Justice and Memory

I remember the first Iraq war. I was about 10 years old, and I was a big sharp shooter with my 22 caliber rifle. Somebody bought me a whole bundle of targets with Saddams face on them. So I've shot at this man before. Back in those days, I guess I bought the whole "this man is the enemy" thing as much as a 10 year old can buy anything.

I think the first President Bush made a good decision not pushing onto Baghdad and toppling Saddam 16 years ago. In part, he said it was because there was no viable exit strategy. We are now in a position to feel what that's like. We are about to send 10's of thousands more of our soldiers into a country in chaos, and we've been in there for more than three years. If we want to be honest with ourselves, we are forced to admit that three years post Saddam, the country is a whole lot worse off than when he was it's leader.

I'm not saying that we should praise Saddam, or not hold him accountable for his crimes as a leader. I'm not saying that he was a "good guy." I'm just saying that when we look at the facts we might admit that the American government is responsible for as many Iraqi deaths as he was, maybe more. Someone might respond: "well Andrew, wait, he was an oppressive leader, who kept most Shiite Muslims out of the political elite. He crushed would-be opponents, he did not allow free elections, he violently kept the Kurds from separating into their own nation-state." I would be forced to respond: "you bet. That's all true." But he also kept the country at peace for more years than it was at war. He was a leader who protected a Sunni minority who would have been oppressed more under Shiite leadership than the Shiite majority were oppressed under his leadership. Baghdad was a bustling metropolis, with a beautiful museum, nice restaurants, shopping districts, and electricity 24 hours a day. Their weren't curfews, you could go shopping without fear of a suicide bomb exploding you into a million different pieces, Al Quaida was not a welcome entity. In fact, Saddam considered fundamentalist religious/terrorist organizations as enemies to his regime, and did not allow them to exist under his watch.

He came to power from humble beginnings, born into a family of shepherds. He fought his way up, educated himself, with the help of the CIA, studied law in Egypt observed by US and Egyptian intel during an exile there, returned to Iraq, and there helped repair a country in tatters. He did terrible things, ruled as a tyrant, but it would seem in retrospect, he did it, not only in his own benefit, but also that of the country. Under the Arab Socialists, (of which he was a part), Iraq came to have free health care for all citizens, free education up to the highest levels, he helped modernize Iraq's economy, worked with many of the world governments, meeting with the highest officials of France and the US, for example, on many occasions. He did more for women's freedoms than maybe any other Arab leader.

Should he be hanged for his crimes. Maybe. But as we, America, are now experiencing, Iraq is no easy place to get under control. How are we now trying to impose order in Iraq? With violence and killing even more drastic than that used by Saddam himself. Why aren't our leaders going to hang? Figuratively I think they should, but literally, probably not. People do make mistakes.

As Ghandi said: an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.

US State Capitals

Show me an American kid this age who can rock this knowledge! I bet there are a lot of Americans who could list the whole Mcdonalds menu though. Bad sign. How many Americans can even name one region in India? All i'm saying is we should spend a bit more time branching out and learning more about the rest of the world and a little bit less time celebrating our fictitious superiority.

Why Virgil is the Anti-American One

"WASHINGTON, Dec. 20 — In a letter sent to hundreds of voters this month, Representative Virgil H. Goode Jr., Republican of Virginia, warned that the recent election of the first Muslim to Congress posed a serious threat..." This fella Goode is a damn fool, and no damn good! Americans are afraid that we are a terrorist target for Muslim extremists. Yes we are! Bombing the Middle East, I can promise you, is the last thing that will remove us from their bulls eye; but pressure from moderate Muslims will, in the end, be the only thing that ends the violence, and prevents more terrorist attacks on American soil.

Goode said: “I fear that in the next century we will have many more Muslims in the United States if we do not adopt the strict immigration policies that I believe are necessary to preserve the values and beliefs traditional to the United States of America and to prevent our resources from being swamped,” and he vowed to use the Bible when taking his own oath of office. I fear that people like Mr. Goode, with their prejudiced attitute, are risking my own, and other Americans lives by inciting the hatred, against us at home and abroad, of people who have a right to believe what they choose to believe. The more Muslims we have in our country, and the more we welcome them and treat them with the respect they deserve as human beings, the less of a terrorist target we will be. Our Country was built upon a foundation of freedom of religion, the right to practice one's own faith and not to be persecuted for it. If we were to live up that foundation, and not allow fanatics like Goode to get away politically unscathed when they subvert the American way with hateful rhetoric, we would also be protecting ourselves from future terrorism. We should remember that Thomas Jefferson, one of our celebrated founding fathers, kept a heavily read copy of the Koran, and studied it. If we as Americans showed more interest in the Koran, and were more welcoming to the Muslim community, we would be doing a great service to ourselves by demontrating that we might not be deserving of the wrath the extremist Muslims are hell bent on incuring against us.

The more American troops who are killed in Iraq, the more of an outcry there is at home to end the war. Nobody likes to see "their own" under fire and dying. While I subscribe to the belief that all humans are brothers and sisters, that there is no "us and them," I am well aware that this is not a prevelent view-point in practice. Generally we separate ourselves on customs, social values, religion, or color, but across the board people generally don't like to be blown up, shot, gassed, or chopped. I'm certainly not a big fan of living in fear of being murdered because somebody thinks i'm different.

America should embrace Muslim people, if we elected a Muslim president, I can almost guarantee that extremist Muslim terrorists would have a much harder time garnering support for their terrorist operations against us. If the majority of Muslims felt like we, as Americans, (and we should remember the great number of American Muslims who ARE AMERICANS) were not against "them" and their way of life, they would be far friendlier towards us, and the extremists in their midst would have little support for their murderous ways. The fastest way to bring about that change is to actually be welcoming to the Muslim people, to do the opposite of this idiotic Representative, and show them that we are not their enemy, instead of giving them evidence that we are.

The Wrong Color to be in Iraq

White. Of the 14 people captured in the recent raid on a convoy in Iraq, only the white ones were "kidnapped," 4 Americans and an Austrian; the 9 Asian drivers were released. Seems that we are getting a taste of our own medicine. Arabs in our country have to beware, and in our dealings with them in their own country (in this case Iraq) they are even more subject to terror. They can be taken and held indefinitely without probable cause. They can be stopped and searched in airports just because they look a certain way. I think it is a tragedy that these American contractors in Iraq have been captured, and that they may die when they were only over there trying to make a buck, and maybe even thinking that they were doing some good. But they were in Iraq profiting off an illegitimate war, and we are at home and abroad treating free human beings with no regard for the laws of men [and women]. This is another case where we must first find fault with our own ways. To just jump to blaming the Iraqis who have kidnapped these men, is to ignore our own role in their behavior. Maybe they are trying to show us something. They released all the contractors but the white ones. I wonder how many white American prisoners there are in Guantanamo? I'm not saying the kidnappers are right, they aren't, but neither are we. WE ARE MANIFESTING NEGATIVE OUTCOMES WITH NEGATIVE ACTION. That whole reap what you sow thing comes to mind....

Is president Bush an idiot?

Can you believe this was on MSNBC? WOW... Can't really imagine this on FOX news, but it's entertaining, that's for sure. Entertaining like a horror movie.

Here are members of the New Life Church in Colorado Springs this morning, praying during a service in which the founder of their church, who had just been fired, admitted, from the pulpit, that he was guilty of sexual immorality, and that he was a "deciever and a liar." So he's human. What a surprise?

If I had never seen the inside of a church before, or seen how people behave in there, I might look at this picture and think these people are on drugs. I've seen people behaving more "normally" at raves and Grateful Dead concerts. I'm not saying that people should act "normal" in life, I mean all the touching and singing and holding the hands up and stuff is probably the best thing about church, if you ask me. The bummer part is that these human beings end up fighting against themselves needlessly. This guy Ted Haggard was the head pastor, and also, it seems, a part time Meth-head and fan of gay sex. The poor guy describes his other life though, as "so repulsive and dark that I've been warring against it all of my adult life." Poor guy. What a waste of energy. (Well OK resisting doing drugs which are made from household cleaning products and over-the-counter cough medicine is probably time well spent), but man, there is nothing wrong with being gay. Yet, according to a Denver Post article, the head of the oversight commitee, a pastor Larry Stockstill, said "he is confident Haggard would regard homosexuality not as a predisposition, but as a temptation to be fought." JESUS! Then he went on to say that "Haggard is not in touch with truth and reality." So this pastor, who thinks that one's "god-given" (if you will) sexual tastes are sinful and should be fought against, especially such simple proclivities as adult, consensual, homosexual sex, which has been observed in numerous animal species, and in other mammals also, this guy is in touch with reality? I don't think so. Whatever this God is, if It is all powerful, then I think if It didn't want homosexual sex to happen, it probably wouldn't. These are the problems one starts running into when they take a book likethe Bible as "scripture." We have to remember that it was just people who wrote that book, people just like Ted Haggard, people who had plenty of misconceptions about what was right and wrong, but plenty of them were probably having a little gay sex on the side as well, and probably feeling guilty about it. I mean come on people let's move on.

I feel bad for Ted. I think he probably chose the wrong profession. But i'd venture to bet that the poor guy was raised to feel guilty about his "urges." Maybe he thought that if he really just kept praying, stayed close to the church, and preached "God's word," then he'd get "better." Doesn't seem to have worked out that way. He just ended up looking like a hypocrite, which he is. As are most of the people in the picture up top I bet. Some of them are probably gay, mostly in the closet probably, some probably do drugs, (that guy standing a few rows back with his arms in the big V, I'm thinking he's smoked a little bit of the funny stuff), most of them probably masturbate and are either having or looking forward to having pre-marital sex. I say right on. Sex is great. In fact that big church is probably a great place to meet girls, if the people on the pulpit weren't so consistently (as Pastor Larry Stockhill would put it) "not in touch with truth and reality," I'd probably go there to meet some. Maybe when they toss the Bibles in the bin, a little bit of balance and reality can begin.

Another fine day on google news

Today is an especially down day in the world of news. It all started this morning at my German Girlfriends house. She has cable. Which means CNN and FOX News (in English). CNN is nothing great, but it's not nothing, nor is it as entertaining, or addictive as FOX. Watching FOX News is like looking at a horribly disfigured, leg-less, wheel-chair bound, cross-eyed, stump-armed, burn victim. It makes you cringe, feel shame, get a sickly ache in your stomach, doesn't compute, and yet you can't look away; then you look away, but seconds later you sneak another look, seconds later you're changing the channel back to the torture chamber that is FOX news. So this was the start of my day. Listening to John Kerry clips over and over and over again. As if showing John Kerry saying something stupid is going to keep the republicans from losing the House, and maybe even the Senate. Not likely. Then they show clips of Bush trying to fumble out a criticism of Kerry's speach. As Bush lumbers forward, he is just able to articulate that: "words are important." Thanks buddy.

On FOX they just keep talking, but then you try to remember what they were saying, and you realize that they don't really say anything. They had some guy on to talk about the same old line, Democrats are weak on defence. Blah Blah Blah. I can't stop watching this stuff. And I totally disagree with all of it. I'm not sure if there are like subliminal pictures of paradise being broadcast beneath the facade of meaningless right-wing blather. The newscasters all seem like middle-aged kindergartners, whenever they try to articulate their own ideas, it comes out jumbled and sort-of dumb, almost as if they are all trying to emulate the President's speech. Then when they get something out without a hitch, they have that Bush smile, which says proudly: "that's right, I can talk."

Well that was all depressing, and then on, to news.google.com when I arrived home to the internet connection. OH MY GOD. It's almost as if the Economist and Business Week articles i've been reading the last two weeks have been filtering up. The economy is slowing. America is in trouble. I predict that the two articles in last weeks Economist and International Herald Tribune will come along as well, by tomorrow tops on google news the masses will be reading how London is the new financial capital of the world. The Federal Government has taken too many bites out of the Big Apple. Too many regulations. International business leaders have a difficult time even entering the United States through our handicapped TSA run airports. Who wants to fly in a country where you can't bring a damn bottle of wine on the plane anyway? Let alone invest in that country. Welcome to news.google.com, welcome to America. Bad news, more bad news, and politics, yucky politics. But some good stories to look into are the story about Diebold, the maker of the paper trail lacking, hackable voting machines which about a third of Americans will be using this year to vote in the mid-term elections. There is also a fantastic opinion letter by Karen Finley: http://news.yahoo.com/s/huffpost/20061102/cm_huffpost/033060

AMERICA WAKE UP

We went into Iraq 3 years ago, and we wanted to look like tough guys. But we went into the only country in Bush's "axis of evil" which posed no real threat. While we were busy "shocking and aweing" the world with our bombing of Baghdad, Iran and North Korea may have actually questioned their nuclear intentions; but then they watched as our Iraq mission went terribly wrong (in addition to watching us go into a country they both knew didn't have nuclear capabilities, while we didn't do anything other than call them evil axis members). They have looked on as we have become bogged down in a big mess with no end in sight. They have watched as the nations of the world have become more and more united in their hatred of the USA. The last few years they have put their feelers out, threatening more and more nuclear objectives, scorning inspections, and basically giving us the old nani-nani boo boo. They have watched as we have done relatively little to stop them. Bush has made us liars. He said the United States would stop any of his defined "axis" powers from developing nuclear weapons. We have stood by and watched, offered weak threats and now North Korea has the big one (or something damn close).

Not only did we not stop them, the fact is that we may have pushed them into a corner where their only option was to develope "the bomb." Humans are a resourceful bunch, and that includes North Korean humans. We have been starving them with sanctions, and now we are threatening more. Condi Rice has basically made clear that America is not really considering a military option. We bluffed, they called and raised, and we folded. Now we are telling them that they will be punished and feel the might of American consequences (i'm paraphrasing here). Only all we are doing is promising more of the same: more sanctions, which have been the very things driving their nuclear ambitions. Now we're scurrying around the world, trying to make friends with everyone again, so they will all impose the sanctions we tell them to. But much of North Korea's income comes from the black market anyway. The whole world can sanction them, but Kim Jong Il will still have income and power, while the poor of North Korea will suffer the great blunt of our pathetic and foolish retaliation.

A little history helps us understand the present situation. The fact is, four days after North Korea signed a denucleariztion agreement with the United States, China, Russia, Japan and South Korea on September 19th, 2005, the United States imposed huge sanctions against North Korea which were designed to cut off their access to the international banking system. We imposed these sanctions because we branded them a "criminal state" which was guilty of money laundering, counterfeiting, and trading in "weapons of mass destruction." But when we entered into that denuclearization agreement with them four days earlier, we agreed (according to Newsweek) that the United States and North Korea would "respect each other's sovereignty, exist peacefully together and take steps to normalize their relations." So we were acknowledging them as a sovereign state with a right to exist, they entered into the agreement with us; and then we imposed sanctions because we suddenly decided that we'd deny their right to exist. We backed out of our part of the denuclearization agreement, in which Pyongyang promised to "abandon all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs," thereby terminating the agreement itself, and giving them the right (at least as far as we were concerned) to continue developing nuclear weapons, which they have now done.

It almost seems like we didn't want to stop them in the first place. And what will we do now? We'll impose more sanctions even though we know that they depend on lucrative black market dealings including trading in weapons. We want to take all of their legitimate money making capabilities away through sanctions. What are they left with then? Kim Jung Il doesn't seem like a man to fold, on the contrary, he seems determined to stay in power. I'm sure they have noticed, like me and the rest of the world, that we are not going to stop them from producing nuclear weapons, except through worthless threats and through sanctions and more sanctions, many of which we have already been imposing on them.. It seems to me that they have little option but to really start pumping up their nuclear weapons production and including them in their weapons trade. When you starve a man, he'll eat what he can. When Al Qaida gets their hands on a big nuclear war-head, and maybe a rocket to fire it with, we'll only have ourselves to blame.

Come on Condi! WAKE UP! USA WAKE UP!! North Korea is a real threat. We know it, they have told us, demonstrated it, and we know they are a criminal state who will sell deadly weapons for the sake of profit. Putting them in more economic need seems like about the worst idea possible. Would anyone like another cup of crazy? The war we got into is one that is needless and criminal, it is the one that looked easy: Iraq. There is such thing as a just war, but Iraq was far from it. If North Korea will sell nuclear weapons to the highest bidder, then they are an imminent threat, and should be dealt with as such. But that does not necessarily mean that we must go to war with them, although we must acknowledge that it is an option, and one we take seriously.

The Vice Foreign Minister Kim Gye Gwan said in discussions with Selig S. Harrison, as reported in the October 16th issue of Newsweek, that they "...really want to coexist with the United States peacefully... we are definitely prepared to carry out the Sept. 19th agrement, step by step, but we won't completely and finally dismantle our nuclear weapons program until our relations with the United States are fully normalized..."

I want to know why my government officials aren't having the conversations with North Korea that a Newsweek reporter is having. This reporter, Mr. Harrison, sat down with the chief North Korean negotiator for 6 hours of talks, including two personal dinners, according to the Newsweek article. The North Koreans are clearly willing to talk and they seem quite honest; they say they have a nuclear weapon, and then they test it to show that they do. I have no reason to believe that they are lying if they say they are willing to give those weapons up in return for certain demands.

According to Harrison:

"Kim Gye Gwan spelled out what Pyongyang has in mind, calling for bilateral negotiations without preconditions leading to a package deal that would be followed by the resumptions of the six-party talks. For example, he indicated, the U.S. would lift some or all of the sanctions in return for North Korean concessions such as a cessation of plutonium production at the Yongbyon reactor; a missile-test moratorium, or a commitment not to transfer nuclear weapons or fissile materials to third parties..."

Sounds a lot better than a nuclear weapon in the hands of a stateless terrorist, someone who mutually assured destruction, that special nuclear war deterrent, doesn't exist for. If we do all we can peacefully, and North Korea doesn't desist from its nuclear program, then we have to get a coalition together and stop them by any means necessary. The consequences of nuclear arms in fundamentalist terrorist hands are too great to ignore. I'm normally a peacenik. Most things can be done peacefully. But we are peacefully driving North Korea into a role as a global nuclear arms provider for enemies of the so called "free-world." This is unacceptable.

WE NEED TO WAKE UP and smell the plutonium.

Just One Minute Men [and women]

On Thursday night, the 5th of October 2006, a group of liberal Columbia students stormed the stage while the founder of The Minuteman Civil Defense Corps was speaking as an invited guest of the College Republicans, another student group. The disrupters stopped the speech, prevented a question and answer session, and chanted "si se pudo, si se pudo" ("yes we could") over and over again. "Could what?" I might ask. They had unrolled a banner onstage which said in English and Arabic "No One is Illegal." I agree that no one is illegal, but doesn't the founder of the Minuteman group deserve the same status, even though we might not agree with him? As a free, "non-illegal person" (by the broad definition given by the protesters themselves), he should have been allowed to speak.

There is a way to organize a protest and there is a way in which a group can undermine itself with behavior that does not serve its cause. What on earth was happening at Columbia University this past Thursday? People with one point of view brought a group to speak at their University. All were welcome to attend. It was a public forum. While I don't agree with the ideas of the Minute Men, or think that their tactics or intentions are very American, it is only my opinion. At such an open forum, people with other viewpoints are brought, and we are free to question them, and to try and change their mind. But how can we engage them in discussion if we don't hear what they have to say? If we want them to listen to our argument, then we should listen to theirs. Columbia University is supposed to attract and admit the best and the brightest students. But what were these students thinking? (Or were they just not thinking?)Organizing a protest is as American as Washington D.C. cherry blossoms in spring. Showing up and making sure that your alternative perspective is represented is totally appropriate. But if we show up at an organized event where an alternative viewpoint is meant to be heard, then it is our civic duty as a citizen of a free society to sit down and listen if we wish to be represented there. If we want to bring a big sign that says "I think so and so and my opinions differ from yours," then I am all for it. Why sit in a group of peers who think the same as we do, and talk about the ills of the world as we agreeably see them? We aren't changing much by doing that. We need to be out mixing with the folks who hold the alternative opinions we see as being so destructive to the happier societies we envision. We need to be there to remind them that they might be wrong, just like they are there to remind us that we might be.

If we act like monkeys and chant something they probably don't understand, if we take their voice away, if we attack them and make them feel unwelcome, yelling and screaming in their faces, they will not listen to us. They will think that we are as crazy as they think we are, and they will think that we are as wrong as they think we are. If we act like we don't know how to act in a free society, by welcoming alternative viewpoints, hearing them out, and presenting our different opinions in a civilized way, then the people who observe us will be forced to consider us uncivilized. They will see us as less than respectable monkeys.

It's no way to get the point across. It is also making the same mistake we so often criticize the Bush Administration for making. It is to act like a child and not talk or listen to people who disagree with us. It is to tell them that they don't have a right to exist. I am reminded of why we are so hated in the Middle East. Our leaders have told people that they are with us or against us. They have told them that their way is wrong. It is this mentality and behavior which is the reason the current US Administration is at war. It is why they think they have a right to torture, to silence, to imprison without trial, and now to try these prisoners without fair representation or disclosure of evidence.

It is liberals who usually defend the oppressed, whose voices are being shut down with violence, whose rights are being violated, whose freedom is at stake. But when liberals act like the very Administration and persons who they criticize, the validity of their arguments is undermined. Their actions and their ideas are devalued in the eyes of those whose minds they need to change, and also to those in the center, who may now veer Right to avoid obnoxious monkeys. Those of us with disagreements, if we think we have a better way and want others to see things differently, would do well to listen to the arguments of those we disagree with; it might tempt them to listen to us. The least we can do is tell them they have a right to think and speak their own truth. If we don't want to give them that right, then we aren't fighting for freedom; and we probably aren't worth listening to.

A

Monday Mexico sent a letter requesting that Bush veto new legislation just passed by the senate which would allow 700 miles of fence to be put up between our countries. With the Iraq mess and the repeat button stuck on the "terrorist threat" message, I , maybe like many Americans, have been distracted enough to have missed this immense moment in American (or un-American) history. Today Bush signed the bill.

Torture and the American Way

I highly recommend this letter.

www.thenation.com/doc/20061009/moral_compass

a side note

Maybe my stay the course attitute in my last post is partly a result of my own media biases. Upon further reading I found that according to a poll taken in September 2006, 80 percent of Iraqi's favor a full US withdrawel within a year, 65% favoring an immediate pullout, with 77 percent suspicious that the US wants to establish permanent bases in Iraq. Is is right for us to keep bases there, will we try? I think we should prove them wrong on that one. Is Iraq a central and sensible location to have US military bases. Militarily, especially depending on military objectives, yes. But does that mean we should? No.

I just want to admit that while in my last blog I criticized the left wing voices who are calling for a withdrawel now, they may be right. They really might be right. If the people of Iraq want us out, and if we as Americans really believe in Democracy, then we should leave, and leave them to their free will's fate. Democracy in Iraq does not mean having a government who lets us do what we want there, it means having a government representative of the people. Not our people, their people.

A

We Can't Go on Like This- But We Can't Leave

I often consider how much money America spends on "defence." Our defence bill this year far exceeds 400 billion dollars. By 2010 it is set to exceed 500 billion dollars. Some of the rise in spending is a pay increase for soldiers. This is a good thing. That number will rise to about 100 billion dollars. But when you think about the fact that we have almost 1.5 million active troops, the average pay would be around $70,000 per soldier. But the highest pay of course goes to the military personel who are least at risk. Most soldiers are sold short. For example, a private in the Army, one of our boys on the front lines, typically makes less than 17,000 dollars per year to risk his or her life. The Airforce gets the biggest chunk of change (excluding personel pay), getting an increase from 108 billion dollars up to almost 114 billion. This is where the planes, carriers, big-guns, big-bullets and bombs come in. That's where the big money to be made is for the private corporations who have the big lobby power. This is war-making and not peace keeping money.

Many of our soldiers are still underequipped, still driving around under-armoured Humvees, even while their ammo bags are full and the planes flying overhead are overloaded with overly expensive weapons, with all too much killing power. The way we are carrying out this "war" puts our troops in harms way far too often because far too often their missions end up demonizing them in the eyes of the people.

Lets look at what happened yesterday for example. A house in Baquebah, 35 miles north of Baghdad, was entered by troops, and then they called in an airstrike. 8 civilians were killed. 4 men and 4 women. Witnesses said the attack was unprovoked. A mother was making breakfast. Suddenly people started getting shot. The soldiers were looking for insurgents, but is this the right way to do it? To make the Iraq people feel fear all the time, to enter their sovereign homes, and sometimes kill them, even innocent women and children, how can it make the Iraq people feel any other way about us than that we are the enemy, be they insurgents or not. This is war-making not peace keeping.

We need to completely change the policy in Iraq, stop looking at it as a war between us and them, between America and the "terrorists" we seem to be inviting there every day to fight us. We can learn a lesson from Hizbullah, which is right now in the midst of a huge propaganda campaign all over Lebanon. It is doing vigorous PR work. They are a humanitarian force in Lebanon, they help with education, health-care, food, protection. They are trying to minimize their "terrorist" aspect.

We can do more of this in Iraq. We have to face the fact that to many in the Middle East, we are the terrorists. We must make ourselves useful. We should have more of our qualified military personel out there in the field making sure the people of Iraq have electricity 24 hours a day, making sure that they have running water, plenty to eat, our troops need to patrol the markets, protect the Sunni's from the Shia insurgents, and vice-versa. We have so many resources to help the country rebuild its infrastructure. We need to get that place up and running. If our soldiers need to fight, then we can fight. But we need to be doing more to foster friendship between Sunni and Shia, and between ourselves and both of these groups. We probably need more soldiers not less. But we need to start protecting them by making them more of a peace-keeping force. We need more diplomats as well; Arabic speaking people and a good PR firm. We have to understand that in the Middle East we aren't in Kansas anymore. But some rules still remain true. A little bit of honey smooths a wound a lot better than a gun in the face.

We need to end the "war on terror" as it exists now. It's not working any more than the "war on drugs." This is a war of ideas, and we need to put far more energy into fostering a new image for ourselves. As it is now, we are empowering the "terrorists" by frequently making ourselves look like the bad guy. We give them the high ground, and it comes back to them in the form of heightened power and control. We are in Iraq now, and we need to help sort things out there. I don't think we can just pull out and abandon the country to the insane state it is in: a state we helped put it in, albeit unintentionally. It scares me when the left starts talking about just abandoning the Iraq mission. We should have done that 4 years ago, but it's too late now. We need to change course there, yes, but we need to stay there.

The way to beat the insurgents is to take their friends away. Take away their support, help turn people against them, the Shiite community against the Mahdi Army, and the Sunni's against the Sunni killing teams. Many Sunni's are already turning away from them because they are so careless with the lives of Iraq civilians. People are growing tired of the suicide bombings, and they are seeing that things are not getting better. When we blow houses up and kill civilians or people that we don't absolutely know are terrorists, we do not help ourselves nor the people of Iraq. We need to do more to protect the people. Knocking on doors looking for weapons is foolish. A terrorist behind a door is no threat. He is a threat when he leaves his house, and this is where we should be looking for him. If we want the tables to turn on our image, people must feel safe in their homes, at least not threatened by us there. Little acts go a long way.

I really believe that by doing more to help the Iraq people get back to normal life, which means making sure they have electricity, water, and safe places to shop for food, with more emphasis on communication, with a clear plan and clear intentions, we can help stem the the tide of hatred which is washing over us. We need more Arabic speaking soldiers to do be doing friendly communication and PR with the Iraqi citizens. And we need to use the violence and brutality of the insurgents against them. Which means a war of information. We don't need to lower ourselves to their level. We can take the higher ground and show the people (presently 47% of the Iraq population and up to 88% of the Sunni Arab minority think military attacks on Coalition forces are legitimate resistance to what they often see as an occupying force) that we are friends to them more than the insurgency are.

(this might seem a bit optimistic, but we have to start making changes. If what is going now is not working, just a little change might open up a whole new view to us, and suddenly things can get better. My point is that we must come up with something, some plan, and then start moving. We can't expect things to get better if we keep doing the same things that have not worked and that we have been doing as things have deteriorated.)

More to come.
a

Fox news

This is an addition. I just want to say that though I thought that Clinton did a good job in the interview, the fact that he went on the aggresive allowed him to get his point across, I just wanted to say that he was no angel as president. And I'm not talking about the Monica affair, if anything that made me feel for the guy. I don't think it's good to cheat on your wife, but even though he did it in his office, that was private business between him and Hillary, and of course the young impressionable Monica. But anyway, the way that Fox responded in this editorial on its website shows a level of childishness not seen since the last Disney cartoon. Wow. I just thought i would post it for everyone's perusing, just in case you don't already watch Fox news, or read their website (which I don't recommend, but do find entertaining in a comedic sort of way). Does this seem as biased to anyone else as it does to me? I am not a conspiracy theorist who thinks that Bush planned 9/11, and i really don't think it was his fault. I think there really were "intelligence" problems which caused the plot to be overlooked. Anyway, to blame Clinton for 9/11 (as the article does), is to ask us to subject this news outlet to the highest scrutiny. And I think we may come to the conclusion that they are well into National Inquirer territory. This is nonsense and should be labeled as such. Fox is all too happy to let the Bush White House off the hook. But they want to blame a man who was in office almost a year before. If they want us to think that Bush didn't know what was going on, how on earth can they be so bold as to tell us that his predecesor knew? A little cup of CRAZY anyone?

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,215607,00.html

Bill Clinton does a fine job defending himself in this video

I haven't done any fact checking, but I think it is interesting. And he gives a good whack to the Fox styling.

the devil and Mr. Chavez

I just want to take a moment and come to the defense of our President. I admit that i've said negative things about our George before. But when Hugo Chavez calls him The Devil, I think we need stop traffic and get a little perspective. The devil is not real. Chavez may well know that. But to give Bush the so called "props" that are usually reserved for the Big D, is to give a bit too much credit to our war torn Commander in Chief. I mean come on. The Devil has a reputation for having been around for thousands of years. Bush is barely 60. Having had a drinking problem and having a history of terrible executive decisions does not bring someone to level of the Lord of Hell, the tax man of souls, the #1 fallen angel. No way. Bush is just a man. I think he has good intentions. But fundamentalist terrorists also have good intentions, though I think theirs, like our George's, are the intentions of misguidance. Like Bush, and Chavez as well, they think they are doing acts of goodness, but are generally antithetical to a peaceful and happy world. They are acts of people who apparently fail to acknowledge that they are only human, and therefore cannot know the truth. George Walker Bush may be a little out of his league in the oval office, but he is not the Devil. I can't say whether or not he smells like sulfer.

Chavez, while it was nice of him to say that he is not against Americans, and that he hopes we will elect a new president (which it looks like we will since Bush hasn't changed the constitution to allow him an indefinite stay in power as Hugo has done), is a lot like Bush. Except that one is a power hungry socialist, and the other a power hungry Capitalist evangelist. They both seem to think that they know that what they are doing is right. That is dangerous. We're just a bunch of humans, just a bunch of over-intelligent monkeys. Let's give The Devil his due. None of us are that supposedly bad, we are just generally misled and over-confident. Great intelligence is not insurance against fucking things up. Often it is to the contrary. Just ask Einstein and the Atomic Bomb. Or the person who figured out that steel could be molded into weapons. Or Jesus.

Some Leisurely Egyptions

My impression of the Middle East from having grown up in America, watching TV, going to school, etc, was that it was a pretty dangerous place. Often suddenly exploding in spots and not particularly welcoming to westerners. But when I visited Egypt this past spring it was an eye opening experience. I felt so safe in Egypt. Cairo is a city of far more than 10 million people. I felt safer there than I would in most big American cities. They were a laid back, peaceful people, from what I saw. Crossing streets was a precarious business. But the Egyptions did it with a bold and fearless spirit. I never saw an accident, and the drivers seemed genuinely dedicated to not hitting pedestrians, albeit in a chaotic, jaw-dropping sort of way. This picture was taken in a southern city and I can't remember the name.

These guys were having a fine afternoon. A fine afternoon indeed.

OK OK OK

Allright, so I admit, I got a little carried away with the 9/11--Iraq--terrorist--blah blah blahing. So we've heard it all before, and finally, the news is starting to catch fire that things are and have been a bit haywire, a touch screwy, a tad willy nilly. It's hard for me to see it all the way here in Spain, but I guess even Americans who never attended one of those dangerous liberal training camps, have started to realize that Bush is duller than the bottom of his cowboy boots, and that his administration's handling of the Iraq war, in fact the whole "war on terror" has been piss poor from the get go.
I have friends that don't want to read this crap anymore " ...just too many people talking about it." Maybe they still want to believe that because The Economist supported the Iraq invasion, it had to be the right thing to do. I don't know.

Americans can be a forgetful bunch. We often believe what we watch. Now more of the media is turning against the Administration. Many Americans are picking up what CNN and Newsweek are putting down. Some in the media are getting a little spine to stand up to Tony Snow's lines. But we must admit that the outlet with the most spine of all is FOX. It's like their backbone is made of the same steel as their hard heads. They manage to make a dark and stormy sky shine blue. The Republicans can do no harm.

And there are those who still listen to them. When FOX news changes it's line, then maybe our work is done
Yes, it's tedious, yes, it's repetetive. But it's finally tipping our way. And do we need to keep writing, reading, and talking about what is wrong with the little American policy picture, about war crimes, faulty media, the Constitution being turned on its head? Yes. We do. Because otherwise it's the status quo, and it becomes invisible. America and its citizens have the power and the potential to do a lot of good in the world. But there are many big kinks to work out. So if you are tired of reading, talking, or writing about the biggest mistakes, blunders, and misperceptions of and about the Bush team, the media, the three branches of our government, the Polish and KFC, then you need to drink a big cup of coffee, take a deep breath, and keep right on reading, writing, and talking. When things change, then we can take a break. Vale?

But just to lighten it up a bit, and get into something new, something that the whole blogosphere hasn't been writing about day after day after day after day...

OUR ASTRONAUTS HAVE UNPACKED A NEW RADIATOR!!

Talking points: the pre-9/11 illusion

First of all let me admit that my mind has been heavily occupied; thinking, rethinking, hashing out, questioning, and DEMANDING ANSWERS about this terrible tragedy which I heard about today. The tragic break-up of Bobby Brown and Whitney Houston is devastating. It's terrible, and it has been consuming me. But today I wanted to talk about something else.

In a recent post, I commented on the common republican talking point which keeps being regurgitated all over me: "democrats want to take us back to a pre-9/11 mentality." I want to go a little further into that here. I think it is worth a good deconstruction. Before 9/11 we weren't Yankee fans. Before 9/11 we did not want the Patriots to win. Before 9/11 we did not live in perpetual fear. And before 9/11 we were not engaged in perpetual war. Back then we were not subjected to repetitive images of the World Trade Center buildings being flown into by hi-jacked passenger airlines and imploding into rubble, because back then (light bulb pops) it had never happened. And it is great footage. But what has it done to our mentality? And what have we allowed our government to do as a consequence?

How threatened are we? What is this war we are fighting? What are its consequences, and what are the possible outcomes? What are the greatest threats we face? Is terrorism one of them?

The United States has a population of close to 300 million people. In the last 50 years we have lost far less than 4000 citizens to terrorism on our own soil. According to CNN numbers, 2,973 people were killed on 9/11 (not including the terrorists), and as of Sept. 3rd 2006, 2,974 U.S. service men and women had been killed in Iraq and in what Bush calls the "war on terror."

In 1999 an average of 24.7 people died every day in traffic related fatalities in the United States. Nearly 10,000 people die every year in them. More than 560,000 Americans die of cancer every year. Nearly 1,000,000 Americans died last year from strokes, heart disease, and other cardiovascular disease. Our pollution of the planet is a huge factor in the rising surface temperatures of the world's oceans; this is in turn causing increased hurricane and typhoon activity, which in turn causes death and destruction. If we want to be afraid of something, we have much more we can be afraid of that is right in front of us. We are more likely to be run down by a bus while crossing the street, or shot while bird-hunting with Dick Cheney than we are to be killed in a terrorist attack. This is especially true in most of the red states. There is big news for the Bush lover who lives on a farm in Kentucky, Ohio, or Utah, who is so grateful for Mr. President protecting him the last 5 years, making sure he isn't blown up by an impassioned Jihadi. News Flash: dude, you are not a target. It's sort of odd that the big blue area's of the map, LA and New York City most of all, the places with the biggest bulls’ eye's on them, are consistently voting democrat. New York, for example, the state which received the harshest and deadliest blow on 9/11, voted for Kerry in 2004.

We are waging war. We are not under attack, and have not been for 5 years. We would do well to ask the people in Lebanon what it is like to be under attack, or the citizens of Baghdad who tasted “Shock and awe.” They were under attack. 9/11 was a tremendous tragedy. It is sad and the perpetrators of that crime should be brought to justice. But we must return to the case in point. Osama Bin Laden is not in Iraq. We are not putting all our resources into capturing him, and trying him in court. We are responsible for the situation in Iraq. We created the present environment there. Anyone who is not with us is against us. The more people you declare war on, the more people you will be at war with. We are busy making almost all of the Middle East our enemies (the special exception of course is Israel).

The other day I heard a “correspondent” on Fox news say (and I paraphrase), in reference to the American turned Jihadi/Muslim who was seen on tape inviting Americans to convert to Islam, that he had “turned to the dark side.” Not a friendly thing to say. Not all Muslims are terrorists, and saying that their religion is the “dark side” is not a very good way to influence them, or win them as friends.

Saddam was not innocent of crimes, nor a just ruler, and despite the fact that America helped bring him to power in the first place, he ruled with an iron fist. He did not tolerate terrorist organizations, or any fundamentalist groups who would inevitably be threats to his power. He is gone now. We have been, and are, inviting terrorists to Iraq by doing nothing less than telling them that “this is the front in the war on terror.” Basically an invitation. Come to Iraq, let’s have a war. This is not fair to the people of Iraq, and it is not fair to our soldiers.

I've begun asking myself what political reasons there might be which would motivate the decision makers to get bogged down there indefinitely? Otherwise why are we handling it so poorly (at least poorly to those who want it to end)? If we are going to war with the “dark side,” we certainly need a front in their territory. And Iraq is as good a location as any. It happens to be fairly central in the region.

But why would we want to do that? I don't know, and I don’t like conspiracy theories, but when you look at the situation for what it is, it doesn’t make sense. I have trouble believing that the Administration is handling everything so miserably on accident. Can they really be so hopelessly incompetent? I know many think they are.

It might be true that we are safer at home because we are fighting a war in another country; inviting the terrorists there to fight (as Bush has told us they are) so they won’t have as much time or energy to blow us up on our own turf. But unfortunately this is not a legitimate excuse to destroy a country. America's great power does not make the lives of its citizens more valuable than the other human beings on the planet, be they black, white, Hawaiian, Muslim, Christian, Jewish, or Buddhist. If we are fighting them there so we don’t have to fight them here, it is gravely unjust, cowardly, and criminal. It is the same as using torture chambers, or prisons to hold prisoners indefinitely without trial, outside the U.S. The fact that we do them does not make the acts legitimate.

Iraq was not a threat to us, even if the WMD stuff was true. To say that Iraq was a threat to America is like saying that France is a threat to China. The threat from terrorists is being overblown in the same way. We are making them bigger than they are. We are giving them more and more power by assigning them a role that they could not even at first have filled. If you show enough fear, even an armless midget will start to think he can beat you; and his friends and family will start to believe it as well. And the money comes pouring in. And so on.

Are we safer than we were the day before 9/11? Not really; we are still dying of car-accidents, heart-attacks, aids, and cancer, and we are still being shot by stray hunters bullets; and at about the same frequency. The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is rising, the earth is getting hotter, the ice-caps and glaciers are melting. The voting process is being taken over by politically connected private corporations. Our soldiers are at risk in foreign countries. Considering the numbers of our service men and women who are deployed, and the fact that they are Americans, we would probably be forced to admit that by the numbers, our citizens are less safe than they were on Sept. 10th 2001. One thing is absolutely sure. Today we have more enemies. We have named them and declared war on them. We have empowered them, and we are busy uniting them against us. Each day we "stay the course" we give them more reasons to want to blow us up; maybe even you: Utah.

Should we bomb, and send troops into England?

As a new front on the "war on terror" it now appears that it may be necessary to invade the British Isles. It would certainly be a taste of the old empire medicine for the Britons...

So let's look at this interesting scenario. From Reuters:

London - British police said on Monday that they had charged two
men held in a major swoop last week, one of whom was accused
of undergoing terrorism training at a camp in southern England.

Detectives said Yassin Mutegombwa, 22, had been charged with
three counts of receiving training for terrorism at a caravan and
camp site in Hampshire and at a farm in Berkshire, west of London,
during April and June.

British police said in February they suspected there were terrorism
training camps in the country but this is the first time they had
provided any details.

The charge stated Mutegombwa had received weapons training
that "he knew or believed that the instruction or training was being
provided there wholly or partly for purposes connected with the
commission or preparation of acts of terrorism".

So we have terrorist training camps in England. And therefore, probably the United States as well. With Iraq and Afghanistan as inhospitable as they are presently, the free soil in the US or Great Britain would seem more attractive for a nice weekend terrorist camp.

So now WE are harboring terrorists; and maybe we should have bit more sympathy for other governments, stop harrassing them for being "supporters of terrorists" just because they have training facilities within their borders. If a tiny country like England, with all its military and "intelligence" might, can't keep terrorist training camps out of existence within its borders, how can Pakistan, Iran, Ethiopia, or Libya? Terrorists, or potential terrorists, are just people. They live all over the world, in every nook and cranny. We are all potential terrorists. We all live somewhere, and we are all subject to new ideas, new religions, new ways of thinking. The power of thought is true power. Smart bombs would be a lot smarter if they didn't explode and kill people, but rather contained parachuting teachers, come down to teach new ways of thinking. We all need to be smart bombed, us and them.

I was going to tie the following article together with a little diddy on Global warming but i've been writing for too long and need to sleep....

I read an article tonight in the Independant (a British paper) about a new scientific study which concludes that man is responsible (at least for the most part) for the increase in hurricanes and cyclones, both of which are responsible for deaths, injuries, human misery, and billions of dollars in damage every year, and it basically comes right down to global warming.

check out a related article (I couldn't find the Independent one):
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=ar.Nlb44tSxo&refer=us

It is still september 11th on the eastern
coast of the United States of America. I'm in Spain, and it's now Sept. 12th. The Spanish government may not be supportive of the Bush team, but over here, despite how much the people might think poorly of Americans, they have not forgotten Sept. 11th and the bombing of the World Trade Center or the innocent lives that were lost there. Tonight there was a long television show (dubbed in Spanish of course) documenting the World Trade Center attacks. There were interviews with survivors, police, firefighters. It was American made. There was nothing subversive about it, or anti-american.

September 11th 2001 was a beautiful day in Boulder Colorado, where I was living on that serene morning. I woke up early and drove into the mountains to crawl around on rocks with chalk on my fingers and really tight shoes. The sky was light blue and pristinely clear, as it was above New York. The infidels didn't know they were infidels. But that crystal blue day, we lay folk, chubby with the wealth created in the 90's and still freshly removed of our cold-war opponents, were lazily gazing at the blue sky's of a few grand years as the unchallenged global super-power, and we were cheerily ignorant of the coming storm.

But the serene blue vista, the calm Starbucks gaze out a Trade Center window, was shattered by the first plane. And there were more planes. The caffeine buzz was gone, suddenly unnesessary, and replaced by riteous indignation. We found ourselves battered. And we presumed it to have been even worse than it was. We estimated the death toll thousands above what it turned out to be. Nothing short of miracles had occured in the stories we heard about survivors, reunited families, strangers saving strangers. But there were the dead. Tragic deaths. Good people, good Americans, had been slaughtered by an unknown enemy. We were mad.

Our president told us that we would find out who did this, and we would get them. This is our story, the story which starts when the first plane hit. But there was also the story of the pilots, the suicide hi-jackers, brave and faithful enough to die for their cause. People spent years planning the attack. They were muslim people, and most of them had been living in far different worlds for most of their lives than Americans. They had spent more time fighting with guns than with SAT exam scores. They too have a story. And to many of their peers, they are the heroes of that day.

I think it is a sad thing. I think it is a sad thing that they see us as so wrong that they will die to kill us, and I think it is a sad thing that we don't see their story, the one that starts before 9/11, at all, we only see the story that starts on 9/11, and that story stars them as the enemy: a senseless, "evil," enemy, which is out to get us because of our freedom. This is not a true story, and it is getting really late so i'm not going to delve further here. But let me just say that who are we to say that we, (one group of people), are more right than them (another group of people). WE are all just people. If we can start concentrating a bit more on improving WE, rather than attacking or retaliating against THEM, we might make some progress in connecting the dots between the history of pre-9/11, the history of post--9/11, and the future of civilization. Turning the world into America is not a very realistic goal. Let's just look at Dick Cheney's vision of Iraq for example. He could have been right in thinking that we would be greeted as liberators. It turned out that he was wrong. Afghanistan is another example. Or how about planting "democracy" in Palestine, stir the soup of a lack of critical thought, and you get an elected "terrorist organization."

The republicans are busy doing HAMMER TIME, and they are using the same hammer that they've used before, jack-hammering away at us with fear. As the elections approach I can hear it all the way in Spain. The administration is busy administering the same loud feed-back, pre-chewed fumblecabbage that they've stunk us up with before, "WE ARE NOT SAFE." They seem convinced, or seem to be trying to convince us, that if we don't stay at war, there will never be peace. But does that make sense?

I'm not trying to say that the democrats are going to fix all the problems, but I keep hearing that if we elect the democrats "they are going to bring us back to a pre-9/11 world." Are they going to stick all our heads in the sand and time warp us back? What i want to know is: is that really any different than the present? The biggest difference is that our actions were more in keeping (certainly not perfect) with international law. It could have been 9/9, or 8/28, or 10/02, but whatever you say, people hi-jacked planes with box-cutters and fake bombs and they killed a great number of people and did some tremendous damage which reflected a well thought out and carefully executed plan. Not the work of some demented crazies, but rather the work of highly motivated people. If the people who planned the Iraq war also planned 9/11, the first plane would probably never have made it off the ground.

Side note: my "pop" taught me that the kid who tortures animals is never popular. And the grownup who tortures grownups... well, not only is he not popular, but he is also breaking international laws, and subjecting himself to worthy scrutiny. He is a criminal. And he deserves to be held-accountable and punished...

We have lost perspective of what America once stood for. The media is certainly no help. Neither the red team or the blue team in America have the answer because both are playing with a flat football on a soccer field. The muslim cricketeers aren't playing a nice game, they aren't playing a fair game, but most of all they are playing a game that we in America haven't got a clue about. All the different players seem to think that their sport is the only true sport. I think an acknowledgement on all sides that different games exist and can all be true at the same time might be a good start.

America has a lot of work to do to start making friends again. "Terrorists" are people. They have a story, and they have reasons for doing what they do. The ends may not justify the means, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the other side (being us) is right in any response it makes. The post-9/11 story is the scariest to me. It is still being written as I write. Someone is probably getting killed in Iraq right now, likely there will be at least one or two American soldiers killed today, and who knows how many civilians. America needs to take inventory. We can admit that we were wrong to invade Iraq, but that does not mean that we can pull out our troops. But the guns that our soldiers carry are not the weapons that will win the war on terror. The minds of men and women are the only weapons which can win this war. This is a war of ideas, of civilized thought. Both sides are fighting like savages. Savages kill, savages fight with brute force. If we wish to call ourselves the civilized world, we should stop shooting and start thinking. We should stop yelling and start talking, infidel to infidel, soldier to Jihadi, men bound for heaven to men bound for hell, priests to clerics, and both of them to scientists. This planet is getting smaller every-day, we have to start acting like the neighbors we all are. All of us.

I'm sitting at the messy desk. I should be at the gym; but then, what is should be? I mean I'm letting myself wallow in flabbyness. One half of me says get up and go, but really it's more like one 16th of me saying let's go, and the other 15 16th's just being clammy and spanish, unmotivated, slightly hungover, and slightly enjoying African music that is making my mushy brain feel a touch damp.

The real questions in life: How to feed yourself, cloth yourself, and afford a place to sleep, how to find a mate. What happens when all these questions are answered? I'm sitting at the desk. Clammy.

Let's address the biggest news of today: first and foremost Paris Hilton is arrested for drunk driving. It's the hip celebrity thing to do these days. Mel Gibson is such a trend setter. I say props to them. I mean you get tired of shopping, shopping, shopping, and you have to spend the money, I mean otherwise what's it good for? A good DUI attorney is THE chic new accessory, it's got the Gucci handbags and the little chihuahuas beat this year. Throwing phones at hotel staff is so like early 2000's.

Oh, and a lighter note: Bush publicly defended torture.

The Death of Irwin

The Death of Irwin


If you are as tired as me of thinking about the insanity in the Middle East, the foolishness of Israel and the White House, the failure of any sort of diplomatic mission in resolving long standing problems, starvation and degradation in Africa, the bickering about the mid-term elections, the blundering in Iraq, the blundering in Lebanon, the fact that this latest batch of war-crimes and
terrorist acts will go unpunished,
if you are just as fed up as me at the lack of good irony in
this sad state of affairs,
then you must have been just as saddened, and delightfully entertained as me,













to find that Steve Irwin, the famed Croc-hunter, was tragically killed yesterday, not by a man-eating shark, not by a giant croc, not by a black adder, a diamond back rattler, a lion, or a cobra, but rather was pierced through the chest by that undercredited, yet placid, beast, THE STING RAY...

I loved Steve Irwin. "LOOK AT THIS" he'd say, in his rye Australian tongue, with his eyes wide open, staring at a clump of "FELINE POO" that he'd found in a cave and was holding between two fingers. Then he'd take a big sniff of it, and tell us it was fresh. Good old Steve. He was as a legend. The only cool animal show host. Entertaining to all ages. He wasn't disturbingly feminine, yet married, and totally exitable and girly like that one guy who loves to do shows in Thailand... He wasn't a cocky, Irish, reptile obsessed, know-it-all with a big nose and red hair (yuck), like that other guy. He wasn't some polished BS artist made in America by lame producers who say "this guy has a pretty face, and a biology degree... so;" no, he was genuine Steve. Steve Irwin. We all know Steve Irwin, we all know the Croc-Hunter. But he wasn't just a Croc-hunter, he had a well rounded interest in all animals, he wasn't just obsessed with one species, like that Dork Manny the Shark Swimmer. Steve was as exited about feline poo as he was about a reticulated python, or a great white shark. Steve was the King. And the king has died.

This news did come as a shock, especially as I was reading it in a spanish newspaper, and didn't really get what was happening until about two paragraphs into the article. The headline in El Periodico: "El 'cazador de cocodrilos' Steve Irwin fallece en Australia... El ecologista fue atacado por una raya cuando rodaba un documental," did little for my understanding. I caught that he was attacked, or being attacked, but "rayo" was not in the dictionary, so I had little idea what was going on. The picture in the article was also misleading. It was the infamous photo of Steve holding his new baby while in a pen with a big "cocodrilo" which he is feeding. I thought maybe the spanish are a couple years behind in the news and that the Michael Jackson (hang baby from window, hang baby in front of giant crocodile...) like news story had just finally made it over to them; and for a moment it all made sense: Steve Irwin, in fine health, is being attacked by the miss-the-boat-spanish-media, for his baby mis-hap of two years ago. Not so.
A couple lines in, after gathering that he was filming a new documentary, (to be hosted by his 8 year old daughter... *couldn't my dad have been Steve Irwin*) north of Brisbane, and nowhere near his croc pens, I came across this little bit of sentence: "...fallecio ayer en aguas de Australia...", my interest thus being perked with the possibility that the attacks on Steve were in response to an Australian water blowjob, I went ahead and grabbed the dictionary to confirm "fallecio," which it turns out means "died" (in preterito imperfecto). So now I'm really confused. And I go to Google News to find out what's really going on. Well, good old Steve, petter of poisonous snakes, shark swimmer, crocodile hunter, "fallecio" while snorkling with a sting ray.

The funny thing about sting-rays is that, not only are they non-aggressive, but as emedicine.com tells us:

Stingray injuries (eg, puncture wounds, lacerations, envenomations) tend
to have good outcomes. If patients do not develope infection or other
complications, they can expect to have minimal pain in 24-48 hours and
healing within 1-2 weeks


Except when you get jabbed in the heart. If Steve had been struck in the leg, in the arm, in his ass, he would have been fine, even in the back or almost any part of his chest, he would have survived. But the venomous barb punctured his heart. Can someone please tell me what the odds of that might be?


And what a sad, but welcome change for him to die this way. It's like Elvis having a heart attack, and dying on stage, instead of just dying cause he was a fat-drug addicted, puffy bacon eater. It's a beautiful way for Steve to die, because he died doing what he loved. He was in the water, his second home; and what a shocker: it wasn't a shark that killed him, or a snake, or a crocodile, none of the animals that he wanted to show us were over-demonized, and worthy of protection. He would not have wanted to be killed by an animal we were already scared of, animals he wanted us to protect. But a sting-ray? Perfect. There won't be a back-lash against sting-rays. There won't be a "great sting-ray hunt of 2006" in response to the tragic demise of Steve. And that is how he would have wanted it. The poor guy, he probably just couldn't believe it, one of the least dangerous animals in the world to swim with, pierces his heart with it's stinger.

Steve Irwin was as cool as they come. He never went Gucci on us. Like Crocodile Dundee, he always looked out of place on 5th Avenue. His success and wealth never went to his head. He stuck around his family zoo and dedicated masses of energy into it, and into environmental conservation. He may have been one of the last people alive who deserved to be stabbed in the heart with a poisonous barb. But the people in the news on a general basis, well, they just don't seem to do enough snorkeling.
And what lesson is there here for us? For us I cannot say. For me, the only conclusion I can draw is that my Spanish is horrific. I, like Steve Irwin, am a native English speaker, and it looks as though that won't be stopping any time soon. Oh, and also, now I know i'm better off playing with poisonous spiders, snakes, and rolling around with crocodiles than swimming with a sting-ray; or wait, maybe not.