Fredericksburg, VA - April 2004. All text,
design and imagery on website http://aartsen.net/
and its affiliated and subsidiary pages and files is subject to copyright
- insofar as not explicitely attributed here, mine.
Brand logos and names and company logos and names are the property of their
respective owners. Any mention of Verizon
and its subsidiaries on any of my webpages is a function of my status as
an employee of this corporation, and do not indicate Verizon's approval or endorsement of these pages, this
site or my views. These web pages are authored wherever my computer, scanner,
camera, ears, eyes, and grey cells happen to be, and reside and are published
in the USA. This site is non-commercial and all opinions and observations expressed herein are personal.
On a lighter note, the TNT cable television network broadcast a slew of Arnold movies the day after the election (they couldn't do so earlier, because of "equal access" regulations for elective candidates in California). In advertising for the "Arnie Day" they said that "in the movies, Arnold always wins". I guess that if you look at Mr. Schwarzenegger's career, they really could have safely stated that "Arnold always wins"... Unless life is the movies, out there in Fantasyland...
Wednesday October 8, 2003
On what will probably become know as "Arnie Day", it is curious to see an Austrian bodybuilder become governor of the State of California, a region with the fifth largest economy in the world. While many take the view Mr. Schwarzenegger is a true Republican, and while I admit that he hails from one of the more conservative regions of Europe, I think he may well prove to be decidedly left of center - to American standards, of course. Californian voters probably chose someone they see as a right wing democrat, safe because he knows how to make money, and safe because the Kennedys will keep him in check.
The Bush administration is decidedly in trouble. Something like 12% of all Americans have no medical insurance of any kind (this in a country where much medication is four or five times as expensive as in Mexico, Canada and Europe), while we are being deluged by spammers and marketers whose only occupation is to use existing laws, or the absence of laws, and the absence of effective law enforcement, to con as many people as possible out of money for services and goods that are never delivered. There are (more than before, it is admittedly not a new problem) scam insurance companies, telemarketers that use techniques developed to confuse and defraud elderly people, while more and more people are losing their jobs (as in, hundreds of thousands every month) with the Government declaring "we are out of recession".
Sorry, but I don't think the population is being looked after very well today. Last week, I hobbled on my crutches (I've had foot surgery) into my local Giant supermarket, and took over a motorized shopping cart from an elderly woman. Got to talking, and it turned out she is a Hungarian refugee, who had, with her husband, lived in the USA for 35 years. Nothing remarkable, but she and her husband moved "back" to Hungary last year, because Social Security (i.e., the government pension) is much better there than in the USA.
Say what? Granted, the Hungarians have always economically done better than the rest of what used to be known as the "Eastern Bloc", but we are talking about a former Soviet vassal here, a country where people earned maybe a tenth of what we do here. There is now a company with offices in local malls, that advertises a $500 advance "on your next paycheck". For that dead end street to be commercially sustainable, there must be a lot of ordinary folks in a lot of trouble..
So I personally think the election of the Austrian bodybuilder is a harbinger of what is to come. You just cannot go and spend tens of billions of dollars on the reconstruction of Iraq when a sizeable and voting chunk of the American population is faced with the stark choice: "Food or medication?" every month. In fact, if it weren't for my (very large) employer, I might not be able to get all of the approximately $2,000 worth of medication I need, either - I know that many HMOs do not cover all of it, and am comparatively lucky we have one in our lineup that does.
Saturday September 13, 2003
An interesting article at the BBC News website makes the point that "intensive agriculture had driven many plants and animals out of the rural setting". As it happens, I bought a home in rural Virginia last year, on a plot of land that used to be farmland. In the USA, many farms in the vicinity of urban areas were not large enough for sustainable agriculture in the 20th century, and so were abandoned or given over to development.
Much of the land ended up being reforested, and so of the five acres (two hectares) I live on about four is new woodland, probably thirty years old, and an acre is lawn and house. That is the case with many homes in Spotsylvania County, where the local council has prevented urban sprawl by setting a minimum of two acres as the size of a saleable lot.
Most homeowners here have left significant portions of their property wild, and so wildlife, from deer and turtles to foxes and more insects than I have ever seen before is thriving in what is almost a wildlife refuge, as most of us prohibit hunting on our propety (with the exception of our own, of course :), and there are no hazards like traffic and the like. This is all wildlife and vegetation, as the Brits claim, that was not there before. I harvest my own firewood, which reduces the use of my heatpumps in winter, using a non-polluting high efficiency woodstove, my trees recycle carbon monoxide, my land recycles water that ends up being used in urban America, my waste is recycled through the use of a septic tank, which effectively maintains the well water I and my neigbours drink, while the only form of energy available here is electricity.
My sister, of course, has commented that I am a cause of much pollution because I do my 71 mile commute to work in a car with a 5.7 litre V-8, but I wonder if, on balance, my portion of an individual's pollution is not less than that of a city dweller. She may commute to work on public transport or a bicycle, she does live in a city with 700,000 inhabitants, and cities are great concentreated polluters.
One interesting point the British make is that three quarters of England's arable land is responsible for only 1% of Britain's Gross Domestic Product, which makes you wonder if we're paying enough for our produce, which seems to forever become cheaper.
Friday September 12, 2003
Only now can we see the "groupware" and "remote working" technologies developed in the '70s and '80s really used. The company I work for, Verizon, with just shy of quarter of a million employees, is really run using email and instant messaging today, and I can really fly into New York City or Los Angeles, jack an Ethernet connection into my laptop and work. I can hear a chorus of "we've had that for years!" echoing around the Internet, but that is not true. Very large organizations are only now able to do this "out of the box", because you stand and fall with the ability to hook *everybody* up, not just some departments.
It had to be 100% available, and affordable. There had to be routing networks that could touch the Internet but also be secure (I'll forget about the viruses for a moment, save for saying that they are now able to spread like there was no tomorrow exactly *because* only now is every employee in every corporation "wired"), I see companies in Third World countries recruit talent in the USA via the Internet, and the virus software I use on my private computer is Czech.
That took a long time. If I recall correctly, I helped introduce the Apple II in The Netherlands around 1979, and it wasn't until several years later that the Macintosh came with something called "Appletalk" (or did the ill fated Lisa have networking?). And UNIX, of course, had networking built in from day one, but it wasn't until the early 'eighties that Ethernet made it possible to use that networking a little more widely.
And so, today, the team of which I am a member is preparing to introduce nationwide Ethernet (click the link, then go to "Transparent LAN Services") into the marketplace, something you'll see available in 2004. Not something you have to buy equipment for, configure, do stuff - no, out-of-the-box, we bring you a jack and you just plug your LAN into that and you are networked to your office on the other coast.
The second anniversary of September 11 has, in the meantime, been and gone - I am not one for crowded memorial services, so I commemorated what was, for me, a very hurtful and emotional episode of my American life by taking the same flight from New York to Washington I took that morning in 2001, a trip I do not make very often any more since I gave up my Manhattan office last year. With the superb and ubiquitous networking described above, I really did not need that any more. Besides, my boss is now in Irving, TX, his in NYC, and his in Baltimore, MD... Of course, having lunch together, or slapping each other on the back when something went really well, kinda went out the window with the fax machine..
Sunday June 29, 2003
The pope (the Roman Catholic one, the one in the Vatican that won't let you get divorced or use contraception) has today exhorted the European Union to recognize its Christian roots in the EU constitution.
Funny old fella, that pope. There were Europeans way before there was a Christian church - in fact, if if hadn't been for the Europeans his religion probably would have been a smallish sect in the Middle East.
So hopefully the pope will see the error of his ways, and formally recognize Europe's original religions in his exhortations, and be properly grateful we gave him a job...
Saturday June 28, 2003
Newsweek excerpts this week a new book, “AT WAR WITH OURSELVES: Why America is Squandering Its Chance to Build a Better World” (Oxford University Press) by its Washington, D.C. correspondent Michael Hirsh. In the excerpt, Mr. Hirsh makes the following observation:
"The main reason I decided to write this book is that I have two young sons who are growing up in a world that is Americanized and yet often hostile at the same time, a world that most Americans scarcely understand."
And that comment set me thinking again about the rude and ill-advised comments we hear from Secretary Rumsfeld, and the (to me) completely anomalous response of the American public to French resistance to the Iraq war, in buying far less wine and other French products than before. There are a couple of very good reasons why Europeans had no taste for this particular war, reasons I really haven't seen spelled out in the press.
One is that what the average American (and Brit, I'll get to that) calls democracy is not at all what the average European thinks democracy is. Going back to colonial times, the British two party democracy has been relatively prevalent in Anglo-Saxon countries. In a two party system it is fairly easy to reach a consensus, only one other guy you have to haggle with, and for as long as you have a bargaining tool, it can all be done noiselessly and quickly. But that is not at all how democracy works in the majority of Europe, in France, Germany, Italy, my native Holland. There, you'll find dozens of political parties, aligned along all sorts of lines, environment, religion, ethnicity, and so on. We Europeans, therefore, are used to attaining what we perceive as a "real" consensus - most major decisions a European government takes are negotiated with a dozen or more parties, and each of those can potentially prevent consensus. Long, drawn out - yes, cumbersome, yes, but the average European will feel that they have more "democracy" than does the United States, because the individual voter, through parties large and small, has better representation in those multi-party coalition governments than in a two party system.
That is why the British government was able to provide physical in-your-face support to the American-led Iraq war, and most European countries were not. And there is, to that, of course, one other reason.
Most Americans, unfortunately, do not realize that in much of Europe, between five and ten percent of the population is Muslim, of North African or Middle Eastern extraction. And when I say Muslim, I do not mean either immigrants or converts. These are Muslims who, for two or three generations, have made their home in Western Europe, and are full citizens of the country they live in. Muslims from countries neighbouring Europe, not from some faraway shore. That makes them Muslims as well as Western Europeans as well as taxpayers and.... voters!
So now, here comes George Bush, who is suggesting the Europeans help him send a huge army out to Iraq, to overthrow a government, and in the process kill some of these people's relatives, friends, fellow believers, destroy their homes, jobs, what have you. All for a good cause, and we'll fix it up afterwards.
I for one am not surprised that Germany, France, Turkey, would have nothing to do with it. It had little to do with anti-Americanism, but with a simple mechanism that should be better understood by the Bush administration: "You cannot ask another government to alienate a large segment of its voting population". Because if you take into account that these voters have access to political parties that actually do have a say in government, as opposed to having to negotiate their way into one of two parties, you'll understand why most Europeans felt that, in the absence of a United Nations political consensus or a physical act of aggression by Iraq, this war could not be politically justified.
If you add to that that the older generations remember the WWII devastation (on our way to summer vacation in Austria, in the late 'fifties, because my Dad loved the mountains, we would traverse hundreds of miles of devastated Germany, rubble as far as the eye could see), and grew up with 15,000 or more battle ready Soviet tanks on their doorstep (it would have taken the Soviet Army maybe four or five hours to get from the East German border to Amsterdam, where I used to live), it is not inconceivable that the average European has no taste for wars that they feel can be avoided.
Thursday June 26, 2003
Today's Supreme Court decision that adult homosexuals having consensual sex in their own home have a lawful expectation of privacy, effectively killing anti-sodomy laws in the US, generates a number of interesting questions. Behind those laws are, I assume, largely "moral turpitude" statutes, where legislatures set standards for moral and amoral behaviours in the community.
The (to me) interesting question is whether we can consider this wrong. Before I go on, I fully agree that a government has no place in regulating behaviours that neither affect nor damage the community, but at the same time it probably isn't as easy as all that. You could make lots of arguments for lots of behaviours that are today punishable by law but, taking a clue from this ruling, probably shouldn't be. The press is all over it already, so I will spare you the examples (this is a family forum, after all :), but I come from a thoroughly modern European country where as recently as the 1980s it was still illegal to make car repairs in the street on a Sunday - there was no separation of state and church in The Netherlands, which had, and possibly still has, an official State religion.
So it will be interesting to see what the legal consequences of this ruling will be, over time, what behaviours will be deemed acceptable, and what behaviours will be illegal (in the privacy of one's home or hotel room, of course). I do support the argument that a government should not be in charge of morals, that's a behaviour that harks back to a time when religion held the social framework together, a time that we should probably finally leave behind us. Having said that, "for the people, of the people" leans very strongly on the people's convictions, and that can bring you back to religion in no time at all, if a majority so chooses.
The French have recently outlawed all expressions of religion in public schools - no crosses around the neck, no chadors, no yarmulkes, taking the intellectually correct view that religion is within the person, and need not be advertised in a public facility. But you can never win the argument that an expression of one's religion can not also be deemed an expression of free speech.... So, as you can see, I don't have the answer either. It'll keep the philosophers busy for a while yet.
Friday June 20, 2003
The BBC news website today has the following (the subject being allergy attacks in cinemas):
"Researchers in Brussels found that asthma sufferers could have attacks triggered by high levels of allergens brought in by cat-owners on their clothes and left on the seats. If that's not bad enough, the offending enzyme, Fel D1, comes from cats' guts, and is only present on the fur (and clothes and ultimately cinema seats) because of the way cats lick themselves."
Although I am a former pet owner, I have over the years, helped by a late developing allergy, come to wonder whether intimate human contact with animals that lick their private parts and then you is all that hygienic. It is nice to finally see some research confirming that my concerns are valid, especially if you consider that some very nasty diseases have recently "jumped" from animals to humans. Perhaps it is time to re-examine some of the things we've always taken for granted. After all, if I can be charged extra insurance for smoking, perhaps pet owners should pay for their self inflicted suffering.. And we could add fast food addicted obese folk, and rockclimbers, and..
Saturday, May 10, 2003
SARS... Need I say more?
Sunday April 6, 2003
Coalition Troop Casualties, POWs, MIAs
4/06/03 3:27PM
By The Associated Press
The names of troop casualties, provided by relatives or military officials. The military totals include casualties whose names may not yet be
available.
U.S.: 76 dead, eight missing and seven captured. In some cases, families have released names before the military. On Saturday, the
Pentagon said 79 American servicemembers died, eight were missing and seven had been captured.
British: 27 dead, according to the British government.
DEATHS:
April 4:
Marine Capt. Benjamin Sammis, 29, Rehoboth, Mass.
April 3:
Marine Pfc. Chad E. Bales, 20, Coahoma, Texas, non-hostile accident
Marine Cpl. Mark A. Evnin, 21, South Burlington, Vt., combat
Army Staff Sgt. Nino D. Livaudais, 23, Utah, combat
Army Spc. Ryan P. Long, 21, Seaford, Del., combat
Army Spc. Donald S. Oaks Jr., 20, Harborcreek, Pa., combat
Army Sgt. 1st Class Randy Rehn, 36, Longmont, Colo., combat
Army Capt. Russell B. Rippetoe, 27, Colorado, combat
Army Sgt. Todd J. Robbins, 33, Hart, Mich., combat
Marine Cpl. Erik H. Silva, 22, Chula Vista, Calif., combat
April 2:
Marine Lance Cpl. Brian E. Anderson, 26, Durham, N.C., non-hostile accident
Army Spc. Mathew Boule, 22, Dracut, Mass., helicopter crash
Army Master Sgt. George A. Fernandez, 36, El Paso, Texas
Marine Pfc. Christian D. Gurtner, 19, Ohio City, Ohio, non-combat weapons discharge
Army Chief Warrant Officer 4th Class Erik A. Halvorsen, 40, Bennington, Vt., helicopter crash.
Army Chief Warrant Officer 3 Eric A. Smith, 42, Rochester, N.Y., helicopter crash
April 1:
Army Sgt. Jacob L. Butler, 24, Wellsville, Kan., combat
Marine Lance Cpl. Joseph B. Maglione, 22, Lansdale, Pa., non-combat weapon discharge
March 31:
Army Spc. Brandon Rowe, 20, Roscoe, Ill., combat
March 30:
Marine Capt. Aaron J. Contreras, 31, Sherwood, Ore., helicopter crash
Marine Sgt. Michael V. Lalush, 23, Troutville, Va., helicopter crash
Marine Sgt. Brian McGinnis, 23, St. Georges, Del., helicopter crash
March 29:
Marine Staff Sgt. James Cawley, 41, Layton, Utah, combat
Army Cpl. Michael Curtin, 23, Howell, N.J., suicide attack
Army Pfc. Diego Fernando Rincon, 19, Conyers, Ga., suicide attack
Army Pfc. Michael Russell Creighton Weldon, 20, Palm Bay, Fla., suicide attack
Marine Lance Cpl. William W. White, 24, New York, vehicle accident
Army Sgt. Eugene Williams, 24, Highland, N.Y, suicide attack
March 28:
Army Sgt. Roderic A. Solomon , 32, Fayetteville, N.C., vehicle accident
March 27:
Marine Gunnery Sgt. Joseph Menusa, 33, Tracy, Calif., combat
Marine Lance Cpl. Jesus A. Suarez Del Solar, 20, Escondido, Calif., combat
March 26:
Army Spc. William A. Jeffries, 39, Evansville, Ind., illness
Marine Maj. Kevin G. Nave, 36, White Lake Township, Mich., vehicle accident
March 25:
Navy Hospital Corpsman 3rd Class Michael Vann Johnson Jr., 25, Little Rock, Ark., combat
Marine Pfc. Francisco A. Martinez Flores, 21, Los Angeles, combat
Marine Staff Sgt. Donald C. May, Jr., 31, Richmond, Va., combat
Marine Lance Cpl. Patrick T. O'Day, 20, Santa Rosa, Calif., combat
Marine Cpl. Robert M. Rodriguez, 21, New York, combat
Air Force Maj. Gregory Stone, 40, Boise, Idaho, grenade attack
March 24:
Marine Cpl. Evan James, 20, La Harpe, Ill., drowned in canal
Marine Sgt. Bradley S. Korthaus, 29, Davenport, Iowa, drowned in canal
Army Spc. Gregory P. Sanders, 19, Hobart, Ind., combat
March 23:
Army Spc. Jamaal R. Addison, 22, Roswell, Ga., combat
Marine Sgt. Michael E. Bitz, 31, Ventura, Calif., combat
Marine Lance Cpl. Brian Rory Buesing, 20, Cedar Key, Fla., combat
Marine Lance Cpl. David K. Fribley, 26, Fort Myers, Fla., combat
Marine Cpl. Jose A. Garibay, 21, Costa Mesa, Calif., combat
Marine Cpl. Jorge A. Gonzalez, 20, Los Angeles, combat
Army Pfc. Howard Johnson II, 21, Mobile, Ala., combat
Marine Staff Sgt. Phillip A. Jordan, 42, Enfield, Conn., combat
Marine Lance Cpl. Patrick R. Nixon, 21, Gallatin, Tenn., combat
Marine 2nd Lt. Frederick E. Pokorney Jr., 31, Tonopah, Nev., combat
Marine Cpl. Randal Kent Rosacker, 21, San Diego, combat
Marine Lance Cpl. Thomas J. Slocum, 22, Thornton, Colo., combat
Marine Lance Cpl. Michael J. Williams, 31, Yuma, Ariz.
March 22:
Navy Lt. Thomas Mullen Adams, 27, La Mesa, Calif., helicopter collision
Marine Lance Cpl. Eric J. Orlowski, 26, Buffalo, N.Y., machine gun accident
Army Capt. Christopher Scott Seifert, 27, Easton, Pa., grenade attack
Army Reserve Spc. Brandon S. Tobler, 19, Portland, Ore., vehicle accident
March 21:
Marine Maj. Jay Thomas Aubin, 36, Waterville, Maine, helicopter crash
Marine Capt. Ryan Anthony Beaupre, 30, St. Anne, Ill., helicopter crash
Marine 2nd Lt. Therrel S. Childers, 30, Harrison County, Miss., combat
Marine Lance Cpl. Jose Gutierrez, 22, Los Angeles, combat
Marine Cpl. Brian Matthew Kennedy, 25, Houston, helicopter crash
Marine Staff Sgt. Kendall Damon Waters-Bey, 29, Baltimore, helicopter crash
Date not given:
Marine Lance Cpl. Thomas A. Blair, 24, Broken Arrow, Okla., combat
Marine Sgt. Nicolas M. Hodson, 22, Smithville, Mo., vehicle accident
Army Spc. James Kiehl, 22, Comfort, Texas, combat
Army Sgt. George Edward Buggs, 31, Barnwell, S.C., combat
Army Master Sgt. Robert J. Dowdy, 38, Cleveland, combat
Army Pvt. Ruben Estrella-Soto, 18, El Paso, Texas, combat
Army Chief Warrant Officer Johnny Villareal Mata, 35, Pecos, Texas, combat
Army Sgt. Michael Pedersen, 26, Flint, Mich., helicopter crash
Army Pfc. Lori Piestewa, 22, Tuba City, Ariz., combat
Army Pvt. Brandon Sloan, 19, Bedford Heights, Ohio, combat
Army Sgt. Donald Walters, 33, Kansas City, Mo., combat
CAPTURED:
March 24:
Army Chief Warrant Officer 2 Ronald D. Young Jr., 26, Lithia Springs, Ga.
Army Chief Warrant Officer 2 David S. Williams, 30, Orlando, Fla.
March 23:
Army Spc. Edgar Hernandez, 21, Mission, Texas
Army Spc. Joseph Hudson, 23, Alamogordo, N.M.
Army Spc. Shoshana Johnson, 30, Fort Bliss, Texas
Army Pfc. Patrick Miller, 23, Park City, Kan.
Army Sgt. James Riley, 31, Pennsauken, N.J.
MISSING:
March 23:
Army Sgt. Edward J. Anguiano, 24, Brownsville, Texas.
Marine Pfc. Tamario D. Burkett, 21, Buffalo, N.Y.
Marine Cpl. Kemaphoom A. Chanawongse, 22, Waterford, Conn.
Marine Lance Cpl. Donald J. Cline, Jr., 21, Sparks, Nev.
Marine Pvt. Jonathan L. Gifford, 30, Decatur, Ill.
Marine Pvt. Nolen R. Hutchings, 19, Boiling Springs, S.C.
Marine Sgt. Fernando Padilla-Ramirez, 26, Yuma, Ariz.
Marine Sgt. Brendon Reiss, 23, Casper, Wyo.
OTHER COALITION CASUALTIES:
DEATHS:
British:
April 1:
Lance Cpl. Karl Shearer, killed in accident involving light armored vehicle
March 31:
Staff Sgt. Chris Muir, Romsey, England, killed while disposing of explosive ordnance
March 30:
Marine Christopher R. Maddison, combat
Lance Cpl. Shaun Andrew Brierley, road accident
March 28:
Lance Cpl. Matty Hull, in combat; death is being investigated possibly as result of friendly fire
March 25:
Cpl. Stephen John Allbutt, Stoke-on-Trent, England, tank hit by friendly fire
Trooper David Jeffrey Clarke, Littleworth, England, tank hit by friendly fire
March 24:
Sgt. Steven Mark Roberts, Bradford, England, combat
Lance Cpl. Barry Stephen, Perth, Scotland, combat
March 23:
Sapper Luke Allsopp, London, combat
Staff Sgt. Simon Cullingworth, Essex, England, combat
Flight Lt. Kevin Barry Main, jet shot down by friendly fire
Flight Lt. David Rhys Williams, jet shot down by friendly fire
March 22:
Lt. Philip Green, helicopter collision
Lt. Marc Lawrence, helicopter collision
Lt. Antony King, Helston, England, helicopter collision
Lt. Philip West, Budock Water, England, helicopter collision
Lt. James Williams, Falmouth, England, helicopter collision
Lt. Andrew Wilson, helicopter collision
March 21:
Color Sgt. John Cecil, Plymouth, England, helicopter crash
Lance Bombardier Llewelyn Karl Evans, Llandudno, Wales, helicopter crash
Capt. Philip Stuart Guy, helicopter crash
Marine Sholto Hedenskog, helicopter crash
Sgt. Les Hehir, Poole, England, helicopter crash
Operator Mechanic Second Class Ian Seymour, helicopter crash
Warrant Officer Second Class Mark Stratford, helicopter crash
Maj. Jason Ward, helicopter crash
Thursday April 3, 2003
It is a pity some of our Western brethren think it necessary to keep taking down the Al-Jazeera website, just at a time when it is important to get news with a Middle East and Arab view. If there was ever a time where we needed to understand each other, this would be it. Many of the recent conflicts sat on that old Christian / Muslim dividing line - Kosovo comes to mind, at a time when Muslims have been migrating into Western Europe wholesale, it is hardly surprising that some of the European countries with very large Muslim populations (France, Germany, The Netherlands) have not joined the "coalition".
Not surprising either, perhaps, that those countries that have had Islamic and Arabic exposure as a consequence of past colonialism (Britain, Spain) have declared their support, although no EU nations other than the UK have joined the battle.
Will Middle Eastern leaders understand that now that Islamic fundamentalism has reached out into American home territory, their world has changed? I said it in my commentary after September 11 - if you though you knew what Jihad means, you've misunderstood America and the Americans. Perhaps some parallels with the Crusades can be seen - George W. Bush called a Jihad against fundamentalism, and like it or not, that's what's going on today. Combined with lessons learned from the Vietnam conflict, that makes for an awesome (and dangerous) policy, because now we won't stop until the objective is reached. In the past, the were always political reasons to cease and desist - creating Berlin, Jerusalem, perhaps one might add the Korean DMZ to that. But I think one thing we've learned is that that creates more problems than it solves, so, good luck, George. Like most Europeans, I don't think we have a right to invade someone else's country, but like most Americans, I think we should finish the job.
Being an immigrant is a strange thing.. Especially if you can see both the Pentagon and George's house from your office windows... Walking past that hole in the Pentagon every time I went to the dentist did something to my world perception.
Saturday March 22, 2003
While my laundry is droning away somewhere behind me the world is catching fire, and young men and women are dying a gory death in someone else's desert. Iraqis too, the desert belongs to the Bedouins, the aborigines of the Middle East, and neither Saddam's young people nor ours have a right to be there.
Are we better off now that we can get live video from the top of a troop carrier? As a former journalist, it's a very nice development provided you have enough time to watch it all, I have to go and get mower gas and then clear more of the mounds of leaves left over from last fall. Journalism used to have magic when you didn't have your editor looking over your shoulder, but now, of course, you can't even go to the bathroom without fifteen million people noticing it. This new way of using available technologies, and the way US and UK armed forces are using them, also means reporters can get their heads blown off much more easily than in the past, perhaps a not too subtle way for our forces to demonstrate what they're doing is not an adventure movie, but a risky venture at best. As I watch live Internet feeds, five journalists, twe Aussies and three Brits, are missing, some confirmed dead. It was curious to get a live view of all those tanks and armoured vehicles stopped somewhere between the Kuwaiti border and Baghdad, waiting for their very own mobile 7-11 to catch up with them, gas and hotdogs on the move, hold the mustard.
I like to think this will all be over by Wednesday, provided one of Saddam's henchmen puts a bullet in his brain - otherwise it'll end up being reminiscent of Hitler's and Nazi Germany's last weeks. Which would see another generation of talented young men gone, not enough left to bother collecting. I tended to agre with all those who didn't want war, but then I thought about Fidel and how long he's been oppressing, controlling and jailing his people, and perhaps that isn't a good thing either. So let's get this over with, because there will be enough of a mess to clear up afterwards, but please take note a mess was there to begin with, so it really doesn't make much of a difference.
Saturday March 15, 2003
The international press this week makes much of German Chancellor Schroeder's plans to turn around the German economy, which has been in the doldrums for some time. I can't escape the parallels with our own economy, having seen how millions of workers in the US lost part or much of their life savings when the dotcom economy collapsed. And now we're spending something like a billion dollars a day - that's about $3.50 per day for each American - dealing with Saddam Hussein.
I personally think pumping that $3.50 a day back into the US economy, and making sure everyone who lost savings, including myself, gets that money back, would be a better way to invest in America's future and its prosperity. Schroeder and his voters have decided not to go into Iraq, they appear to have a different view of what's important to the civilian footsoldier. I am paying $1.70 for a gallon of premium gasoline today, up 40 cents on what I would pay in the "good times". I personally think that is what matters to us, George, in the rural area I live in I see families shopping for bargains in the supermarket, clearly having difficulty making ends meet, with the cost of living up, bonuses down and savings plans returning half of what they used to. Considering Schroeder is part of "Old Europe", according to Donald Rumsfeld, I think I'll vote for some of the old, rather than the new. That's my money you're spending, there, Mr. Bush.
Friday, March 14, 2003
What bothers me about the Elizabeth Smart kidnapping is that nobody seems to have raised the issue of the parents' responsibility for all this. Get this: the Smarts live in a 6,600 square foot home (that's huge, thats $$$$s) and by way of being good neighbours have homeless drifters they find on the street do chores around the house? And then they either don't have or don't use an alarm system, so this person can walk right in? To me, the Smarts are the ones that are "endagering the welfare of a minor". This Brian David Mitchell would seem to be mentally disturbed at the very minimum, but if Smart hadn't invited him 'round most likely the entire thing would have never happened. Scary thing, that, Elizabeth and the drifter pay the price for what I can only come to the conclusion is irresponsible parenting.
Somehow, we did manage the closure of what I suppose I can only call our own "Annus Horribilis", if I may paraphrase the Queen of England, a year in which death came to my doorstep, and the United States was severely wounded. When I took my friend Peter (not his real name) into Grand Central Station, on Wednesday, the anniversary day of the attacks, it was to show him how the place had been cleaned up.
Peter grew up on Long Island, but lives and works in D.C., working for a Federal Agency as intelligence analyst, dealing with those messy countries we have been going into, this past year. That's why I will leave him his anonymity, there is no sense in putting your friends at risk.
But when we walked into Grand Central they had put one of the bulletin boards back in the hall, the boards that were all over town last year, filled with flyers and notes detailing the missing, put up by relatives and friends and colleagues in the hope their mother, father, brother, sister, uncle was in a hospital somewhere, or wandering the streets with amnesia, or alive under the rubble, the first few days nobody knew there would be no more survivors.
We knew this fairly quickly, the engineers had told me what the temperature was, under there, there was only fire, real fire, under ground, there wasn't any way anybody was still alive, but people, kept hoping against hope there were survivors under there, it became annoying after a while, all those flyers, and then they became memorials.
It is not the same on television, and suddenly it hit us both - Peter, because this was the real thing, he was in shock for a moment, it just not the same on television... and I burst into tears, it all came flooding back in that one instant, in the middle of that huge station, and I wasn't prepared for it.
We didn't get downtown until the next day, I did not want to be part of the huge crowd of attendees, so when we finally went to Ground Zero, on Thursday morning, there was peace and quiet, a few tourists, an eery calm, and Peter was able to see the huge gash that has been rent into downtown Manhattan, the damage to the area surrounding it, and then we were able to walk down Fulton Street to the Seaport, and sit and have lunch outside, and enjoy the late Summer sun, watching the tourist crowd begin to swell around noontime.
There weren't many people in NYC, Wednesday or Thursday, workers stayed home, the streets were empty of cars, unusually. I am glad I came, because I needed to put this thing to bed, the emotional rollercoaster that was so hard to get under control, and perhaps it was Peter who capped it, walking away from Ground Zero: "I am glad I was here, now I understand better what I have worked for, this past year".
You see, it was Peter and his colleagues who helped ship all those well armed young men and women, the aircraft carriers, the F-16s, out to Afghanistan and Pakistan, it is he and his ilk who sent our attackers vengeance, in a calculated, level headed fashion. It is a good thing I didn't bring him up to New York until Wednesday, because, having seen it, the air still ripe as we came out of the subway, he is angry now, and sad. He's touched the scorched earth, where still dozens of dump trucks, now repainted and covered, move tons of rubble out of the pit, where still our technicians are putting miles of fiber optic cable under ground.
So, we both have closure, and we're back at our desks today, doing what we do. God Bless, or whatever it is you say when you run out of words.
Tuesday September 10, 2002
Driving past the Pentagon on my way to work, as I do most mornings, I note a huge searchlight illuminating the side of the building that was damaged in the September 11 attack, now all repaired and "better than new". The airwaves and the papers are full of September 11 programming, it is hard to avoid and I find it unnecessary and overkill, but there you are, Americans are emotional folk. It gives me the same "can't get away from it" feeling I used to have when living in The Netherlands, where year after year World War II is TV-rehashed around Liberation Day.
With a friend, I will spend September 11 in New York City, drawn like a moth to a flame, I guess, it is the only place I can think of to be that day. But I'll mostly be working and meeting with my boss, attending a memorial service later in the day, pay my respects, we really do need to get on and put it behind us. Judging from the Iraq rhetoric flying around, we haven't learned much... :-(
Sunday September 8, 2002
Rumours keep cropping up that Deutsche Telekom in the financial doldrums after overspending in its quest for dominance, will sell Voicestream, its American cellular holding that uses the European GSM system, like most cellular carriers worldwide do. I noticed this morning, though, that Voicestreams Internet domain has been redirected - right, to t-mobile.com, Deutsche Telekom's international cellular brand name, and then I discovered the new Voicestream store right next to the car wash in Fredericksburg, VA, that I use every week - uh, Voicestream? T Mobile, right... DT sell its American prize? I kinda don't think so.....:)
Monday, August 26, 2002
There you go. And the oil needs changing in the car, dear.
Wednesday, July 24, 2002
As we are all fearfully watching what is left of our stockmarket based savings plans, the following gem is doing the rounds - likely written by a beerhead with too much time on their hands:
"If you had bought $1000.00 worth of Nortel stock one year ago, it would now be worth $49.00.
With Enron, you would have $16.50 of the original $1,000.00.
With Worldcom, you would have less than $5.00 left.
If you had bought $1,000.00 worth of Budweiser (the beer, not the stock) one year ago, drank all the beer, then recycled the cans for the deposit, you would have $214.00.
Based on the above, my current investment advice is to drink heavily and recycle."
(The story doesn't say, but my guess is the writer would then advocate reinvesting the savings in more Budweiser)
Monday, July 15, 2002
I first encountered Rod Steiger in the Ray Bradbury story "The Illustrated Man", which I went to see because I was, at the time, a voracious consumer of science fiction - so much so that I think I mostly moved to London because Stanley Kubrick's "2001" was running there on a wide screen, and without subtitles. I saw 2001 11 times - now I just about live in it. While Steiger is probably best known for his role as a sheriff in a small bigoted Southern town ("In the heat of the night" - no, the movie, dumbo!), I also recommend "The Pawnbroker", where he plays a Jewish holocaust survivor shopkeeper in New York City. Otherwise, visit Yahoo's movie page on the man I consider to be one of America's best actors. May he rest in peace, thankfully there is quite a body of work that will let me continue to enjoy his incredible talent.
I keep getting asked if, after Enron and MCI and Global Crossing and all those others, we (Verizon) will be next to belly flop. Nah.... we're not one of those innovative risk taking new enterprises, we're a reasonably staid. conservative, and regulated-to-the-gills phone company. Not only that, over the past decade or so we actually lost most of those individuals who love taking risks and cutting corners, who got jobs in the "new economy" and huuuuuge salaries and stock options dangled in front of them. I have, on occasion, wondered if I was doing right staying where I was, not taking one of those gilt edged offers that were made to me, too, days when two, three recruiters called you to see if "you were ready to leave" yet. So don't worry, friends and customers, most of our agressive risk takers left for greener pastures - we know this because they call us up looking for a job... :)
Went to see my sister late last year, in her hometown of Villeneuve s/Yonne, in France, an hour or so East of Paris, where I shot this picture out the window of the 14th century pharmacy in an almshouse in the village. Just a little of the beaten path, in many areas of Europe, and you're "transported" into the middle ages, just like Star Trek, even your communicator works... Never fails to blow my mind, standing in front of a sign that reads "This rampart was built in the 13th century, after Saxon invaders destroyed its 11th century predecessor, of which unfortunately only the gate remains". Tsk tsk, those terrible barbarians, destroying other people's countryside.... Mind, though, that I live in a country where probably 98% of all buildings are less than 50 years old....
Thursday, May 23, 2002
The prize for the quote of the week, without a shadow of a doubt, goes to Jamie C. Kellner, chief executive of Turner Broadcasting. Speaking about the new breed of digital television recorders, which allow the user to skip commercials, Kellner is quoted in today's New York Times with the following gem:
"The free television that we've all enjoyed for so many years is based on us watching these commercials. There's no Santa Claus. If you don't watch the commercials, someone's going to have to pay for television and it's going to be you."
Right, right, of course, Jamie, brilliant observation. So where did the money for commercial television come from, all these years? Salvation Army? United Way? Humane Society? Or, perhaps we've been paying for it ourselves all along, in the price of our toothpaste, cereal, motor cars, and bottles of Coca Cola? Just a question, Jamie, yes, of course, TV has always been free.... didn't we coin the phrase "free gift", a few years ago? While you're educating us, perhaps you could help me understand that "free gift" - free, as opposed to what? Gifts you pay for? Tsk, tsk......
Thursday, May 16, 2002
Thanks, April, for sending me the joke below. I have no idea who originated it, but it's too funny, New York humour coming back.
A young woman in New York was so depressed that she decided to end her life by throwing herself into the ocean. She went down to the docks and was about to leap into the frigid water when a handsome young sailor saw her tottering on the edge of the pier, crying. He took pity on her and said, "Look, you've got a lot to live for. I'm off to Europe in the
morning, and if you like, I can stow you away on my ship. I'll take good care of you and bring you food every day." Moving closer, he slipped his arm around her shoulder and added, "I'll keep you happy and you'll keep me happy." The girl nodded yes. After all, what did she have to lose? Maybe a fresh start in Europe would give her life new meaning.
That night the sailor smuggled her aboard and hid her in a lifeboat. From then on, every night he took her three sandwiches and a piece of fruit and they made passionate love until dawn. Three weeks later, during a routine inspection, she was discovered by the captain. "What are you doing here?" the captain asked. "I have an arrangement with one
of the sailors," she explained. "I get food and a trip to Europe, and he's screwing me." "He sure is, lady," the captain said. "This is the Staten Island Ferry."
Thursday, May 9, 2002
Among the many murders and assasinations taking place this week the shooting of Dutch right wing politician Pim Fortuyn attracted my attention, not only because I am Dutch, but also because I have never seen the Dutch emote, by the hundreds of thousands, like they do this week.
I wonder whether it was September 11 that showed the normally stoical and unemotional Dutch that it is OK to show your feelings en masse, as they're doing this week. It is somewhat strange to watch all this from afar, and realize your home country really has changed.
The simple fact that a gay academic (I remember him vaguely, we hung out with the same crowd in the 'seventies in Amsterdam) could end up in right-of-center politics, and be viewed as a populist, with a massive following among the indigenous Dutch blue collar population, and among the young-and-restless, is less strange than it may seem from the Anglo-Saxon world. Holland has steadily grown more egalitarian as the decades progressed. Like many openly gay intellectuals, he spoke out loud, only he ended up doing it more publicly than just in the pub on the corner. Gays, after all, learn to fight for their rights from an early age on. I should think Fortuyn and his "integration" platform probably can be related right back to him having to do that selfsame thing, I don't think it is particularly easy being openly gay and still wanting to pursue a successful career. He kind of fits the pattern I remember from my years in Amsterdam and London, erudite, abrasive, new-money-affluent, and opinionated.
The Dutch have a saying: "High trees catch a lot of wind" (actually, in a country as flat as Holland is, *all* trees catch a lot of the ever present wind...:). Combine Fortuyn's high profile with the easy availability of firearms, in Western Europe, and you have all the ingredients for *real* violence. For former Eastern Bloc denizens, it is one of the few things they have in abundance that they can sell there, since firearms were very hard to obtain, in Western Europe, from the end of WW II, and with the EU borders being virtually nonexistent, once you have them inside the EU you can take them anywhere.
Sad, then, here in the States we don't pay an awful lot of attention to a public shooting, shit happens.... Hopefully the Dutch will carry Fortuyn's momentum, and that of his violent death, and do something good with it. It is perhaps too much to hope for, but a political party like Fortuyn's could provide a lot of outlet for the angry and disenfranchized, let them work on their own problems, rather than have society take care of them through a long and involved extremely democratic political process. Perhaps getting involved and seeing that you make a difference would be a good way of handling anger management - anger, after all, often emanates from the feeling of having no power, no way to influence your fate and world hunger, and that is a legitimate emotion that people need help with. We humans tend to breed before we have acquired a lot of wisdom, and if you don't have it, how are you going to teach your children?
They Dutch have built themselves an affluent society, we've always been traders, after all, and we continue to be very good at that. I tend to be met with incredulous stares when I tell my American friends and colleagues tiny Holland is the second largest investor in the US, after Britain, it is always good to stay friends with your former colonies... :) But when I read that some Dutch town councils make sexworkers available to handicapped people as part of their social care program, however sensible and caring that may be, I cannot help but wonder if my fellow countrymen and -women haven't slowly reached the "fat an' happy" stage - dumb they're not.
Tuesday, January 1, 2002
Perhaps 2001 mostly served to (re)teach us about mortality. A few years ago one of my oldest friends, Dik, sat in his hospital bed in Amsterdam, already half paralyzed, and said to me "you know, Menno, the only thing I regret about my life is everything I haven't done, because I will now never get to do those things. You never know when it will all end". He died three weeks later of a brain tumor, a victim of melignant melanoma. Dik was funny, he had asked me to get him some comfortable underpants, the briefs he had were hurting him, and when I came back from the department store (how much underwear do you buy for someone who has only weeks to live?), I put the new underpants away, and he said: "You sure got me enough for the rest of my life". I laughed, then cried, I still miss his dry wit and relentless optimism.
As the lease on my Mitsubishi was up, however much I do love that car, it is going back to the dealer today, and as of yesterday I am driving one of those real American muscle cars that, as a kid, I would dream of owning, looking at the pages of Popular Mechanic magazine: Chevrolet's Camaro Z28, with the 35th Anniversary Special bells and whistles package, of course, and noooooo, it's got a six speed stick, yah... :) I am told this is its last model year, but at any rate, its V8 has that deep rumble that you can feel in your stomach, even as you sit at the lights. A man's gotta have his toys.....
Have a wonderful year, all of you, health and happiness, enjoy life and be good to your neighbours and friends, those, after all, are the people you can really take care of, we often forget how close they are to us, every day.
An interesting article at the BBC News website makes the point that "intensive agriculture had driven many plants and animals out of the rural setting". As it happens, I bought a home in rural Virginia last year, on a plot of land that used to be farmland. In the USA, many farms in the vicinity of urban areas were not large enough for sustainable agriculture in the 20th century, and so were abandoned or given over to development.
While my laundry is droning away somewhere behind me the world is catching fire, and young men and women are dying a gory death in someone else's desert. Iraqis too, the desert belongs to the Bedouins, the aborigines of the Middle East, and neither Saddam's young people nor ours have a right to be there.
gasoline today, up 40 cents on what I would pay in the "good times". I personally think that is what matters to us, George, in the rural area I live in I see families shopping for bargains in the supermarket, clearly having difficulty making ends meet, with the cost of living up, bonuses down and savings plans returning half of what they used to. Considering Schroeder is part of "Old Europe", according to Donald Rumsfeld, I think I'll vote for some of the old, rather than the new. That's my money you're spending, there, Mr. Bush.
in the financial doldrums after overspending in its quest for dominance, will sell Voicestream, its American cellular holding that uses the European GSM system, like most cellular carriers worldwide do. I noticed this morning, though, that Voicestreams Internet domain has been redirected - right, to t-mobile.com, Deutsche Telekom's international cellular brand name, and then I discovered the new Voicestream store right next to the car wash in Fredericksburg, VA, that I use every week - uh, Voicestream? T Mobile, right... DT sell its American prize? I kinda don't think so.....:)
in the Ray Bradbury story "The Illustrated Man", which I went to see because I was, at the time, a voracious consumer of science fiction - so much so that I think I mostly moved to London because Stanley Kubrick's "2001" was running there on a wide screen, and without subtitles. I saw 2001 11 times - now I just about live in it. While Steiger is probably best known for his role as a sheriff in a small bigoted Southern town ("In the heat of the night" - no, the movie, dumbo!), I also recommend "The Pawnbroker", where he plays a Jewish holocaust survivor shopkeeper in New York City. Otherwise, visit Yahoo's movie page on the man I consider to be one of America's best actors. May he rest in peace, thankfully there is quite a body of work that will let me continue to enjoy his incredible talent.
Like many openly gay intellectuals, he spoke out loud, only he ended up doing it more publicly than just in the pub on the corner. Gays, after all, learn to fight for their rights from an early age on. I should think Fortuyn and his "integration" platform probably can be related right back to him having to do that selfsame thing, I don't think it is particularly easy being openly gay and still wanting to pursue a successful career. He kind of fits the pattern I remember from my years in Amsterdam and London, erudite, abrasive, new-money-affluent, and opinionated.
As the lease on my Mitsubishi was up, however much I do love that car, it is going back to the dealer today, and as of yesterday I am driving one of those real American muscle cars that, as a kid, I would dream of owning, looking at the pages of Popular Mechanic magazine: Chevrolet's Camaro Z28, with the 35th Anniversary Special bells and whistles package, of course, and noooooo, it's got a six speed stick, yah... :) I am told this is its last model year, but at any rate, its V8 has that deep rumble that you can feel in your stomach, even as you sit at the lights. A man's gotta have his toys.....