DECIDER ACTS OUT THROUGH DOG

This morning Raven is chomping down bolillos from our mercado dipped in fried eggs covered with salsa de guajillo, sour cream and chopped onion.

Suddenly he begins cackling raucously and spits a beakful of breakfast at the computer screen.

Rave, what's going on here?

"Hah! I was watching a video of Bush acting out through his little dog, Barney. A reporter stopped down to pet Barney, and Barney hauled off and bit his hand!"

Well, Bush was trained by his masters to snarl and bite--and that must be what he passed on to his dog.

"Oh boy. A whole new Axis of Evil: reporters."

If I say so myself, Rave, considering that those guys have been the ones to sell Bush's lies and spin to the gullible gringo public (I am not going to call them citizens as they believe that all a citizen does is vote every once in a while when he or she finds himself or herself with empty pockets), I'd say that Barney is a fair amount smarter than his master at spotting the Axes of Evil.

"I guess so. It used to be that the Dylan line, "You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows", was a truism. Now only the non-human species knows."

Rave, the Vogel uber Alles....

COWBOYS AND INDIANS
(In memory of my grandfather Clovis)

1.

Your grandfather Louis,
deprived of a native name,
then of his French name
when he crossed his family
into the United States,

deprived your mother
of the warmth of the long house
of community,
married her off at 13
to bear 11 children,

bury her husband.
A widow at 41,
she moved you all 2
thousand miles to Snoqualmie
Pass, way on the outskirts of

civilization,
built a big log house and called
it The Donut Inn,
frying mountains of beignets
for ravenous travelers

who couldn’t care less
if French or English mumbled
from her raven’s beak.
There you tumbled in the snow,
wild with being a child, high

above your brother’s
dedication to building
his tourist cabins.
There you chose the better part:
learning to be Hawk, learning

to read the deer tracks
and bear droppings, then turning
your eyes to Pancho
Villa’s revolution far
to the south, in Mexico,

where his horses’ hooves
drummed your dreams to their flash point.
In adolescence
you discovered a way to
be Indian AND cowboy,

and cover your heart
with the dust of Mexico;
inevitably
that lead to rodeos, where
brother Indians became

other cowboys, and
where the Nez Perce were
the top riders. But
the purses were pretty small
because the winners weren’t white.

2.

When you married Ruth,
both of you were just 18.
Your mother suffered
scorn from your mother-in-law,
child of an aristocrat

born out of wedlock,
despite their both being French
speakers in Anglo-
land; the price hypocrisy
imposes on loneliness

is the steep learning
curve of assimilation.
But you had the sense
to create your own nation—
putting fire to metal

and producing sculptures
of long-forgotten flowers,
horses like arrows
and your wonderful kettles
of hammered copper and brass.

You made what pleased you,
and did what you pleased:
trading old rifles,
catching snakes in the sagebrush,
hunting arrowheads along

the Columbia,
mining a mountain top for
gold, shooting winter’s
supply of elk, deer and bear,
and always, your fast horses

bursting from the barn
to battle down the muddy
track at Longacres,
while you tipped your expensive
Stetson at the bets window.

When the snow backed off
in spring we would ride your jeep
up the canyon road
until it got stuck up to
the axles, then winch it out;

liberating it
from the mud called for a few
candy bars: Baby Ruth
or maybe Butterfingers
that you bought by the carton—

before heading back
to the ranch and grandmother’s
lemon meringue pie.
Sugar and coffee were your
fuels, and they served you well.

3.

When I was edging
toward adolescence, you gave
me some good advice:
“It isn’t necessary
for your grandmother to know

what you are doing”,
which surely saved me a lot
of aggravation.
Teenage boys copied your spray-
painted jeep—a precursor

in the 50s to
the psychedelic buses
screaming The 60s—
and college guys got credits
for watching you drink coffee

and carrying your
equipment at the World’s Fairs:
the Smithsonian
had you demonstrate metal-
working, and strange women gave

you their phone numbers
while the college guys looked on,
wishing they were you.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch my
grandmother put her foot down,

said “no more horses”—
so you bought a pair of mules
and scattered horses
around the valley, giving
me a map of where they were

in case of your death.
When I got married we lived
on Magnolia
Beach with no central heating,
so you came with your chain saw

to cut up driftwood
for our fireplace, let women
chase you around in
the Red Robin Tavern while
my new husband coveted

your magnetism,
feeling young and foolish in
his tie-dyed tee shirt.
You drank a few beers, went to
some galleries, predicted

our difficult life
as a couple, then left us
some firewood, loaded
your saw back in the Bronco
and headed back home to the ranch.

4.

1970s:
You completed 50 years
of marriage to Ruth,
refined your artist’s vision
with cataract surgery

that allowed you to
spot dimes along the roadside;
you kept the silver ones
in the small trunk I gave you
both for your golden wedding.

And because Ruth had
backed out on your plan to spend
those golden years in
Mexico, you expanded
your academic antics,

devoted more hours
to searching for blue agates
in dry river beds,
hammered out more bracelets
and pieced onyx mosaics.

My daughter spent school
vacations watching Grandpa
create war bonnets
and swap his jewelry for
Navajo bracelets of

Blue Gem and Kingman
turquoise. An Easter
studio portrait
of you two shows a blank space
between Renate’s teeth, two

grins gleaming below
your big Stetson, and that last
summer in the tall teepee
you made, Renate sat guard
while you dreamed, and the cancer

metastasized from
your colon to your liver.
“Grandpa promised me
he’d tell me the old stories”,
she said, “But mostly he sleeps”.

The photo I made
2 weeks before your last dream
shows you transparent,
but with all your teeth and hair.
We buried you in zero

degrees of bright snow,
so like a Quebec landscape,
the day before my
35th birthday; I said:
“Time to become an adult”.

5.

A few weeks after
your funeral, Grandma Ruth
rang me up to say
your chickens had come home to
roost: the ranchers who had hid

your horses from her
wanted to know what to do
with them. “I told them
to keep them—and realized
that was the first family

decision I’d made,
after almost 60 years
of marriage: he let
me believe I was calling
the shots, while he always moved

all of the pieces”.
You must have had a good laugh
imagining Ruth
learning how to trade horses
and sell your gun collection—

not to mention barns
stuffed to the rafters: snowshoe
prototypes (one for
each year), toboggans, skis, sleds,
deer and elk antlers—the stuff

accumulated
by a man from the mountains
who made the valley
his playground. It fell to Ruth
to fall and shatter her hip,

unload all of your things
on other mountain men and
sell the property.
She vacillated: “I don’t
think he’s want me to sell it”.

“It’s your decision”,
I said. “You can try taking
care of 5 acres
pushing a walker, and live
6 months—or buy a small place

and live another
several years in comfort”.
She got rid of it,
moved into a mobile home
and neighbors helped plant her prize-

winning dahlias.
We had a long phone talk
3 days before she died—
I was in Boston Common,
buried in October leaves.

6.

Ruth outlived you by
9 years, and 5 years later
I followed your dream
to Mexico to find my
home writing and producing

theater here in
the birthplace of Zapata,
dreaming in Spanish
of revolution: a day
when Native people will not

be tempted to “pass”
because the land will belong
to he who works it,
and no one will have to choose
between living on his knees,

dying on his feet.
When snow covers your gravestone,
here it is 80
degrees, and you, who slept in
winter on an electric

mattress pad, under
an electric blanket and
down comforter--while
wearing socks—would finally
feel warm. Here in our valley

sometimes I smell snow
falling on the high pass to
Mexico City;
deer come down and steal fodder
from the cows in the ranchos

up in the near hills,
like they did in Ellensburg.
Here hawks and owls swoop
down out of the guaje trees
to hunt on the riverbank

for rats and field mice,
and ravens are forced to bathe in
polluted water.
Young men leave the villages
to pick crops where I grew up,

far in El Norte,
while here their fields and their wives
lie fallow, waiting.
Washington made treaties
with Mexico, stole its land,

destroyed its culture,
builds its reservation wall.
The turquoise stones in
your bracelet that I wear
are the skies of our planet.

Don’t Do It
For Carl T (9/2/1944—4/1/2007), with thanks to
The Band and Dylan Thomas

1.
I was black magic
woman, dancing in thirties
velvet when we met,
my dress from an antiques shop
cut down to fit my body:

110 pounds
of rocking silk in DeKalb’s
simmering cornfields.
You drank the long, hot summer
from a bottle of Jim Beam,

introduced yourself,
and we talked all night in your
apartment above
an insurance agency.
Fact: We never stopped talking,

even when that meant
late night long distance calls from
places like Texas,
my husband rolling over
in bed, passing me the phone:

“It’s Oh Hi, again.”
Then, when we were divorcing,
a rough patch when you
tried living in my upstairs
in Seattle—which didn’t

work, and your father
drove you back to Illinois
for the tough struggle
to get sober: Brush with death,
hospitals, the halfway house,

coffee, cigarettes.
When your father died you sent
me the soundtrack to
The Big Chill”, and that told me
we had become middle-aged.




2.

A few years after
I decamped to Mexico
we started taking
vacations together, in
Zihuatanejo mostly,

still staying up half
the night talking, watching lights
dance across the bay,
tuning your guitar to waves:
the optimal spot to write

songs. Those songs
reproduced, began to form
a critical mass:
a poetic, musical
X-ray of the times we’ve lived.

The surgical steps
to bring it all back home, safe,
on a c.d. took
so much energy, and time,
that suddenly we were old.

3.

One night your phone call:
“They told me I’ve got cancer.”
Then the treatment starts;
6 month’s after my former
husband’s death, I am hopeful—

and even more so
when your e-mail comes telling
me that you need sun,
have bought your Zihua tickets.
I decide to fly there, too,

feeling too old for
all night bus rides without sleep;
but once I arrive
at the bungalow and see
you are now a shadow, so

transparent that palm
trees and the beach pass through you,
hope becomes anger
at your refusal to live,
at your holding on to shame.

Saying “Don’t do it,
don’t break my heart” in silence
is really a drag;
watching you spitting your life
into a wastebasket, and

smoking your death, two
packs a day of it, pacing,
refusing to eat
or bathe, is seeing you go
gentle into that good night,

when rage is the spark
absent from your tobacco.
On April Fool’s Day
the sun rose on your last waltz:
You did it, you broke my heart.

THE USUAL SUSPECTS

I soaked guajillo chiles overnight so that Raven and I could breakfast on picadas this morning while reading La Jornada.

Great stuff is salsa de guajillo, but the news about candidates for Obama's cabinet is NOT:

1. William Daley, brother of Chicago's mayor and best known here in Mexico for his promotion of NAFTA as Clinton's Secretary of Commerce;

2. Michael Froman, from the failed Citigroup and college buddy of Obama's from Harvard days;

3. Susan Rice, another Clinton cadre whose spoils for helping in the campaign may include becoming National Security Officer (shades of Condolences Rice, best known for her derisive comment, "Let 'em eat my Ferragamos", to the victims of Katrina;

4, 5. Two other Clinton retreads are being considered for Secretary of the Treasury--a position both Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers have had before;

6, 7, 8. John Kerry, Christopher Dodd and Bill Richardson (all failed candidates or pre-candidates for the presidency) are being mentioned for Secretary of State. Richardson is another Clinton cadre, but does have international experience as UN ambassador;

9. Arizona's governor, Janet Napolitano, on whose watch so many Mexicans have been killed, is up for Attorney Gerneral.

Not good news at all. Just the usual suspects. Where's the CHANGE, Rave?

"Don't ask me. I am still stuck on that little old lady who said, Where's the beef?"

Raven thinks with his stomach, as always, and it appears he is feeling a little nauseated at what he sees.

It appears that although Hillary lost, Bill will be back in his old job as president.

BURY SANTA ANNA'S LEG--AGAIN--IN THE CATHEDRAL

Raven and I have been flapping around on a bunch of sites today to see how folks are responding to the election of Obama in Gringolandia.

Rave is now eating the last of the dill biscuits we made to eat with Texas-style chili.

"I can't believe your species. The gringos chose the lesser of the apparent evils--a man black like I am, instead of a professional geezer whose claim to fame was being an uncredited extra in the 70s film, The Deer Hunter. Big deal. To read their comments, they brought down the Berlin Wall again, singlehandedly. It's crap!"

You betcha it's crap. Especially since they are still building the Mexican Wall.

"Well, at least that's providing work for undocumented immigrants."

True, Rave. Folks are being paid 10 to 15 bucks an hour, maybe, to build a wall to keep them out.

"I felt compelled to post a cry for a little reserve and common sense. Want to hear it?"

Sure, fire away.

Raven pings the remaining biscuit crumbs off his print out:

"Wow: Could you possibly be a little more self-righteous?

Just because you gave a few bucks to somebody who promised change? What did you actually DO to make that change possible?

Eight years ago here in Mexico, the same kind of foolish born-again euphoria percolated after the July election of the PAN president, Vicente Fox. The PRI had been in power for 71 years and people were tired of the same old perfect dictatorship, so they created the concept of the USEFUL vote--voting against the PRI.

Folks asked me, the day after the election, what I thought Fox's presidency would be like. My answer was, "He will be the worst president in the history of Mexico".

Months after the election the father of one of my bright students told me that Mexico was a new country since July 2nd. I told him that new countries were not born because folks voted in a different party, and I asked him what HE was doing to make it new. He had no answer.

Time has passed since July 2, 2000. Last year Fox was voted the Worst President in the History of Mexico by the majority of the folks in a national newspaper poll. Take it from me, he had some stiff competition--for example, Santa Ana, who gave away more than half of Mexico's territory to the gringos for a plate of lentils. But Fox did it--left the country in ruins, where the monument to his presidency is a huge white elephant library that cost about 4 billion dollars, is unusable because of water entering from all sides and destroying the few books purchased for it. It can't be entered as it is falling down--but all of Fox's cronies and family members who looted the country were paid handsomely.

I suggest that you gringos be a little more cautious before shouting from the rooftops that Gringolandia is great again--simply because you had to choose between the fear of being homeless and clinging to the racism upon which the country was founded.

There is a lesson for all of you in the Fox presidency."

I hope they get it, Rave, but I am not betting any of my devalued pesos on it.

MOHAMED TO THE MOUNTAIN: CANJILON LAKES, AGAIN

For Maryanne


1.

Twenty years ago
we took your big GMC
pickup up this road:
first, a stop in El Rito
to greet the French plaster saints,

then through the canyon
painted gold with aspen leaves—
the black and white trunks
echo end of the season sheep
as the truck bucks over ruts,

points its nose cloudward
into the turquoise stone sky.
Road Closed the sign says;
to hell with that, we open
the wire gate and go on up

to fish in the top
lake, where the first October
snow falls on our hair
before we head back down to
Echo Ampitheater.

There swallows toughen
their nests, trying to prolong
summer forever,
and we try to grab our youth
as it dances into fall.

2.

It’s been 14 years
since I left New Mexico
for old Mexico,
and I only went back once—
now almost 8 years ago—

so when you meet me
at the airport I’m lost in
a foreign country—
and you are back from the dead,
the land of leukaemia.

My friend Lorenzo,
who had to leave his daughter
in that place, tells me:
Maryanne will die, they all
die—that’s just the way it is.

We have a Spanish
saying , I remind him: No
one has bought his life—
I could be run over by
a bus tomorrow morning.

But I take a plane,
instead, to go once more to
the Canjilon Lakes—
as one of two survivors
of this disease that is life.

3.

Your husband worries
that we’ll do something foolish:
go up a closed road,
get stuck in mud overnight—
but we have made it through the

worst that can happen.
Savoring our breakfast of
chiles rellenos
in Española, we are
chomping at the challenge that

is repetition.
As afternoon opens in
El Rito Canyon,
our old friends the sheep welcome
us back, and an off-road shrine

is visible now—
because this year’s leaves are down;
the Sacred Heart beats
inside the stones and under
oak leaves painted with honey.

The aspens dance bare,
their silver, like our more than
middle age, ready
to be inlaid with turquoise
for a bracelet around

our survivors’ lives.
The road has been recently
graded, and the last
segment—just below the lakes—
is asphalt. A few patches

of snow like old skin
waiting to be shed linger
in sunless shadows
around the top lake, where two
fishermen unload their gear.

We won’t fish this year—
just unloading our old lives
is sufficient sport.
The sky falls into the lake,
where we are like silver fish

ripe with reflection,
lighter than swallows, flying
down to Abiquiu
and beyond, lining our nests
for the new life of winter.

November 17. 2007

I am going to put some poems I have been writing over the past year on this blog during the next week or so.

They all bear some kind of Raven imprimatur, although he says poetry is not his bag.

AFTERNOONS WITH LEO AND SOPHIE IN CASA ALTA
For the spirit of Leo Kenney; Oct. 10, 2007

After my classes
in the university:
the real world of art
is watching Leo painting,
smoking many cigarettes,

drinking way too much
red wine, mixing pop music,
I Ching and sunset
on Elliott Bay—Sophie
a tangerine lioness

on the windowsill.
We’ve lost that lovin’ feeling?
Yes, it’s gone, gone, gone—
and with it underpinnings
of mystical expression,

the swinging sixties:
Tavola and bubble gum
openings, Leo
in his patent leather cap
from Carnaby Street

dancing with me on
a houseboat’s deck, and Sophie
dreaming of mice
like diamonds. As the sun sets
on the day’s painting drying

on the tabletop,
on the pale flowers fading
in a Chinese vase—
dropping their seeds for the birth
of a new painting, a new

ideology:
make art, not war, while jungles
of jungles of Vietnam
and Bolivia are blooming
with hope and revolution.

And it all goes wrong.
Yesterday makes 40 years
since the death of Che.
Leo and Sophie are gone.
But paintings remain: the seeds.

BACK IN THE SADDLE AGAIN?

Raven is wearing something on his head that looks like a set of earmuffs.

What the fuck, Rave?

I wave my hand between his head and the computer screen, and he takes off the muffs.

"It's spring--you know, SPRING--when a young bird's fancy turns, etc. Except that I am not a young bird. And I just do not want to hear the cackling cacaphony blasting in every tree around here."

Now, Rave. You wouldn't be just a little envious, would you?

"Naw. I am too old for that, too."

So what are you doing in this provincial Mexican spring that's better?

"Cheering on Chavez the Peacemaker. He raised an enormous ruckus, got everybody's attention by moving a fistful of battalions to the Colombian border--then torpedoed the US agenda of Let's You and Him Fight by becoming the peacemaker in Santo Domingo--complete with his singing of a merengue."

Fabulous. Smartest guy in the hemisphere, with the exception of Fidel.

"These days that's not saying much. With everybody thinking with his wallet--or his genitals. I hate spring!"

He puts the muffs back on. It's no use talking to that bird.

Raven and I have been out of touch in a long time.

He's still in Mexico. I am in Caracas.

Will post the latest political stuff later. Despite the complete nonsense going on here with bogus protests for the non-renewal of RCTV's concession, I am poking through the museums and starting to write poems again.

ARTIST'S STUDIO 6 a.m.

Caracas, Venezuela
May 31, 2007


In the Museum
of Contemporary Arts
I walk slowly past
a group of wooden figures--
Homage to Velazquez;

their painted eyes track
me as I run smack into
the canvas wall of
"Artist's Studio 6 a.m.".
Falling with the morning sun

more than 40 years
into the Seattle past,
the 2nd floor pre-
renewal Maynard Building--
I awake in our brass bed,

start a new life in
a parallel universe.
Our 12 foot ladder
stretches out of the painting,
ratcheting me skyward now

above the spattered
palettes, hot plates, the old chair
swivelling in front
of our dreams--some battered, some
flattened--others almost new-

HOLDING THE BAG


"He did it! The old sonofabitch, Augusto Pinochet, danced off to prepare for the next lifetime, leaving everybody in Chile holding the bag--including its current president."

Raven tosses the crust of his french toast into the garbage can.

We knew he would. I really would have appreciated seeing him rotting in jail, but at least he will be rotting someplace.

"He must have started stinking before he died, then."

Rave, that's a line from Mother Courage. I didn't know you were a Brecht fan.

"There are a lot of things you don't know about me. I am a veritable Renaissance Bird."

Don't you mean virtual Renaissance Bird?

"Smartass."

Raven slurps espresso and turns back to the computer screen.

"At least they aren't going to give him a State funeral. Probably because this president of Chile was tortured by Pipnochet's goons. If he had kicked the bucket on Lagos' watch they would have dressed him up like a pinata and wrapped him in the chilean flag."

I would like to think that this means that the Manichean weighting of our moment in history to the side of evil might be lightening up.

"I would be cautious about thinking that. But there is a little bit to back that up."

And what might that be, Rave?

"Hugo Chavez is currently leading the votation for Time's Person of the Year at 28%. Followed hotly by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, our veritable next-door neighbor at 23%."

How many times did you vote, Rave?

Raven turns his beady eyes heavenword.

"I'll never tell."

WHERE IS THAT BALL, ANYWAY?


Raven is enjoying his breakfast toast more than usual. Butter is running off it into his beak. His laugh is that of a young bird.

Rave, you are in fine form this morning. What’s the deal?

“I am still celebrating the Venezuela presidential election. That Mexican creep, Jorge Castaneda, sure won’t be celebrating it—and this gives me intense pleasure. He had an article in Newsweek this week where he mouthed off as an expert on Latin America—give me a break—and absolutely EVERYTHING in the article was a lie—dates of Venezuela’s elections, poverty percentages—and especially his predictions about the election results—where his most extreme example of a Chavez victory—6 million votes—was not even close to the landslide that happened. I mean, what else is out there to celebrate?

Pinochet’s imminent demise?

“Naw. That’s a crock. They probably didn’t do surgery on his heart nor give him the last rites. I think he just wanted to be taken off house arrest. He will be dancing in his toe shoes in no time. I remember in 2000 how he got on a plane in England in a wheelchair, and was doing the chachacha when he got off it in Santiago—and into the arms of his old torture orgy compinches. No, I’m afraid that Hugo Chavez’ 63% victory is the only game in town.”

Yep. Speaking of crocks, the US government mouthpiece for Latin America, Thomas Shannon, was blithering in London about Venezuela and democracy—mumble mumble—and how they want to have an excellent relationship with Venezuela—grumble grumble—but that the ball was in Venezuela’s court.

“Right. Chavez is plotting coups against them every 30 minutes. He’s spending hundreds of millions of Venezuelan citizens’ tax monies on US election propaganda and US intelligence commissions. Not to mention that he has the Venezuelan navy playing war games in Chesapeake Bay even as we speak. Where do those guys get off?”

He called them on it, though. Said he’d like to have a good relationship with the US, too—but on an equal basis—and that he didn’t believe they were sincere, anyway.

“So, in whose court is the ball NOW?”

Raven has finished the toast, and is peering around for something else.

Still hungry, Rave?

“Not exactly hungry. More like unsatisfied. I don’t know what I want, though.”

Hmmm. Seems like the ball is in YOUR court, then.

RINGING THE CHANGES

Raven's eyes are circling like vultures this afternoon.

Too much coffee, guy?

"Too much happening in the world. I am discombobulated. Frangipanied. Flibberdegibbeted, even."

Are those real words, Rave? That sounds like birdspeak to me.

"Doesn't matter. Look at everything that's been happening since we left Mexico and came here to be bored in Bahrain: Your buddy Ortega finally got in in Nicaragua; this new guy Correa will be the next president of Ecuador. Chavez is being re-elected by a landslide even as we speak."

Ortega, first off, is not my buddy. I barely know him. Just because he claims to be a leftist doesn't make him my friend. I just hope he learned something from all the mistakes he made the last time he was in the power.

"Like the expensive sunglasses caper he pulled his first trip to New York?"

If that was part of maintaining the Latin American tradition of rampant corruption, yes. Second off, being the next president of Ecuador is no big deal. I think there have been eight in the last ten years. Remember that last year when we were in Quito Gutierrez was drummed out, and then Palacios took over. That's two in less than two years. If this guy turns about to be just another banana republic bozo, he won't last either. As for landslides in Venezuela, they are pretty common--remember the one in 1999 soon after Chavez took office where half of Vargas state fell into the Caribbean?

"I suppose you're right. Still, it's a lot of excitement compared to anything happening here in the Arabian Gulf."

Don't worry, we'll be back in the hot seat in Mexico soon. Then you can fly down to Oaxaca and be tear-gassed and shot at by the federal police.

"Never thought I would be nostalgic for that, but I am. Even makes me hungry. Can you heat up some of that chicken with cashews stuff from Swan Lake?"

So long as you're bushwhacked by nostalgia, consider this: Pinochet justt had a heart attack.

"Great news. Is he kicking the bucket?"

It says on Yahoo News that he's in the hospital in serious but stable condition. Maybe he just wanted a change of scene from being under house arrest.

"Naw, he's a pro at house arrest. he was under house arrest for about 15 months in London."

That's right. Maybe he IS kicking the bucket. It would be just llike him to die before they bring him to trial for crimes against humanity.

"There's no justice. Forget the chicken. I've lost my appetite."

SOME TERRORISTS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS

Well, Rave, you were right about the Posadas case. The US government is just stalling.

"Of course they are. Posadas was their fair-haired cubano--did all the CIA dirty work and then some. A fanatic as a terrorist. Blowing up that plane 30 years ago and killing 73 people was like eating a donut for that guy."

Yesterday was supposed to be the final day for shitting around. But all they did was submit a document to the INS court in Texas saying that he was a bad guy who had committed terrorist acts and that they wanted a chance if he was going to be set free to submit another document saying that he was a "danger to the community". They have had almost 18 months to act on Venezuela's request for extradition of the guy--since he escaped from prison there (dressed as a priest--el terrorista en sotana) while in the process of being tried for blowing up the Cuban plane. They tried getting another country to take him in a deportation process--and nobody was willing to accept him.

Raven helps himself to the last piece of whole wheat pecan cake.

"Look, they are going to keep shitting around, as you call it, indefinitely. They want to avoid at any cost a trial of the guy because someone could ask about the CIA's role in blowing up the Cuban airplane AND the role of the person who was the CIA Director in 1976: Bush Padre. On apporea.org they had a story where the president of Cuba's National Assembly said just that."

You're spitting a lot of crumbs around, guy.

"One of those crumbs should be Luis Posada Carriles."

I agree--in addition to the 73 people he offed in the airplane explosion, there's the Italian tourist he ADMITTED to killing in those bombings in 1997 in La Habana. And then that 200 pounds of C-4 plastics caper he tried to pull in 2000 in Panama with Fidel--and everyone else in the stadium--as a target. He went to prison for that, too, but in 2004 when Mireya Moscoso (mas bien "mocosa"--snot nose) was going out of the presidency she accepted a bribe of several million dollars from the Miami Mafia to pardon him and his partners in crime.

"Right. Which is how he ended up bouncing around Central America and finally ended up entering the US from Mexico under mysterious circumstances."

Not THAT mysterious, Rave. Money is never all that mysterious.

"True. Who was it that said "No one can resist a cannon-blast of 50 thousand pesos"?

A little out-of-date, considering inflation and all, but it was Alvaro Obregon.

"Funny. I could've sworn it was George Orwell."

THE HORROR, THE HORROR

Rave, we have entered the heart of darkness.

"What now?"

Didn't you read the the US Congress passed a law making torture "legal"?

"Yeah. What's new about that? They have been torturing folks in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Guatanamo and in all their Gulag of secret spots ever since the Bush Gang engineered 9/11."

But that was all illegal!

"What difference does that make? There have been no recupercussions from it." Raven helps himself to a whole-grain chocolate cookie. "These are not bad, you know."

How can you stuff your beak when I am so ashamed of carrying a US passport I could crawl in a hole someplace?

"We birds don't need passports. Nor any stinkin' badges, come to think of it".

Geez, Rave--I didn't realize that you were a Mel Brooks fan.

"You learn something new every day. Mel Brooks was funny. Torture is legal. War is peace. Ignorance is strength. Those don't come from Conrad, but Orwell is close."

You're such a cynic.

"Not really--this is just another instance of your species confusing being at the top of the food chain with being superior."

I think we're in the banality of evil territory now, Rave.

"Maybe. Or maybe just in Mexico. It's the same thing."

THE REAL ENEMY OF THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION

Raven and I have been negligent about blogging for some time now.

The crackpots, racists and right-wing fanatics who have come out of the woodwork since Chavez' wonderfully entertaining Smells of Sulphur Speech last week in the UN have enticed us out of our hammocks and at least briefly, back into the fray.

We are still not up to speed. At this point I am doing the spouting off, and Rave is playing typist. I guess he is disdainful of having a real dialog with our species, and I can't say I blame him:

Anyway, a few highlights from our posts on the right-wing blog site, blogcritics.org:

Sept. 22:


I would be willing to bet just about any amount of money that I am the only person posting here who has actually gone to Venezuela several times and sat down with Hugo Chavez to talk about what's needed in Latin America (I live in Mexico) and the world today.

Getting information from the horse's mouth sure beats getting it from the horse's other end--the propaganda machine of the Bush administration....

Before one shoots his/her keyboard off with opinions, it would be useful and also ethical to find out what's really going on in Venezuela. Where, by the way, NO elections have been suspended--for any reason. Where the Supreme Court is considerable less partial than the US Supreme Court (although I was glad to see the US version finally show some spine in regard to the inhumane treatment of prisoners in Guatanamo). Where people's opinions are freely voiced and peaceful protesters are NOT dragged away in paddy wagons like they are in NYC.

As for leftists dying right next to folks on the right at the hands of US enemies--some of us leftists are not going to be dying anywhere near the US. Some of us left the belly of the beast many years ago.

I see nationalization of resources as a positive step here in Latin America--in Mexico Lazaro Cardenas nationalized the petroleum resources in 1938.

In Venezuela Chavez did not create the national petroleum company PDVSA--but he has forced other countries' petroleum companies to cooperate in joint ventures with it. And to pay the hundreds of millions of dollars in back taxes and royalties that they owed. Since they are still operating in Venezuela, they must view the operation as being in their interest.

Unused agricultural land may be expropriated (not nationalized) by the state. That's not a novelty--in the US the state may expropriate any land under what is called "emminent domain".

All opposition newspapers are alive and operating in Venezuela. None have been closed. If you have info to the contrary, post it here.The Supreme Court has not been subverted--unlike in the US.

"Overriding the rule of law with government fiat" is a phrase which makes absolutely no sense, linguistically or otherwise. Are you perhaps not a native English speaker, and would like to repost that phrase in your first language?

There is nothing in the Venezuelan Constitution that was created in 1999 that indicates an increase in presidential powers (perhaps you are thinking about passed laws, not the Constitution?), jailing political opponents or inciting revolution in neighboring countries. Do you have a copy of the Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela? I do.

These well-documented facts--show us the doumentation. Don't just tell us that we should believe that The Usual Suspects have been rounded up and are guility.

As for Human Rights Watch--do a little research about where they are coming from. It's always disappointing to find out that funding for such groups at HRW and Reporters without Borders is not free of influence.

A good example of what I am talking about: Last week's scandal about the reporters from the Miami Herald that were fired because they were being paid by the US government to write anti-Cuban propaganda. Fidel is no dummy--when he asked one of those very reporters in public in response to a rude question "¿Quien te paga?"--he knew who was paying him.

Another good plan if you're wanting to try to write about Latin America would be for you to learn Spanish. That way you would be able to read websites in that language as well as the Venezuelan opposition newspapers. The Washington Post and Fox News are not what we call primary sources in journalism.

Sept. 25:

I am glad to hear that you have been reading up on Chavez and Venezuela. They have a very interesting--and hopeful--social project going there--which is why I have made several visits there and spent time talking to all kinds of Venezuelans--from street vendors to the president--about what seems to be one of the very few positive projects at this moment in time on the planet.

The Bush adminstration bashes Chavez daily--not because they believe he is a dictator, or a bad guy--or any of that stuff. They want him OUT so that they can grab Venezuela's petroleum. And the tone has risen since they found out that apparently Venezuela's petroleum reserves are much larger than those of Saudi Arabia.

Folks who bash Chavez on this forum or in other venues are not even after Venezuela's oil--since most of them are in no position to get their hands on anything except a shrinking salary and a credit card to keep them in debt for life. What they are after is acceptance--a sense of belonging to the group in power. That's toadying--and they don't need educations or good jobs or even average IQs to do that.

They turn mean as hell when confronted--and out comes the racism, xenophobia, homophobia, and all their other phobias packaged in right wing ideology. All that behavior means is that they are scared.

Why scared? Because every time there is a scandal on the horizon the Bushies trot out a planned terrorist attack, abuse the airline travelers and have their lapdog (another expert at toadying) Blair round up the Usual 22 Pakistanu Suspects. The media toadies hop on the bandwagon and shriek that everyone must be scared.

Remember the Dylan song, "Everybody Must Get Stoned"? This is the version for the first decade of the Twentyfirst Century: "Everybody Must Get Scared".

Why? Because scared people don't challenge their leaders. Remember, Bush said he was The War President. In times of war everybody must get scared and get together to march like lemmings into the sea of imperialistic slaughter.

What these poor folks do not realize is the following: THE REAL TARGET OF THE US GOVERNMENT IS THE US CITIZEN. The really big lies are told to him/her. Substandard education is given to him/her. Outrageously inflated and incompetent medical care (far inferior to what we have here in Mexico, even) is provided to him/her--and if one has to go into hock to pay for it, all the better.

The US government, the Bush Gang--they don't care about you folks. You are only an inconvenience to them in their paranoid power plans--because, theoretically, even with the Patriot Act locked around your wrists, you COULD HOLD THEM ACCOUNTABLE.

Why not stop toadying, stop salivating for SUVs and other garbage you don't need, stop squandering the fragile future of this planet?

Why not learn how to think for yourselves?

Why not get off your duffs and get a life beyond the remote control?

Even if your government tells you that your only function is to shut up, shop at the mall and pay taxes to support their global massacres.

Just do it.

******

Raven is giving me the eye.

What's the matter, guy?

"Nothing. I just wonder if any of this ever does any good for anybody...."

Chavez of Arabia

Raven is wearing a dishcloth on his head today.

What's the deal?

"I am trying to look like Peter O'Toole."

Lawrence of Arabia?

"Yep. Although, according to the scuttlebutt on Yahoo News, it's now Chavez of Arabia."

I see. Does that have anything to do with his recalling his ambassador to Israel?

"Among other acts, yes. Apparently there are thoiusands in the Middle East who want him for their president."

And what are they going to do with those two-bit dictators that are running their countries? I did not see rampant revolution when we were there last year.

"Maybe it's just a dream?"

OUR MAN IN HAVANA IS NOW OUR MEN IN TEHRAN

Raven is cackling hysterically in front of the computer, crumbs of pan de dulce spewing out of his beak.

Mind your manners, Rave. You aren’t the one sweeping the floor around here.

Raven glances down at the less-than-pristine floor.

“Seems like I am not the only one. The latest blunder by New York Times reporters will ring your ears with deja-vu. On CommonDreams, John McGlynn writes:


‘On November 13, 2005, the Times published a report by William J. Broad and David E. Sanger headlined, “Relying on Computer, U.S. Seeks to Prove Iran's Nuclear Aims”. The report contains allegations of secret Iranian plans to obtain a nuclear warhead based on information contained in a stolen laptop computer. The allegations are made by anonymous US “officials”, in the mode of former Times reporter Judith Miller, whose fabulously wrong pre-Iraq invasion September 2002 report on Iraq’s quest for aluminum tubes for use in a clandestine nuclear weapons program set the stage for Bush administration heavies Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice to start talking about tubes + Saddam Hussein x 9-11 = mushroom clouds over America.

‘Like Miller before them, in their story Broad-Sanger rely heavily on anonymous “American officials”, “American intelligence officials”, “officials” in the Bush administration, etc. to roll out the “strongest evidence yet that, despite Iran's insistence that its nuclear program is peaceful, the country is trying to develop a compact warhead.”

‘What is the evidence found in the laptop? “More than a thousand pages of Iranian computer simulations and accounts of experiments” that show “a long effort to design a nuclear warhead.” Where did the laptop come from? “American officials have said little. . . about the origins of the laptop, other than that they obtained it in mid-2004 from a source in Iran who they said had received it from a second person, now believed to be dead.” Is the evidence (or intelligence) convincing? “[W]hile the intelligence has sold well among countries like Britain, France and Germany, which reviewed the documents as long as a year ago, it has been a tougher sell with countries outside the inner circle.” What is Iran’s response? Not in the Broad-Sanger article but in a Reuters article, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said: “The baseless claim made us laugh. We do not use laptops to keep our classified documents.''
….
‘Returning to Judith Miller, the beauty of her articles is that they had a thumping insistence that something had to be done to stop Iraq. That insistence managed to live on long after the reported facts themselves were disproved or shown to lack credibility or logic.
‘The Broad-Sanger story also has a thumping insistence, but bad as Miller’s articles were on the facts, the Iranian laptop story appears to be a real stinker. Within 24 hours of the appearance of the Broad-Sanger piece, David Albright, a nuclear arms expert and president of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), weighed in to say that Broad-Sanger got the basic facts seriously wrong. In fact, Albright went so far as to accuse Broad of journalistic malpractice. Here's what Albright had to say:
“William J. Broad and David E. Sanger repeatedly characterize the contents of computer files as containing information about a nuclear warhead design when the information actually describes a reentry vehicle for a missile. This distinction is not minor, and Broad should understand the difference between the two objects, particularly when the information does not contain any words such as nuclear or nuclear warhead.”

You’re right, Rave. It reminds me very much of the Graham Greene novel, Our Man in Havana, where the guy recruited by British intelligence almost sent their entire operation into the toilet forever by passing off the schematic diagram of one of the vacuum cleaners he was selling as one for Soviet weaponry!

“Didn’t read the book, but the movie was a riot. Where is Alec Guiness when we need him? Maybe they’ll make a remake with some third rate silly actor.”

Save us from silly actors, Rave. And from third rate silly journalists.

BACK IN CHINGOLANDIA....

Yikes, Rave, supposedly it's 93 degrees here in Cuautla today! Sure could have fooled me.

"It doesn't seem that hot to you--although I note that you are wearing shorts and a tee shirt--because the normal weather in Bahrain was at least 10 degrees hotter. But, yes, it is rather hot--that's why I was buzzing around by the river all morning."

Well, now that you are back to business, what's your take on the latest news? I see that President Mugabe of Zimbawbwe called Bush and Blair the "two unholy men of our millennium" at the FAO meeting in Rome.

"Good for him! Although the US has pretty well mediatized away any credibility that the guy had. Can you believe that they managed to have travel sanctions applied to him because of--get this--vote rigging? I guess the Creepy Cretin Bush doesn't appreciate anyone giving him competition in that quarter. And Chavez?"

Chavez said, among other things: "The FAO gets 900 million dollars a year, not even one billion. Compare that to what developed countries devote to their agricultural production: One billion a day!"

"In one day they are investing in subsidies what FAO can allocate in one year," said Chavez.

"In Washington, they've just announced their defence budget for the coming year: 500 billion dollars. That's enough to finance FAO for 500 years!"

As usual, he pointed out the obviously skewed priorities of the US government. Too bad folks in the States are so brain-dead that it isn't even obvious to them.

"He's been busy. First he managed to organize the troops in Salmanca at the Cumbre to call a spade a spade in regard to the US blockade of Cuba, and got everyone behind him in regard to the extradiction of Posadas--the "Osama bin Laden of Latin America", as some have called him--for blowing up that Cuban airliner in 1976. By the way, do you remember how much Libya's government had to pay in "reparations" for supposedly blowing up that Pan Am plane over Scotland?"

No, but why isn't the US having to pay reparations for Posadas' bombing--given that he was on the CIA payroll at the time?

"Those cynical bastards--they would probably say that at one time or another just about everybody has been on their payroll."

I haven't, for one.

"Nor has this bird. But, speaking of extraditions, Chavez has turned up the heat by saying that he is going to ask for the extradition of Pat Robertson for terrorism because he called for Chavez' assassination."

Good move, and at a great time, as it seems like the Bush Gang has its dirty hands pretty full these days--what with Rove and Libby and now Cheney, aka Mad Dog, under the eyes of the special prosecutor--on top of the Katrina scandal, the Iraq mess, et cetera.

"Not to mention that afro-americans were demonstrating in Washington. And neo-nazi skinheads created such a ruckus in Toledo, Ohio, with their "criminalization of blacks" that martial law had to be declared in the state where Bush rigged the vote in 2004 and stole his second presidential election....And you tell me that we are going to the States next week?! Maybe I will pass. It will be rainy and cold and I don't have an umbrella. Better that I stay here in 93 degrees--which, I see on Yahoo Weather feels like 101 degrees.
Nothing like life in the tropics!"

A CHRISTIAN ASSASSINATION

Rave, I am really hot under the collar this morning.

"I'm not surprised. This is not exactly the temperate zone we are living in. I suppose that's why this rye bread is dried out?" Raven holds up a torn piece of bread in one claw.

It is probably stale. And I am not hot from the weather, I am angry.

"Oh oh. This wouldn't have anything to do with a bible-thumping rabble rouser calling for the assassination of Hugo Chavez on US airwaves, would it?"

Of course it does! Things are getting wilder and wilder and more and more violence is the order of the day. The fact that the Snickering Cretin's spokesperson simply passes off an action against international and federal laws--including against the Patriot Act--as merely "inappropriate" is beyond outrageous, and it indicates that Venezuelan Vice President Rangel was absolutely correct when he said that mounting an anti-terrorism campaign all over the world, while supporting and advocating terrorist acts from the heart of the US itself was beyond hypocrisy and was, in fact, simply criminal.

"Sounds criminal to me, all right."

Raven rejects his breakfast bread.

"Would you mind nuking a small bit of leftover lasagna for me?"

Whatever Raven wants, he gets.

Of course I will microwave the lasagna for you. I am getting tired of looking at it, anyway. But back to the assassination caper, why isn't Robertson in jail--with both due process and the key thrown away?

"Beats me. Any muslim cleric, for example, who called for the assassination of the Creepy Cretin undoubtedly would be."

And Rumsfeld--Mr. War, as Chavez calls him--or Mr. Mothballs, which I prefer--said that Robertson was a private citizen and that private citizens say all kinds of things all the time. As if every private citizen had a license from the FCC to operate a broadcasting network to say all kinds of things all the time! I am sure those other private citizens would be in hot water even suggesting an assassination of the Crosseyed Cretin on a ham radio set.

Raven opens his beak to coincide with the DING of the microwave.

"Actually, I wonder how much the Corrupt Cretin donated to Robertson's network to insure that he would call for the killing of a president who is NOT a cretin, nor a war-mongering scoundrel taking refuge in false patriotism, and who happens to control both OPEC and the world's largest hydrocarbon reserves. That's what I wonder. And although I expect to live to 84--if those same warmongerers have not blown the planet to bits by then--I do not expect my question to be answered."

Raven tucks into his lasagna.

"A little dry. But beats stale rye bread. Or Soylent Green."

Amen, brother Raven.

BLOGGERS IN BAHRAIN

Raven and I are kicking back in Manama, Bahrain, as the average daily temperature this time of year is around 106 degrees fahrenheit.

"Lots of sand here", Raven nods approvingly. "It's been awhile since we lived at the beach."

We are not exactly living at the beach, Rave. I don't call a fifth floor apartment beach digs. Admittedly, it's close for you to buzz over to the beach, but this is not Puerto Angel, Oaxaca.

"I noticed that. A marina of expensive boats yields far less in the traditional Raven scavenging goodies department that those little fishing boats in the bay did."

But food in general is pretty good here. Much better than it was in Jordan.

"Speaking of which, there was an attempt to blow up a US ship in the harbor of Aqaba a few days ago. The missile missed, though."

I am glad to see you are keeping abreast of the news as well as the activity at the Marina Club, Rave.

"Yep, in spirit I am right there in Crawford, Texas, with Cindy Sheehan. Dotting the i and crossing the t, calling a liar a liar and a bastard a bastard. Burning the ears of redneck America."

Meanwhile, back in the Middle East....

"Meanwhile we are riding the shifting sands of tenuous allegiances, I think. The way I see it, the leaders of these Middle East countries are NOT representative of their people."

Are we going to see a sea of revolutionaries on the horizon soon?

"We are not in Latin America anymore, my dear. A missile exploding in the Red Sea is not the same as a sea of red berets in Caracas. I am not making any predictions, only commenting that there is a stink of instability hanging about the region."

No film at 11, then?

"Maybe yes. Probably no."