Of Doctors, Priests, and Presidents

Fallujah and the Battle for the Presidency

"Your neighbour’s grandchildren will be fighting this stupid greed-crazed Bush-family war against the whole Islamic world for the rest of their lives if John Kerry isn’t elected to be the new president on Tuesday."

Hunter S. Thompson

After dropping off my daughter at the mental institution Friday, my drive into work was punctuated by Cape Times billboards proclaiming Hunter S. Thompson Writes For Us. "Assholes," I sneered. "Though well past his sell-by date, I know this much. The Good Doctor would not lower himself to writing for a limp-dick, low-rent street sheet like yours. He is a man of honour and integrity who will do many things, but writing for the Cape Times is not one of them. Whoever penned that headline should be dipped in lime and run out of town."

Okay, maybe I was being a bit harsh. All in all, our local print whores are not that bad. Dinner-table Gun Battle Kills Three remains one of my favourite headlines, epitomising life on the Cape Flats. Nevertheless, determined to trip up the paid hacks pulling off this particular fraud, I snuck over to the Cape Times site and, sure enough, there it was, Fear and Loathing of Bush Mafia — Gonzo Journalist Predicts Democrat Will Be Next U.S. President.

I smiled. Still exercising extraordinary reach, the Doctor confirmed my jaundiced view of IOL's duplicitous ink jockeys foisting syndicated trash onto Cape Town's dumb and gullible public as commissioned work. We (you and I) have had this article pointed to us by many far-better educated people than the whores and fools drawing fat paychecks from the Cape Times. We are, after all, bloggers and know the Good Doctor would not lower himself to freelancing for a Third-World instrument of corporate greed.

Well, okay, he would but so what? A man has to earn a living.

The point is that newspapers worldwide have been seduced into publishing the greatest political junkie of the Twentieth Century's prediction for Tuesday. What does it prove? It shows our newspapers to be dumb losers hell-bent on increasing circulation at all costs. They are prepared to publish the views of a man who has bucked the system and all trends by failing to predict the outcome of a U.S. presidential election for some forty years.

With Hunter S. Thompson's endorsement, John F. Kerry's campaign sank like a high-speed, gun-running cigar boat hitting a whale off the Florida Keys. The Senator will be yesterday's man when the sun rises Wednesday morning. His run will have ended in a cloud of spray, blood and blubber. Yes, I feel sad for my friends who have given their all to unseating the evil little drunk now residing in the White House but, as my good friend M. Scott Peck points out, nobody said life was fair.

You have fought the good fight my friends, but now is the time for you to—as the Doctor puts it, kneel down and be rewarded.


A heavily fortified city...

Despite these feelings of vindictive melancholia, my mood remained high. Like Osama Bin Laden, the Doctor knows his audience. Osama's October Surprise promises hellfire and brimstone for the good people of The World's Greatest Takeaway Democracy. My delight at receiving word from Osama was unbounded, not so much because he sees the streets of Middle America running red with blood, but because he adopts the Good Doctor's elegant style:

People of United States, this talk of mine is for you and concerns the ideal way to prevent another Manhattan and deals with the war and its causes and results.

He is nothing if not blunt.

But I am amazed at you. Even though we are in the fourth year after the events of September 11, Bush is still engaged in distortion, deception and hiding from you the real cause and thus the reasons are still there for a repeat of what occurred.

"But I am amazed at you." Indeed. Displaying anything but amazement, Bin Laden, who engages his global public with a shrewd appreciation of their idiocy, spells out the nature of his enemy, the Bush administration.

We have not found it difficult to deal with the Bush administration in light of the resemblance it bears to the regimes in our countries, half of which are ruled by the military and the other half of which are ruled by the sons of kings and presidents. Our experience with them is lengthy and both types are replete with those who are characterised by pride, arrogance, greed and misappropriation of wealth.

These are all things with which the Good Doctor, a man well versed in the law, is familiar. And Bin Laden has the occupiers taped. They are vermin and scum and he intends wiping them from the face of the earth. He will, of course, fail. Much like Dr. Thompson's prediction of a Kerry victory, Bin Laden is being hopelessly optimistic.

George W. Bush will turn the Middle East to a sheet of glass before admitting guilt or defeat.

But that is neither here nor there. These missives from the boundaries of our global village are superbly timed. In the Doctor's case, we know his epistle is motivated by a need to finance large cars, fast women and fat hotel bills. Osama, however, plays for higher stakes.

George W. Bush's return to the Oval Office is essential. Dubya is unique. He is an original and Bin Laden is fond of him. No U.S. president before Dubya has so thoroughly defiled what was once a Proud Highway. Bush has stumbled its course, fouling the air with his arbitrary policy defecations, militaristic projectile vomiting and compulsive corporate binging. It has been an odious four years, but it has been thoroughly enjoyable.

Osama Bin Laden knows this, and wishes to see Bush continue his trashing of the presidency. A peaceable man with kindly eyes, Bin Laden has no need of terrorism while The Son of The Great Satan is in charge. Given four more years, George W. Bush will destroy the United States himself, and the New Caliphate, with Bin Laden playing a benign Saladin, will come into being.


Teeming with foreign Rambos...

For now, though, Bin Laden has other fish to fry and it is here that, to appropriate the words of the once and future Caliph, I say to my fellow bloggers, "I am amazed at you." Though you might be working feverishly to install a new and more respectable neocon stooge to your Highest Office, why have you not linked Bin Laden's message to Fallujah?

I ask you this. What president of the United States facing difficult times at home has not launched distracting military offensives against collaterals around the world? None. They all do it. It is a risk-free tactic. Once the lapdog media settles down and the problems are buried beneath dead foreigners, there is not even a need to apologise for the aspirin factory.

Bin Laden knows this and, by painting George W. Bush a war president and foe worthy of insult and deprecation, he has given him his bump in the polls. But his endorsement is conditional. Listen.

...we fight because we are free men who do not sleep under oppression. We want to restore freedom to our Nation and just as you lay waste to our Nation so shall we lay waste to yours.

Fair enough. A couple of days short of Monday or Wednesday, when George W. Bush will feel the need to obliterate the mighty city of Fallujah and show himself to be the War President, Osama warns him off. If Bush goes ahead, he will slight Bin Laden's pre-election bump and lend his warning added weight.

Osama wants history to judge Fallujah, a heavily fortified city teeming with foreign Rambos armed to the teeth by the U.S. taxpayer, Bush's Stalingrad. Whether it will be adjudged as such or not, the vicious beating meted the U.S. Marine Corps in April ranks with the thrashing handed American troops by a weakened Rommel at the Kasserine Pass.

The Americans have never recovered from their defeat by Rommel's fleeing troops and Fallujah has rubbed salt into a wound deepened by countless failed military ventures over fifty years. The Americans have become the Italians of the Twenty First Century. Wherever they go, men spit on the ground and women and children laugh or throw stones at them. This has not gone down well in the Pentagon, a dark place filled with bitter losers high on hate.

In as much as the flattening of the towers of the World Trade Center served symbolic purpose, Failure in Fallujah enraged generals blind to their forces' inability to take a single Iraqi town or city in two years. Shipping professional British soldiers north (the Black Watch under PorridgeBoy), they have moved thousands of Marines into offensive positions around Ramadi and Fallujah and now await their commander-in-chief's order to flatten the city and the millions of highly trained foreign nationals occupying Fortress Fallujah.

Osama says, "...just as you lay waste to our Nation so shall we lay waste to yours."

Living in Sadr City, Tariq is a member of the Iraqi resistance and a veteran of April's battle.

"What battle?" he asked quizzically when I raised the April Rout.

"The Battle of Fallujah. The routing of the Marines in April."

He laughed and hawked a huge gob of phlegm into the dust of Haifa Street. "Well, there you have it. There was no battle. They're a bunch of pansies. We chased them off, hounded them out of town."

"Yeah, but what about next week. They've moved thousands of Marines into position and intend flattening Fallujah and Ramadi."

Tariq slapped his knee and roared with laughter. "So what? It's a PR stunt. If Bush or Kerry attack, they lose. If they don't attack, they lose. It's what we call a win-win situation. Besides, if they flatten Fallujah, I get to travel to the States."

"Eh?"

"For the next job."

"Oh."

"Yeah."

That is how it works in the victory business. You see it every time. ... Nobody wants to hire a loser. Right? They stink of doom and defeat.

"What is that horrible smell in the office, Tex? It's making me sick."

"That is the smell of a loser, senator. He came in to apply for a job, but we tossed him out immediately. Sgt Sloat took him down to the parking lot and taught him a lesson he will never forget."

"Good work, Tex. And how are you coming with my new enemies' list? I want them all locked up. They are scum."

"We will punish them brutally. They are terrorist sympathisers, and most of them voted against you. I hate those bastards."

"Thank you, Sloat. You are a faithful servant. Come over here and kneel down. I want to reward you."

Light Reading

• Hunter S. Thompson | Fear and Loathing, Campaign 2004 [Link via Bruce]
  
• Robert Chalmers | Hunter S Thompson: More fear and loathing on the campaign trail
  
• Steve Appleford | The Doctor Will See You

Peace at Last?

There is a surreal quality about visiting the United States in the last days of the presidential campaign. If George W Bush wins, according to a scientist I met, who escaped Nazi-dominated Europe, America will surrender many of its democratic trappings and succumb to its totalitarian impulses. If John Kerry wins, according to most Democrat voters, the only mandate he will have is that he is not Bush.

John Pilger | Will There Be A War Against The World After November 2?


Want more?

The recruits were taken in batches of 12 to the side of the road and made to remove their shoes and lie face down on the ground before being shot in the back of the head. The killings are seen as a significant step in the growing confidence and propensity to violence of the militants. Although hundreds have died in bombings and mortar attacks, this is the first time they had carried out a planned operation with such a high number of casualties.

Kim Sengupta | Massacre at Baquba


Then vote Kerry...

Like Jimmy Carter back in the 1970s, President Kerry will be well aware that what shoe-horned him into the White House was an entirely negative public emotion, hostility to George Bush. Just as Kerry consistently disdained his eager and all-forgiving left supporters before November 2, he’ll redouble his public and private displays of rejection thereafter, contemptuously wiping Michael Moore’s moist kisses from all his cheeks. The constituencies President Kerry will be eager to placate and to satisfy will be exactly the ones he has courted the whole of this election year: the Neocons in Washington, and the bankers in Wall St.

Alexander Cockburn | The Great Delusion: Kerrycrats and the War


...or Bush for that matter.

As for the American people, look, you're never going to be able to persuade me that even the most rabid Bush supporter in Texas wasn't horrified by what he saw. The question though is how do you deal with it. And for a lot of people in America, they simply expunge it or deny it. When I wrote my first stories about My Lai, I remember vividly a Minnesota public opinion poll that showed that more than half of the American people didn't think I should have published that story. They weren't accusing me of doing anything wrong, but they didn't think I should have written about it. So you always have this resistance to an ugly truth.

Lakshmi Chaudhry | Seymour Hersh: Man On Fire

Note: Thanks to EastSouthWestNorth for the above and other photographs of the invasion-inspired Baquba massacre, the continuing Chaos in Iraq series, and a wealth of links to stories worldwide. Thanks too to all newsgatherers fighting dumbed-down broadcast media to bring their readers unvarnished reportage. Good journalists are filing stories from all corners of the globe, but it is these sites that bring them to us. Sadly, the fast-deteriorating United States-Iraq-Iran-Palestine imbroglio remains the story of our time.

Update: 100,000 Iraqi civilians dead

Giving the lie to difficulties attending assessments of Iraqi post-invasion deaths (laughably pegged at 10,000), the Guardian and Independent report a scientifically sound survey [pdf] by The Lancet [registration required]. Introduced by Richard Horton's [pdf] compelling plea for sanity, the study puts the number of Iraqis murdered thus far by invading American and mercenary forces at 100,000.

After spending a page casting doubt on the report's methodology and veracity, The Washington Post allows us, on the second page of its cynically muted response, Household Survey Sees 100,000 Iraqi Deaths:

Even though the sample size appears small, this type of survey is considered accurate and acceptable by scientists and was used to calculate war deaths in Kosovo in the late 1990s.

And, with Fallujah, Ramadi and every other city in the country closed to the invaders, this war has barely begun. Look at it this way. Were the United States to be invaded, more than ten times that number would have to die to approximate the slaughter visited on the hapless Iraqis. A million Americans blown to blazes by surgical strikes? Could I live with that? Well, given the American response to Iraqi deaths, I guess, yeah, easily. I could live with ten million dead. Why not? Blow them away, Bubba.

• Guardian | 100,000 Iraqi civilians dead, says study
  
• Independent | Revealed: War has cost 100,000 Iraqi lives
• The Lancet | The war in Iraq: civilian casualties, political responsibilities
  
• The Lancet | Summary: Mortality before and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: cluster sample survey
  
• The Lancet | Report: Mortality before and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: cluster sample survey [pdf]

Note: The first two articles, pointed to by Danny Dayus's World Crisis Web, brought the survey by The Lancet to my notice. What sort of person disseminates these links, day after day, month after month, year after year? The sort that chooses to make a difference.

Ailing Arafat to Fly to Paris Hospital

Ailing Yassir Arafat to fly to Paris [Graphic: Werner Horvath]

President Yassir Arafat took part in morning prayers early Thursday while he braced for a thorough medical examination by teams of senior Palestinian, Jordanian, Egyptian and Tunisian doctors, as a large crowd of Palestinians kept a silent vigil outside his besieged compound amid wider popular rallying across the occupied territories around the leader of the Palestinian people.

Palestine Media Center | Arafat to Get Thorough Medical Examination: Palestinian Security Services Put on Alert

Doctors decided Thursday to fly Yasser Arafat to Paris for treatment after blood tests revealed the ailing Palestinian leader has a low platelet count. Associates said Arafat was too weak to stand Thursday, appeared confused at times and spent most of the day sleeping. The doctors told reporters the cause of the low platelet count was not known and further testing was needed. Arafat's personal physician, Dr. Ashraf Kurdi, said there was no immediate threat to Arafat's life. "His condition is good, his spirits are high," Kurdi said.

Low platelet count, fatigue, etc. Sounds like Adult Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia to me. Call it an ill-educated guess. Given his three-year imprisonment in Ramallah by the IDF, the Palestinian president's health is not good and he might have only several weeks to a year to live. I hope I'm proved wrong.

Guardian | Ailing Arafat to Fly to Paris Hospital

Note: The New York Times exemplifies the mind-boggling contradictions inherent in American pronouncements on Arafat's causal role in the Palestinian occupation:

Israel began confining Mr. Arafat to the compound in December 2001 after a surge in Palestinian suicide bombings. In the nearly three years since then, the Palestinian areas have slid into increasing lawlessness, with various security services competing for territory.

By failing to crack down on Palestinian violence and groups sworn to Israel's destruction, Mr. Arafat has lost much of his credibility with the outside world. Mr. Sharon, who considers him no partner for peace, will not negotiate with him, a position supported by the Bush administration.

New York Times | Ailing Arafat Going to Paris as Uncertainty Grows

Smoke Rings on Wine

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.

The force that drives the water through the rocks
Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams
Turns mine to wax.
And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins
How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.

The hand that whirls the water in the pool
Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind
Hauls my shroud sail.
And I am dumb to tell the hanging man
How of my clay is made the hangman's lime.

The lips of time leech to the fountain head;
Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood
Shall calm her sores.
And I am dumb to tell a weather's wind
How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.

And I am dumb to tell the lover's tomb
How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.

Dylan Thomas | The Force That Through The Green Fuse Drives The Flower

Note First published October 29, 1933, two days after Thomas's nineteenth birthday. Thanks to Mark Woods for the link and, for meg, the orchids backing Thomas's poem on Leon Malinofsky's site.

The Shaming of America

"May the best man win... heh-heh... heh-heh..." [Cartoon: Steve Bell]

It beggars belief that the world's most powerful democracy should find itself in this hole for the second time in a row - becoming an object of international ridicule, scorn and not a little alarm, even as the country's leaders talk idealistically about exporting American freedom and democracy to Afghanistan, Iraq and beyond.

Portrait of a Country on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown [link via Bill Connolly]

PorridgeBoy confirms, via Paolo and Joi Ito, George W. Bush's decision to 'go Chinese' and escape to the Jesus Bunker. I tried accessing the U.S. president's Web site last night, but was met with an abrupt 403 error page: You are not authorized to view this page.

Comments appended to Joi's post indicate a global ban outside the land of the free.

And there I was thinking they'd posted a presidential brain scan. Ah well, despite Dubya's loathing of furriners, I'll say this much for him. He's not as dumb as he looks. The page serves two purposes. On the one hand, it spells out U.S. foreign policy for the next four years and, on the other, the site can now offer a never-ending loop of depraved subliminal messages designed to turn U.S. Web users' brains to mush by next Tuesday.

Note: Should you really wish to watch Whatever It Takes (snigger...) or see Laura Bush naked, do your bit to subvert U.S. security and type the URL, https://www.georgewbush.com, into your browser's address bar.

The soul of a nation is under the knife | Death is standing in the doorway of life.

Bob Dylan | Dignity [Demo]

ExplodingBlogs

Well, why not? Besides, Euan made me do it. Join BlogExplosion, that is. It's all his fault. I had absolutely nothing to do with it. My interest in blogging is, as you know, purely professional.

Indeed. I am, in part, a professional man. You needn't laugh. It's that part of me that gets paid to sit nine hours in an office above the streets of Cape Town studying, among other things, Web traffic flows. Why? Screw that...I'm not telling you. Work and blogging are the two exclusive things left to me. Well, two of the few things not detailed in some 800,000 bloody words littering the Web and taking up Shelley's bandwidth.

Besides, I have bared my soul and reasons for this undertaking to Michael O'Connor Clarke, presently blogging up a storm at Corante, PorridgeBoy, currently residing in the White House, and Frank Paynter, who is furthering his study of combustible fertilizers, and have no need of further sanction. Okay, I'm a 20-visitor-a-day man at heart. So perhaps I do feel I'm compromising myself here, but what the hell, we're all whores in one way or another. What do I care if hordes of people visit this blog? Thousands have already done so and many have said ugly things, but I have sent them packing. Some will not return and most will never be the same again.

And so we get back to the beginning...why not?

Euan's raving about foam-flecked right-wingers laughing hysterically while slaughtering women and children. I am open to new experiences and would like to see these people at work. How do they get their kicks? How, when they are getting their asses kicked from here to Kingdom Come, can they believe they are fighting and winning a war? Why do they like people only when they're dead? I want to find out.

What will Democrats do when George W. Bush tars and feathers John F. Kerry, ties him to the back of a rented donkey, and has him paraded along Pennsylvania Avenue before thousands of chanting, brown-shirted, torch-bearing Republicans? Will they revolt, leap from buildings, or turn to their blogs? I do not know, but events of this nature intrigue me and I wish to report on them.

Besides these small entertainments, I have heard tell that, beyond my blogroll, the riches bursting the seams of the tail of the blogging power curve await any explorer daring to venture beyond the bounds of common sense. There are artists, writers, educators, musicians, philosophers and decent people out there. So, what the hell, I'm in. It has little to do with common sense. I am not known for common sense and, like any warblogger, know no fear whatsoever. Perhaps it is a failing; perhaps not. Let's just see how it goes.

Besides, I will find out whether Father Christopher's maxim "Home is where the spam is" holds true. And I will report back to you.

Note If sundry unwashed, unfed, unclothed, uncouth or novice bloggers wander in here, you'll find nothing of interest or use to you. Get yourself over to the IT Kitchen, learn to blog unplugged and get in on the ground floor of what could become blogging's source of first reference (I've always wanted to use that phrase, i.e. "first reference". Now that I'm a traffic whore, I find it comes easily).

The Chicken Hawks

People try to put us down...

People try to put us d-down | Just because we get around | Things they do look awful c-c-cold | I hope I die before I get old | This is my generation | This is my generation, baby.

Notorious anti-American and drunken pyro-prose master stavrosthewonderchicken is back in town. Not content blasting the status quo to hell and gone with Improvised Eclectic Dissections (IEDs), the Man with Seoul now slags fellow blogging entrepreneurs and rips a new one for his Korean hosts.

Stavros, who gleefully predicted the Great Slaughter of the Yanqui Invaders back in 2002, is a former Greek cruiseship waiter and rentboy of mixed parentage, expensive habits and dubious taste. He attributes his successful reading of the markets to his partner, She Who Must Be Obeyed.

Waeguk, the knife-wielding proprietor of an infamous downtown Seoul backstreet bar, strip joint and drug den, disagrees. "Fuck him," he giggled, smacking a drunken yellow man off his barstool with a baseball bat. "He lies through his wooden teeth. His insight derives mainly from decades mastering the Asian drug-smuggling, piracy, gun-running and sex-slave syndicates."

The baseball bat made a flat, cracking sound as it crashed into the yellow man's head. He screamed and dropped to the floor. "He sails the length and breadth of the continent," continued Waeguk, following through on his swing. "Stavros, that is. Everybody knows and fears him. He is not to be messed with. Unless you're a good-looking woman, that is. The girls can't get enough of him."

"He's back in town," I told him, matter of factly.

Waeguk's face turned the colour of Babylonian parchment—post-invasion. The bat, now still, hung at his side. He started to say something but, after babbling incoherently a couple of seconds, fell silent. He looked sick. The yellow man at his feet stirred and Waeguk, as if in a panic, began beating him mercilessly.

"Don't you ever, ever comment on my tongue stud again, you demented fucking yellow bastard," he roared at his now blood-drenched, comatose patron. "It has absolutely fucking nothing to do with you."

more...


Just because we get around...

Why don't you all f-fade away | And don't try to dig what we all s-s-say | I'm not trying to cause a big s-s-sensation | I'm just talkin' 'bout my g-g-g-generation | This is my generation | This is my generation, baby.

And if you think that's sick, try this guy. I mean, really. Y'know? As if we don't have enough violence already. On TV, that is. Especially on TV. Everybody's upset about the violence on TV. Who gives a shit about people like Waeguk?

Breathing heavily, Waeguk paused. "Christ, I owe the fucker millions. He put everything he had on those neocon fuckheads getting screwed in Iraq. Naturally, we all laughed at him and I was happy to take his money." He once again turned his attention to his former patron. I stepped back to protect my suit. The baseball bat no longer rang against the yellow man's head, which had cracked like an egg.

"Now I owe him millions," wailed a plaintive Waeguk. "Those dumb bastards have been chased out like dogs, with their tails between their legs and explosives up their backsides. Oh, shit, what am I to do?"

Tossing the blood-soaked bat back across he bar, he looked at me and shrugged his shoulders in despair. "What am I to do?" he implored.

I threw my drink in his face. "Pay up or die, asshole. I'm just the messenger. Pay up or I'll set the hogs on you."

Waeguk wiped his blood-smeared face and sneered. "You'll feed me to the hogs, eh? You double-dealing, two-faced shithead."

He was holding a large, wicked-looking blade. From where I sat, it looked like an up-market machete. "You ungrateful Sudanese sap," I snarled. "Is this how you repay my friend's generosity and kindness? Do you know how his family have suffered while you have profited from his goodwill?"

I snapped my fingers. Brian, backed by an evil-looking bunch of thugs, filled the doorway. I could sense he was in a foul mood. "Ey Brian," I called. "How's the craic then, you gobshite? Not too good on the work front, eh. Fuck 'em, boyo. You need some space, a bottle of John Jameson's best and a... yeah, well, I'll leave the rest to you."

"Fuck off," he muttered, kicking the yellow man aside while pouring himself a long whiskey. "I've been speaking to Doc. It's depressing. He's a fucking Californian."

"Never mind that. We have business to attend to. Waeguk owes us some money."

Moffatt's eye's lit up like freshly minted dollars. He reached for the baseball bat behind the counter and advanced slowly towards Waeguk. "Money?" he asked.

more....

Why don't you all f-fade away | And don't try to dig what we all s-s-say | I'm not trying to cause a big s-s-sensation | I'm just talkin' 'bout my g-g-g-generation | This is my generation | This is my generation, baby.

The Who | My Generation

Indeed. It makes you want to puke, doesn't it? But remember this. We live in dark and dangerous times and these are ugly people. Small talk, passable manners and a good tailor will no longer buy you a seat at the Fat Man's table. So who can blame them for behaving as they do? They are animals and know nothing else.

More, there is no telling what they will do next. Feeding people to the hogs is the least of their bad habits. Should you see these thieves and whores approaching you, cross swiftly to the other side of the street and avert your eyes, or you will wind up swimming with them in the shark tank.

Trust me on this. It's my job to know these things.

Never Say Goodbye

Not the girl next door...

Twilight on the frozen lake | North wind about to break | On footprints in the snow | Silence down below. | You're beautiful beyond words | You're beautiful to me | You can make me cry | Never say goodbye.

I went downstairs for a smoke at lunchtime today. I walked slap-bang into the sun and one of the most beautiful girls I have ever seen.

About 5'10" and wearing an aquamarine bikini with a cheesecloth skirt or sarong slung low about her hips, her lithe figure, fine-boned features and startling eyes stopped me dead in my tracks.

With a friend, she stood just outside the doorway, pointing at something up the street with one of her long, tanned arms. She was laughing. The graceful arc of her legs—one poised slightly behind the other, showed brown and seductively elegant through a wraparound made translucent by the sun, and her streaked blonde hair blew back across perfect shoulders.

Our eyes met. And that was that. Nothing else existed.

Suffering some kind of panic attack—palpitations, shortness of breath and a feeling in the pit of my stomach more akin to having survived a mortar attack than a horde of butterflies, I didn't know where to look. In her mid-twenties, she filled my world. And she had a goddamned hibiscus pinned to her hair.

Fuck it, I wanted a gram of nicotine, not a South Sea island paradise replete with goddesses, nymphs and thoughts of divine intervention.

I lit my smoke, my eyes drawn irresistibly to her free-form beauty.

Our glances slid furiously off each other; hers innocently, mine not.

I didn't know what to do and felt about as large and clumsy as the six-storey building behind me. I mean, I'm in my forties. Well, you know, I have a family. No girl, off the bat, has done this to me since... well... again, you know.

Besides, why did this girl make me as nervous as a teenager? I feel comfortable with beautiful women and seek their company.

Gah! I ducked round the side of the building and she ducked into the Chinese takeaway.

I finished my smoke in hopeless confusion. She came out of the takeaway and headed up the street, my eyes tracking her every step. I knew she knew I was watching her. God, her long, tanned back stretched way down...

I stumbled back up to my office and sat down, shaking. I was a nervous wreck.

Time is all I have to give | You can have it if you choose | With me you can live | Never say goodbye. | My dreams are made of iron and steel | With a big bouquet | Of roses hanging down | From the heavens to the ground.

"Maybe I'm starving," I thought. I was clutching at straws. "Nah, it's that girl. She's reduced me to nothing."

Fucking hell. I went out for another smoke. Despite the traffic, the street—packed with beautiful women during summer—seemed about as empty and cheerless as an overdose of T.S. Eliot.

Across the road, workmen were painting the high-rise for the tourist season. The dark bulk of the mountain reached for a sky as blue as the sea. High cloud, feathered and aloof, crawled in across the surface of Heaven. I calmed down and tried the office again.

After pouring some milk into the kettle, I cleaned it out and made a cup of coffee. It doesn't take long, after moments like these, for dark and depraved thoughts to set in. I mean, who was she anyway and would she mind...?

The phone rang. It was my wife. "Jesus," she said. "You sound terrible. What's wrong?"

I laughed nervously, choked, blew my nose and cleared my throat. It didn't help. I bluffed my way through it. She could probably tell, but she knows I'm incurable.

She'd been up to the hospital to see her shrink and, for the first time in thirty years, she'd scoured her folder. Borderline Personality Disorder it said. BPD, substance abuse, cutting, etc. And all the other shit.

I knew it. She knew it. We knew it. I mean, we've always known it. But I was over the moon. Chuffed. Happy. Now we really know it. She's not fucking crazy.

She has BPD. Yeah, yeah, I diagnosed it a long time ago, but getting it from the folder... well, it means a lot. Now they know what they're working with and she knows what she's dealing with.

After twenty-five years and despite the mayhem, the carnage, the hopelessness, the violence and the all-round savagery, there is hope.

And something else. I call it love, but what the hell do I know?

The crashing waves roll over me | As I stand upon the sand | Wait for you to come | And grab hold of my hand.

Anyway, I wasn't getting much work done, so I told my wife to clean the house and pack boxes (we have to move) and cut the conversation short.

Perhaps I just wanted to remember the girl. Christ. Burnt biscuit brown with the sort of skin one tastes on sight, she was about twenty-five. Yet, besides her hips, her mouth with lips sculpted as cleanly as her lean body, her back and the flower in her hair, I found it difficult to re-envision her.

I couldn't remember her eyes. I saw her, damn it. Really. I saw her in the sense that she was not a vision. Weird thing, though. I've seen and studied a lot of beautiful women, but she reminded me of my wife when first I met her.

Down to her figure, appearance and the way she dressed. Right down to the flower in her hair. She was effortlessly, endlessly and most disturbingly sexy.

My wife's little perturbations have definitely damaged our relationship, but I still love her, damn it. And, yup, it's not that she once looked like the girl who, only this morning, turned my stomach in the very best way.

Damn! I'm convinced this girl was my wife.

This has been happening to me frequently of late. I find my mind turning on memories of beautiful women.

After so many years, they continue to cause me enormous grief.

Yesterday, I was watching the wind, green with summer, waving shadows through the grass. A beautiful girl taught me to see the sun and appreciate the grass. She showed me a light I'd never know'd.

Summer basks in a green shade. I knew it back then, but I hadn't seen it. Showing it to me, she gave me the sun, changed my life forever and became immortal.

Now, I suffer the consequences.

There is no going back. Not that I've any need or desire to. My wife, today, is the same wild orchid I met twenty-five years ago. At lunchtime, I saw her outside my workplace. In an aquamarine wraparound with a flower in her hair.

The sun was electric and so were her large, blue eyes.

I took her hand, locked her long, delicate fingers around mine and walked with her up the road.

Oh, baby, baby, baby blue | You'll change your last name, too | You've turned your hair to brown | Love to see it hangin' down.

Bob Dylan | Never Say Goodbye

Weirdly enough, after getting out of it today, my wife took a pair of scissors to her hair this evening and hacked off most of it. Although's she's dyed it from blonde to jet black once before, she's never cut it off. Ah well, it's better than cutting...

And no, for those not living in South Africa, it's not all that strange family have to bear the brunt of mental illness. Read this story and weep.

Child's Play

To Build Better Citizens for America

The sun on the meadow is summery warm. | The stag in the forest runs free. | But gather together to greet the storm. | Tomorrow belongs to me.

"...in other ways, our school [Nicholas Senn High School] is a remarkable community resource, with plenty of morale. Our students come from 70 nationalities, speak 57 different languages and still maintain a sense of unity and mutual respect. Senn students have performed 70,000 hours of community service over the past five years and have been recognized with a national service award. Senn has also developed some of the city's most successful academic programs for at-risk kids.

"So instead of waiting for the ax to fall, we began to fight back. We researched the effect that the military takeover would have on our school and community, and wrote fact sheets. We made flyers about our concerns and put up 3,500 of them, with another 500 in Spanish. We reached out and met with community organizations, launched a Web site, wrote press releases and organized to get people out to support us. On October 5, we brought about 700 people out to the CPS forum at our school."

The branch of the linden is leafy and green, | The Rhine gives its gold to the sea. | But somewhere a glory awaits unseen. | Tomorrow belongs to me.

"The mood in the room was electric. Students had been preparing all week—they had written speeches, drawn dozens of handmade signs and brought along many of their parents. When CPS officials tried to show us a slick promotional video about the Navy ROTC program, the room rebelled. The entire audience stood up and turned its back to the presentation.

"David Pickens, the deputy chief of staff for schools CEO Arne Duncan, glared at the angry crowd for the next five minutes in a dramatic standoff, while the heckling grew louder. Then someone in the audience started to chant 'We say no,' and soon, the whole crowd was booming its opposition.

"Pickens and his team promptly ran from the auditorium and left the school, leaving us to conduct a real community meeting."

The babe in his cradle is closing his eyes | The blossom embraces the bee. | But soon, says a whisper; | "Arise, arise, | Tomorrow belongs to me.

"It's clear that Pickens and his crew will be back. The plan for Senn High School is part of a much larger agenda—an agenda to militarize much more of the public education system. Chicago currently has some 10,600 students enrolled in Junior ROTC programs—and the military plans to increase that number to 15,000 by 2007, according to Col. Rick Mills...

"Junior ROTC enrolls students as young as 11. Members wear uniforms, drill with fake rifles, learn about military history and are encouraged to continue with a military career.

"This outcome isn't left to chance. An Army memo directs JROTC staff to 'actively assist cadets who want to enlist in the military [and] emphasize service in the U.S. Army; facilitate recruiter access to cadets in JROTC program and to the entire student body;...[and] work closely with high school guidance counselors to sell the Army story.'

"At the exact time when the U.S. military is running short of troops for its bloody occupation for oil and empire in Iraq, they are targeting students at home—not, of course, students in the wealthy, predominantly white suburban schools outside Chicago, but inner-city students at schools like Senn." more...

Source: Jesse Sharkey | Get the Military Out of Our High Schools

Oh Fatherland! Fatherland! Show us the sign! | Your children have waited to see! | The morning will come when the world is mine! | Tomorrow belongs, tomorrow belongs, tomorrow belongs to me!

Cabaret | Tomorrow Belongs To Me

Toys R Us

Defective. Cost: $189,449.00

"Next week, something will happen that will unmask the upside-down morality of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. On October 21, Iraq will pay $200m in war reparations to some of the richest countries and corporations in the world." ... "Here is a small sample of who has been getting 'reparation' awards from Iraq: Halliburton ($18m), Bechtel ($7m), Mobil ($2.3m), Shell ($1.6m), Nestlé ($2.6m), Pepsi ($3.8m), Philip Morris ($1.3m), Sheraton ($11m), Kentucky Fried Chicken ($321,000) and Toys R Us ($189,449)."

Source: Naomi Klein | Why is Iraq Giving $190,000 to Toys R Us?

Note Thanks to Norm Jenson for linking to the above pointer to ongoing and pervasive U.S. economic and political malfeasance in the New Iraq. Naomi Klein has written extensively of it from Baghdad and provides a broad but thorough overview of the criminal palm-greasing, carpetbagging, and savage pecuniary barbarity of the suits guiding and profiting from this illegal invasion and deadly occupation. The following two articles, from The Nation and Harpers, highlighting the depravity of corporate America and its dollar-driven, globalisation-espousing political frontmen (all the usual suspects), are essential reading.

The Greedheads

"That autumn was awash in 'rebuilding Iraq' trade shows, in Washington, London, Madrid, and Amman. The Economist described Iraq under Bremer as 'a capitalist dream,' and a flurry of new consulting firms were launched promising to help companies get access to the Iraqi market, their boards of directors stacked with well-connected Republicans. The most prominent was New Bridge Strategies, started by Joe Allbaugh, former Bush-Cheney campaign manager. 'Getting the rights to distribute Procter & Gamble products can be a gold mine,' one of the company’s partners enthused. 'One well-stocked 7-Eleven could knock out thirty Iraqi stores; a Wal-Mart could take over the country.'"

Source: Naomi Klein | Baghdad Year Zero

The Deal Makers

"A case can certainly be made that James Baker and Madeleine Albright have had more direct influence over Iraq's debts and reparations payments than any politicians outside Iraq, with the possible exception of the forty-first and forty-third Presidents of the United States.

"As Secretary of State, Baker played a role in running up Iraq's foreign debts in the first place, personally intervening in 1989 to secure a $1 billion US loan to Saddam Hussein in export credits. He was also a key architect of the first Gulf War, as well as of the cease-fire that required Saddam to pay such sweeping reparations. In his 1995 memoirs, The Politics of Diplomacy, Baker wrote that after seeing the oil-well fires in Kuwait he cabled President George H.W. Bush and said, 'Iraq should pay for it.' Now, through the consortium, Carlyle could end up controlling $1 billion of those payments."

Source: Naomi Klein | James Baker's Double Life

"The main proposal would transfer ownership of $57bn in unpaid Iraqi debts. The debts would be assigned to a foundation created and controlled by a consortium in which the key players are the Carlyle Group, the Albright Group (headed by another former secretary of state, Madeleine Albright) and several other well-connected firms.

"Under the deal, Kuwait would also give the consortium $2bn to invest in a private equity fund devised by the consortium, with half of that going to Carlyle.

"The consortium would then use its personal connections to persuade world leaders that Iraq must 'maximize' its reparation payments to Kuwait. The more the consortium gets Iraq to pay over a period, the more Kuwait collects, with the consortium taking a 5% commission or more. The goal of maximizing Iraq's debt payments directly contradicts the stated US foreign policy aim of drastically reducing Iraq's debt burden."

Source: Naomi Klein | Bush special envoy embroiled in controversy over Iraq debt

Carlyle backs out

"The Carlyle Group, a large investment firm linked to US and British politicians, has pulled out of a scheme to recover billions of dollars from Iraq [for Kuwait], following the publication in the Guardian this week of documents detailing the secret proposals of a consortium with which it was involved. ... A Carlyle partner, former US secretary of state James Baker, has been accused of a conflict of interest, because he has been touring the world demanding debt relief on behalf of President Bush, while his firm had a private interest in doing a special deal with Kuwait. ... Documents from the consortium describe Carlyle's chairman, former US defence secretary Frank Carlucci, as the man who 'played a convening and guiding role on behalf of Carlyle'."

Source: Guardian Unlimited | Carlyle pulls out of Iraq debt recovery consortium

Additional Material
Guardian Unlimited | Read the James Baker documents [contains pdf files]

The Year of Surrendering Quietly

Developing an Exit Strategy

"Every four years, liberals unhitch the cart and put it in front of the horse, arguing that the only way to a better tomorrow is to vote for the Democratic nominee. But unless the nominee and Congress are pushed forward by social currents too strong for them to ignore or defy, nothing will alter the default path chosen by the country’s supreme commanders and their respective parties. In the American Empire of today, that path is never towards the good. Our task is not to dither in distraction over the lesser of two evil prospects, which will only turn out to be a detour along the same highway."

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Preempted

"Many attest to a slack political tempo this campaign season. A simple refusal to vote at all on the presidential candidate could see the turnout drop below 50 per cent, as bleak a register of popular cynicism about the realities of the democratic mandate in the us today as the Venezuelan turnout was exhilarating. The next us president could even be denied a majority ‘mandate’ from the sliver of those voters going to the polls. By the same token, the shape of resistance in the coming years will not derive from a vote for Kerry, or even one for Nader, but from the harnessing of those vital, idealistic energies that always move through the American firmament, awaiting release."

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Alexander Cockburn | The Year of Surrendering Quietly

Note: The above graphics are taken from JR files and satanslaundromat, two thoughtful urban photoblogs showcasing a surfeit of compelling, often humorous, images. Employing David Weinberger's translation skills, might this shot not be entitled Canada? And with guerillas on the offensive in Afghanistan and Iraq, Israeli forces razing northern Gaza, and Americans throwing their weight behind George W. Bush, might a 'Canadian approach' to the U.S. presidential reelection in 2004 not be best?

Song vir Katryn

Song vir Katryn

A two-season mini-series written and directed by the prolific Jan Scholtz, Song vir Katryn is an under-rated, poorly publicised Afrikaans television production in dire need of a movie rights sale.

Ostensibly a boy-meet-girl story starring Afrikaans rocker Valiant Swart and blonde TV sensation Therese Benade, it uses a run-of-the-mill but tight-knit plot to sketch the possible consequences of incestuous, long-term sexual abuse. Rich in innuendo, allusion and direct reference, the series’ sub-text should be immediately apparent to millions of abused women and children who, protecting a dark secret, perpetuate a conspiracy of silence.

Folk singer Jinx (Swart), a doctor, falls in love with waitress Katryn (Benade). While Jinx wanders from scene to scene as though in an ether-soaked daze, he retains a likeable, down-home quality befitting the part. Benade's good looks and slightly wooden acting (suited to her character) make her an unlikely table attendant, but she too is an adequate lead. The couple, much like the protagonists in Claude Lelouch's And Now My Love (1974), spend much of the first series separated by circumstance, misunderstanding, intrigue and squandered opportunity. Their bond is preceded and nurtured by the professional relationship shared between Jinx and Katryn's mother, Hannah, jailed for murdering her abusive first husband.

Katryn wins a national modelling competition and international acclaim, and characters from her working and personal lives fuse to explore relationships, drugs, abuse, sexual orientation and murder. Working the time-honoured cocktail of deceit, denial, love and friendship to good effect, the first season introduces many opportunities for disaster. At its close, Katryn and Jinx find each other, but the heroine with the girl-next-door appeal leaves for London and a year-long contract with her suave, manipulative employer, Ernst Huldebrand.

Katryn's rape by her boss (Huldebrand) in London sparks Song vir Katryn’s second season. It introduces new characters and fires the web of relationships in which Jinx and Katryn have become ensnared. Rejuvenating the plot's careful structure, the rape gives the series' established characters greater depth. Katryn's past leaps to the fore and, as she and Jinx again remain separated by the ghosts haunting her, the consequences of prolonged sexual abuse are allowed to gently impress themselves on the viewer's consciousness. Rather than explore the subject, much of the second season devotes itself to seeing the guilty brought to book. Katryn, finally able to disclose her promiscuous past to Jinx, finds her guilt and shame evaporate in a sugary ending in which all look set to live happily ever after.

I don't watch much TV, and pick my shows carefully. I'm a blogger, damn it. I watched Song vir Katryn because it's well-written, with a kitchen-French-cum-soapie flavour. That said, it's also deeply flawed. All on the show work with what they have at their disposal but, in the end, inexperience tells and it's left to the central characters, the story line and Valiant Swart's brand of sentimental-but-bluesy folk-rock to lug poorly developed secondary characters (Bonnie), over-ambitious casting, lousy make-up, occasionally bad dialogue and sometimes abysmal sets to the final credits.

South Africans do not use or contribute much to the Web, especially Afrikaans-speaking South Africans. However, in a country boasting the highest incidence of rape worldwide, this series broaches a subject with which most women have some experience. Identification with Katryn's response to her predicament may not be easy. Personal grief at remembering or reliving horrific experiences might drown empathy for her character. Still, I find it hard to believe Song vir Katryn elicited so little response.

Song vir Katryn is a brave piece of writing. Reworked, refashioned and recast as a movie, it might accomplish more than it appears to have done on the box and the Net.

Big Easy Clubs PGA

"Golf? Who the hell wants to play golf?"

Something there is about you that strikes a match in me | Is it the way your body moves or is it the way your hair blows free? | Or is it because you remind me of something that used to be | Somethin' that crossed over from another century?

Catching up with the Big Easy at his Acre of Africa, I asked South Africa's leading golfer and World No. 2 what he thought of PGA commissioner Tim Finchem's attempts to lock him into the U.S. tour. "Fuck him," sputtered Ernie, "First Iraq. Now me. These Yanquis are insatiable. They want everything."

I don't play golf. In fact, being a left-hander lent clubs for right-handed players I hate the bloody game. More, time-zone differences ensure that watching players trudging miles across undulating lawns for five or six hours beats counting sheep any time. I fall asleep after five minutes. Nonetheless, I greatly respect the drab people who pitch and putt their way to fame and fortune. While they display abysmal dress sense, they certainly do have skill. And they earn big bucks too. Hence my interest. I get Ernie to play for me and pretend I'm getting a cut. Why not? With Schumacher and Els out there earning my living, I sleep easy at night.

Els, packing his clubs before heading off to defend his HSBC World Match Play Championship title at Wentworth continued: "To keep your card on the US Tour you have to play 15 events and I have already played more than that and I haven't finished yet. But they are saying they want over 20 and nothing abroad. Naturally we have to sit down and talk, but one thing is for sure, don't start putting a padlock around me, don't make a barrier because that's not going to work."

Ernie was on a roll. "I'm not hurting their tour at all, I'm not hurting any of the players on their tour, because none of them do what I do: play worldwide. I'm helping their tour, I'm helping the European Tour and all the other tours too because I play all round the world."

Yup, he's a puppy and that's why I wanted a word with him. I need a ticket to the Brazilian Grand Prix and I'm running low on cash and girls. Ernie needs to get a grip on himself if he's to keep me in the style to which I have fast grown accustomed. The Guardian tells us, "Els is unique among world-class golfers in that he takes his talents far and wide: to Australia, South Africa, the Far and Middle East as well as Europe, and also lives in England..." Apparently, there "...is a formal organisation of sponsors on the US Tour and, though Woods is still the main attraction, Els is hardly any distance behind him in terms of popularity with the men who put up the money. If the tour took its argument to its logical conclusion and attempted to ban him there would be immediate outrage from those tournaments who have benefited in the past from the South African's presence."

Thought I'd shaken the wonder and the phantoms of my youth | Rainy days on the Great Lakes, walkin' the hills of old Duluth. | There was me and Danny Lopez, cold eyes, black night and then there was Ruth | Something there is about you that brings back a long-forgotten truth.

Who is this Woods boy? Why have I not heard of him? Bring him to me. I wish to speak to him. At the moment, Ernie needs to trounce a big Indian muthah if he's to get to number one. The last thing he needs is some commoditized American poncy boy messing with his swing.

"You gonna play the Indian at Wentworth?" I asked. Apparently the Indian's a Fijian playing under the alias V.J. Singh.

"Yeah, I think that would be great. Numbers one and two in the world, World Match Play, 36-hole final, that would be great."

Dumbo. No wonder they call him the Big Easy. I gave him a sharp smack across the back of his head. "Focus, Els," I screamed. "Keep your eye on the fucking ball! Now, you gonna play the Indian at Wentworth?"

"I'd love to see that happen - but I'd also like to see him taken out before the final."

Heh... that's my man. Such things can be arranged.

I've posted snipers in the trees at the eighteenth. If you've never see a golf ball hit from 1,500 meters by a .35 caliber projectile travelling some 3,300 feet per second, watch the Indian get beaten into second place at Wentworth. As for Woods, tell him I have his girl, Elin Nordegren. She and I go back a long way. He and Finchem can meet me in the clubhouse when Ernie tees off on the sixteenth. Like the good commissioner, I am a reasonable man and have no desire to interfere with their game. But I do have a plane to catch and am not to be messed with. Brazil is the last race of the season and I do not intend missing it.

Note And remember, should Els botch the job, I have backup. We South Africans are, if anything, thorough. Why else would the Americans get us to fight their dirty wars for them?

Suddenly I found you and the spirit in me sings | Don't have to look no further, you're the soul of many things. | I could say that I'd be faithful, I could say it in one sweet, easy breath | But to you that would be cruelty and to me it surely would be death.

Bob Dylan | Something There Is About You

Update October 17, 2004 Well, my sniper apears to be out of luck and a job. For now. Vijay Singh was thrown out of the tournament (some things never change) and Ernie Els didn't botch the job. I've sent my man elsewhere.

Beyond Abu Ghraib

HERSH: "I got a call last week from a soldier — it's different now, a lot of communication, 800 numbers. He's an American officer and he was in a unit halfway between Baghdad and the Syrian border. It's a place where we claim we've done great work at cleaning out the insurgency. He was a platoon commander. First lieutenant, ROTC guy.

"It was a call about this. He had been bivouacing outside of town with his platoon. It was near, it was an agricultural area, and there was a granary around. And the guys that owned the granary, the Iraqis that owned the granary... It was an area that the insurgency had some control, but it was very quiet, it was not Fallujah. It was a town that was off the mainstream. Not much violence there. And his guys, the guys that owned the granary, had hired, my guess is from his language, I wasn't explicit — we're talking not more than three dozen, thirty or so guards. Any kind of work people were dying to do. So Iraqis were guarding the granary. His troops were bivouaced, they were stationed there, they got to know everybody...

"They were a couple weeks together, they knew each other. So orders came down from the generals in Baghdad, we want to clear the village, like in Samarra. And as he told the story, another platoon from his company came and executed all the guards, as his people were screaming, stop. And he said they just shot them one by one. He went nuts, and his soldiers went nuts. And he's hysterical. He's totally hysterical. And he went to the captain. He was a lieutenant, he went to the company captain. And the company captain said, 'No, you don't understand. That's a kill. We got thirty-six insurgents.'

"You read those stories where the Americans, we take a city, we had a combat, a hundred and fifteen insurgents are killed. You read those stories. It's shades of Vietnam again, folks, body counts...

"You know what I told him? I said, fella, I said: you've complained to the captain. He knows you think they committed murder. Your troops know their fellow soldiers committed murder. Shut up. Just shut up. Get through your tour and just shut up. You're going to get a bullet in the back. You don't need that. And that's where we are with this war."

Seymour Hersh | Berkeley October 8, 2004 | from A Tiny Revolution

See also: Robert Fisk | Unforgivable Betrayals and Broken Promises

Download: [mp3; 2.82MB] Bob Dylan | Dignity [Piano Demo; Link: Counterpunch]

Friends, Near and Far

Tom's InformationClearingHouse

In so many ways, beyond his regular postings, I do not know Tom. Yet, in other ways, perhaps through his passion for and commitment to disseminating uncommonly covered news across the Web, I feel I do. His illness therefore touches me more deeply than it would should I have come to know his work through another medium.

The e-mail below, from a family friend, tells us he is "recovering quickly" and "should return to his old self in no time". Needless to say, I wish him a speedy and full recovery. I also thank him for reminding me how we who use the Web as our primary source of information take our news gatherers for granted. Many such hard-working researchers are listed on this page. They know who they are. Their work, though invaluable, should not take precedence over their health.

Get well soon, Tom. You're in our thoughts. And look after yourselves, all of you. You're special people.

-----Original Message-----
From: Information Clearing House [mailto:emailtom@cox.net]
Sent: Friday, 08 October, 2004 20:44 PM
To: mgolby@mweb.co.za
Subject: ICH update

I am writing today to inform everyone that two nights ago, October 6th, our friend Tom suffered a heart attack and has been in the hospital ever since. He is doing well and is recovering quickly. He should return home tonight or early tomorrow and is anxious to get back to work. The doctors say that he will have to take it easy for a while but should return to his old self in no time. The website will continue to be up and running, but for obvious reasons, won't be updated for a few days. Tom would like to thank you in advance for your continued support and understanding.

Sincerely,
A Family Friend
"Liberty can not be preserved without general knowledge among people." (August 1765) John Adams

Over the past couple of years, through her writing and her generosity, Shelley has made me increasingly aware of how much we value our Web friends. Always a remarkable writer, Shelley's posts about her folks affected me profoundly.

I've told her separately how her entry on her folks' meeting created in my mind an indelible image of the cover of a fifties novel. Her Dad, in uniform, stands next to his cruiser, his foot raised on its rear bumper. With his elbow resting easily on his raised thigh, he flirts with her mother, a young beatnik-cum-hippie seated on a grass-green verge, surrounded by flowers. It's an effortless, smiling picture rendered, for some reason, on the cover of a book.

Through the Web, Shelley was able to share her parents with us in ways not possible a few years ago. Yet, on her Dad's death earlier this week, I found myself at a loss for words. My inability to articulate anything but the mundane has troubled me for days.

In so many ways, and at certain times, the virtual space separating us—made greater by what I believe to be an increased sense of others' grief, becomes a perplexing, unbridgeable chasm. I wish it weren't so.

Big Brother Quiz

Question #43

Who said:

"First, the Israeli people not only have the right to defend themselves, they should defend themselves. They have an obligation to defend themselves. I mean, if I can, just for a moment, tell you a personal story.

"I was in Jerusalem a couple of years ago, actually three years ago, in August of 2001, staying at the King David Hotel. We left in the morning, headed to the airport to leave, and later in the day I found out that that same day, not far from where we were staying, the Sbarro Pizzeria was hit by a suicide bomber in Jerusalem. Fifteen people were killed. Six children were killed.

"What are the Israeli people supposed to do? How can they continue to watch Israeli children killed by suicide bombers, killed by terrorists? They have not only the right to the obligation to defend themselves.

"Now, we know that the prime minister has made a decision, a historic decision, to unilaterally withdraw from Gaza. It's important for America to participate in helping with that process.

"Now, if Gaza's being used as a platform for attacking the Israeli people, that has to be stopped. And Israel has a right to defend itself. They don't have a partner for peace right now. They certainly don't have a partner in Arafat, and they need a legitimate partner for peace.

"And I might add, it is very important for America to crack down on the Saudis who have not had a public prosecution for financing terrorism since 9/11. And it's important for America to confront the situation in Iran, because Iran is an enormous threat to Israel and to the Israeli people."

John F. Kerry
Richard Cheney
John Edwards
George W. Bush
Father Christopher

Check whichever is appropriate.

Answer: It was NOT Father Christopher. Giving testimony to a closed session of the Senate Sub-committee Hearing into Allegations of Genocide, War Crimes and Other Global Marketing Failures held in the Jesus Bunker deep beneath the Rocky Mountains, Father Christopher's spokesperson, stenographer, and sometimes proofreader Chris Locke said: "Oh what a ride it was, when almost daily there was something like this to read over my morning coffee. Fame, money, power! Women threw themselves at my feet. Now women run me off the sidewalk with their bicycles. It isn't right. It isn't fair! Well, OK, it is fair. I guess. All being fair in love and war. The book reviewed here was a victim of the latter, having come out five weeks after 9/11. I cursed myself for writing about marketing — who gives a rat's ass about marketing? Why couldn't I have written instead about anthrax or the Taliban or Al Qaeda? I did know a Sam Qaeda at one time, but I'd never heard of Al."

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