Not a good sign

Baseball season started today, with the Giants in San Diego. I kept track of the game on the internet, using the Yahoo Sports thingy. In the top of the 7th, with the score tied, the Padres loaded the bases with one out. Joe Nathan came in and got the outs.

Well and good. But in the following inning, the Giants blew a huge chance. Ray Durham walked to open the inning, and Jose Cruz doubled him to third. With no outs, it looked like a perfect chance for the Giants to leap ahead. All Rich Aurelia had to do was get on base somehow.

But he popped out to the infield, the worst possible thing he could have done. That left first base open, and Bonds was, of course, intentionally walked. Edgardo Alfonso proceeded to hit the first pitch into a double play, no runs, one hit, no errors, one left. Not a good sign of things to come. But at least it was still tied.

I spent the day totally wasting time, as usual, with apologies to the author of the book I'm reading. I mean, mostly I did errands and cruised the internet. Now I'll go home and see if the game's still on when I get there.

Update: My pessimism was unjustified. The Giants scored three in the ninth and won. However, by the next game, E. Alfonso was already demoted in the batting order for grounding into inning-ending double plays not once but twice. The nerve.

Domestic press perspectives

Radicals complain that the "corporate media" gives short shrift to Iraqi suffering in the war. Here are a few stories just from today, which I gathered in a few minutes, to disprove the notion.

Washington Post, 30 Mar 03: 'The Sky Exploded' and Arkan Daif, 14, Was Dead.
Associated Press, 30 Mar 03: Iraqis Mourn Civilians Killed.
L.A. Times, 30 Mar 03: Small Town Caught Between Two Armies.
Newsweek, 7 Apr 03: The Mind of the Iraqis.
New York Times, 31 Mar 03: Tension at the Checkpoint, Fear Crossing the Bridge.

However, I couldn't find anything in the same quick check of CBS, CNN, or NBC. I didn't even try Fox News -- ha!

Foreign press perspectives

Nice analysis of the Michael Moore flap and Hollywood's mostly patriotic fare by a New Zealand writer, Cass Avery. And in The Age (Australia), Michael Moore explains his outburst.

We are continually bombarded with one fictitious story after another from the Bush White House. And that is why it is important that filmmakers make non-fiction, so that all the little lies can be exposed and the public informed. An uninformed public in a democracy is a sure-fire way to end up with little or no democracy at all.

I still think it was obnoxious. But sometimes there's a place for that, too.

Cheaters! Cheaters!

Widely quoted during the last couple of days was an American commander who said Thursday "The enemy we're fighting is a bit different than the one we war-gamed against because of these paramilitary forces. We knew they were here, but we did not know how they would fight.'' Oh really? Then what about this piece from the Guardian (U.K.) about a war game in which a retired U.S. general, playing as the Iraqi forces, used the same underhanded tactics that are now flummoxing U.S. and U.K. troops?

On this gorgeous Saturday, Cris and I are hanging out at home, exercising and doing things to benefit the commonweal -- that is, the household. Cris has an endless store of ideas on how to solve the storage problems in the basement, so today we're putting up some kind of cabinets to store some of the clothes that won't fit in the bedroom. While working in the basement we run the television, flashing between cable TV war updates, baseball games, and wildlife shows. Clearly, our bourgeois life is little affected by either the war or the economy. It does feel unreal.

While protesters in San Francisco mostly took a rest, "hundreds of thousands" demonstrated around the world today.

Oh, and there's this: Bechtel Vies to Rebuild Iraq, a SF Chronicle story that imples protesters who targeted the San Francisco-based construction company at the war's outset were on target. Other stories on Bechtel and Halliburton from the Chronicle: 11 Mar 03 and 28 Mar 03.

The best thing in the world today

The best thing today is Kim Jung Il's weblog.

Dear diary. Bush still doesn’t ‘get it.’ I tried making my feelings clear but he’s too busy ignoring me, he is such a jerk. Everything in his life is just Saddam, Saddam, Saddam and I am sick of it.

On the plus side, I think my hair looked pretty good today. Also I went frolicking at Paektu Mountain and the rainbow came out again. After dinner some of my subjects sang me a song because I invented Outer Space.

I was going to write a satirical "secret diary of Elizabth Smart." It went something like this:

Day 1  Kidnapped by smelly wacko and taken to a campsite. The guy is this religious nutcase, one of those Mormon polygamists. I used to wonder about them, that maybe they weren't so bad, maybe the church was supressing them because they were really right or something. But if this guy is anything typical, I can see why they got outlawed. He took me to a campsite and fed me marshmallows.    Day 2 The marshmallows ran out and I said I wanted to go home. But I stayed when he said he had Mary-Kate and Ashley videos. He did, too. And he has a TV. But there is no electricity in a tent. Booooring!     Day 57 On the road with Emanuel and Sister Wanda. Emanuel will only stop at Arby's because he says he wants to get me an Oven Mitt toy. I told him I didn't want the stupid toy but when he gets these ideas there's no talking him out of it. Wanda commented, "ixjjjrex hittksell arrrccghh."

I didn't have enough time to do that, unfortunately. It would be funny, though. If you did it right.

Thomas Merton's ambivalent war novel

I've participated in several anti-war protests, but my feelings about the war are ambivalent. While I was solidly for any plan that held off the war while holding Iraq accountable for its weapons programs, I also sympathized with the suffering of the Iraqi people under a brutal dictatorship. I thought it was a terrible idea for the U.S. to attack a country which had not attacked us, but I had to admit that "removal" of the Hussein regime would benefit that country. If it had to happen, I just wanted it done as bloodlessly as possible.

And despite my better reasoning, something in me wanted to see the U.S. speed to the rescue. To someone raised on the prevailing myth of World War II -- that the U.S. had entered the war to free people from the oppression of Germany and Japan, and then only when attacked ourselves -- as well as countless cartoonish melodramas, from Superman to James Bond to the Road Warrior, in which some costumed hero saves the world through violent action, that fantasy had a strong attraction. Gen. Tommy Franks and his sidekicks were going to bust down the door of a Baghdad palace and sock Hussein in the jaw! Who wouldn't want to see that?

Resemblances to a bad action movie aside, the war in Iraq offers several moral dilemmas. If it's a war for oil, that's bad -- even the Bush administration seems to agree, since they deny that's the reason -- but will that stop American companies like Bechtel from profiting from the subsequent oil trade? If it's a war to rid the world of Iraq's "weapons of mass destruction" (the chemical and biological weapons they have had in the past, and perhaps still have), what happens if the invading forces don't find any? Is there any real connection, as the President has asserted, between Iraq and Al-Qaeda or the "War on Terror"? How much of our national willingness to start a war has to do with an American antipathy to Arabs or Muslims? Can we be against the war and still "support the troops," whatever that means?

Mixed feelings about war are nothing new for Americans. Though most people remember World War II as a "good war" where Americans were clear on why we were involved and unquestioning of the wisdom of joining in, back in the late 1930s agreement wasn't nearly as unanimous as we remember. As today, there was a great deal of ambivalence about the threats posed by an evil dictator as well as the horrific notion that a war was necessary to unseat him. As today, there was an antiwar movement on campuses in both the U.S. and the U.K., with students signing a pacifist pledge, promising to refuse induction into the armed forces. And just as today, there was propaganda and sanctimony on both sides of the debate.

In those days, a young Thomas Merton -- born in France to a New Zealander father and an American mother, both painters; a teenage orphan who lived in English boarding schools; a budding novelist, and a recent convert to Roman Catholicism -- struggled with these issues. In 1941 he was teaching at St. Bonaventure College in upstate New York. That summer, a few months before he decided to enter the Trappist monastery in Kentucky where he was to spend almost the whole of the rest of his life, Merton wrote a novel, his fourth attempt at the form and the only one ever published. This book was finally published, in 1969 as the world confronted other conflicts, as My Argument with the Gestapo (New York: New Directions, 1969).

Written in the form of a journal -- the original title was "Journal of My Escape from the Nazis" -- the book follows a young man as he wanders in wartime London and occupied France. The narrator, who has no name, whose occupation is vague (he allows that he is a kind of journalist, but only in the sense that he is writing a journal), and who claims citizenship only of an imaginary country called Casa -- the language of which is a macaronic blend of romance languages and English, a kind of proto-beatnik Esperanto -- documents his encounters with the populace, with soldiers, and especially with officialdom in the form of censors, detectives, and secret police.

Merton's book was written at a time when the U.S, officially neutral, was providing the U.K. with crucial support. Americans were watching newsreels of German (and Japanese) wartime cruelty and of England suffering under German bombing. The American public was expected to strongly sympathize with the English, whose stiff upper lips were supposed to be both a model of courageous resistance and a warning that the U.S. might soon find itself involved in the same fight.

Merton looked upon all this with a jaundiced eye. Having lived his childhood in France and most of the decade of his teens in England, he much preferred the former; English food, fashions, habits, domiciles, and above all English kitsch and sentimentality all revolted him. As a recent and zealous convert to Roman Catholicism, he regarded England's Protestantism as a nadir of spirituality, not to mention taste.

Thus his treatment in his novel of the much-heralded British pluck is more cynical than sympathetic. His narrator has gone to London to see the war for himself. Confined in a tube-station bomb shelter with the hoi polloi, his eye and ear is merciless: "The sound of the lamentable, croaking, gay songs they have been singing, down there, to the tune of the broken accordions, makes me shudder in my sleep," he writes.

An old man comes up to me. "What nationality are you?" he says. "You are not English. Where do you come from, to see us English people in our silent, incomprehensible courage? What do the people in your country think of our resistance? Do they know how brave we are? Do they understand our bravery?"

The whole earth shakes with a giant bomb above us, so great that spontaneously, all over the tunnel, voices begin at once the words of the very same song, together: a song full of lying gaiety, cloaked in smut.

"Listen to them," says the man who has been talking to me. "You say you do not know your own nationality. Then if you have no national pride, how can you expect to understand our bravery?"

Merton's narrator resists nationality, in so far as it imposes any sort of emotional cant, because during wartime nationality is inextricably linked to sentimentality and to its rhetorical cousin, propaganda. He understands that "national pride" and "bravery" are just code words.

"Why are you fighting?" I ask him. "Tell me clearly, what for: not in the language of politicians. Tell me some concrete things you are fighting for."

"We are fighting for Cadbury's chocolate, for Woodbines, for the London County Council, for the Gasworks, for the Doulton Pottery at Lambeth, and for the broken span in the middle of the Waterloo Bridge. We are fighting for Lord Nelson's blind eye, for his last words ('Kiss me, Hardy') and his notorious mistress, Lady Hamilton, portrayed in our films by Vivian Leigh..."

But this novel is not just satire. By becoming a stateless person and confessing allegiance only to an inviolate country of the heart, Merton's narrator is testing what is true and what is false about the world's situation and that of the individual. He rejects the comforts of popular culture, especially cinema, and the easy answers it offers. After finding his way to France through a secret route, he encounters a German officer, who tries to establish his brotherhood with the narrator by recalling the anti-war film All Quiet on the Western Front. Thus Merton finds the Germans quite as sentimental, and thus as misled and misinformed, as the English.

This equation of the English and the Germans, sacrilegious as it must have been in 1941, is not extended to the French, whom Merton likes better. When he steps into a Parisian cafe to ask directions, the narrator finds no sentimentality among its embittered patrons, only "fierceness": "The men stand there with a strictly human and French anger in their eyes, offended, not like dogs, offended like men." In this, too, he takes a contrary stand. The defeat or surrender of the French in 1940 was (and still is, as we can see from recent condemnations) looked down upon. But for Merton it was no disgrace; it didn't suggest anything inferior about them, in contrast to the vaunted "bravery" of the English, because the French were still confronted with -- indeed, forced by their situation to confront -- moral questions.

In fact, for Merton's narrator, the technical condition of being free or conquered is not what matters. After being detained and interrogated about his nationality and the reason for his presence in Paris, Merton's narrator is free to wander around the city and ponder existential questions. In the book's most quoted section, the narrator, having admitted to an interrogator some bare biographical facts, says,

You think you can identify a man by giving his date of birth and his address, his height, his eyes? color, even his fingerprints. Such information will help you put the right tag on his body if you should run across his body somewhere full of bullets, but it doesn't say anything about the man himself. Men become objects and not persons.

Now you complain because there is a war, but war is the proper state for a world in which men are a series of numbered bodies. War is the state that now perfectly fits your philosophy of life: you deserve the war for believing the things you believe. In so far as I tend to believe those same things and act according to such lies, I am part of the complex of responsibilities for the war too.

But if you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I think I am living for, in detail, and ask me what I think is keeping me from living fully for the thing I want to live for. Between these two answers you can determine the identity of any person. The better answer he has, the more of a person he is.

This credo of identity provides the key for his character. Beneath his swipes at English cant, fatuous Germans and the treachery of movies, Merton really does want to know what you're fighting for, whether you're English, French, German or from "Casa." His fundamental concern is with personal integrity, and whether one's principles are linked to ultimate truth. Though his references in his novel to religion are mostly veiled, we can now see -- in light of the fact that Merton was about to make the greatest decision of his life, to become a Trappist monk -- what he thought of his own situation. Finding himself in a war -- not the literal war of the French (though he was most in sympathy with them) but a spiritual war -- he dearly wished to emerge the victor.

Merton's entry into monastic life, in December of that year -- just after Pearl Harbor, as it happened, though in his autobiography he claims this did not enter into his decision -- was one victory in this spiritual war, but not the end of his struggle for integrity. At various times during the rest of his life -- as documented in letters and in the personal journal he kept -- he often wondered whether he was in the right place. Usually this ambivalence had to do with whether, in the Kentucky monastery he chose, he was going to be given the latitude to pursue his struggle. Significantly, each time he came close to leaving for another monastic environment, he chose to stay put. He knew his struggle was, like that of his novel's narrator, not dependent on place, but was in his own heart.

I suspect Merton would take a dim view of our country’s justifications for the Iraq war. He would dispense with the patriotic fervor, the cheerleading and the pious talk from governments on every side; as he ignored Hitler, he would no doubt ignore Hussein as a justification. He would question his own feelings and reasoning, and call on others to do the same. Judging from his other writings, I think his greatest sympathy would be with women and defenseless civilians. At the same time, I’m not sure he would be quick to support, for example, the dubious and poorly organized “human shield� movement, because as he learned more and more about nonviolence, he developed a great faculty of discernment when it came to activism.

But whatever I may imagine would have been Merton’s reaction to current events, I take heart from his cautious reaction to the war of his own day. Following his example, we should reject the clamor of news and propaganda, think for ourselves, and discover that the origin of war is in our own hearts. Then we can pray, finally, for forgiveness, and repentance.

Let's face it

The U.S. strategy is flawed, says this analysis from a Knight-Ridder writer.

Despite the aerial pounding they've taken, it's not clear that Saddam Hussein, his lieutenants or their praetorian guard are either shocked or awed. Instead of capitulating, some regular Iraqi army units are harassing American supply lines. Contrary to American hopes - and some officials' expectations - no top commander of Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard has capitulated. Even some ordinary Iraqis are greeting advancing American and British forces as invaders, not as liberators.

Not that I want that to be true. I really don't. Now that we're there, the worst thing would be to get bogged down; I hope they end it quick.

Did anybody doubt that U.S. Plans to Run Iraq Itself when the war's over?

And just because I can, here's a link to a story headlined Hollywood's abuzz over Moore's anti-war harangue at the Oscars.

Moore's rant

This story is just great. A nice antidote to all the war news, even though it is related to war news.

Jerry Lewis 'irate' over DJ impersonation

Jerry Lewis is considering legal action against a radio station whose disc jockey impersonated the comedian in a conversation with French President Jacques Chirac, his attorney said.

A disc jockey for KROQ 106.7's "Kevin and Bean Show" called Chirac last week posing as Lewis and held a five-minute phone conversation with the French president in which the pair discussed the war in Iraq.

As everyone knows by now, bomb-throwing documentarist Michael Moore went off big-time in his Oscar aqcceptance speech last night. Even more priceless were the slack-jawed expressions on the faces of the movie stars sitting in the front rows. They didn't know whether to laugh or cry. No one has posted the full text of Moore's rant, that I can find.

I'm of two minds about Moore's ejeculation. The middle-class well-behaved part of me is embarrassed for him, not least because he should have had something a little more articulate to say in his fifteen seconds of worldwide attention. The rebel in me is secretly pleased, though. I hate juvenile tactics, but I sympathise with them.

Nothing dramatic

Yesterday after coming back from the morning of protesting the war, I flopped on the couch. I had fallen asleep when the phone rang. It was a recruiter -- looking for somebody who could write and annotate java code samples. Too bad -- I mean, good thing -- I'm not more technical.

I spent the rest of the day keeping up with the news. The day’s protest turned into the usual evening of cat-and-mouse with the police, as excitedly reported by the local TV stations. At one point in the early evening there were at least three separate groups of over 1000 people each marching around South of Market and up Market St., blocking intersections; there were the usual attempts to get onto the Bay Bridge and disrupt traffic there, something that's been a tradition since the first Gulf War. Then we finally got really tired, though it was at least a more legitimate weariness than I felt the day before, when I was exhausted simply by watching TV all day. Cris and I both went to sleep early that evening.

I recall that before the war started I felt an urge to do something dramatic, and that I was waiting until the war started to actually do it. But I never decided on what to do, nor did I remember, when the war actually started, to do it. In fact, like everyone else, I was simply caught up in watching it on TV and the internet. So I haven't gotten my head shaved or my eyebrow pierced or done anything at all to either demonstrate publicly or mark privately this event -- except, of course, my demonstrating with the masses yesterday. And the event is really important to me, because of the fact -- largely drowned out in all the excitement and angst over the munitions and their use -- that this is the first time the U.S. has ever attacked another country without first being attacked and without U.N. authorization. That, more than the war itself or the harm it will do, is what upsets me.

People I saw at yesterday's protest: Bob and Katie, whom I accompanied, and also: Mark Freeman and his boyfriend Ken; Philip Klasky; Nicola Ginzler. Hadn't seen her in ten years or so. Philip brought me some gum.

Metaphor of the day

I'm watching CNN here. A commentator just described the bombardment of Baghdad as akin to "a symphony conducted by a great conductor" -- in this case a certain general in charge. Man.

One antidote is the bitterly irreverent Get Your War On: "All I have to say is, once this is over, the Iraqi people better be the freest fucking people on the face of the earth. They better be freer than me. They better be so fucking free they can fly."

The Washington Post reported today that a control room glitch allowed viewers of one of the BBC channels to watch Bush preparing on camera for his war-opening speech Wednesday. The Mirror said:

Moments before the historic Bush speech began BBC News 24 accidentally showed the President being spruced up by aides. Viewers saw the US leader shuffling awkwardly in his chair as minions busied themselves trying to smarten his appearance. One assistant fiddled with his right lapel as a woman sprayed his hair, frantically combing his trademark side-parting into place. She also brushed his jacket clear of dust as Bush made himself comfortable before making the speech.

A morning on guard

I got up at 5:00 this morning, but not for zazen. Today was the "shut down downtown" day for anti-war protesters. After leaving the house, I walked over to 24th and Mission, then over to my friend Bob's house; we went with his 13-year-old daughter Katie to the BART station and went downtown. We decided to join the group of people attempting to blockade the offices of the Bechtel corporation. Arriving about 7:00 a.m., we passed the front of the building, where other groups were blocking the building's front entrance and parking garage; there were already more than 100 people sitting there chanting. We went around to some of the doors at the back of the building, a nice place to spend several hours, as it turned out. The two sets of double glass doors were set under an overhang, behind an adjacent building just to the south and near a plaza to the west. We lined up in front of the doors and linked arms comfortably. (Update: Katie quoted in this article from the S.J. Mercury News.)

Facing us was a frenzied knot of protester-support people, as well as several dozen people trying to get into the building. The protester-support people kept checking cell phones, skittering around the building to check other groups, and updating us. Between 7:00 and 9:00 a.m. we sometimes had people come up every sixty seconds and breathlessly update us on what was happening on the other side of the building. Granted, what was happening over there tended to be a lot more interesting than what was going on with us, since it was the other side where all the cops and arrests were. We stood there with equanimity, refusing people entry into the building. A lot of people who worked for companies other than Bechtel with offices in the same building tried to convince us to let them in, but we wouldn't, and that upset some of them. My favorite excuse by a would-be worker came from a middle-aged woman who came up to me and announced, "I have issues to handle!"

Across from us, shut-out workers gathered with a cell phone in one hand and a container of coffee in the other. By 9:00 or 9:30 you had one caffienated group of people. We simply stood there; they paced, gesticulated, talked into cell phones, and occasionally tried to get into the building. Finally, after 10:30 or so, almost all of them had drifted away.

Around the same time, people started trickling out of the building. Several dozen people had managed to get in at various points; between 10:30 and 1:00, when we finally left, about a hundred people came out, all told. The security guards in the lobby would knock on the glass doors with the knuckles, and we'd part; the guards would open the door just enough so that the people could squeeze out, but they were clearly being told to be careful not to let any protesters in. This played into our hands since they weren't letting in workers either, even the people who approached and plaintively said, "Hello -- you know me!"

Over the morning, our own numbers shrank; at times there were only four people in front of each of the double doors. Bob and Katie left around 10:00. But other people came over the course of the morning, and there were actually more people there at noon than at 11:00.

Meanwhile, the support people were keeping us updated on events at the front of the building, where arrests continued throughout the morning. Between all the cops and demonstrators in front, and us in back, all the entrances were effectively shut down. But even when it became clear that the security guards wouldn't let anyone else into the building, we remained, since it wouldn't be right to let them open our doors while people were getting arrested trying to shut down the front. So we stayed until almost 1:00 pm., leaving only when all the people in front had been arrested.

I'm writing this at almost 4:00 pm, and TV is reporting that thousands of protesters are still roaming the streets of San Francisco, where protests were held all over the downtown and Civic Center areas today. See sfgate.com for coverage; also Contra Costa Times and SF Business Times and Reuters and the Guardian (U.K.).

Cute nickname

What do you do when your cute nickname becomes the acronym for a scary new illness? You plead with the readers of your website to "Please.... I beg of you" stop sending email about it.

Hopeless job market

Salon published an entertaining article on just how bad the market is for tech jobs. It refers to a website called fuckthatjob.com. Here's an excerpt for those who don't subscribe to Salon:

She asked her close friends, many of whom were also looking for jobs, to send her the most outrageous postings they spotted; she would put up the listings and add snarky comments about the employers behind them. She was quickly inundated with examples of over-the-top job requirements. There was, for instance, the film editor who wanted an assistant to help him finish a project -- the assistant would get no pay, and would need to provide his own editing equipment. Or there was a marketing firm in need of a "team player" to work as a copywriter. The applicant, who would be an unpaid intern, had to know HTML, Photoshop, Fireworks, Dreamweaver, PHP, JavaScript and "search engine optimization." The company wanted this person to have four years of marketing experience, and work for about 20 hours a week. The position was perfect, the ad said, for people who had "a desire to keep their skills polished during a lapse in employment. In other words, if you haven't been able to find a job and want to stay 'in the marketing loop', this is a great way to do so."

I have a candidate for that site. Posted on craigslist, it looks like an ad for overseas English teachers. In fact it's just an advertisement for a school -- I use the word loosely -- in the Czech republic that issues you a certificate in teaching English to non-English speakers and purports to offer job placement. I hope nobody would be dumb enough to think that's some kind of job guarantee, in the Czech Republic or anyplace else -- even if their four-week program is any good.

He's way too cheerful

Appearing on the campus of a Jesuit university in Cleveland, U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia chirped hopefully that civil rights might be scaled back during wartime. "'The Constitution just sets minimums,' Scalia said after a speech at John Carroll University in suburban Cleveland. 'Most of the rights that you enjoy go way beyond what the Constitution requires.'" Click on that link, which contains a wonderfully cheerful picture of Scalia waving a giant key. If the link doesn't work, click here for a saved version.

Protestors decorated the Sydney Opera House, and a protestor banged on a British war plane. Meanwhile, San Francisco activists are pulling the chain for Wednesday night and Thursday morning.

What a relief

Oscar organizers say impending Iraq war won't stop show

Organizers of the 75th annual Oscar awards say the impending war in Iraq won't derail Hollywood's biggest event on Sunday.

President Bush's 48-hour ultimatum for Saddam Hussein to leave Iraq or be forced out by military action increased the likelihood that news coverage could supersede the live Academy Awards telecast on ABC.

Show producer Gil Cates has acknowledged that war would change the tone of the production, but as of late Monday the glitzy red-carpet ceremony was still scheduled to proceed as planned.

I know you'll also be reassured by the prospect of the resolution of the Gandolfini-HBO feud that has stopped production on the fifth season of "The Soproanos."

American martyr

Posted are photos showing the incident March 16 in which an American activist was killed while protesting the destruction of Palestinian houses by the Israeli army. More links: Assoc. Press story; backgrounder from the Olympian, the woman's hometown paper. Update: the U.S. State Department has asked Israel to investigate the incident.

Personally, I'm less than outraged by this event. Of course it's a tragedy, and of course the woman showed courage. But she was there to put her body on the line, and she died doing exactly what she wanted to do. I admire that kind of commitment. But I don't think you can call it an outrage that she died under those circumstances. An outrage would be if the Israeli army (for example) stopped her car on the way to the demonstration and shot her in the street.

As for her cause, I'm even more ambivalent. It's surely true that the Palestinians are suffering under the Israeli rule of their territories, and tearing down or bombing houses in those areas is a brutal tactic. But of course the Palestinians have provoked it by bombing innocent people in cafes and buses -- which I think is about the most vicious and cruel tactic a cause could possibly resort to, short of a chemical weapons attack.

Considering the fact that Palestinians continue to resort to these bombings, I'm amazed at how much sympathy they have among the American left. At peace rallies all you hear is sympathy for the Palestinians -- the connection with the war in Iraq is never explained -- as if the Palestinians were innocent victims. Nobody mentions suicide bombings. It's as if people are afraid that any criticism of anybody who is Muslim would be construed as racist.

But the left has been this way for years. See this Salon article from May 2002, this article from the Nation of June 2002, or this piece from the Feb. 2003 Weekly Standard. And some people are boycotting all the recent peace demos if they're sponsored by ANSWER.

Circle in the dark

I went to one of the many candlelight peace vigils. This one took place in my neighborhood in Precita Park. About 200 people eventually showed up, shielding their candles from the gusty wind. Sara and Martha showed up and kept relighting my candle when it went out. "There are more people in Dolores Park," Sara said. "But they have drumming."

Drumming: feh. There was no drumming in Bernal Heights, just a little ad hoc singing of the peace song repertoire. Being godless San Franciscans, attendees changed the words to "He's Got the Whole World In His Hands" to "I've Got the Whole World in My Hands."

"Isn't that the point of the song," Martha asked, "that you don't have the whole world in your own hands?"

Our other favorite family

Bil Keane, the octogenarian creator of The Family Circus, is profiled by the Salt Lake City Tribune.

Despite the dysfunction found in many families and the irony that permeates the culture in the age of "The Simpsons," readers love the "Family Circus" gang today as much as they did when the strip began more than 40 years ago.

Sure we do. We like watching hellish auto race wrecks too.

More marching

I went today to the San Francisco peace march, one of several around the world. Unlike previous marches, this one wasn't on Market St. It started at Civic Center Plaza and wound through Hayes Valley to a park somewhere. I met up with Catherine and Brandy and we stood around listening to the awful speeches for more than an hour before realizing the march had already started. Pictures will be posted tomorrow. Update:SF Chronicle pix are here. Photos by my friend Will Doherty are here. Still more photos here.

Candlelight vigils are being planned for cities all over the U.S. and Canada at 7 pm local time. Many cities, such as SF, have vigils in multiple neighborhoods. Click here to find the vigil closest to you or see more info.

I'm getting the feeling the war will start Thursday or Friday, but what's the difference to me? I don't even have a job to walk out of.

Supersize my Freedom Quarter!

Now that the U.S. House of Representatives has formally excised the word "French" from their menu -- I'm not even going to link to that travesty of news -- I can think of a number of other things to be renamed:

the Freedom Quarter, a popular nightlife district in New Orleans

Freedom kissing, a pastime of lovers

"You smell like a freedom whore!"

Freedom Lick, a town in Indiana

Freedom dressing, something to put on salad, and freedom bread, to eat before dinner

Freedom cut pantyhose and green beans

Freedom roast coffee

Freedom Provincial furniture

the freedom twist hairstyle

The Freedom Connection, starring Gene Hackman

Best in show: the freedom poodle

Traipse out to your patio through your freedom doors

'Seig heil on your dial'

Now that right-wing foamer Michael Savage has national TV exposure, cooler heads are starting to get alarmed. This interesting column by Michael Hiltzik in the L.A. Times wonders if the Disney corporation, owner of the San Francisco radio station where Savage's show originates, is really that comfortable with Savage's offensive rants. Other links:

Salon, 5 March 03: Savage's long strange trip

a "critical analysis" of Savage's recent bestselling book

Orange Co. Register, 9 Mar 03: Savage turned bigot when blocked from UC professorship

Philadelphia Inquirer, 13 Mar 03: MSNBC stands by Savage as some sponsors flee

I've always thought it very strange that San Francisco, of all places, even has a right-wing radio station. For that station, KSFO -- nicknamed "Hot Talk" (cringe) -- plays nothing but right-wing ranting (plus Oakland A's baseball games). The only possible explanation is that there are thousands and thousands of people in the famously liberal Bay Area who are actually hate-filled homophobes and xenophobes. I don't know where they are, but it's not surpirsing I don't know any. Where would I run into them, besides on the bus? I don''t talk to people on the bus.

I can't listen to that station, no matter what they're playing. I turn it on once in a while, but I quickly turn it off. It's just too painful. Instead, for a laugh, I turn on the fundamentalist Christian radio station. that's only because there is no radio outlet in SF for the right-wing Catholic network.

Jesus shrugged

This morning's reading at morning prayer -- I've been going regularly to that, not zazen (it starts at 8:30, not 6:00) -- was "the wedding at Cana," where Jesus turns the water into wine. Part of the story creates a stumbling block:

When the wine failed, the mother of Jesus said to him, "They have no wine." And Jesus said to her, "O woman, what have you to do with me? My hour has not yet come." (John 2:3-4)

I was just thinking of this story yesterday, not knowing it would pop up today. I was thinking: When we pray, we generally expect God to be pretty supportive. But what if God sometimes reacts with the thought, "What's that to me?"

I did a little online search. Some writers suggest that the point of the story is to show Mary's continuing role in Jesus' life by pushing him into public ministry. Others suggest Jesus' response shows his humanity, while others say his irritated response was intended to show he would not show favoritism to his mother.

I concur with the bit about how the story shows Jesus' humanity. Lutherans like the stories that show Jesus' humanity and divinity at the same time, as the dual nature of Jesus is an important part of our theology: "true God and true man," as I was made to recite in school. (I went to a Lutheran parochial school.) When I was in college, playing guitar at the folk music service at the Lutheran student center, I even wrote and performed a song citing this dogma.

Anyway, back to the point. Several years ago I read a book, "Radical Prayer," which pointed out that, as a human, Jesus must have experienced the process of emotional maturing that all humans do. Presumably he snapped at his mother in this story partly because people simply snap at each other once in a while. But the book went on to suggest that, since Jesus was resurrected as a human and ascended to heaven in his human body, he still retains his human personality traits even as he listens to our prayers. Using that logic, I suppose it's possible that Jesus might listen to me praying, for example, for help with my book, and respond, "What's it to me? Write your book if you want." But I'd rather he send me a little Holy Spirit so I can get the darn thing done.

In a little while I'm going to the airport to pick Cris up from her three weeks in El Salvador. I haven't gotten much done on my book while she's been gone, nor in the weeks preceeding that. I thought I would be able to get a lot done while she was gone, as I sometimes find her presence distracting. That's the reason I leave the house to work. But even with her gone, I found it hard to work in the house, and not once did I go to work at the church (my usual offsite writing location). The cats were one distraction; I also managed to assign myself the job of producing a newsletter for my church. I went to a few films, and generally dicked around. I listened to a lot of public radio, waiting for the war to start. That's it. I'll blame my lack of productivity on the putative war.

There's a draft

Author T. C. Boyle just appeared on local radio, and I was moved, for the first time in my adult life, to actually call in with a question. Early in the show he mentioned that he begins novels with an idea and writes to see how the story will come out; he doesn't plan much or outline. I called and asked what implications this has for later drafts. Does it mean he has a lot of work to do to rein in the first draft (as I do with my own first draft)?

"This is going to drive a lot of people crazy," he answered, "but I don't do any subsequent drafts. I do substantial rewriting as I go along in the first draft, and when I get to the end of the book, it's essentially done. Of course there's editing and so on, but what's in my computer is basically it." Yes, that did drive me crazy. Boyle's new book is Drop City.

More secretive Christians

Why are all these cryptic Christian movements suddenly popping up in news articles?

They generally operate outside the authority or oversight of the official church, often maintaining their own chapels, schools, seminaries and clerical orders. Central to the movement is the Tridentine Mass, the Latin rite that was codified by the Council of Trent in the 16th century and remained in place until the Second Vatican Council deemed that Mass should be held in the popular language of each country. Latin, however, is just the beginning -- traditionalists refrain from eating meat on Fridays, and traditionalist women wear headdresses in church. The movement seeks to revive an orthodoxy uncorrupted by the theological and social changes of the last 300 years or so.

That's from a story in Sunday's NYT. The hook in the story is that one of the big funders of this movement worldwide is movie star Mel Gibson, whose father is one of the movement's leaders. The reporter wrote:

When I called the church elder who was Holy Family's representative at the county meetings, he agreed to an interview and accepted my request to attend a service, on the conditions that I not identify him or any member of the congregation beyond Mel Gibson, and that I withhold details that might invite the interest of fans or paparazzi. He also asked that I refrain from speaking to the priest, the congregants or anyone else during my visit. He told me that anyone seen speaking to me ''will not be welcome back at our church again.''

I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing. On the one hand, there's all this secret shit going on. On the other hand, there are all these news stories about them.

We give up already!

A lost Iraqi patrol, mistaking British target practice for the start of the actual war, tried to surrender to the astonished limeys. The British paratroopers sent them back across the border, saying "it was too early to surrender."

Too bad one of those "embedded" reporters wasn't with the paratroopers. TV news is now full of film of soldiers drilling in the desert, awaiting the order to attack. Desperate for something to report on, the journalists are busy doing up-close-and-personal features on finger-itchy troops.

More on secret right-wing Christian group

Turns out that Harper's is not the first publication to investigate the right-wing Christian Fellowship Foundation, otherwise known as the Family. The L.A. Times published a long article on 27 Sep 02. As a public service, I have posted it here on my own website to make it widely available.

Last night I joked that Bob Dole should open his debate with Bill Clinton with the words, "Bill you ignorant slut..." I wasn't the only one with that idea. An hour after posting that, I turned on Saturday Night Live to see their pre-titles sequence was a parody of that event (which takes place for the first time tonight on "60 Minutes"). And sure enough, the Dole character began his bit with those words. But who better to make that joke, since it originated 25 years ago (!!) on that very show.

The colorful Clinton clan

The inimitably abrasive Medea Benjamin took it upon herself to mau-mau Hillary Clinton in an anti-war demo. The senator was presented with a "pink slip" worn by one of the demonstrators, whereupon she lost her nerve and departed. Benjamin, a San Francisco activist (the story sys she's a New York activist, but as this story explains, she's actually on leave from a job here in SF) ran for senator from California a couple of years ago and quickly wore thin the patience even of people who agree with her -- as she obviously is now doing in Washington.

Meanwhile, it was widely reported today that Chelsea Clinton has nailed down a prestigious consultant gig afte she receives her M.S. this year, while Bill will face Bob Dole for a regular point-counterpoint gig on "60 Minutes." Wouldn't it be wonderful to have Dole start his remarks by saying, "Bill, you ignorant slut..."

Can't stand the suspense?

Are you on the edge of your seat about the coming war? You've got ten more days of suspense. Unless that's just disinformation. If I were Paul Wolfowitz, I would launch the attach on the ninth day. That'd show 'em!

The March issue of Harper's has a riveting article about a secret evangelical society -- sort of a Protestant Opus Dei -- called "The Family." Many senators and congressmen have been members; the purpose of the group seems to be to get right-wing Christians as much access as possible to the powerful occupants of the White House and Congress. The article, which isn't online yet, depicts the organization's leader, Doug Coe, telling this anecdote, which has clearly been repeated many times, judging from the number of times it's already been published on the web. This archives contents list of the organization's papers at Wheaton College provides some background. The group's only public event is the annual National Prayer Breakfast, which both Bush pere and fils, as well as Joe Lieberman and many other presidents and politicians, have spoken at.

This started me on a search that reminded me that the internet is an amazing thing. Here are some of the things I found: Broken-glass Republicans would crawl through broken glass if it would get Clinton out of office. A paranoid description of the supposed ties between Coe and the New Age movement. And this article by Jim Wallis, leader of the liberal Christian group Sojourners, mentions Coe as an example of right-wing Christian influence in Washington.

....and more news

The dubious human shield movement is on the verge of falling apart after a struggle broke out over who would control the movements of the activists. The western peace volunteers want to select the sites they are "defending" themselves, so as to prevent a perception they are being co-opted by the Iraqi government. The Iraqi government, unamused, is on the verge of throwing them all out. Earlier, some British volunteers left Iraq on their own. Of course, right-wingers are having a field day.

Vonnegut vs. the administration

Kurt Vonnegut's February interview in In These Times garnered a lot of attention, and now he appears again to slag Bush and his cronies. Yes, it's fun to see somebody go off on the warmongers. But I hope when I'm 80 years old I'm less angry, because it's a little sad.

A federal appeals court has struck down the Child Online Protection Act, saying it's too vague.

All right, that's it. I'm going to try to get something done on my poor neglected book.

Shake the head sadly

This is fucking scary.

During the 40-minute speech, Bush also promised to bring an end to the severe war drought that plagued the nation under Clinton, assuring citizens that the U.S. will engage in at least one Gulf War-level armed conflict in the next four years.

"You better believe we're going to mix it up with somebody at some point during my administration," said Bush, who plans a 250 percent boost in military spending. "Unlike my predecessor, I am fully committed to putting soldiers in battle situations. Otherwise, what is the point of even having a military?"

Mildly clever, you think. Well, it's from The Onion of 18 January 2001.

It obviously wasn't enough for Hollywood to turn the Aileen Wuornos saga into a cheap, exploitative TV movie in 1992. Now I just noticed a Nov. 2002 story saying two glamorous Hollywood stars, Christina Ricci and Charlize Theron, will play Aileen and her lover in a big-screen version. Just what we need.

It's a little disturbing how many movies I've seen in the last month or two. Not many by some people's standards -- like maybe eight. (When I was a college student I used to see eight a week. Of course, I was majoring in film criticism.) But movies were basically all I had to talk about when taking a walk today with my fellow first novelist Katia. I don't have time to sit around reading books, I think. I do have time to spend three or four hours a day on the internet wasting time, though.

Men = big walking, drinking dollar signs

I couldn't resist this chipper travel piece on Phnom Penh. Excerpt:

It was disarming and a little frightening to walk into a pool hall and have 50 Khmer and Vietnamese girls look my way with smoldering eyes. John, a North Carolinian who accompanied us for a night out on the town, summed it up when he said, "This place is just like the bars at home -- except women here dig me."

Sure they do, fella. "Is that a roll of bills in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?"

The guy has some fantastic photos accompanying his travel pieces, supposedly posted from the road.

I went downtown today and was nearly run over by 500 teenage peace demonstrators. The kids, who have not yet learned that a peace march is more effective if you walk slowly, thus giving others a chance to observe and possibly join in, were steaming down the sidewalk on Market St. at about 4 m.p.h. Looking impossibly young and happy, and composed of about an 80-20 ratio of girls to boys, the youths were part of a nationwide school walkout -- make that worldwide.

Low in that same article is this paragraph:

Around 100 people took part in a ``Mall Walk for Peace'' at a suburban Albany, N.Y., shopping mall to protest the arrest of 61-year-old man who wore a T-shirt that read ``Peace on Earth'' and ``Give Peace a Chance'' while he shopped two days earlier.

The fools! A shopping mall should be selling the peace t-shirts, not banning them. That's what America's all about!

Let confusion reign

The Supreme Court ruled today that just because businesses have similar names doesn't mean the huge corporation can force the smaller one to change. Companies must prove actual damages. This means, for example, that Radio Shack cannot sue Bianca's Smut Shack for using the word "shack." (Yes, this actually happened, though Bianca eventually prevailed.)

Now the Beatles are safe from Apple Computer, and vice versa. The Beach Boys are safe from Wendy's. Rhino Records is safe from Rhino Truck Linings. And Big Boy Condoms will rise again.

No Santa Claus, either

Michael Musto, who's been writing his Village Voice column going on 20 years now -- I well remember the time in the early 80s when it started, and I wrote the Village Voice a letter saying "Who the hell is this??" -- files a column in which he acts surprised that the Grammy Awards are a joke. Dude, the Grammies have been a joke at least as long as you've been writing that vapid column.

Terror suspect with serious bed-head

We're already bombing the shit out of Iraqi installations. Has the war started yet or not?

Bizarre and depressing moment on CNBC just now: Some guy named (I think) Chris Whitcomb was speculating on whether the just-captured big al-Qaeda leader was going to cough up any information. This fellow Whitcomb repeated a story he said he'd heard from a retired Army general. According to the story, thirty years ago the Army had captured a top Viet Cong commander, and even though he was tortured by the South Vietnamese, they couldn't get any information out of him. Finally they showed him a porn movie that some G.I.s had brought back from Japan, and the Viet Cong guy was suddenly more cooperative. He offered to tell them anything they wanted to know, if only they'd show that movie to him again. "So everyone has his price," Whitcomb concluded. The female news anchor who was interviewing him didn't even blink.

Hello?! Where's the outrage here? They're talking about torturing prisoners of war like it's an oil change. About this al-Qaeda bloke, this CNN story says: "Interrogators are using 'all appropriate pressure' to extract information from the al Qaeda operations chief, officials said." But this New York Times story says: "'The standard for any type of interrogation of somebody in American custody is to be humane and to follow all international laws and accords dealing with this type subject,' President Bush's chief spokesman, Ari Fleischer, said." Frankly, I think it's bad enough they published that photo of the guy with serious bed-head.

The museum of characteristic things

A piece in today's New York Times suggests that thousands of disposable AM radios air-dropped into North Korea could turn the populace against the ruling class:

Advocates of smuggling radios into the North, mostly human rights and Christian church groups, say their effort is aimed at ensuring that someone is indeed listening. Even if only a tiny elite tune in, they say, the effect can be powerful.

"The populace will suffer a kind of psychological collapse when they learn what has been done to them and what the real world is really like," predicted Radek Sikorski, who grew up listening to Voice of America and Radio Free Europe in communist Poland and now works at the American Enterprise Institute.

That psychological collapse is described in a Samuel R. Delaney novel that offers a paranoid, dystopian view of a world where everyone has been somehow deluded into thinking there is a horrible, eternal war going on. (I think it's The Fall of the Towers but I'm not sure.) The delusion is somehow broadcast into everyone's minds by some horrible machine invented by the aliens or whoever is bent on keeping everyone in submission. Along the way, the machine is destroyed, and everyone is suddenly enlightened as to the true nature of reality, at least to the extent that they realize the eternal war was just a delusion. But instead of feeling liberated, everyone is very depressed. First because their whole world has changed; even if the new reality is better than the old, it's still a shock. Secondly, they have to face the fact that they were suckers all their lives. I can't think of any better description than what they're predicting for North Korea if, someday, the Kim regime falls.

Also in today's New York Times, a visit to "Tchaikovsky's boyhood piano, the instrument of the Russian composer's first serious work." This made me think there should be a museum of objects characteristic to their famous users -- instruments they used to achieve their best work. For example:

Nixon's tape recorder

Elvis' Brylcreme

Kathy Acker's vibrator

Marilyn Monroe's brush used to tease her hair

J. Edgar Hoover's X-acto knife

A hand puppet from Michael Jackson's bedside table

from Dean Martin's dressing room, a box of tea, used to brew the fake "whiskey" he carried onstage

from Sylvia Plath's kitchen, a can of E-Z Off

from Tina Turner's dressing room, an economy-sized bottle of Aleve

and the object I would most like to have: the copy of "Leaves of Grass" inscribed to Monica Lewinsky by Bill Clinton.

Date of destiny

Whether you write dates the European or the American way, today is 03-03-03. Make it memorable.

My uncle Art died last week. About him, my cousin wrote last year that he "still had a lot of living to do" even though he was, at age 83, suffering a recurrence of cancer and was particularly depressed about it. A steady but somewhat impatient man, in his retirement he developed a hobby of composing newsy three-dot essays -- like Herb Caen without a job -- and sending copies to all his relatives. By newsy, I mean that he actually passed along news and sports items and commented on them, despite the fact that he had showed no particular vocation for journalism or writing throughout his entire life. Essentially, he became a columnist with an audience of about 25.

In fact, what he was doing was blogging. He never used a computer except to send email (and, showing a lack of imagination, never sent his "columns" through email, but only through snail mail) and never knew what a blog was. But blogging was what he was doing, just in a different medium.

Conspiracies

Last night I indulged my affection for Frank Sinatra movies and rented The Naked Runner, a wonderfully typical mid-60s Cold War thriller. In the film, British spies manipulate an American businessman, played by Sinatra, into assassinating an East German agent. It's not a terrific movie, at least not in the scan-and-pan version I saw on VHS that cuts off 40% of the cinemascope image, but the premise is worthy of Patricia Highsmith, and Sinatra's performance is thankfully understated.

Then today I went to see The Quiet American, Michael Caine's last hurrah as a dashing leading man. Though the film concentrates on how American foreign policy in Indo-China (now Vietnam) in the 1950s is eerily echoed today, I picked up on the film's parallels to the Sinatra movie. Each movie has, as its climax, an assassination that the protagonist is manipulated into. Seen through the lens of the Sinatra film, the Caine film clearly focuses on the wrong relationships. Instead of concentrating on the sexual triangle between Caine, Brendan Fraser and Do Thi Hai Yen (who can only be described as "willowy"), I thought the film should have concentrated on the relationship between Caine, who plays a journalist, and his native assistant, a secret Communist sympathizer who manipulates Caine into betraying Fraser. This personal betrayal, not incipient American influence in Indo-China which audiences are all too familiar with, is the story's real linchpin.

News from 29 Palms

While millions were protesting around the world two weeks ago, about 100 people protested in 29 Palms, Calif. The picturesque desert town, which pretty much fulfills every stereotype of small desert towns, is squeezed right between a large Marine base used for desert combat training and the transcendent beauty of Joshua Tree National Park. The hundred-person demo was the first peace demonstration ever held in the military town. A reporter from the BBC visited a week later (low in article) and talked to Marine spouses.

Misery loves company

The SF Chronicle reported this morning that, when you realy look at the figures, a lot more people in California were out of work than previously reported. In 2001 and 2002, "the San Francisco area shed 92,900 jobs, a stunning 150 percent more than previous estimates." Well, I was stunned then and I'm stunned now. I will be stunned until July, when my unemployment runs out. Then I will simply disappear from the radar.

Just for fun: Courtesy of BoingBoing, a gallery of all the leaflets dropped on Iraq in the last four months.