, since Raven can’t use headphones. His eyes are ready to pop out of his head—which bobs in time to the music as he reads the day’s news on the computer screen.

Rave, give us a break here. From the music. Please.

Rave gives me a bald stare.

“I did not bring these raucous tunes back from Caracas, now, did I?”

They were a gift from my friend Félix. But I doubt that even he listens to them 24/7.

Raven shuts off the music.

“Okay. Silence is golden. You want to talk, or what?” He helps himself to my stash of granola bars, tears off a wrapper, begins pecking at one of the peanut butter bars.

I was wondering which country is the target for a regime change this morning, that’s all.

“Well, let’s see. In less than two weeks we’ve had Cuba, Syria, North Korea, and Iran. The Iran change is somehow connected to the presidential elections in Argentina, apparently.”

I don’t think so. I think it’s connected to the bombing of a Jewish center in Buenos Aires in 1994. Maybe by Hezbollah. Which in turn is connected to elections and gun-running in Paraguay in the multi-country corner where all the terrorist groups like the CIA and Al Quaeda are supposedly hanging out selling each other weapons and secrets.

“And the knee bone is connected to the thigh bone? Key word apparently is Jewish, so we´re talking Mossad? And Ariel Sharon? Bush says the US is going to occupy Iraq for at least two years. His own private Idaho—er, Palestine.” Rave tosses the granola bar wrapper in the waste basket. “Cynical bastard is even now admitting it was all about oil.”

As if we hadn’t figured that out. Well, in that case for the moment, anyway, we can probably push Cuba and North Korea and even Syria to the back chairs of the musical chairs and move up Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.

“Does that mean you’ll be flying off to Saudi Arabia to bring back cds of belly dance music?” Raven has a malicious gleam in his eye.

In your dreams, Rave.

“If it’s all about oil, maybe we’ll be looking at the Tomahawk missiles here in Mexico pretty soon.”

Naw, Fox will continue giving Bush all the oil he wants. Losing money on every barrel. Making up for it in volume.

“Another idiot at the controls. Isn’t that enough reason for a regime change?”

It should be. Do you have somebody in mind? Rave, you wouldn’t be planning to run for president of Mexico, would you?

“I’m strictly a behind-the-scenes guy. But what’s the name of that beetle sidekick of Subcomandante Marcos?”

Durito, I believe.

“¡Eso! I think I’ll send him an e-mail. Before Bush pours Tony Garza all over us again like a bad smell....”

“DE JIHAD” ALL OVER AGAIN

Raven arches a feather at the long black and white tie-dyed skirt I bought in a craft fair in Caracas.

Is that a salute, Rave?

“Maybe. You’re very retrograde in your style lately, I think.”

It’s because we live at the beach. All the old hippies and burners that straggle through here on their way to Zipolite have left a mark in our consciousness, style section.

“What a bunch of bullshit. Let’s talk about real stuff—like the Middle East.” Rave scrolls down the computer screen. “For example, here we have Shiite pilgrims in Karbala, Iraq, calling for a Jihad against the American occupiers.”

Sounds like fun. Just what the world needs is another war with God on its side. What’s the deal?

“It says here:

‘One million people commemorating the martyrdom of Imam Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet Mohamed, were not only determined to take part in the rites banned by Saddam Hussein and his Baathist predecessors, but also to lay their claim for a Shia-led government. Yesterday, the final prayers of the festival were different from the days that have gone before, with thousands of young men arriving from the cities of a de facto Shia confederacy, which is already taking shape.'

It sounds like a political convention, not a pilgrimage, Rave.

“Well, whatever it is it clearly very theatrical. Listen to this:

‘The young men left their Kalashnikovs and grenade launchers in their vehicles out of respect, they said, for the holiness of Karbala. But later, covered in blood from flagellation with chains and knife wounds they had ritually and frenziedly inflicted on themselves they roared their desire to avenge Ayatollah al-Sadr, murdered by the regime in 1999, and fight for a free, Islamic Iraq. In sermons, imam after imam called on Iraqis to take the destiny of the country into their own hands, and the Shia to take their "rightful place" in deciding how the country should be governed Some of the crowd carried banners saying "Bush equals Saddam", "Down USA" and "Yes, Yes, Islam". ‘”

A week ago I could have contributed a few choruses of “Ooh Ah, Chávez no se va”, and “Cuba sí, Yanquis no”, Rave.

“Very funny. Here they have quotes from some of the people:

‘One member of the Hawza, the Shia religious body based in Najaf, Abbas Nahidi, said: "The Hawza believe there should be elections so people can decide who should govern us. We want an Islamic state. We do not want to be ruled by any foreign powers including the United States."

Yusef al-Hababi agreed."We are all prepared to take part in the jihad to throw out the Americans. Look at the way they conducted this war."’

Everybody’s a critic. The first step toward democracy, Rave. But seriously, there’s nothing like the Bush foreign policy of bombing the shit out of everybody for putting everybody with a US passport in the crosshairs of one of those Kalashnikovs.

“Then it’s a good thing you are melding into the tie-dyed universe of our own little Beach Blanket Bingo parlor.”

I think I already said everybody’s a critic....

WILL THE ALPHA DOG PLEASE STAND UP?

This morning Júpiter the Dog finished most of the leftover grilled chicken from my ill-advised late night supper, and Raven cleaned up the rice.

“Too much fake chicken stock in the rice”, Raven spat out one of the last grains. “I hope I don’t get a migraine from the MSG.”

That’s why I left the rice. Sorry. I felt too guilty to throw it out.

“If I die, just bury me in the patio under the lime tree. What’s in the news?”

The usual misery. The usual suspects. Now that the tachycardia of the invasion on Iraq is slowing down, the Dogs of War are fighting among themselves in Washington. Listen while I translate from LA JORNADA:

‘Tuesday a close adviser of Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, lauched a new attack on the State Department, characterizing it as a broken instrument that supports dictators, fails to advance US interests in the world and which should be disbanded. Newt Gingrich, ex-leader of the House of Representatives, asked for a complete restucturing of the State Department, a process which he said must include declarations to Congress, an external task force to make recommendations for changes, and what would be essentially a purge of the career diplomatic corps. Gingrich advized that he was not asking for the removal of Secretary of State Colin Powell, although it would be almost impossible to imagine that the functionary would remain in his job if these changes were effected.’

“Wasn’t Newt the sour graper who was pissed off because Clinton was getting blow jobs in the oval office?” Raven looks doubtful.

While Newt was lucky to get a haircut? Probably. This kind of internecine warfare among bureaucrats is not new. But what’s happening now shows that the apparent “success” of the Hawks’ Iraq invasion has made them a whole lot bolder. From their perspective, the US should not take other nations into account, but should show the world that it will defend its interests regardless of their opinions or interests. Gingrich goes on to say that the State Department had failed in the battle to persuade international public opinion to suuport the war against Saddam Hussein, and undermined the military campaign by not playing hardball with Turkey to launch attacks from its territory. Then he complains about Powell’s decision to meet with Syria.

“I wonder how Powell is adjusting to being The Invisible Man when he thought that Black Was Beautiful.” Rave takes a big swig of coffee. “Sounds like it’s a laugh a minute in Washington.”

Are you suggesting that we should be there, Rave—instead of here in our tropical hideout at the end of the earth?

Raven chokes on the coffee.

“Not a chance. Júpiter the Dog and I can scrap over the spoils just fine right here. Next time he can have the rice....”

RUMSFELD CALLS FOR REGIME CHANGE EVERY 15 MINUTES

Raven is happy that I am back in Puerto Angel. He has been doing aerobatics in the trees, singing outside the window while I was trying to take a nap—and yesterday evening he left me one of his feathers in the bathroom. (I am not sure what I was supposed to do with it, and was afraid to ask....)

This morning, however, he is looking serious. If a bird can hunch in front of a computer screen, that is what he is doing.

Rave, what’s the problem?

“Oh, nothing but the continued unravelling of rationality here on the planet. Great news for Earth Day is the prospect of nuclear conflagration in North Korea. Here, from the Common Dreams site:

‘A secret Donald Rumsfeld memorandum calling for regime change in North Korea was leaked yesterday, opening a fresh foreign policy split in the Bush administration. The classified discussion paper, circulated by the defense secretary, appears to cut directly across State Department plans to disarm Kim Jong-il, the North's dictator, through threats leavened by promises that his regime is not a target for overthrow.’”

More Doublespeak. If I remember my history correctly, first Hitler invaded Poland a la blitzkrieg, 1939’s version of Shock and Awe. And then wasn’t there a non-agression pact signed by Hitler and Stalin—designed to buy time before Hitler invaded the Soviet Union?

“Sounds singularly familiar. Here it says:

‘The memorandum was leaked on the same day that a senior State Department negotiator flew to Beijing for three-way talks with China and North Korea. Officials working for Mr Rumsfeld are implacably opposed to the talks, pointing to North Korea's long history of extorting aid and concessions in return for promises - never kept - to behave in a more reasonable way. Instead, they seek to use the salutary effect of the rapid victory in Iraq to push North Korea to scrap its nuclear weapons program immediately.’”

It also sounds like the first phase in going after China, Rave.

“Could be. Listen to this:

‘An unnamed senior administration official told the New York Times: "The last thing the Chinese want is a collapse of North Korea that will create a flood of refugees into China and put Western allies on the Chinese border." Colin Powell, the secretary of state, is said to have secured the president's approval for a carrot and stick approach in a meeting last week. Mr Powell called for threats to withhold aid and investment from North Korea, while assuring the regime that it faces no threat from the United States. Mr Rumsfeld, who was "distracted" by the war against Saddam Hussein, did not attend the meeting and may now be trying to regain some traction in the Korea debate, officials speculated.’

Distracted?! That’s what they say about us supposed bird-brains. I am not accepting Rumsfeld in any of his nefarious aspects. Distracted, indeed.”

Rave, even more disturbing to me than his being distracted is his arrogance. Last week it was Syria he was threatening to invade. This week it’s North Korea. Next week, who knows who the target will be. If this were a movie we were watching, we would vote with our feet because it wouldn’t be believable.

Raven, appearing to be distracted by something outside the window, prepares for take-off. He votes with his wings, leaving another feather on the keyboard of the computer.

RAVEN’S REMEDY FOR DUALISTIC THINKING

Raven is rolling
a snail shell along the wall
in the patio:
Sisyphus horizontal?
No, he is meditating

on the physics of
forward movement, asking for
guidance to balance
this dark, retrograde moment
that we are tunneling through.

A big leaf flutters
down in front of the snail shell,
and slows Raven’s pace:
nature puts unexpected
obstacles to make us think?

Raven is not awed
by randomness in nature,
as his own nature
is alternating current:
turning despair into hope,

conflict into peace,
and stupidity into
a new consciousness.
He shoves the leaf from his path,
pushes the circle forward—

no longer a shell,
but a geometric force.
In the mobius
strip of his mind, all of the
dimensions is only one.


Note: Sisyphus, a Corinthian king, was, like Raven, a famous trickster. In Greek mythology one of his capers was catching and tying up Thanatos (Death). In the Underworld he was condemned to roll a large stone up a hill—from which it always rolled down again....

SYRIA IN THE CROSSHAIRS

E-mail from me to Raven:

Wow, Rave! The closing ceremony of the forum to express international solidarity with the Bolivarian Revolution here in Venezuela was highly emotional. Lots of powerful speakers: Evo Morales, the social leader from Bolivia who should be sitting in the presidential chair of that country, was especially moving in his presentation, but there were many other leaders and intellectuals who bowled us over. Chávez was great, of course. (And we got to have a hug and kiss together, so I felt the strength of the man at very close range.) He kept going for hours in the street fiesta afterward, where big screens allowed the people to see him and hear him all along the Avenida Bolívar.

Raven to me:

Fabulous! The synergy of so many folks with positive intentions is bound to have a ripple effect. And one is really necessary now. I don’t know if you have been looking at the news this morning, but the latest country for the crosshairs has been identified by the Bush Gang: Syria.

This is from LA JORNADA:

“The United States ‘believes in the presence of chemical weapons in Syria’, declared president George W. Bush this Sunday—accusations that were denied by the government of Damascas, which labeled them tricks to distract attention from the chaos unleashed in Iraq. In the White House, the president announced to the press that Damascas ‘must cooperate’ with Washington in its efforts to put an end to the regime of Saddam Hussein. ‘The government of Syria must not give shelter to a single member of the Baath party’, he added.

Me to Raven:

This is bad news, Rave, The majority of the speeches presented yesterday here in the forum, in addition to supporting Venezuela, were speeches of strong resistence to the US invasion of Iraq and the proliferation of other invasions. Several mentioned the raising of Cuba’s and Venezuela’s profiles as targets. Chávez said:
“We are ready to mobilize ourselves and defeat any attempt from the inside or the outside to destroy this revolution”, and called for the globalization of the struggle for the freedom and equality of all people.

And what about the chemical weapons that Iraq was supposed to have? Were they supposedly sneaked into Syria, or what? This is getting too crazy.

Raven to me:

GETTING too crazy?

SENTADO SOBRE LOS MUERTOS

It just isn’t the same writing these blogs in Caracas without Raven. We are working out a slightly more high-tech method than the tradtional 2 cans and a string approach to communication. We are now exchanging e-mails.

From me to Raven:

Hey, guy, after a 4 hour search to obtain bolivares for mexican pesos yesterday that left me frazzled and with an episode of diarrhea due to my visit to an upscale east-side Italian bistro (fast service, tortellinis seemed fresh, almost good italian bread with olive oil and something else to dip it in; it may have been the “something else” that hit my stomach like a cluster bomb falling on a house in Bagdad?) I managed to keep my intestines under control to watch a strong documentary film by 2 Irish women about the coup that took place here a year ago, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”. My friend Félix and I watched maybe 15 minutes in the English version and then started again with the version in Spanish. I have mixed feelings about the massive difference in quality of the print cut in English and the washed out version in Spanish—but maybe it’s more important for English speakers to understand what happened here?

Raven apparently took a few minutes to down his coffee and respond from Puerto Angel:

Hey you, too. Maybe the Spanish version is meant to be a bus picture!

*Note: Some of the films that turn up on the first class buses are normal videos of films—mostly from Hollywood—but there are some nearly inexplicable choices—the occasional good documentary about divers in Cabo Verde, but just as likely a low-budget biker video with hilarious subtitling of the biker jargon. This documentary could serve as a consciousness raising vehicle on the buses....

Raven continues:

Check out Eduardo Galeano´s piece, “la náusea” in LA JORNADA:

“The country in the world which fabricates more weapons and more lies sneers at the sufferings of others. ‘We don’t count the dead’, answered General Franks when someone asked him about collateral damage—what they call those civilians blown to bits.”

Me to Raven:

Rave, right. Remember the blog we did about the Bly poem, “Counting Small.Boned Bodies”? For the Poets Against the War event at the university, where one of my students lifted the roof of the auditorium reading Miguel Hernández’ elegy from the Spanish Civil War, “Sentado sobre los muertos” (Sitting on the Dead)....I have the Galeano piece on the screen now. Nice translating. What about this irony-laden comment?:

”Babylon, the whore of the Old Testament, deserves this punishment. For its many sins and its plentiful petroleum.”

And then, at the end:

“The country dedicated to bombing the other countries, that for years and years has been inflicting an uncontrolable number of 9/11s, has declared an infinite third world war.

Raven to me:

Of course it is. And get this, from another piece:

“Miami, 11 de abril. The governor of Florida, Jeb Bush, brother of president George W. Bush, proclaimed on Friday that after the “success” of the war in Iraq, the United States ought to turn its sights to the “neighborhood” and pressure the international community so that the cuban regime doesn’t continue.”

What is this—a neighborhood cleanup campaign?

Me to Raven:

That’s all we need, Rave—the whore of the Miami anticastristas who rigged the election in Florida to put the Village Idiot in the White House dedicating himself to being the soccer mom of the hemisphere. This scenario of putting Cuba and then Venezuela in the crosshairs was mentioned by Chávez last night after we watched the film. What he didn’t do was quote himself—about a year ago he said “We will continue for many years in the crosshairs of the snipers....”

Raven to me:

I read that he cut an agreement yesterday with the “opposition” to hold the referendum on his presidency. So I guess Carter will be going back to Caracas?

Me to Raven:

Yeah. At least he is a dove—his flying here with his new Nobel sure beats the hell out of sending a cruise missile through the front door of Miraflores.

Raven to me:

I bet the Pentagon still has those 3,000 toilet seats they didn’t drop on Bagdad....

ON OUR KNEES

Yesterday in the forum for solidarity with the Bolivarian Revolution a professor from the Central University here in Caracas spoke about the relevance of Simón Bolívar´s thinking for these moments in which we are living.

Bolívar was ahead of his time. He devoted a hundred percent of his time and energy and economic resources to freeing his country from its colonial status; he was born wealthy and died penniless, wearing a borrowed shirt. His ideas about equality of all people in a nation and creating a structure for a united South America had gone unheeded until the emergence of Chávez on the political screen, who proudly wears his mixed ethnicity and his heart on his sleeve.

Chávez has not endeared himself to the oligarchy, the traditional elite whose control of Venezuela Bolívar tried to prevent. The same kinds of folks who conspired against The Liberator actively conspire against Chávez. I sure didn’t see any designer label shoppers in the crowd for yesterday’s events.

Raven might have spotted them; he has sharper eyes than I....

Revolutionary leaders who are ahead of their time--this theme kept resounding in my head all day yesterday, due not just to the analysis of Bolívar’s thinking, but also because April 10th was the 84th anniversary of the assassination in Chinameca, Morelos, of Emiliano Zapata—another leader who was ahead of his time because he wanted to take what was precious and useful from traditions of the past to insure a viable and harmonious future for campesinos of Mexico.

Zapata is famous for having said, “La tierra es de quien la trabaja” (The land belongs to the person who works it), and that phrase is displayed in the wall of the musuem in Anenecuilco, Morelos, that contains the ruins of house in which Zapata was born. Zapata was also against a society of classes. Why is it that leaders who believe in and promote the concept of equality among people are seen as dangers to society?

Zapata also said, “It´s better to die on your feet than live on your knees.”

I assume that Raven would insist that the question to think about in terms of the loss of personal freedom in the US and other parts of the world due to the current administration´s plan for world dominance is:

How many of us are living on our knees?

Raven, of course, doesn't have knees....

TOPPLING THE STATUES OF SADDAM....CARVING UP IRAQ

Too bad Raven is not with me here in Caracas. With the White House Hawks who dominate the news everywhere I go in the world rubbing their claws together and salivating over the spoils of Iraq (only guys who have souls like oil spills could salivate over petroleum....), I miss Raven’s manic lyricism, his pointed wit.

Yesterday Rumsfeld described the images from Bagdad—the toppling of statues of Hussein--and said he couldn’t help thinking about the fall of the Berlin Wall, and of the Iron Curtain. He compared Saddam Hussein to Hitler, Stalin and Lenin. I am not sure how he hooked Lenin into the picture, but....He clearly forgot to notice that the cartoons circling the world in protest banners and newspapers most commonly show Bush with a false Hitler-style mustache, and discreet nazi swaztikas circling him like flies. (Who was that peanuts character? Ah yes, Pigpen....)

Who is Rumsfeld kidding, anyway? Now we will watch the Hawks take out the carving set and start slicing off chunks of Iraq. Petroleum for Cheney’s pals at Halliburton, France and Germany complaining that they are being discrimianted against in the division of the spoils because they didn’t support the US invasion. Cynical bastards are on the ascendancy almost everywhere, knives and forks upraised.

Here in Caracas, maybe not. This morning we will begin the Solidarity event to commemorate the failed coup that isolated Hugo Chávez from the presidency for almost 48 hours--returned to the office by the PEOPLE, those forgotten and disparaged elements of a democracy that is fast disappearing in the world at large—and there are folks from all over the world. So far I haven’t seen anyone else carrying a US passport, but maybe I will today? In the Foro Bolivariano de las Américas, I feel a little lonely holding down the fort with al the other spots in the hemisphere so well-represented—especially the younger generation of Canadians. I am hopeful that the White House petrocriminals who have tried to get their claws on Venezuela´s oil by demonizing Chávez and fomenting counterrevolution have not convinced every other US citizen but me to stay away from here.

But as an expat, I guess I don’t count anyway. I feel a precious sense of freedom—I can say or write what I want, even associate with terrorists if I choose to without being threatened with jail for my lack of patriotism. Or lack of nationalism—that outmoded 19th century bugaboo suddenly back in fashion in the retrograde epoch of Bush.

I am almost as free as Raven.

Maybe.

REGIME CHANGE

Wow—trying to get on the night bus (13-14 grueling hours from Pochutla to Mexico City—almost as long as flying to Bagdad….) is not so easy. When I left the village, Raven was duking it out with Jupiter the Dog over some Brie in suspicious condition I put out in the garden when I made a half-hearted pass at cleaning out the refri (as we say in Spanish). Amd not only they were running amok: The cat--in this case I-- had not even left last night, and the mouse who lives downstairs in the kitchen, and who has been getting bigger and more belligerent, was trying to sleep in my bed!

And now, here in the Internet Café I open the window for LA JORNADA only to read rumors of the possible death of Saddam Hussein (not news)—and the possible death of Dick Cheney, who despite his dogged belligerence has apparently had some heart attacks (heart, not conscience) in the past….(which might be news—but only if true—I believe it was Mark Twain who said, “Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated”?)

Hmmm. Just last week Raven and I were demanding that Bush and Cheney both be impeached—as a number of folks have speculated that no one has assassinated Bush because Cheney and his Rabies would both become President.

Here in Mexico we say “Muerto el perro, se acaba la rabia” (When the dog dies, the rabies is finished)—which in the case of Cheney would raise the opportunity to test if the “dicho” has a real-life application. With Rabid Dogs of War Cheney and Bush out of the way, would the psychosis they have fomented—a combination of Big Stick a la Teddy Roosevelt, Jews for Jesus and/or Jesus as the Imposer of Alcoholics and Cokeheads for President (paz, Oliver Stone)—simmer down, or has the disease been fanned to epidemic proportions (in order to balance the idiosyncratic new pneumonia virus streaming out of China….?) by Rumsfeld, Rice and Other Canines for Christ?

I really find the inclusion of fundamentalism a nasty element in this bitches’ brew we are swimming in. Especially fundamentalism of the stripe that drags Jesus by the ear into every potential political conflict and insists that he did not say, “Turn the other cheek,” but gave orders along the lines of “Burn the other gook”, and not “Suffer that the little children come unto me”, but “Come and see the little children suffer in my name”. Let's stop with the Sermon on Capitol Hill. In short, as Eduardo Galeano has implied—when Jesus seems to be in the picture only to give contradictory messages--to Bush and to the Pope, in this case--it’s best to leave him out of it.

So. For the next step after IMPEACH THE BASTARDS:

REGIME CHANGE IN THE USA.

Good Friday is coming up; let’s not crucify any more people in His name.

GOLPE DE ESTADO MUNDIAL

Cluster bombs have been described by some Iraqi victims as “grapes falling from the sky” over Bagdad and the villages that surround the city. Cluster bombs, of course, are prohibited by the Geneva Conventions—another element of international law disdained by Baby Bush and his gang of petrocriminals.

Robert Fisk, one of the few un-“embedded” journalists writing about the invasion of Iraq for THE INDEPENDENT interviewed some of the victims and reported their descriptions:

***Rahed Hakem remembers that it was 10.30am on Sunday when she was sitting in her home in Nadr, that she heard "the voice of explosions" and looked out of the door to see "the sky raining fire". She said the bomblets were a black-grey color. Mohamed Moussa described the clusters of "little boxes" that fell out of the sky in the same village and thought they were silver-colored. They fell like "small grapefruit," he said. "If it hadn't exploded and you touched it, it went off immediately," he said. "They exploded in the air and on the ground and we still have some in our home, unexploded."

Karima Mizler thought the bomblets had some kind of wires attached to them – perhaps the metal "butterfly" that contains sets of the tiny cluster bombs and springs open to release them in showers.

Some victims died at once, mostly women and children, some of whose blackened, decomposing remains lay in the tiny charnel house mortuary at the back of the Hillah hospital. The teaching college received more than 200 wounded since Saturday night – the 61 dead are only those who were brought to the hospital or who died during or after surgery, and many others are believed to have been buried in their home villages – and, of these, doctors say about 80 per cent were civilians.

Soldiers there certainly were, at least 40 if these statistics are to be believed, and amid the foul clothing of the dead outside the mortuary door I found a khaki military belt and a combat jacket. But village men can also be soldiers and both they and their wives and daughters insisted there were no military installations around their homes. True or false? Who is to know if a tank or a missile launcher was positioned in a nearby field – as they were along the highway north to Baghdad? But the Geneva Conventions demand protection for civilians even if they are intermingled with military personnel, and the use of cluster bombs in these villages – even if aimed at military targets – thus crosses the boundaries of international law. ****

Raven, of course, is outraged at this inhumane behavior on the part of the invaders.“You know, I think it’s time that we species who are dominant in terms of our numbers expell your species from the animal kingdom. We don’t need the Geneva Convention to know which way the wind is blowing with you guys!”

Rave, I understand where you’re coming from. Not only is Baby Bush praising the soldiers for their “friendly treatment” of Iraqi civilians, but the Pentagon-controlled press has hinted that Iraqis have dropped the cluster bombs on their own people. Fisk, however, goes on to report:

***One thing was clear: there is no "front line" in the fighting around Babylon, that US forces strike into land around the Tigris river by air and then withdraw and Iraqi forces do much the same in the other direction. Only the Americans and British, of course, have air superiority – indeed there is no evidence a single Iraqi aircraft has taken off since the start of the invasion – so even the US and British officers back at Qatar headquarters can hardly claim the cluster bombs were dropped by Iraq.***

"But they’re cynical enough to TRY to make the claim. We may be beasts, but we are not cynical bastards.”

Raven throws the rest of his breakfast into the garbage can. “When I, a scavenger, lose my appetite, it’s time to recalculate the Mayan calendar. I think the end of the 13th Baktun is coming sooner than 2012”

Fisk gives us a little background on the use of cluster bombs:

***Needless to say, it is not the first time cluster bombs have been used against civilians. During Israel's 1982 siege of west Beirut, its air force dropped cluster bomblets manufactured for the US Navy across several areas, especially in the Fakhani and Ouzai districts, causing civilians ferocious and deep wounds identical to those I saw in Hillah yesterday. Angry at the misuse of their weapons, which are designed for use against exclusively military targets, the Reagan administration withheld a shipment of fighter-bombers for Israel – then relented a few weeks later and sent the aircraft anyway.

It is not easy to listen to Iraqi officials condemning the use of illegal weapons when the Iraqi air force has itself dropped poison gas on the Iranian army and on pro-Iranian Kurdish villages during the 1980-88 war against Iran. Outraged claims from Iraqi officials at the abuse of human rights sound like a bell with a very hollow ring. But something terrible happened around Hillah this week, something unforgivable and something contrary to international law. One hesitates, as I say, to talk of human rights in this land of torture but if the Americans and British don't watch out, they are likely to find themselves condemned for what they have always – and rightly – accused Iraq of: war crimes. ***

"Yeah, right. The US and the Brits are going to allow their leaders to be dragged into trial in The Hague. I’ll believe that when I see it.”

Here in Latin America there is a push toward solidarity and compassion, according to an article in today’s LA JORNADA:

***Intellectuals of Latin America have created an International Committee of Solidarity with their colleagues who are censured or persecuted for fighting against the war. According to the public declaration, published yesterday in the newspaper LA REPUBLICA in Montevideo, Uruguay, the Committee will “dedicate its efforts to giving true information about what is happening in US society, as well as about the continuous warring incursions of its armies throughout the entire planet.” The intellectuals, among them Uruguayans Mario Benedetti y Eduardo Galeano, Argentinians Juan Gelman y Mempo Giardinelli and Luis Sepúlveda from Chile, have invited all men and women of good will to join their peaceful fight for freedom. They believe that the invasion of Iraq is a “golpe de estado mundial” (a military coup at the global level) that is running roughshod over international law and has for all purposes anulled the United Nations, and which also represents a severe erosion of individual liberties in the US itself.***

“Good for them”, Raven opens the refrigerator door and looks around inside it. “There’s nothing in here worth eating. And you’re flying off to Venezuela to put your two cents into all this.” He heads for the door.

Where are you off to, Rave?

“Back to the simple life appropriate to my species. I’m off to the garden to eat worms. It’s still early.”

EVEN IN A DECAYED DEMOCRACY....?

It’s beautiful here on the Oaxacan coast this morning. Raven is singing along with Barbieri, after complaining that his pan dulce was stale. There’s no smell of napalm in the air....

And I am scrolling down the computer screen. Opening windows. Reading Subcomandante Marcos in La Jornada (“The Tower of Babel: between makeup and the closet”):

"In the new Tower of Babel, the common task is respect for who’s in charge. And the person in charge does it by substituting an excess of force for not being right. The mandate is that all the colors be made up to demonstrate the shiny color of money—or those that dress in multicolor do so only in the darkness of shame. Makeup or the closet. The same for homosexuals, lesbians, immigrants, muslims, native peoples, “colored people”, men, women, young people, old people, those who don’t adapt and all the names that other people take in whatever part of the world...This is the project of globalization: to make the planet a new Tower of Babel. In every sense. Homogenous in its way of thinking, in its culture, in its model. Dominated not by the person who’s right, but by the one with the force...In the new tower, the architecture is war against The Different, the bricks are our bones and the mortar our blood...."

Marcos’ singularly dark vision of this moment is shared by most of us. We want to find a glow of hope somewhere in the labyrinth that will give us the blast of spiritual adrenalin necessary to go forward. Towards that glow. In a world dominated by Doublespeak, Good is Evil and a leader who speaks about human dignity is reviled as a demagogue, a dictator or a populist.

Or, in the postmodern categorical thinking, we have the case of Hugo Chávez being reviled for fomenting “an excess of democracy” in a poor country. (Remember Kissinger, who said that people in the Third World should not be allowed to elect people who might inconvenience the agenda of the US—and who overthrew Salvador Allende, democratically elected President of Chile, on September 11, 1973, using General Pinochet as his hit man?)

Meanwhile, democracy—even of the representative sort—has become a thing of the past in the US. An article by Robert Kuttner in the Boston Globe, reprinted on www.commondreams.org reminds us that Bush benefits from the decay of democracy, and does not give us a very hopeful prognosis:

“Even in a decayed democracy, of course, if things get bad enough, the people will throw the rascals out. But repairing democracy itself -- that is harder.”

This echoes the modest proposal that Raven and I made a few days ago: IMPEACH THE BASTARDS, I believe we said.

We´re still saying it. Hoping that the sooner it happens the sooner the citizens of the US—and of the world—can start taking back control of their lives.

Raven is going to hold down the fort here in the tropical bunker for a couple of weeks while I am off to support the “excess of democracy” in Venezuela at the Foro Bolivariano de las Américas. ¡VIVA LA REVOLUCIÓN! (The revolution of consciousness....)

IMPEACH THE BASTARDS!

This beautiful morning Raven and I have agreed on two things:

1) I won’t give him any more undercooked meat, and

2) Bush and his criminal crony Dick Cheney MUST BE IMPEACHED.

What was that slogan for some brand of US athletic shoes that used Asian slave labor in their manufacture--? JUST DO IT!

Write, call and visit your congressional representatives.

Now.

Before more thousands of people are sacrificed to the gods of petroleum, get the people that are SUPPOSED to represent you rolling on the impeachment process.

(Nixon resigned—having done less damage to US credibility. And the Republicans tried to toss Clinton out on his ear for receiving blow jobs in the Oval Office. Monica Lewinsky doesn’t have to pay some distractive visits to Baby Bush at this point—he’s unleashed too much mayhem already. Let him keep his fly up—but throw his ass out of there!)

If you have any doubt about the gratuitous suffering and death of the invasion of Iraq, check out the photos on www.mikemalloy.net!

Raven says you won’t want to eat any more undercooked meat, either....

LOBOS QUE MATAN ENTRE ELLOS

“Well, says Raven, “I feel vindicated.”

How’s that, Rave?

“Remember the conversation we were having yesterday—about the law of the jungle?”

A little hard to forget it, You raked my species over the coals.

“Yeah, well, I’m not the only one doing the raking. In La Jornada there is a piece about José Saramago receiving an honorary doctorate in Madrid from the Universidad Carlos III. He gave a speech entitled Democracy and the University, and—it says here—after observing a minute of silence for the victims of the war in Iraq, added ‘We are living, THEY are living, an unjust, illegal and disproportionate war, and we, the so-called public opinion—what we are doing is searching for the way to change the luck of the human being and change what we have been throughout history: wolves that kill each other, offending even wolf consciousness—because wolves respect each other, and human beings don’t know how to do that.’ So, another person realizing that these comparisons to the animal kingdom are, in fact, insultingly unfair to us animals.”

What else did he have to say?

“That it’s necessary to ‘reinvent democracy and break it loose from the immobility to which it has been condemned by the routine and the incredulity of different political and economic powers—for whom it’s convenient to maintain the decorative facade of the democratic edifice that is preventing us from verifiying if there is really something behind it.’”

And how does he suggest doing that?

“He appealed to the university, to provide free education—on the basis that the new model needs to come from that before it is too late. He says: ‘The university needs to be—more than an institution that dispenses knowledge—the space for the formation of the person educated in the values of human solidarity and peace; educated also for freedom, critical spirit and responsible debate of ideas.’”

What we struggle to implement here in this educational community on the edge of the sea. Or the edge of the earth. With marginal results.

“Also in Spain there seems to have been cloned the cancelation of cultural events.” Raven continues reading.

Poets against the war again?

“It says, ‘While Saramago showed his preoccupation for the democratic process, the Executive of the Spanish government, right-wing politician José María Aznar, ordered the suspension of the televized gala with which annually has been celebrated World Theater Day, and which according to the actors was due to the fear on the part of the authorities that it would be converted into a new proclamation against the war, critical of the posture of Aznar in regard to the conflict.’”

Bush barring Walt Whitman all over again, Rave.

“The actors made a very articulate statement, though: ‘Theater is a political art, done by way of an assembly—convoking the people and dialoging with them. Only in the meeting of the actors with the citizens—only then theater takes place. It is not possible to do theater without politics, given that it was born to question the gods and unmask the men who disguise themselves as gods. It’s an ancient vice—a government which thinks it’s God.’”

Right, Rave. We´ve got politicians thinking they are God, but behaving like the worst examples of animals. Confusion on a grand scale. I’m glad you feel vindicated, but where does that leave me?

“I think we need to look back at where we were a few days ago: Stuck inside of Mobile, with the Memphis Blues....”

Again.

LAW OF THE JUNGLE

Raven has been rampantly lyrical on this beautiful spring morning here in the tropics. He was shrieking at 6:30 from the roof, ready to sing along with The Best of Gato Barbieri. I am crawling around with my coffee cup, facing the prospect of reviewing Robert Fisk’s trip to a hospital in Bagdad with my students.

Raven is unruffling his feathers and humming as he reads the morning news.

“The Leo of Your Dreams, Hugo Chávez, was rabble-rousing in Caracas yesterday.”

Fabulous! That’s something he does well. What was he rousing about?

“Business, primarily. It was an assembly of Businessmen for Venezuela. But then here he starts talking about Jimmy Carter—“a man dedicated to finding the solutions to conflicts—looking for political ways, diplomatic ways, peaceful ways.” He goes on to say:

‘I raise my voice, again, which is the voice of Venezuela against the invasion of Iraq; Venezuela has no other option but to say Peace! No other opetion but demand respect for international law, for the sovereignty of countries. Venezuela has no other path but to demand a return to the framework of the United Nations because it is very dangerous for the world that international order is broken, and that we are entering the phase of the law of the jungle--where always the strongest imposes his will. This is very grave, indeed. Lula, our brother President of Brazil, said it well a few days ago—and I repeat: No country, no matter its name--in this case its name is the United States of America—has the legal authority to decide what is good and what is evil in the world. Or to invade countries or bomb cities where there are children, women. For God’s sake! Innocent human beings—this can’t be. Who has given whom that legal authority to drop bombs on cities? From here we ask for peace, and I repeat again the demand that we use the United Nations.’”

Sounds good to me, Rave.

“He goes on to say, and I don’t know if he is being sarcastic or what—that some people there have suggested that after the US destroys Iraq they should come after him....”

Considering that one of the highest priorities of the US government is the destruction of OPEC, it would not be that far-fetched. They certainly put enough money into the two coup attempts against Chávez last year. But what disturbs me, Rave, is that although folks are talking in the General Assembly of the UN, no concerted proposal for a resolution has yet been made against the US for this completely illegal invasion of another country.

“A bit of activity is happening here in Latin America, though. In Rio Bush was officially declared persona non grata by the city council. There was a protest outside of the US embassy in Quito. The Secretary of State of the Dominican Republic resigned in protest of the government of his country’s backing of the US invasion. And in Managua, Nicaragua, the Vice President declared himself a dissident within his government for the same reason.”

But it isn’t changing the reality of what Chávez says—that the law of the jungle has taken over in world affairs. Colin Powell has even had the nerve to say that neither the UN nor any other country will be involved in Iraq after the US takes control. He’s saying it will be a US colony! The real problem is that until a critical mass of dissent is formed WITHIN the US the law of the jungle will continue to prevail.

Rave looks uncomfortable.

“You know what? I have been running this law of the jungle phrase around in my mind, and I’m just not comfortable with it. We have the jungle pretty much right here, and even though it’s mating season—with all the competition that creates—the jungle is, as always, a relatively peaceful environment.”

So? What’s your point?

“My point,” Raven cocks an eye quickly in my direction, “is that the jungle is peaceful because the human species—Tarzan fantasies aside—is normally not represented there.”

SWEETHEART LIKE YOU

“It’s hot!” One of my students shouts this to me as he makes his way, sweating, across the campus here at the university.

It’s nice! At least we’re not in the middle of a sandstorm in Iraq....

Raven looks up as I come in.

“Here’s a guy with his fingers in his eyes.” Raven points at the front page of La Jornada on the computer screen. The headline: SANDSTORM PARALYZES INVASION!

The Three Stooges used to put their fingers in each others’ eyes, Rave.

“Before my time, apparently.” Rave yawns and reaches for a sweet roll, hits a different window with the mouse. “Want to hear about an un-imbedded journalist?”

Robert Fisk, I presume.

“Not Dr. Livingstone. This is an interview with him by the Democracy Now folks, and I will just read some of it:

Amy Goodman, Democracy Now! Host: Set the scene for us in Baghdad right now.

Robert Fisk, The Independent: Well, it’s been a relatively—relatively being the word—quiet night, there’s been quite a lot of explosions about an hour ago. There have obviously been an awful lot of missiles arriving on some target, but I would say it was about 4 or 5 miles away. You can hear the change in air pressure and you can hear this long, low rumble like drums or like someone banging on a drum deep beneath the ground, but quite a ways away. There have only been 2 or 3 explosions near the center of the city, which is where I am, in the last 12 hours. So, I suppose you could say that, comparatively, to anyone living in central Baghdad, it’s been a quiet night. The strange thing is that the intensity of the attacks on Baghdad changes quite extraordinarily; you’ll get one evening when you can actually sleep through it all, and the next evening when you see the explosions red hot around you.

Jeremy Scahill, Democracy Now! Correspondent: Robert Fisk, you wrote in one of your most recent articles, actually, the title of it was "Iraq Will Become a Quagmire for the Americans" and I think many people within the US administration were surprised to find the kinds of resistance they have in places like Nasiriyah. We have the two Apache helicopters that have apparently been shot down and many US casualties so far. Do you think the Americans were caught by surprise, particularly by the resistance in the south where everyone was saying that the people are against Saddam Hussein?

Robert Fisk: Well, they shouldn’t have been caught by surprise; there were plenty of us writing that this was going to be a disaster and a catastrophe and that they were going to take casualties. You know, one thing I think the Bush administration has shown as a characteristic, is that it dreams up moral ideas and then believes that they’re all true, and characterizes this policy by assuming that everyone else will then play their roles. In their attempt to dream up an excuse to invade Iraq, they’ve started out, remember, by saying first of all that there are weapons of mass destruction. We were then told that al Qaeda had links to Iraq, which, there certainly isn’t an al Qaeda link. Then we were told that there were links to September 11th, which was rubbish. And in the end, the best the Bush administration could do was to say, “Well, we’re going to liberate the people of Iraq”. And because it provided this excuse, it obviously then had to believe that these people wanted to be liberated by the Americans. And, as the Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz said a few hours ago, I was listening to him in person, the Americans expected to be greeted with roses and music- and they were greeted with bullets. Saddam did not get knocked off his perch straight away, and I think that, to a considerable degree, the American administration allowed that little cabal of advisors around Bush- I’m talking about Perle, Wolfowitz, and these other people—people who have never been to war, never served their country, never put on a uniform- nor, indeed, has Mr. Bush ever served his country- they persuaded themselves of this Hollywood scenario of GIs driving through the streets of Iraqi cities being showered with roses by a relieved populace who desperately want this offer of democracy that Mr. Bush has put on offer-as reality. And the truth of the matter is that Iraq has a very, very strong political tradition of strong anti-colonial struggle.

Amy Goodman: Do you think Saddam Hussein is in control?

Robert Fisk: Oh yes, absolutely. There have been a few incidents, I mean there was a little bit of shooting last night and there were the rumors that people had come from Saddam City and there were clashes with security forces or security agents, and rumors of a railway line being blown up, which was denied by the authorities, but there is no doubt Saddam is in control. It’s very funny sitting here, in a strange way, I suppose, if you could listen to some of the things that were said about the United States here, you’d laugh in America, but I’ve been listening to this uproariously funny argument about whether Saddam’s speech was recorded before the war and whether they have look-alikes. So, that in fact, the speech that Saddam made 24 hours ago, less than 24 hours ago, a speech that was very important if you read the text carefully and understand what he was trying to do, it has been totally warped in the United States by a concentration not on what he was saying, but whether it was actually him that was saying it. The American correspondent was saying to me yesterday morning, “This is ridiculous, we simply can’t report the story, because every time we have to deal with something Saddam says, the Pentagon claims it’s not him or it’s his double or it was recorded 2 weeks ago”. So, the story ceases to be about what the man says, the story starts to be this totally mythical, fictional idea that it really isn’t Saddam or it’s his double, etcetera. I watched this recording on television, all his television broadcasts are recordings because he’s not so stupid as to do a live broadcast and get bombed by the Americans while he’s doing it. The one thing you learn if you’re a target is not to do live television broadcasts, or radio for that matter, or, indeed telephone. But if you listen and read the text of what Saddam said, it has clearly been recorded in the previous few hours, and I can tell you, having once actually met the man, it absolutely was Saddam Hussein.

Jeremy Scahill: Robert Fisk, what are you seeing in terms of the preparations for the defense of Baghdad? The people that we’ve been interviewing inside of Iraq- both ordinary Iraqis as well as journalists and others, are saying that there aren’t really visible signs that there are any overt preparations underway. What’s your sense?

Robert Fisk: Well, it doesn’t look like Stalingrad to me, but I guess in Stalingrad there probably weren’t a lot of preparations. I’ve been more than 20 miles outside of Baghdad, and you can certainly see troops building big artillery vetments around the city. I mean, positions for heavy artillery and mortars, army vehicles hidden under overpasses, the big barracks of long ago-as in Serbia before the NATO bombardment have long been abandoned. Most of these cruise missiles that we hear exploding at night are bursting into government buildings, ministries, offices and barracks that have long ago been abandoned. There’s nobody inside them; they are empty. I’ve watched ministries take all their computers out, trays- even the pictures from the walls. That is the degree to which these buildings are empty; they are shells. Inside the city, there have been a lot of trenches dug beside roads, sandbag positions set up. In some cases, holes dug with sandbags around them to make positions on road intersections to make positions for snipers and machine gunners. This is pretty primitive stuff.

Amy Goodman: General Colin Powell said that foreign journalists should leave as the campaign of so-called ‘shock and awe’ is initiated- and it has started. Why have you chosen to remain in Baghdad?

Robert Fisk: Because I don’t work for Colin Powell, I work for a British newspaper called The Independent; if you read it, you’ll find that we are.”

Nice piece, Rave. Glad you just hit the high spots of it, though. It’s definitely not where I want to be now, either.

“Funny. I was all set to run into you in Badgad, and ask that all important question.” Rave has a mad gleam in his eye.

Okay. I’ll bite. What’s the question?

“What’s a sweetheart like you doin’ in a dump like this?”

Well, we know why Robert Fisk is there—he doesn’t work for Colin Powell. Doesn’t Dylan quote something in that song about patriotism being the last refuge of scoundrels? Better you should be asking Tommy Franks for the answer.

“He might get the wrong idea.”

No, he won’t. He’ll just quote a few more lines from the song: “If you steal a little they throw you in jail. If you steal a lot they make you king....”

SADDAM—AMERICAN AGENT?

Raven is in fine feather this morning, chortling to himself in front of the computer screen between pecks at his hotcakes.

I am not so fine of feather. All the war news has been grinding me into chorizo.

Okay, Rave. What’s so funny?

“The Pentagon propaganda has painted the Iraqui soldiers as being ready to throw down their obsolete weapons and cover the US and British troops with flowers. Seems like the reality is different. Listen to this:

‘The captured or deserting soldiers interviewed by western journalists so far clearly do detest the Iraqi dictator but are less than overjoyed to see US and British soldiers rolling across their country. One Iraqi PoW told a New York Times reporter that President Saddam had been such a disaster for his country that he must be an American agent.’”

I think that’s called “gallows humor”. It’s amazing, though—after all the years of war and bombings and blockades the Iraquis clearly still have a sense of dignity.

“Meanwhile, on the US front, it seems people are starting to smell a rat. The CIA is still insisting that Saddam did not buy any uranium in Africa and that he’s never had any ties to Al Quaeda. They say that Bush was informed, but decided to use those lies in his speeches anyway.”

To whip up patriotic fervor, perhaps. Or to see how much obvious pap the public will swallow.

“I was reading an article a few days ago where he told a visitor to the Oval Office at the beginning of his presidency (sic) that if it had not been for the intervention of Jesus he would have been sitting in a bar in Texas instead of greeting visitors in the White House.”

Big mistake, that intervention. If he were sitting in that bar right now we might expect him to bust up a barstool—or fall off of one. He sure as hell wouldn’t be bombing Bagdad.

“Didn’t someone say the Lord works in mysterious ways....?”

Mysterious, maybe. But perverse?

BOWLING FOR BAGDAD

Last night documentary filmmaker Michael Moore received an Oscar for “Bowling for Columbine”, a controversial picture about gun violence in the US:

Wagging his finger from the stage as he was both applauded and booed by the assembled celebrities, Moore said, "We are against this war, Mr. Bush. Shame on you." Moore, who received a standing ovation from the assembled celebrities, invited the other nominees for best documentary film to join him onstage in solidarity against the war against Iraq.

"We like nonfiction and we live in fictitious times. We live in a time where we have fictitious election results, that elect a fictitious president. We live in a time where we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons," Moore said.

Raven clicks his beak in applause. “Nice going. I wish he had said something about the Day of Infamy, though.”

Are we talking Pearl Harbor here, Rave?

“Not exactly. I am reading a piece by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. for the LA Times that’s republished on Common Dreams.”

I remember him. From the Kennedy days. What’s he say?

“The president has adopted a policy of ‘anticipatory self-defense’ that is alarmingly similar to the policy that imperial Japan employed at Pearl Harbor on a date which, as an earlier American president said it would, lives in infamy. Franklin D. Roosevelt was right, but today it is we Americans who live in infamy.”

He’s right, of course. I don’t feel comfortable running around with an infamous passport, either. Even here at the end of the earth.

Raven looks out the window at the pelicans circling the bay.

“Good place to hide out, though. Nice morning, too. Blue skies. Nothing but blue skies. All the way to Bagdad.”

Enough with the lyricism, Rave. What else does Schlesinger say?

“He says that The Bush Doctrine converts us into the world's judge, jury and executioner -- a self-appointed status that, however benign our motives, is bound to corrupt our leadership. As John Quincy Adams warned on July 4, 1821, the fundamental maxims of our policy ‘would insensibly change from liberty to force ... [America] might become the dictatress of the world. She would no longer be the ruler of her own spirit.’ Already the collateral damage to our civil liberties and constitutional rights, carried out by the religious fanatic who is our attorney general, is considerable -- and more is still to come.”

How does he think that has happened?

“He points the figure squarely, saying: ‘The media have played up mass demonstrations at the expense of the reasoned case against the war. According to polls, a near majority of ill-informed Americans believes Hussein had something to do with the attacks on New York and the Pentagon and resulting massacre of nearly 3,000 innocent people. Hussein is a great villain, but he had nothing to do with 9/11.’”

In short, the media are working for the government now. Jesus, Rave, I remember when journalists were the ones exposing government propaganda—not spreading it around like anthrax. And more to the point, why is it incumbent upon the US to remove Hussein from power in his own country?

“According to Schlesinger, it isn’t. He says: ‘Hussein is unquestionably a monster. But does that mean we should forcibly remove him from power? "Wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been or shall be unfurled," Adams said in the same July 4 speech, "there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy." We are now going abroad to destroy a monster.’”

And creating an even greater monster at the same time. Hussein is pretty small potatoes compared to the White House hawks who are trying to take over the world!

“And giving some of us birds a really bad name, too....”