IN THE AFTERMATH OF TROPICAL STORM CARLOS, RAVEN SAYS FAREWELL

After days of rain
that very nearly drowned him,
raven is drying
his brain in welcome sunlight,
getting ready to pack his

beak and beat it south.
The little rock and roller
wants to play with the
big birds high in the Andes,
string his song down to the coast

again, and stop just
short of the Galapagos:
to meet up with Whale,
who’s been waiting to give him
back his immortality.

Raven’s been pushing
his luck, playing beach bummer
in this tiny bay
where the magnitude of Whale
can’t enter even in dreams:

this briny hide-out
is only a pirate’s cache
of Cuban cigars
in the intense panoply
of contraband that’s Whale’s grace.

Raven deserves to
receive Whale’s forgiveness,
now, for barging in
and gutting him like a fish,
trying to eat his power.

He has learned that small
can also be enormous,
can feel the great pulse
of the ocean in his eye—
the heartbeat of Whale, who drags

the Pacific like
a sweater unraveling
in waves behind him.
He has learned that he doesn’t
have to eat Whale to be him,

that he can dance on
his back as he plows the sea
seeding new beings,
and sing his clouds into bloom
like flowers, or like prayers.

RAIN

Rain. Rain. Rain. Rain. Rain.
A pause.
Raven’s voice calling me from the rooftop:

“I feel like Noah after the flood!”

Uh, just a minute Rave. I think you should be feeling like the bird Noah sent out to find land.

“Doves and pigeons are suckers. Who, with a normal set of brains, would bring back a branch of a tree in his beak under those circumstances? You can’t eat stuff like that.”

You don’t know what he did BEFORE he came back to the Ark with the branch. He could very well have eaten something tasty, then grabbed the branch to bring back.

“At least it couldn’t have been a MacDonald’s hamburger. Is that anti-MacDonald’s French guy still in jail?”

I thought that you would be up on all the news, guy. What’s the deal here?

“The deal is that this wheeler and dealer’s brain has been too rain-logged to process information.”

Raven flutters down next to me on the stone steps.

Thanks, Rave. I was getting a stiff neck looking up at you. I haven’t been too with it, either, but it seems to me that after they dragged him out of bed and crammed him in the slammer that something must have happened because I think I saw something about house arrest.

“At least if he’s in his house he won’t have any prison guards slipping him genetically manipulated gruel….And, speaking of snacks….”

Now what?

“Mind if I swipe the last packet of rye crackers?”

You know, some people have sent me e-mails commenting that you are obsessed with food.

“I’m a bird! A basic creature. Bound to the base of Maslow’s bird-feeder of needs—or whatever it’s called. Birds spend a lot of time looking for food and eating food. That’s not obsession; that’s survival. Birds like me don’t live to be 80 years old on a diet of self-actualization.”

Oh. How old are you, anyway?

“I’m not exactly sure. But I’m getting up there. Let’s just say 40-something.” Raven beaks into the last cracker, and crumples the wrapper. “But let’s get back to the anti-genetics guy.”

José Bové. He was supposed to turn up in Caracas in April, but he didn’t.

“Probably had other fish to fry.”

Rave, please. You’re doing it again. Somebody has to drive tractors into fast food spots. And somebody has to destroy genetically manipulated stuff that doesn’t even reproduce normally. All that weird DNA in the Darwinian soup has got to bode ill for our future.

“And if birds like me eat genetically manipulated garbage? What will happen to us?”

Are you complaining about the crackers?

“Naw, they were great. I was asking a serious question.”

I’m not sure if the eggshells would open and mutants would emerge. But something would happen. Eventually.

“Mercifully, I am not a producer of eggs. But I’d hate to see my descendants breaking millennial Raven traditions. A mutant sounds pretty unappealing as a grandson.”

Rave, is there a point to all this? A needle hiding in a haystack somewhere?

“Why does there have to be a point? Can’t I start my brain cells working again batting around a few random thoughts?”

A few random thoughts can be pretty dangerous. Look at Baby Bush.

“I said a FEW random thoughts. Not A random thought. And certainly not the same random thought over and over: Bomb someplace!

You forgot about: Put food on your family.

“Genetically manipulated mashed potatoes, no doubt. Just what people need: a smearer for president. And you think birds are obsessed with food! At least we eat what we find. We don’t smear it on our fledglings.”

Nor, I’d wager, do you bomb their nests.

“That would not be usual.”

Let’s hope that one of his random synapses puts the Oval Office in the crosshairs.

“Fouling his nest. Big time. Works for me!”

IMPEACH THE BASTARDS II

Raven and I have been watching with great interest the incandescent bulbs lighting up above people’s heads who have finally realized that they were suckered into accepting and supporting the invasion of the sovereign country, Iraq—an invasion that is still going on, with daily deaths from confrontations between Iraquis trying to defend THEIR country and U.S. soldiers who’ve been brainwashed into believing they’re back in—where?—Indiana?

It warms our hearts to see folks finally demanding a bipartisan congressional committee to investigate the machinations/manipulations/manufacturing of evidence and just plain lies (we come from the country and we know manure when we see it) strung together by the petrocriminals of the Bush Gang in order to get their hands—er, drills—into the second largest petroleum reserves on the planet.

“After that investigation shows just how guilty those guys are, do you think that people will look at the invasion of Afghanistan and be able to muster up enough historical memory to connect 9/11 with the Reichstag Fire?” Raven clamps his beak into a rye cracker.

A wry question from the rye cracker monster, huh? I’d like to hope so, Rave. I really would. But you have to remember that the bulbs that we’ve been seeing begin to give off some light are nowhere near the majority. In most of the bulbs there still beats the heart of darkness.

“Wretched analogy. It would be better to say still persists the peristalsis of stupidity.”

You’re too sensitive to images of darkness, and you’re getting too far out, guy—too close to Poe’s “detestable” putrescence from “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar.”

“Poe! Of course. A saint of my devotion. Or maybe I am the saint of his devotion? A second-class saint though—all he had me say was “Nevermore”. Not even “One day at a time.”

Ouch, Rave. I fear we’re heading into a fog of alcoholic imagery.

“He WAS an alcoholic.” Raven unwraps another little packet of rye.

Poe? I suppose so. It didn’t seem to hurt his writing, though.

“I was talking about Bush. The leader of the Gang. The born-again bonehead who—as we indicated a few months back—should be impeached.”

Who would—in fact—do better falling off a barstool in Texas.

“Both of them would do better.” Raven lies down on the windowsill, ready for a snooze in the sun.

Bush and Poe?

I had a terrible feeling—even before I finished my question—that I had been had.

“Of course not.” Raven closes one eye. “Bush and the horse he rode in on.”

To the bar in Texas.

“To the Oval Office. It’s high time they cleaned out the manure in there.”

Raven closes the other eye, and a discreet snore begins to escape from his beak.

DUELING BANJOS

Raven is in conspicuously bad humor this morning. Both of us despise rain, but he takes every drop as a personal insult.

Gee, guy, try to cheer up. We have to think about more important stuff than the weather.

Raven sniffs. “I think I am getting a cold. And you—who spent almost the whole day DRY in bed yesterday—you could show a little more sensitivity to your fellow creatures.”

I wasn’t just loafing, Rave. I was suffering the slings and arrows of my dental adventure of Saturday. Well, the aftermath of anesthesia, anyway. Now I remember why it had been 10 years since I last put myself in the hands of a dentist.

“I wish I could identify with you. Maybe teeth weren’t such an evolutionary bargain after all.” Raven looks down his beak in the mirror. “I don’t have tonsils, either.”

Rave, you are way ahead of the pack by anybody’s standards. I am reading a piece by Charley Reese. My friend Maryanne forwards me his stuff regularly—he is always a breath of fresh air, or at least a breath of common sense. I think you’ll appreciate that he agrees with you about the lack of evolutionary progress by the human race. Listen:


“It's too bad we can't force political leaders to settle their quarrels personally with pistols or swords. If that were their only choice, then most conflicts would be settled by negotiations. But instead, political leaders have the power to spend the lives of the nation's youth as if these precious lives were just another appropriation in the budget.

There is nothing I can do about it, but I don't like it. I suspect the human race has not changed appreciably since the cave man's days. Men have always settled conflicts with force and violence, and I suspect they will right up to the point where they wipe the human race off the face of the Earth.

If there is such a thing as evolution, it ain't working, at least as far as the human brain is concerned.”

“I told you so. Humans are an embarrassment to the animal kingdom—weak, conflictive, INSENSITIVE TO THEIR FELLOW CREATURES.”

Okay, I get the message. What would you like me to do to make you feel better?

“How about a cup of tea, for starters? With a smidge of Broncolin dumped into it. And—let’s see—soft-boiled eggs and toast and maybe some slices of papaya with a little lime juice dribbled over them and….

”Too bad we live at the end of the earth, Rave—sounds like a trip to the breakfast buffet at the Caracas Hilton is in order for you.

“Too far to fly in my tender condition. I guess I will just have to depend on your kindness….

”Blanche Dubois, in the flesh—er, feathers. Just what I needed.

HASTA LA VICTORIA SIEMPRE

Raven is trying to scrunch up my black boina small enough to get it to stay on his tiny head.

Rave, I just don’t think it’s going to work. You will have to commemorate the 75th birthday of Che Guevara some other way.

“Phooey. If anyone is the New Bird—it’s me.”

We are going to have people reading poems and parts of Che’s diaries and I think we might even have a cake. Your wearing the boina would really be a superfluous touch. Try pinning a star to one of your feathers.

“Savage. That’s what you are. I don’t suggest you poke holes in yourself.”

It’s not much different from putting a barrette in my hair, guy. You’re over-reacting.

Raven sniffs, offended.

You don’t have to be a star, baby—to be in my life. This is the time to remember Che—and others who have had the now increasingly rare habit of standing up for their principles and beliefs.

“I suppose. What kind of cake did you say we were having?”

*****
When I looked at the chronology of Che’s life that Lucinda had written for us on the whiteboard, I thought about how carefully Che’s life has been picked over:

Che

tu vida atrapada
como mariposa por un aguja—
pero ¡vuelas, vuelas!

Che

your life trapped
like a butterfly by a needle—
but you fly, you fly!


¡FELIZ CUMPLEAÑOS, COMANDANTE!

PELOS EN LA LENGUA**

Yesterday Raven nearly deafened me, but he also entertained me--in the highest sense--with his translation of a little part of Hugo Chávez' comments from Sunday's "Aló Presidente". We think it's important that more people read the text, as the little part that was picked up my the news services was very distorted. It begins with a few lines from a song:

“I’m not a little gold coin that everybody likes.
I was born this way and I am this way.
Those who don’t like me—too bad.”

I am not, nor am trying to be a little gold coin. Some people don’t like my wart, but is it my fault I was born with that wart? I am not going to get rid of it. Some people don’t like my big lips—well, I was born with them, and how is that my fault? Some people don’t like my eyes because they aren’t blue—this is the way they are: eyes of the savannah--the color of the honey of the Aricas, said a writer. Some people don’t like my hair because it is curly—because it’s not blond and straight. This is the way I was born: I’m ugly—well, black or black with Indian—that’s the way I am. I’m not refined or anything—I’m a little crude sometimes—but how is that my fault? That’s the way I am and will always be—I’m not going to change; I am almost 49—how am I going to change? Some people don’t like my ideas, they don’t like the bolivarian revolution, they don’t like nationalism. Some may have the idea as one leader of the opposition said—well, a pseudo-leader—said in those days of the lock-out—they asked him what his aspirations for Venezuela were, and he said that he dreamed that Venezuela would become Miami Beach: “I dream of Miami Beach here in Venezuela.”

Okay, there are people who have their mind set on another country or another way of life—they would like those of us who are black, brown, indians mixed with white and so forth to disappear and that there would be an elite society. That’s fascism. There are others who have different political ideas and those are respected—some of you aren’t in agreement with Ch?vez and I respect your reasons—even those that seem absurd—that’s okay—everybody has his own heart and mind. Those who would like everybody to be white with green eyes—that’s okay—it’s their problem—but our little world here is made up of blacks and whites and yellows and browns and mixes—that’s the way we are and that’s how we’ll continue to be. Thanks be to God that the world is like that. We respect white people with green eyes—they’re our brothers. No one can be racist there or here.

No, no—we are all equal before God, before the law. There can’t be privileges nor distinctions by race or color. Some people don’t like it that I talk about Christ the way I do. Well, I conceive of him that way; some people see him as weak and foolis; Christ is no fool—Christ for me is a revolutionary, a man who goes around with the people fighting for justice. Some people don’t like me to say that Christ is a revolutionary—because they have a much more middle-class idea of Christ. How could Christ have been middle class if he was born in a stable? Christ was born in a stable, the son of a carpenter and the Virgin Mary and he grew up among poor kids and died crucified. Who crucified him? The powers that be of that time—the fascists of that time crucified our King and Lord and Commander in Chief, Jesus of Nazareth. Some people don’t like it that I talk this way about Jesus—they say I am sinning. Okay—I respect them because there are some who like to go to church; I almost never go to church—I don’t have time. I pray though—what I am saying now is my prayer. I love the Lord and I go around with Him and we go around in the streets, in the roads fighting for the people. That’s my Christ—I love him that way; I don’t like to see him crucified and with the fool’s face they put on him sometimes. My Christ goes around in the streets, goes around alive, not dead and crucified. Some people don’t like this; I respect their ideas.

Okay, I respect whatever difference with Ch?vez or with the idea of Ch?vez. Some people don’t like my idea about the economy, the participation of the State. I am not a communist—if I were a communist you can be sure I would say so. I don’t have hairs in my tongue, I’m not going to be hiding stuff—no. I haven’t even studied communism; even being a communist—if I were one—in this moment in Venezuela the project can’t be communist….Fidel Castro, my friend and brother, is a communist—but the project of Venezuela isn’t communist. It’s written here for whoever wants to know the economic project—in the Constitution….There are some Venezuelans—some of whom have doctorates and so forth that believe Ch?vez is pushing Venezuela towards communism, but they have been mislead. I am a nationalist, a revolutionary, a bolivariano—that’s me, I like that ideological classification—bolivariano is an ideological definition—a healthy nationalism, latin american internationalism, unity—these are some of the ideological lines which I navigate with—the same as Jesus.


**No tengo pelos en la lengua--literally I don't have hairs in my tongue--is an expression in Spanish that means I say exactly what I mean.

****Raven wants to add this description of himself that he found on eBay (his reward for the labor of translating):

In the spiritual world he is a bird who brings protection, a messenger, he warns the forces of light of oncoming destruction and battle therefore giving us the power to guard and time for preparation... he has the ability to see into the past, the future, and beyond the veil of death. He has the great ability to travel from this world to the next.

NO SOY MONEDITA DE ORO

Raven is sitting in front of the computer screen, speakers blasting out the voice of Hugo Chávez.

Gee, Rave. You couldn’t make him any louder, could you?

“Hey”, Raven turns down the volume, “I thought he was The Leo of Your Dreams?”

He is, but I’m not completely deaf yet.

“When you figure out how to get some headphones to fit on my head, I won’t have to use the speakers anymore. I love this speech—where he says he’s not a little gold coin that everybody likes. But he stole my thunder, though.”

Really, guy—someone stole the thunder of the bird who stole the sun and the moon and stars and put them in the sky so that we have light?

“The bird who used to be white and who turned black going up the smoke hole with the sun, the moon and the stars.”

Oh oh. Rave, where is this going?

“You know Chávez. He said: “I’m ugly—black, not refined or anything—a little crude sometimes. Doesn’t that sound like your friendly neighborhood Raven?”

You’re not ugly! Black, well yes—obviously. Crude—sometimes. I see what you mean that he stole SOME of your thunder.

“He even said he wasn’t a communist.”

Has someone accused you of being one lately, Rave?

“Not since the 50s. Not since Charley McCarthy.”

Rave, I told you before: his name was Joe.

“Whatever.” Raven turns the volume back up. “I love this guy!”

A CRAB ON THE WALL

Sometimes you aren’t sure what is the product of your imagination, and what appeared on its own power. Yesterday I read a book by Antonio Skármeta, “La chica del trombón”, in which for at least the second time the author refers to the inhabitants of Gema, an apparently imaginary island in the Adriatic (first in “La boda del poeta”), who immigrate to Chile to escape from wars (a less dramatic version of Swimming to Antarctica….)

In the evening, I went down to my kitchen to make a cup of tea, and discovered a crab on the wall above the stove, almost at intersection of the wall with the ceiling. The crustacean seemed to be looking at me very intently—or maybe crabs only look intently because their eyes are very tiny? At first I thought the crab was an imaginary creature who was somehow a projection of a crab in my interior.

“Ha!” Raven, as usual is reading over my shoulder as I write this. “What a pile of crap: crab in your interior, indeed.”

I didn’t say it WAS; I said that was my first thought.

“Sounds like you were drinking more than tea. Are you sure you even saw SOMETHING?”

Rave, it was a crab. It was about 5 inches across, different shades of orange, and it wiggled its leg at me.

“Waving hello, no doubt. And did you happen to ask how it crawled up the cliff from the beach to your kitchen and then crawled up the wall?”

Not exactly. I asked it what it was up to. That’s when it wiggled its leg. I thought it was a sign, but it wasn’t in my language, so I didn’t understand.

“I think you spend too much time reading fiction. It’s taking over your daily life. Crabs are very tasty; you could have popped it into a pot of boiling water. Isn’t that what you people usually do to crabs?”

Rave, you’re impossible. For somebody so high-minded as you to even suggest killing a fellow creature is shocking. I wasn’t going to kill it. Besides, I’m allergic to shellfish. I just wanted to know its message.

“I’m not an assassin; I’m a scavenger. It’s my nature to know which creatures among the “possibly scavenged” are tasty. Probably there was no message. The creature was confused. All creatures are confused these days. We can’t believe the crazy stuff that’s happening on the planet. Another creature may have invaded its home and run it off. When we start imitating the behavior of your species, anything can happen.”

We’ve been down this road before, guy. I don’t want to take the heat for the nasty stuff some members of my species are up to.

“Fine. Some members of your species want to eliminate all the other species on the planet—not to mention that some members of your species want to eliminate a significant percentage of your own species just because they don’t agree with the Bush Gang. And they're trying to eliminate their historical memory, too, by destroying several thousand years worth of artifacts—so that history doesn’t begin in Sumer, but in a bar in Texas. But you’re not part of that. So what are you doing to stop it?”

I’m trying to raise people’s awareness.

“Great. And the crab? What did you do about it?”

Nothing, Rave. What could I do? I turned off the light and went back upstairs.

SWIMMING TO ANTARCTICA

Raven is holding his sides laughing. Pretty amazing when you consider that means he is levitating—no wing action at all.

What’s so funny?

“I don’t know if this is a joke or if it’s real, but this article says that Jason Blair is replacing Ari Fleisher as White House mouthpiece.” Raven wipes a tear from one beady eye and explodes in cackles.

It’s gotta be a joke, Rave! He’s that bogus alcoholic affirmative action bullshitter journalist that was fired from the NY TIMES.

“I know. I’m black and even I am offended by him. And the two head honchos from the TIMES just resigned. He brought down their house of cards, apparently.”

No way, Rave. They did it themselves by signing up to beat the war drums for the White House.

“My only hope is that he gets Bush back on the sauce. The world would be far better place with those two bozos falling off a barstool in Texas than sitting in the Oval Office.”

A very slender thread of hope, guy. I think we should consider heading south: Patagonia, or Tierra del Fuego.

“Swimming to Antarctica sounds about right….for you anyway. I can take the high road.”

Rave, straighten up and fly right.

SITTING ON A SEA OF....

Raven crouches on the windowsill.

Are you pretending to be a stuffed bird, or what?

“I’m depressed. The world is going to hell in a handbasket.”

Rave, you sound like my grandmother.

“I’ll bet she’s not even alive. Hendrix said: “There ain’t no life nowhere.” And he was right. He’s not alive either.

Yeah, on ARE YOU EXPERIENCED. The song was “I Don’t Live Today”. What IS this, guy: music trivia?

“There is no hope. First Wolfowitz told Vanity Fair that they invaded Iraq using the pretext of WMDs for “bureaucratic reasons.” Then he came out somewhere in Asia and said they didn’t care about North Korea because it wasn’t ‘sitting on a sea of oil’. All bets are off now, when those assholes can come out and say they invaded Iraq for the oil—without even making a pretext anymore.

I see your point, guy. But don’t take it personally. Outside that window is Pacific Ocean—bigger and bluer than any sea of oil in Iraq. And with blue skies overhead stretching at least to Guam.

Raven isn’t buying any of it.

“It’s all lies. Even the truth becomes a lie. War is peace. Oil is WMDS. Up is down. It’s a sea of shit….”

Some days are like that. You just have to sink to the bottom.

WHO CARES ABOUT THE BIG LIES?

Raven is eating a grubby little muffin that’s called a “manteca” (lard) here. It’s the only bread we have left in the house, and I don’t blame him for feeling a little down in the beak about having to eat it.

I’m sorry, guy. Tomorrow I will try to go to Pochutla for food. I have two weeks of dirty laundry to wash in the kitchen sink, so we might be eating very late in the day.

“Want me to do a rain dance so that you won’t have to wash the clothes?” Raven looks at me slyly.

The problem with that is people are not going to want to see me running around naked. They seem to have developed an aversion to the truth lately. I am reading an article from The Independent about Wolfowitz admitting that “WMDs were just a convenient excuse for war.”

“Did he just say that today?” Raven sweeps the shreds of the muffin into the garbage with his right wing.

No, Rave, he didn’t. Apparently he said it to an interviewer from Vanity Fair for the July issue.

“For a fluff piece?” Raven is clearly not impressed.

These folks, besides being liars, are not exactly rocket scientists. He tries to obfuscate the issue by talking about another issue:

“That was the prospect of the United States being able to withdraw all of its forces from Saudi Arabia once the threat of Saddam had been removed. Since the taking of Baghdad, Washington has said that it is taking its troops out of the kingdom. "Just lifting that burden from the Saudis is itself going to the door" towards making progress elsewhere in achieving Middle East peace, Mr Wolfowitz said. The presence of the US military in Saudi Arabia has been one of the main grievances of al-Qa'ida and other terrorist groups. For bureaucratic reasons we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction, because it was the one reason everyone could agree on," Mr Wolfowitz tells the magazine.”

“I see”, Raven nods, “they invaded Iraq for ‘bureaucratic reasons’. Great motivation for bombing the crap out of a country, killing its people, and a big list of destructive etceteras.”

The article goes on to say:

“The comments suggest that, even for the US administration, the logic that was presented for going to war may have been an empty shell. They come to light, moreover, just two days after Mr Wolfowitz's immediate boss, Donald Rumsfeld, the Defense Secretary, conceded for the first time that the arms might never be found.

The failure to find a single example of the weapons that London and Washington said were inside Iraq only makes the embarrassment more acute. Voices are increasingly being raised in the US and Britain demanding an explanation for why nothing has been found.

Most striking is the fact that these latest remarks come from Mr Wolfowitz, recognized widely as the leader of the hawks' camp in Washington most responsible for urging President George Bush to use military might in Iraq. The magazine article reveals that Mr Wolfowitz was even pushing Mr Bush to attack Iraq immediately after the 11 September attacks in the US, instead of invading Afghanistan.

There have long been suspicions that Mr Wolfowitz has essentially been running a shadow administration out of his Pentagon office, ensuring that the right-wing views of himself and his followers find their way into the practice of American foreign policy. He is best known as the author of the policy of first-strike pre-emption in world affairs that was adopted by Mr Bush shortly after the al-Qa'ida attacks.”

“What’s this, another Prince of Darkness scenario? Everybody who has read The Plan knows that he was just one of its authors.”

Anyway, the author of the article says:

“Critics of the administration and of the war will now want to know how convinced the Americans really were that the weapons existed in Iraq to the extent that was publicly stated. Questions are also multiplying as to the quality of the intelligence provided to the White House. Was it simply faulty given that nothing has been found in Iraq or was it influenced by the White House's fixation on the weapons issue? Or were the intelligence agencies telling the White House what it wanted to hear?”

“I can’t believe that anyone really thought the weapons existed! Any idiot would conclude that if they had existed they would have been used when the US began the invasion.”

People want to believe stuff like that, Rave. They feel kind of creepy thinking that people who are running their governments just invent reasons to invade other countries. Even though it has been done over and over again.

“These are folks with no historical consciousness. And what about this silliness of biological weapons being produced in milk trucks?”

They do mention that, Rave. Here it says:

“As skepticism grows over the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, London and Washington are attempting to turn the focus of attention to Iraq's alleged possession of mobile weapons labs.

A joint CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency report released this week claimed that two trucks found in northern Iraq last month were mobile labs used to develop biological weapons. The trucks were fitted with hi-tech laboratory equipment and the report said the discovery represented the "strongest evidence to date that Iraq was hiding a biowarfare program".

The design of the vehicles made them "an ingeniously simple self-contained bioprocessing system". The report said no other purpose, for example water purification, medical laboratory or vaccine production, would justify such effort and expense.

But critics are not convinced. No biological agents were found on the trucks and experts point out that, unlike the trucks described by Colin Powell, the Secretary of State, in a speech to the UN Security Council, they were open sided and would therefore have left a trace easy for weapons inspectors to detect. One former UN inspector said that the trucks would have been a very inefficient way to produce anthrax.”

“That’s an understatement, " Raven cackles. "Open sided. I still think they are milk trucks. Made obsolete by the elimination of Iraqui children….”

SOMETIMES A GREAT YEARNING....

Today we have the barometric blahs—leaden skies droop over the bay, our eyelids are drooping, our spirits are heading feetward. Only righteous anger can save this day. Maybe.

Raven wrenches himself away from the screen, shuffles stuff on the table with his wings.

What are you looking for, Rave?

“Hoping for mezcal. Expecting the worst. Waiting for a bullet in the brain pan. Listen to the latest from the black hole of Ari Fleisher’s mouth”:

Just a minute. I thought he resigned.

“Yeah, well, he’s not gone yet. Let me read you this, okay?

‘Ari Fleischer, Bush’s press secretary, said during his daily press briefing Tuesday that Iran hasn’t taken the appropriate steps to round up al Qaeda terrorists allegedly hiding out within its borders. Moreover, Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons puts the U.S. in grave danger. Therefore, regime change is in order.’”

What is this, Rave, an exercise in logical fallacies?

“There’s more:

“The future of Iran will be determined by the Iranian people, and I think the Iranian people have a great yearning for government that is representative of their concerns,” Fleischer said.’”

Is he crazy? Er—forget I asked that. What an empathetic guy he is! Only with certain population groups, though. He can see right into the hearts and minds of Iranians—with whom he does not share a common culture or language—and feel their great yearnings. Wow! But I have just one question: if he’s so empathetic, why is he not able to look into the hearts and minds of the majority of US citizens and see that THEY are the folks with a great yearning for a government that is representative of their concerns?”

“Good point”, Raven nods. Especially since he goes on to talk about having second sight into what the people of Iran are going to do, too:

‘Fleischer also said Iran's claim that its nuclear program is designed to produce fuel for civilian nuclear reactors is a "cover story."
“Our strong position is that Iran is preparing instead to produce fissile materials for nuclear weapons,” Fleischer said. “That is what we see.”’ I guess he also has a crystal ball?”

Rave, don’t tempt me. You’re talking about crystal, and Ari Fleisher, and balls—all in the same sentence….? And who is this WE?

“Don’t ask me. I am not an empathetic guy. I can’t see into the mind and heart of Ari Fleisher. Nor into his nether regions organs.” Rave pours a shot of mezcal for himself. “Maybe the other guy in the WE is that dummy—what’s his name—Charley McCarthy?”

Joe, Rave. His name was Joe.

TEHRAN IN THE FRYING PAN?

The Bush Gang is flying high on testosterone from bombing Iraq into the abyss of no electricity, no water, no telephones, no museums, no hospitals, no archaelogical sites—in fact no anything except intact oil refineries. No matter that Afghanistan is a shambles, too, and that its people are crawling around with concentrations of toxic and radioactive uranium isotopes in their blood stream 400 times higher than in the Gulf veterans. Now The Bushies are circling like buzzards, looking for another country to destroy—harping that Iran is producing nuclear weapons and sheltering terrorists, they are gearing up to bomb the bowels out of their latest target.

Does anyone see something wrong with this picture—or are we so used to the view from the wrong end of the telescope that we have lost all perspective on reality?

Raven sees something wrong with it:

“Hey, folks—there is one country producing nuclear weapons and charging ahead to produce yet another generation of them: The United States of America.”

Right, Rave. And the shelter for the most dangerous terrorists on the planet is: The White House.

“The really scary thing about these terrorists is that they kill and destroy without even believing that they can go directly to paradise in the event of being “martyrs to the cause”. Or do they think they are going to take all the planet’s oil and all their ill-gotten money with them? What’s out there: a paradise of greenback mansions with petroleum swimming pools?”

The minority poor people are the martyrs to this cause, Rave. And it’s not their cause. They aren’t bringing back fat oil industry contracts for their families. They are coming back in body bags, trussed up in the US flag like Thanksgiving turkeys.

“Bon appetit, Bushies.”

B’WANA—HE NO HOME

(This is for all of us who would rather not be part of what is happening in the world right now, and whose strongest impulse is to isolate ourselves from the pain of living this nightmare.)



I want you to speak the English right,
I want you to smile and be polite,
Say “B’wana—he no home”….
Michael Franks


Despite our best intentions to connect with others,
there are mornings when we don’t feel like opening the door to the world.
Isn’t it enough to ratchet the ceiling fan up to its highest speed—
slicing the air into the lisping of the waves in the bay below
and the fluid screed of Carlos Santana’s guitar?

Why swing the hinge and invite the tenants of Pandora’s Box inside?
Shrieking harpy gangs of petrocriminals are roaming the planet,
their mouths like nozzles of gasoline pumps guzzling the resources
of other countries and belching out hunger, violence and
“endemic diseases, such as death” (Hugo Chávez dixit).

Satellites rise with the sun in the east and watch us
make our first trip of the day to the bathroom;
agents with the souls of proctologists sniff through our e-mails,
probe our recorded telephone calls,
and examine our credit card transactions for purchases from terrorists—

thinking of ways to strip us of our citizenship.
Maybe in their very perversity they have hit upon
the right idea: instead of suffering the outrage
of marginality, let all of us pariahs and potential
terrorists become citizens of the earth!

As citizens of the earth we will have the responsibility
to go where our skills are most needed;
we will assume the mandate to root out plots
disguised as regime changes, and liquidate them;
we will need to tear down the barriers separating countries—

not by invading them, but by honoring their common
humanity—so that people can join in peaceful conjugation;
we will have to work tirelessly to heal the planet
so that it provides nurturance for all of us,
instead of being victimized by a few for their own gain.


Those are just a few of the tasks that we should have
been doing all along—before we became too repulsed
by the savagery of our species to open our front doors
and proclaim, as Fidel Castro did yesterday in Buenos Aires:
“What a lot of light there is here!”

Raven has had his beak out of joint because I was gone for three days to Oaxaca. One of my professors reported that Raven flew into his kitchen and stole topping items from the pizzas he was making to sell on the weekend. When I arrived home Sunday evening I found one of his feathers prominently displayed on the dining room table, and he was slinging a string of complaints at me from the roof. By tomorrow I hope he will have forgiven my absence—or the absence of his chief cook and bottle washer—and will be ready to talk to me about being a citizen of the earth….

THE CAUSE OF FREEDOM?

Yesterday US Senator Robert Byrd made a speech on the floor of the Senate which has been published on the Common Dreams site. Raven and I check this site almost every day because it gives us a little clue as to whether consciousness is increasing in Fortress America—or whether the long arm of the unconscious has the upper hand….

Raven is reading over my shoulder.

“Ha! Nothing like a mixed metaphor. Mixed body parts, even.”

It’s too early in the morning for a blast of criticism, Rave. I just want to pass on a few bits from Byrd’s speech, okay?

“I am never one to fly in the face of new awareness. Especially about a piece called “The Truth Will Emerge”.

Okay. He begins by saying, “The danger is that damage is done before the truth is widely realized. “

“He’s right except that he should have added “usually” before “damage”.

He mentions the manipulation by the Bush Gang, the blurring of the faces of Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, the expoitation of fear. And then he talks about the cynical application of the term “liberation” to the process of destroying Iraq, saying: “But ‘liberation’ implies the follow up of freedom, self-determination and a better life for the common people. In fact, if the situation in Iraq is the result of ‘liberation’, we may have set the cause of freedom back 200 years.”

“How about that they’ve bombed it back to the Stone Age?”

Raven yawns and moves his beady eyes closer to the screen.

That’s pretty much the implication in what he goes on to say:

“Despite our high-blown claims of a better life for the Iraqi people, water is scarce, and often foul, electricity is a sometime thing, food is in short supply, hospitals are stacked with the wounded and maimed, historic treasures of the region and of the Iraqi people have been looted, and nuclear material may have been disseminated to heaven knows where, while U.S. troops, on orders, looked on and guarded the oil supply.

Meanwhile, lucrative contracts to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure and refurbish its oil industry are awarded to Administration cronies, without benefit of competitive bidding, and the U.S. steadfastly resists offers of U.N. assistance to participate. Is there any wonder that the real motives of the U.S. government are the subject of worldwide speculation and mistrust?

And in what may be the most damaging development, the U.S. appears to be pushing off Iraq's clamor for self-government. Jay Garner has been summarily replaced, and it is becoming all too clear that the smiling face of the U.S. as liberator is quickly assuming the scowl of an occupier. The image of the boot on the throat has replaced the beckoning hand of freedom. Chaos and rioting only exacerbate that image, as U.S. soldiers try to sustain order in a land ravaged by poverty and disease.”

“Well, what were they expecting, anyway?”

Let me finish reading, Rave:

“Democracy and Freedom cannot be force fed at the point of an occupier's gun. To think otherwise is folly. One has to stop and ponder. How could we have been so impossibly naive? How could we expect to easily plant a clone of U.S. culture, values, and government in a country so riven with religious, territorial, and tribal rivalries, so suspicious of U.S. motives, and so at odds with the galloping materialism which drives the western-style economies?”

“Isn’t that what I just asked?”

Yeah. And the predictable future looks bleak, too. Byrd says:

“We may have sparked a new international arms race as countries move ahead to develop WMD as a last ditch attempt to ward off a possible preemptive strike from a newly belligerent U.S. which claims the right to hit where it wants. In fact, there is little to constrain this President. Congress, in what will go down in history as its most unfortunate act, handed away its power to declare war for the foreseeable future and empowered this President to wage war at will…We cower in the shadows while false statements proliferate. We accept soft answers and shaky explanations because to demand the truth is hard, or unpopular, or may be politically costly.

But, I contend that, through it all, the people know. The American people unfortunately are used to political shading, spin, and the usual chicanery they hear from public officials. They patiently tolerate it up to a point. But there is a line. It may seem to be drawn in invisible ink for a time, but eventually it will appear in dark colors, tinged with anger. When it comes to shedding American blood - - when it comes to wreaking havoc on civilians, on innocent men, women, and children, callous dissembling is not acceptable. Nothing is worth that kind of lie - - not oil, not revenge, not reelection, not somebody's grand pipedream of a democratic domino theory.

And mark my words, the calculated intimidation which we see so often of late by the "powers that be" will only keep the loyal opposition quiet for just so long. Because eventually, like it always does, the truth will emerge. And when it does, this house of cards, built of deceit, will fall.”

“Nothing like pulling optimism out of the hat like a rabbit, is there?”

Raven wanders toward the window, poised for his getaway.

Where are you off to now, guy?

“Off to find that house of cards. To watch it fall.”

Senator Byrd is not alone in his optimism. Apparently.

JUST A BUNCH OF GRAPES

Raven is twiddling his feathers in front of the computer screen, thinking about why countries have laws.

And why is this your Issue of the Day?

“Because of this Belgian Business.”

Sounds arcane, Rave. Is this something like “Our Man in Havana”?

“No. Maybe. But without the vacuum sweeper store as a front for imaginary espionage. And without Alec Guiness, too. All seriousness aside, the Belgian Business is about trying Tommy Franks for war crimes. For dropping cluster bombs in civilan areas, for example.”

They may look like bunches of grapes to kids, but the unexploded ones are still killing them, too. So, are they putting out a warrant for Franks, or what?

“Doesn’t look like it. Some people from Iraq and Jordan filed the lawsuit. I have read several articles about what happened—pretty good ones in LA JORNADA and on the Commondreams web site. The article on Common Dreams, reprinted from THE GUARDIAN says:

‘Franks appears to have a case to answer. The charges fall into four categories: the use of cluster bombs; the killing of civilians by other means; attacks on the infrastructure essential for public health; and the failure to prevent the looting of hospitals. There is plenty of supporting evidence.

US forces dropped around 1,500 cluster bombs from the air and fired an unknown quantity from artillery pieces. British troops fired 2,100. Each contained several hundred bomblets, which fragment into shrapnel. Between 200 and 400 Iraqi civilians were killed by them during the war. Others, mostly children, continue to killed by those bomblets which failed to explode when they hit the ground. The effects of their deployment in residential areas were both predictable and predicted. This suggests that their use there breached protocol II to the Geneva conventions, which prohibits "violence to the life, health and physical or mental well-being" of non-combatants.

On several occasions, US troops appear to have opened fire on unarmed civilians. In Nassiriya, they shot at any vehicle that approached their positions. In one night alone they killed 12 civilians. On a bridge on the outskirts of Baghdad they shot 15 in two days. Last month, US troops fired on peaceful demonstrators in Mosul, killing seven, and in Falluja, killing 13 and injuring 75.’”

We wrote about that incident, Rave.“

"’The armed forces also deliberately destroyed civilian infrastructure, bombing the electricity lines upon which water treatment plants depended, with the result that cholera and dysentery have spread. Protocol II prohibits troops from attacking "objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population such as ... drinking water installations and supplies".

The fourth convention also insists that an occupying power is responsible for "ensuring and maintaining ... the medical and hospital establishments and services, public health and hygiene in the occupied territory". Yet when the US defenses secretary Donald Rumsfeld was asked why his troops had failed to prevent the looting of public buildings, he replied: "Stuff happens. Free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things." Many hospitals remain closed or desperately under-supplied. On several occasions US soldiers acted on orders to fire at Iraqi ambulances, killing or wounding their occupants. They shot the medical crews which came to retrieve the dead and wounded at the demonstration in Falluja. The Geneva conventions suggest that these are straightforward war crimes: Medical units and transports shall be respected and protected at all times and shall not be the object of attack.’”

All of these sound like legitimate points on which to base a lawsuit, Rave. So what are they doing with it?

“Well, the US government responded very angrily. The State Department threatened Belgium that it will punish nations which allow political use of their laws. The Belgians didn’t feel like being bombed out of existence, I guess, because they already have amended the law that allowed for those kinds of crimes to be tried in their jurisdiction, and denounced the lawyer who filed the case.”

The US has been insisting, with its refusal to subscribe to a world court, that no laws apply to US citizens except US laws.

“Precisely. The article goes on to indicate:‘The Bush government's response would doubtless be explained by its apologists as a measure of its insistence upon and respect for national sovereignty. But while the US forbids other nations to proscribe the actions of its citizens, it also insists that its own laws should apply abroad. The foreign sovereignty immunities act, for example, permits the US courts to prosecute foreigners for harming commercial interests in the US, even if they are breaking no laws within their own countries. The Helms-Burton Act allows the courts in America to confiscate the property of foreign companies which do business with Cuba. The Iran-Libya Sanctions Act instructs the government to punish foreign firms investing in the oil or gas sectors in those countries. The message these laws send is this: you can't prosecute us, but we can prosecute you.

Of course, the sensible means of resolving legal disputes between nations is the use of impartial, multinational tribunals, such as the international criminal court in the Hague. But impartial legislation is precisely what the US government will not contemplate. When the ICC treaty was being negotiated, the US demanded that its troops should be exempt from prosecution, and the UN security council gave it what it wanted. The US also helped to ensure that the court's writ runs only in the nations which have ratified the treaty. Its soldiers in Iraq would thus have been exempt in any case, as Saddam Hussein's government was one of seven which voted against the formation of the court in 1998. The others were China, Israel, Libya, Qatar, Yemen and the US. This is the company the American government keeps when it comes to international law.

To ensure that there was not the slightest possibility that his servicemen need fear the rule of law, George W Bush signed a new piece of extra-territorial legislation last year, which permits the US "to use all means necessary and appropriate to bring about the release" of US citizens being tried in the court. This appears to include the invasion of the capital of the Netherlands.’”

Great—now the marines will be landing where—Rotterdam? They can change the song to include another round of invasions—from the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli to the dikes of Holland.

"Tilting at windmills with tanks and bombing fields of tulips...."

A DIRTY WORD—AND WHAT TO DO WITH IT

Raven is wretched;
kicking along in tidepools,
sniffing at garbage—
he feels the world is ending,
and there’s nothing he can do.

He’s probably right.
All of us feel impotent
in the face of death—
more so when life seems to be
moving along like always….

********************
Just a bit of minor transitory depression for The Bird for All Seasons. He’ll be rocking and rolling again in no time.

I--his lesser half, his anima--am a different story. After reading the Strategy Document of the National Endowment for Democracy, dated January 2002 and NOT FOR PUBLIC CIRCULATION (the pages of the plan dealing with North Korea, China and Burma are even “scrambled”—any Navajo code-busters interested in this one?), I am ready to upchuck my breakfast of, yes, scrambled eggs at the mere mention of the word DEMOCRACY.

Yesterday Raven and I talked about Instant Mix Democracy, Totalitarian Democracy and even Fascist Democracy. The word has become so perverted by its misuse as the rationale for imposing free trade zones, neutralizing competition, institutionalizing greed and violence and hunger, grabbing other countries’ natural resources, dumping surplus products to ruin other economies, mounting and supporting military coups against democratically elected presidents, authorizing the running of guns and drugs and dirty tricks all over the globe by the CIA, cluster bombing women and children in mideast markets—and generally heating the planet to the boiling point—that it would be difficult to find a more cynical word to substitute for Imperialism.

Give it a try, though. If you think of one, send Raven and me a message in a bottle with The Word written on the outside of an envelope containing anthrax, the SARS virus, a medal of Our Lady of Guadalupe minted in Florida and blessed by Jeb Bush or the Bill of Rights shredded into confetti. We don’t care what you put in the envelope—we won’t open it anyway—but here in this broken down beach town we’ll use just about anything as toilet paper. (Especially copies of the Strategy Document for the National Endowment for Democracy….)

BRING TO A BOIL, ADD OIL, THEN BOMB

Raven and I made do with cinnamon rolls and coffee this morning.

“They would have been tastier if you had heated them.” Raven looks a bit sulky around the edges.

Maybe. Listen, Rave, I am reading a piece by Arundhati Roy in the Common Dreams site called “Instant-Mix Imperial Democracy”. Apropos your comment about heating things up, she says the following:

“Here we are, the people of the world, confronted with an Empire armed with a mandate from heaven (and, as added insurance, the most formidable arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in history). Here we are, confronted with an Empire that has conferred upon itself the right to go to war at will, and the right to deliver people from corrupting ideologies, from religious fundamentalists, dictators, sexism, and poverty by the age-old, tried-and-tested practice of extermination. Empire is on the move, and Democracy is its sly new war cry. Democracy, home-delivered to your doorstep by daisy cutters. Death is a small price for people to pay for the privilege of sampling this new product: Instant-Mix Imperial Democracy (bring to a boil, add oil, then bomb).”

“She is certainly right to call it Imperial Democracy, since it has little or nothing in common with the traditional use of the term. Maybe she should have gone for the whole hog (paz, domestic animals) and called it Totalitarian Democracy?”

Or even Fascist Democracy, to be congruent with the US government’s official policy of Doublespeak?

“The cooking instructions make it clear why the US government has fomented civil unrest in, for example, Venezuela—to bring social conditions to a boil.” Raven takes a swig of his coffee.

Oil was already part of the mix. Venezuela sits on a lake of oil and gas that comprises almost half of the reserves of this hemisphere. Since The Bush Gang planned to invade Iraq, and they weren’t sure to what lengths the Iraquis might go to keep their oil out of the US clutches, The Gang decided to go after Venezuela first.

“So they cooked up the idea that Chávez—excuse me, The Leo of Your Dreams—was a dictator, so that they could depose him and enforce their brand of what you called Fascist Democracy—I like that term—in Venezuela.”

And it was necessary to make a coup in order to throw out the Constitution which says that PDVSA is not privatizable. Remember that the first thing self-proclaimed president Pedro Carmona did on April 12, 2002, was annul the Constitution.

“No bombing was necessary.”

No, it was not a time-capsule replay of the coup in Chile of Sept. 11, 1973, when Pinochet ordered the bombing of the president, Salavador Allende, in La Moneda. But it could have been. Which is one of the reasons why in June of last year Chávez installed anti-aircraft weapons around Miraflores, cut the military budget by 25% and put the money to social programs.

“But the The Gang is still agitating for a takeover.”

And using the power of the media, which is what they used to bring things to a boil in the first place. The irony of Charley Shapiro orchestrating a Free Speech event to ridicule Chávez last week in the US ambassador’s residence in Caracas is the enormous power of the media in Venezuela. Lots of money from Gustavo Cisneros, fishing buddy of Daddy Warbucks Bush, is behind the media. Despite his crying “poormouth” that he doesn’t have enough money to send Miss Venzuela to compete for the Miss Universe crown.

“What!? I thought Venezuela was a veritable factory for beauty queens.”

That’s the point, Rave. To make folks think that Chávez’ monetary controls are unpatriotic because they are stopping poor little Miss Venezuela from displaying the wonders of silcone in a swim suit.

“Quite a complicated situation, ain’t it? Now it’s a cultural war they’re bringing to a boil. Seems like a good moment to feel nostalgia for the good old days of The Cold War.”

Well, Venezuelan intellectual Luis Britto called this The Hot Cultural War, so I guess you are right on target, Rave.

“I would be if I were ready to bomb Miraflores. With money from the National Endowment for Democracy crammed in my tiny pockets. But I wouldn’t like to see Chávez test his anti-aircarft weaponry on my very elegant and excruciatingly expensive War on Iraq army surplus toilet seats. Especially the pink ones.”

Jesus, Rave, you’re a one-note samba.

“No way, José. I am your friendly Rantin’ Raven Rock ‘n’ Roller—from way back in the days of The Cold War, baby.”

Raven boogies his way to the sink with his coffee cup.

CLOWNING IN CARACAS

This morning Raven and I sent a letter to Colin Powell of the U. S. State Department, asking for the removal of Charles Shapiro as Ambassador to Venezuela, as well as a quick trip to the woodshed for a blast of traditional discipline for the same individual.

Venezuela is calling for an official apology on the part of the US government for Shapiro’s actions—which consisted essentially of hosting an event in his residence on Tuesday—ostensibly to call for free speech—in which he promoted a comedian’s ridiculing of President Hugo Chávez Frías (aka The Leo of My Dreams) by means of a puppet.

“There’s probably more free speech in Venezuela than in any other country in the world”, opines Raven, as he crunches a potato chip. “An excess of free speech, maybe. Anybody can say whatever he wants there and nobody does anything.”

Theoretically, Rave, democracies are like that. Unlike fascist countries like the US, where the FBI rummages through e-mails and taps phones and searches the houses of citizens without a warrant.

“Great country you’ve got there.” I can barely hear the bird for the crunching.

Rave, didn’t your mother ever teach you table manners?

“Ha! Our mother didn’t forage for potato chips for us when we were wee ones. We barged out of the eggshell and started downing earthworms.”

Let’s get back to the puppet incident, okay. Try to keep the crunching down to a dull roar?

“Whatever”, Rave clacks his beak. “Puppets are the key to this entire incident of boorishness, racism, arrogance, misbehavior and (in the words of the embassy’s official statement) bad taste. They trotted out a puppet of Chávez and made fun of it because Chávez refuses to be a puppet for the Bush Gang.”

More to the point, Rave, he has pretty much drawn a line in the sand in regard to them. A resounding NO to the free trade—aka imposition of US goods—agreement from Point Barrow, Alaska, to Tierra del Fuego. YES to Opec countries receiving decent prices for their non-renewable hydrocarbons. NO to being a colony, in short.

“Ah, colonies. Consumers of these greasy chips. Swillers of Coca-Cola.” Raven looks guilty.

Yeah. Inhabitants of the Heart of Darkness. Shrunken heads. Poachers. Ivory. Kurtz. The horror.

“More than that, in Latin America they are all characters out of Nostromo. Conrad had this all novelistically charted a hundred years ago. I guess nobody paid attention because they thought it was fiction?”

Sadly, Rave, we Sagittarians are always ahead of our time….