The Enlightenment of Max

Max now on Twitter: @monkeysmax

2011-08-13T12:24:00.000+02:00

Max is moving too

2006-12-29T12:33:00.000+01:00

There seems to be an exodus over to Wordpress and I, ever the follower, have decided to join it. I haven't quite figured Wordpress out yet, but I'll get there, the same way I did with Blogger. Please visit me at my new home (and please update your link if you have one). See you over there.

Love
Max

http://cheekymax.wordpress.com/

Max's America

2006-12-29T10:35:00.000+01:00

A matter of time

2006-12-28T14:08:00.001+01:00

Alcohol is going to be banned on all flights going into, out of or over The New Amerika and the United States of Europe. We are already clearly headed in that direction.

Remember the good old days of trans-Atlantic travel? You would leave LA, let’s say, early in the evening. Once the plane had reached cruising altitude, the service would begin. The waitresses would bring round the drinks trolley and you could have whatever you wanted and it was all free.

“I’d like a gin and tonic, please.”

“Here you are, miss. Why don’t I just give you two drinks now so you won’t have to wait for me to come round again.”

Then they would serve dinner, which always came with wine.

“Would you like red or white? Here, have two bottles – they’re only little.”

Then they would come round again with coffee and liqueurs.

“A brandy? Here, let me give you two, they’ll help you sleep.”

And then they would come round again and again, and whenever you pressed the “drinks, please” button. Or you could go to the galley and ask for something. You were never asked to return to your seat “for security reasons.”

Gradually things started to change. The waitresses got less generous. Sometimes wine was not offered with dinner so you had to ask for it. The practice of serving a digestif was completely forgotten. And then the American carriers started making you pay cash for booze – the ultimate incivility of air travel.

Drunk = unruly = security risk. Apparently.

And then today – one step too far. The Czechs are sensationalising the incident and calling it an attempted hijacking. The Russians are calling it what it more likely was – a drunk passenger raising a ruckus.

And the civil aviation authorities will eventually call it this: a reason to ban the booze. It’s only a matter of time.

The story of the incident in Czech and in English.

Cut and run

2006-12-22T11:59:00.001+01:00

It is clear to me that American troops will not be leaving Iraq anytime in the near future. Time will show, unfortunately, that I was right when I said that a change in the balances of both houses of Congress would not make any material difference.

Dr Condoleezza Rice has just referred to the war in Iraq as an “investment” and has claimed that the cost in lives and dollars is “worth it”. I don’t agree. I would rather have Sam still alive. But I guess when you are in a position of power like Dr Rice, you can’t afford to be sentimental.

Sen. John McCain wants to raise troop levels in Iraq. It is likely that Sen. McCain will run for president in the 2008 elections.

“President” Bush spoke this week of a necessity to increase the overall numbers of men and women in our armed forces.

“…this ideological war we’re in is going to last for a while, and...we’re going to need a military that’s capable of being able to sustain our efforts and help us achieve peace.”

But where are these greater numbers of bodies for our armed forces going to come from? Everyone knows that military recruitment is down and desertion rates have remained high. A draft would be unacceptable, but all of the mechanisms are in place.

Bush still thinks we can win the war in Iraq. He is still claiming that his horrible war that has got horribly out of hand is necessary to protect us from The Evil Terrorists.

Dr Rice claims that when Iraq “emerges as a country that is a stabilising factor, you will have a very different kind of Middle East.” I find it hard to believe that she actually believes that, but, then again, Dr Rice is an academic Sovietologist, not a practical Arabist.

A Jew and a Palestinian go for dinner in a Lebanese restaurant… The food was great and the conversation was challenging. Something we agreed on was that Middle Eastern culture is not the same as Western culture. As much as some people would like to think that we are all so much alike, we simply do not have the same values, morals or perspectives. Your average person in Iraq, for example, couldn’t give a shit about freedom and democracy. Neither is in his history, neither is in his tradition, neither is in his experience and neither fits into his culture.

And we agreed that you simply cannot impose democracy. That is a paradox.

Therefore the war in Iraq is pointless (aside from the oil, obviously). No matter what happens, Iraq is not going to emerge as a democracy and it is not going to stabilise anything. If The Amerika stays in Iraq, we will continue to be a catalyst for violence and we will be sending more of our own men and women to die pointless deaths. The claim that we need to improve the situation before we can leave, that we can’t “cut and run,” is crap. We are never going to be able to make it any better. The only way we can improve the situation in Iraq is by leaving – and the sooner the better.

Max loves the bureaucrats

2006-12-21T21:33:00.000+01:00

An sms sent from Max’s phone Wednesday night at about 6.30:

“Just for your amusement, a report after the živnostenský úřad: if I had had a semi-automatic weapon in my hands, they’d all be dead. Luckily I had Kuba with me and he remained calm. I nearly cried. For real. We achieved neither success nor failure, just an ascent to a new and higher level of absurdity.”

I had gone to the Czech embassy in Bratislava on Monday to turn in an application for a new visa based on my trade licence (živnostenský list). The Czech Republic has a rule that you have to apply for a visa from outside the country. It’s perfectly logical that I should go from Prague to Bratislava to submit my paperwork because, you see, what they do in Bratislava once they are sure that my application is complete, is send it from Bratislava to Prague for processing. And then – get this – when my visa is ready, they will send everything from Prague back to Bratislava so that I can again travel from Prague to Bratislava to pick it up. That must make sense to someone.

I thought that things were finally looking fairly good. It had taken literally a year to get things straightened out with the trade licence office, the financial authority, the social insurance office and the health insurance people – all prerequisites for my visa. I went into work on Tuesday morning feeling pretty proud of myself.

There was some communication with the embassy in Bratislava on Tuesday – just a minor complication with my application that was all straightened out by Wednesday morning. But then on Wednesday at 16.22 I received a fateful email from the embassy informing me that the printed version of my trade licence I had submitted was over 180 days old and I would need to submit a new one.

It did not seem like a serious problem. Kuba had already been on the phone to the trade licence office in Prague 3 to find out what I would need to do and what documents I would need to show in order to change my registered address from Prague 5 to Prague 3. (Since I moved over a year ago, I thought it might be time to make it official.) Kuba had talked to a very nice lady who had said that it would be no problem at all. But suddenly it was an urgent mission, so we left our office at 5 o’clock to go to Prague 3.

I should not have gone. I am usually polite, but generally only when things go my way. I hate bureaucracy, I abhor having to jump through official hoops, and I have no patience for the stupid people that always work in government offices. But because we had gone by tram, Kuba couldn’t tell me to wait in the car.

All I wanted was to officially change my residential address, and I had the requisite notarised statement from my landlord. Then I wanted them to print me a new piece of paper so that I could send it to Bratislava. Easy, right?

The woman was perturbed that I did not currently have a valid residency permit in my passport. Kuba and I explained that I had submitted an application in Bratislava and they just wanted a more recent printout of my trade licence. The woman was perturbed that my trade licence had been issued without an expiration date. I explained that I had had permanent residency when I got it. The woman was perturbed that I had had permanent residency in the past, but didn’t have any residency at all now. I explained divorce. The woman didn’t understand, she didn’t know what to do. She wanted to cancel my trade licence that is good forever because I no longer had permanent residency. She went to talk to her colleague in the next room. The colleague didn’t know anything either.

I begged Jakub to make the woman see reason. Not that he hadn’t been trying.

We went back and forth and round and round and I was just getting angrier and angrier. And frustrated. I don’t hide my feelings well. At one point I just figured I was never going to get a visa or anything, and I threw my folders down onto the table. It was frustration, and not aimed at anyone, but the woman took it personally.

Kuba, bless him, remained calm and cool and smiley and friendly for the entire 30 minutes we were there. He had the presence of mind to ask about the woman’s supervisor. She had already left the office but would be in tomorrow so he left his card for her and took hers. Finally we left.

And as soon as we got outside, Kuba started swearing and he was as angry as I was and as disgusted by the woman’s stupidity and lack of sympathy and unwillingness to help us. I was surprised - he had been so perfect inside the office.

And nothing was solved today – the supervisor was no help at all. In fact, she seemed to be as totally clueless as her worker bees. Tomorrow we try a new strategy – appealing to Bratislava.

Max was away

2006-12-19T15:51:00.000+01:00

Vianoční trh v Bratislavě

How the story ends

2006-12-12T13:29:00.000+01:00

I woke up this morning just before 6 o’clock (not on purpose, obviously). I looked at my phone and immediately wondered what had gone wrong with the mission because the screen said “15 missed calls”. But I quickly determined that those calls were actually part of a different story, which I will not go into here.

About 10 minutes later, I received a text message from A.

He was so nice, did not even look at the money, and handed me the becherovka saying that he couldn’t take it! I am so happy and relieved. This was worth getting up so early! Radim & you especially have made my day!!

Radim was the conductor’s name.

As I later told A. in an email, I actually found it very satisfying to have achieved something in the “old” way. It may have been time-consuming, but then so is making bread by hand (also v satisfying).

And A. took the time to explain to me why she needed Kolja. I found it interesting, so here are A.’s words.

for the second year in a row i am teaching about communism and postcommunism in central&eastern europe to a group of american students on a semester-long exchange program - figuring that 1) students would die of boredom if i lectured at them at every single class, and 2) a picture (or many) is worth a thousand words, i put three films on the syllabus: man of marble (poland, soc-realism), kolja (czech republic, transitioning), & goodbye lenin (germany, nostalgia).

and no film shows late communism and the revolution into postcommunism better than "kolja"!!

And there you have it - a story with a happy ending.

Max's Monday Mission

2006-12-11T22:36:00.000+01:00

A. had called me while I was in Paris, so I knew what I would have to do after work today. Sure enough, there was an email waiting for me this morning informing me that she had not been able to solve her problem in Kraków, and she would indeed need me to step in.

A. is a professor of sociology at the university in Kraków. She teaches Polish students in Polish and foreign students in English. For reasons unknown to me, she was planning on showing a Czech film to foreign students in a class tomorrow. On Friday, A. had discovered that her dvd of the film with subtitles in English was missing. She had another copy of the film, but it had only Polish subtitles. She searched high and low, calling every dvd place in Kraków, and even some in Warsaw, trying to locate a copy of the film with English subtitles. No one had it.

A. saw two options. The first was to watch the film with Polish subtitles and take it upon herself to provide simultaneous interpretation into English. The second was to have a dvd with English subtitles purchased in Prague and sent to her. The only friend in Prague A. felt she could ask to do such a thing was Max. As providing simultaneous interpretation would be difficult and exhausting, A. much preferred the second option.

As a result of our phone conversation on Friday, A. knew that I would not get back to Prague until very late on Sunday night, and I would only be able to do something on Monday. She formulated a plan, and sent it to me on a self-destructing tape – actually, in an e-mail. My mission, should I choose to accept it, was to purchase a dvd, take it to the overnight train that goes from Prague to Kraków, and entrust it to a conductor. A. would meet the train in Kraków, give the conductor some money for his trouble, and collect the dvd.

My first thought was that this was going to be a goddamn pain in the ass. My second thought was that I needed to look at it differently and treat it as an important mission that would actually be fun. I chose the second perspective.

I checked the train timetable on the internet at work. The train was departing Praha hlavní nádráží at 20.55, which gave me plenty of time. I talked to Kuba about my mission, to get a Czech opinion as to whether a conductor would accept the package. He said, “Well, 20 years ago for sure, but I don’t know about now. Take some booze for the conductor.” I spoke to Jono about it over email, and he suggested that perhaps if a conductor wouldn’t take it, a traveller would. All good advice.

Upon leaving work just after 18.00, I went straight to Bontonland, where I knew they would have the dvd I needed. They did. I made my purchase and then went to a supermarket where I bought a half-litre bottle of Becherovka. Then I went to Jáma to wait until it was time to go to the station.

I texted A. to inform her of my progress to that point. I took out the envelope I had brought with me, and wrote her name, the station, and her phone number on it. I drank a small beer, read my book, and talked to some people I knew. Then it was time to go for the only part of my mission that could possibly go awry. I made my way to the station.

I watched the departure board until the platform number came up. The train was not yet there, so I had to wait a few more minutes. The train pulled in at about 20.35, so I had loads of time before it would be leaving. I located a sleeping car that was going only to Kraków rather than on to Warsaw. There were two conductors standing outside. I didn’t know if what I was going to ask was kosher, so I would have preferred only one conductor, but I didn’t have a choice so I went for it.

I turned to the younger of the two conductors and told him that I had a request. I explained that I had a small package for a friend in Kraków and that she would be at the station and that it was just a dvd, as opposed to anything dodgy. I took the dvd out of the unsealed envelope to show him. His only question was if she would be giving him some money at the other end. I said that yes, she would give him some money. I also informed him that it was very important because she needed it for a class tomorrow. He agreed to take the package. I showed him that A.’s phone number was on the envelope just in case. He said, “In case she oversleeps?” I said that she would not, that she would certainly be at the station. He reminded me that the train would be getting into Kraków głowny at 5.47. I assured him that A. would be there.

And then I said that there was something else and took the bottle of Becherovka out of my bag. He asked if that was also for her, and I said that no, it was a gift for him to thank him for his trouble. He said that he couldn’t accept it. I said, well, please take it anyway. If you don’t want it, my friend will be happy to have it. I hoped by saying that that he would take it for himself. He then accepted the bottle, so I will find out tomorrow whether or not he eventually passed it on to A. I confirmed the number of his wagon with him and got his name.

The conductor took the package inside the train, I texted A. to give her the crucial information, and I left to go home, proud of a job well done.

2006-12-07T04:00:00.000+01:00

Max is away
I am posting this early because I have to leave my house at 4 a.m. on Thursday to catch a 6 o'clock flight.
Happy birthday to me!

Jackass

2006-12-04T15:28:00.000+01:00

On today’s episode of Jackass, Gwyneth Paltrow earns her stripes as the latest spoiled American celebrity twit to put her foot right into her mouth.

Gwyneth Paltrow is an accomplished actress. Her husband Chris Martin is an amazing musician. They named their first child Apple. Whatever. I think that’s a pretty stupid name, but it’s not my style to criticise a personal choice of people I don’t even know. Neither am I a celebrity worshipper, but I have always had some kind of respect for Gwyneth Paltrow.

Until today, when I read excerpts from an interview Gwyneth Paltrow did with a Portuguese newspaper. Some of the quotes may have been taken out of context – I know that can happen – but it still seems that she talked absolute shite. Let’s take a look at some of Gwynnie’s remarks.

Gwyneth said:

I love the English lifestyle, it’s not as capitalistic as America.

Max responds:

What are you, a fucking socialist? Is your problem capitalism, or did you actually mean to criticise our consumerism? Either way, you are an ignorant twat. Do you ever go down to Oxford Street at the weekend? Do you have any idea how much debt the average Brit has? Do you have any idea why? Yes, Gwynnie, that would be capitalism and consumerism – no less amongst your beloved limeys than amongst your reviled compatriots back home.

Gwyneth said:

People don’t talk about work and money, they talk about interesting things at dinner.

People talk about interesting and mundane things everywhere. If you are at a dinner and the conversation is dull, perhaps you should look at what you are contributing to it instead of making sweeping - and stupid - generalisations.

Gwyneth said:

I like living here because I don’t fit into the bad side of American psychology.

Max responds:

I won’t even pretend to know what you mean by “the bad side of American psychology.” I never shot up my high school either.

Gwyneth said:

The British are much more intelligent and civilized than the Americans.

Max responds:

You really are an idiot, aren’t you? Generalisations are dangerous, blondie. Civilized? You have obviously never been out in Nottingham on a Saturday night. It gets pretty rough. You have, however, proved your point about intelligence. Thanks for setting a great example for all of us.

On the subject of Madonna (the pop star, not the mother of God), Gwyneth said:

She's like an older sister. Everything I have gone through, she went through ten times worse and ten times longer. She gives me good advice about how to say no and take care of myself.

Max responds:

Guess what, Gwynnie? The limeys don’t like Madonna either. They just ignore her and hope that she’ll eventually fuck off back to New Jersey.

Anyway, I know you are being slammed all over the press and all over the internet for your stupid comments. Good. Maybe you’ll learn something from all of this, for example that spoiled, over-privileged, conceited egoists that think they are better than the rest of us should keep their fucking little mouths shut. I suggest you lie low and avoid doing any interviews for a while. Or have your larynx removed.

Adam

2006-12-01T16:20:00.000+01:00

Salvador Dalí: Persistence of Memory

I just saw this headline: “Studies say chemotherapy causes brain damage.”
I immediately thought of Adam.

Adam was diagnosed with a brain tumour in December of 2001. The doctors did everything they could, but Adam died 2½ years later. He was 32.

At different times during his treatment, Adam had brain surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and I don’t know what else. I don’t know which of those things, or what combination, caused the brain damage, but he had brain damage. He found it difficult to read, he couldn’t concentrate on anything for more than a few minutes, and his balance and coordination were damaged. And he lost his memory.

One day, I don’t remember exactly when, or even whether I was in Prague or Guildford at the time, Adam called me.

Max, it’s Adam.

And he told me how he had lost his memory and how he was piecing it back together person by person and that Dan had just talked about me and Adam had remembered me. Now Adam wanted help remembering Prague and the places and the people that we had in common. Adam was completely unashamed and honest.

I don’t remember much, Max. But I remember that we worked together and I remember that you were a lot of fun to be out with.

I think we talked for about 45 minutes. Adam asked me questions about our office and the people and who sat where. He asked me how we had met, and he remembered that we had stayed out till 4 a.m. the night before his first day at work. We talked about the places he knew in Prague, where he had lived for only 3 or 4 months before his diagnosis, and the people that he had just been getting to know. It was a beautiful conversation because I could hear the joy in Adam’s voice as more and more pieces fell into place and he got a bit of his past back.

I don’t think about Adam that often anymore. It’s nice to get a bit of my past back too.

E pluribus recta

2006-11-29T15:58:00.000+01:00

Sometimes I am amazed at the facts I can pick up whilst wandering semi-aimlessly through the labyrinth of knowledge and fantasy that we call the interweb.

Today I learned that E pluribus unum is no longer the national motto of The Amerika. E pluribus unum, for those few of you who may not speak Latin, means “From many, one,” and it originally alluded to the uniting of the 13 colonies to create The Amerika. The motto was first selected in 1776 and features prominently in the Great Seal of The Amerika.

As a motto, E pluribus unum is very cool. I like the fact that it is in Latin because I am a geek. I like that besides reflecting the beginnings of The Amerika, the motto reflects the diverse plurality of our contemporary society. I like that it is all-inclusive.

In contrast, our current motto sucks. “In God We Trust” has been the official motto since 1956, although it first appeared on coins in 1864. The slogan “In God We Trust” was made up as a reaction to pressure from obsessed Christians during the Civil War. And as a theory, I would guess that it became our official motto in the 1950s as a reaction to the godless atheism of those pinko Russkie commies. Which is, as you probably know, also how a reference to God got into the Pledge of Allegiance.

I came to the topic of mottos today when Crooks and Liars led me to Pam’s article about the new US $1 coins. It seems that both mottos, the cool Latin one and the creepy superstitious religious one, are going to be engraved on the sides of the new coins instead of the front or back. Much like British £1 coins have their varying inscriptions around the edges. And, guess what – the Christians are pissed off that the reference to God is not going to be as obviously visible as it is on our other coins. You can read their whining here.

I know that the US Mint doesn’t give a shit what Max thinks about the coins, but here we go. You should remove the reference to God completely. You are alienating atheists, and you are alienating people who do believe in God (or whatever), but find it vulgar that you continue to associate God with money. Hasn’t it ever dawned on you that the association is in extremely poor taste?

That’s it. I don’t really care what the money says or where the words appear. As far as I’m concerned, the new dollar coins could say “FUCK OFF WORLD” right across George Washington’s forehead. Oh, and by the way, the new coins might not be worth very much by the time they get into circulation next February.

Twin Terrors

2006-11-28T12:33:00.000+01:00

Disclaimer:
This post is not an attack on Jenna and Barbara Bush. I understand that most 25 year old girls are a bit stupid, and it’s not their fault that their dad is the worst “president” ever. I cannot explain the secret service’s disinterest in protecting the girls, but it seems that they don’t hold the wellbeing of their charges as a top priority. I would also like to add that everything in this post is hearsay.

The news has offered some entertaining stories about the Bushettes in Argentina over the last couple of days. There was the handbag that was stolen under the watchful eyes of the secret service, alleged nudity in hotel corridors (according to an Argentinean tabloid), and reports of further episodes of lax security. There was also the rumour, later denied, that the US embassy in Buenos Aires had requested that they leave the country.

Every time I see a headline about a Bushette, I am reminded of one of the stories I heard when Jenna was spending a summer in Prague. She was staying at the ambassador’s residence, and the lads of the Marine Security Guard detachment at the embassy were often recruited to accompany her out. I knew several of the marines that were here back then, and I heard the following story from a few of them.

Some of the Marines were out in a bar with Jenna, and the boys were explaining to her that only half of them could drink at any one time. Even when not on guard duty at the embassy, they were on call and at least half of them had to be stone cold sober. After the boys had completed their explanation, Jenna thought for a minute and then asked, “What do you do with the other half of your drinks then?”

For real.

Max's Swimsuit Edition

2006-11-26T13:42:00.000+01:00

Daniel Craig

Neo-Enlightenment

2006-11-25T17:57:00.000+01:00

I have just watched a clip of Richard Dreyfuss on “Real Time with Bill Maher” over at Miss Mickey’s blog, Future Corpse. To use Miss Mickey’s words, Richard Dreyfuss’ words are “powerful and inspiring”. To me, Dreyfuss’ message was about taking personal responsibility. Here is some of what he said.

The clip started off with Dreyfuss pointing out that a fundamental problem is that we, the people, don’t really know what’s going on as far as what our government is actually doing and the reasons they have for their actions. He reminded us of something Dan Rather had said, that the press does not ask certain questions anymore. Dreyfuss expanded that to include the people, stating that we do not ask questions of our government.

Maher questioned whether people know anymore what civics is.

Drefuss defined civics as, “learning of the tools of maintaining a republican democracy.”

He pointed out that it was an idea held by the founding fathers that the people are sovereign. He then spoke about the problem of “who whispers in the sovereign’s ear,” which he defined as “Rupert Murdoch, the guy who owns Viacom and the guy who owns ABC.” And, of course, we don’t know if they also have their own agenda.

But back to personal responsibility…

“Unless the society stands against certain things, they will have endorsed certain things, like torture, leaving the Geneva Convention, and lying to the Congress about the reasons for war.”

Dreyfuss mentioned that the legislative and judicial branches of government have dropped the ball, that they are not doing “their duty” to keep the executive branch in check, to keep the president’s powers within a limited scope. Which will be even more dangerous for the future than it is for the present.

…and then back to civics and personal responsibility…

“You can actually learn the constancy of curiosity and the constancy of outrage. You can learn that it is okay to keep asking the questions and to be dissenters. And if you don’t, if you’re not taught it, then you don’t know it. But we owe ourselves and the United States that we will pass off to our children to relearn the tools of reason, logic, clarity, dissent, civility and debate. And those things are the non-partisan basis of democracy, and without them you can kiss this thing goodbye.”

I have nothing more to add.

The clip and Miss Mickey’s words are here.

Get your kid out of my face - I’m not interested

2006-11-22T16:42:00.000+01:00

A funny thing happens to people when they have children. First, they consider that their new baby is the centre of the universe and the most exciting thing ever. That’s great. But then some parents take that a step too far by forgetting that their baby is merely the centre of their universe, and other people just aren’t really interested.

I have been excited by a few babies in my lifetime: my own Little Sister, my nephews and my niece, and the babies of a few close friends. That’s it. Babies just don’t do it for me. I think they generally look like cabbages for about 6 months, and they don’t do anything even remotely entertaining for at least a year. I don’t ask other people if I can hold their babies, and I don’t stop to admire babies in their prams. I don’t volunteer to baby-sit and I don’t change diapers.

Today I saw a headline on the Huffington Post that said: “Mothers Protest Airlines with Nationwide Airport Nurse-In”. Cool, I thought, I like protests in airports, so I went on to read the Washington Post article: Mothers Rally to Back Breast-Feeding Rights.

In spite of my non-fascination with babies, I am all in favour of breastfeeding. So as I read the article, I was waiting to be offended on behalf of breastfeeding mothers everywhere. Imagine my surprise when I found myself instead offended by the mothers, and specifically by the breastfeeding mother who had been escorted off a plane, thereby inspiring the protests.

First, the “baby” she was breastfeeding was not a baby. The Washington Post story had said only “toddler”, but looking round I found the kid was 22 months old. Yuck. But more importantly, the flight attendant involved in the incident had not told the mother that she could not breastfeed, s/he had merely asked her to cover up.

I would have done the same.

The protesting ladies say that breastfeeding is “normal” and “natural”. So it is, ladies, but so are masturbation and having sex. We don’t participate in either of those activities on airplanes, now do we? Certainly not without covering up!

I do accept that breastfeeding is good for babies. And I guess some women like having their nipples sucked raw several times a day. I completely support the right of women to breastfeed on airplanes. BUT I DON’T WANT TO SEE IT!!!

I don’t care how natural it is, I don’t want to be forced to look at your brat sucking your tit. Okay? Got it? Go ahead and breastfeed, but cover up and be discreet. The rest of the world is not enthralled by your child or your bovine motherhood rites.

Thank you.

The Draft Again

2006-11-21T12:23:00.000+01:00

Okay, so this morning I was reading stories about Rep. Charles “Insanity” Rangel and his 2^nd proposal for a military draft. I had read about it yesterday, but as the general consensus was that Rangel’s proposed legislation wouldn’t go anywhere, I was not inspired to write about it.

Then today I came across a story on ABC News about the current high school drop-out epidemic.

“A recent study by the Department of Education found that 31 percent of American students were dropping out or failing to graduate in the nation’s largest 100 public school districts.”

The article doesn’t mention the military as a consequence of dropping out of school; it discusses only poverty, crime and shortened life span in that context. But I can make that leap myself. The poverty draft has come up on these pages before. And it is well-known that the military will take recruits without diplomas and with the promise of a GED (high school equivalency exam).

This all got me thinking further. I remembered that the US confers citizenship as a reward for military service. And then I wondered if military service is ever offered as an alternative to jail time or criminal prosecution. It was easy enough to find an answer because it is a real issue. According to about.com, courts did sometimes offer the choice of jail or the military during the time of the Korean and Vietnam wars. But the military’s current recruiting regulations forbid accepting such cases. If they are following their own rules, which is doubtful.

“There’s no way to recruit within the rules and be successful.” – a recently retired army recruiting-station commander. (as quoted in Vanity Fair, September 2005, see Max.)

But “Insanity” Rangel says, “I don’t see how anyone can support the war and not support the draft.” And Senator John McCain wants to substantially increase the number of US troops in Iraq. And I am very sorry because I don’t believe in the incoming Democratic Congress and I do believe that the future is uncertain.

I found an interesting article on CNN, of all places. It’s all about how we are already ready for a draft. Of course, Selective Service. According to the article, 93% of men between the ages of 18 and 26 have registered, as required by law.

And then it’s all would we, wouldn’t we… well, this is how we’ll do it if… (kind of O.J. Simpson style, I thought).

Basically, if we do raise troop levels in Iraq or start a war somewhere else, we will need a draft. The only way to avoid a draft would be to significantly raise volunteer levels. Volunteer levels “surge” when The Amerika is attacked. Two examples: Pearl Harbor and 9/11 – both attacks that the government could have prevented, but chose not to. Hmm, makes you think…

For a detailed outline of “What Happens in a Draft”, see the Selective Service website.

CNN's Offensive Pig

2006-11-17T16:59:00.001+01:00

White people campaigning for Keith Ellison

I finally had a chance today to watch this clip on Media Matters. It has provided another point for the long list of reasons why I hate CNN.

The clip is CNN’s Glenn Beck interviewing Keith Ellison, the first Muslim ever to be elected to Congress.

Actually, it is not an interview at all – perhaps that came later. The clip is mostly Beck’s disclaimer, in which he prefaces his ridiculous ‘non-accusation’ with statements along the lines of, “I have Muslim friends, I have been to mosques, I love Muslims.” All stupid declarations that warn you that he is about to say something exceptionally idiotic. And then he did.

“I have been nervous about this interview with you, because what I feel like saying is, ‘Sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies.’…I’m not accusing you of being an enemy, but that’s the way I feel, and I think a lot of Americans will feel that way.”

Very much to his credit, Ellison handled the ‘non-accusation’ well, responding in an intelligent and controlled manner, and without becoming defensive. Perhaps he was seething on the inside. I would have been.

Glenn “Offensive Pig” Beck may as well have said, “Sir, you are not white and you are not Christian. What gives you a right to sit in the House of Representatives?”

And Beck obviously had not done his homework. Ellison has been open and forthcoming about his religion and what it means for him in a political context. A quick google search turned up these quotes from May 2006:

“I think it’s time for the United States to see a moderate Muslim voice, to see a face of Islam that is just like everybody else’s face. Perhaps it would be good for somebody who is Muslim to be in Congress, so that Muslims would feel like they are part of the body politic and that other Americans would know that we’re here to make a contribution to this country.”

“My faith informs me. My faith helps me to remember to be gentle, kind, considerate, fair, respectful. But I don’t make my faith something that other people have to deal with.”

Beck also made the statement that Ellison’s district was “heavily immigrant with Somalians”, and went on to imply that Ellison had only won his seat in Congress because his district is Muslim. I did not find information as to how many Somalians live in Minnesota’s 5^th district, but I did find here that the population of the district is only 23% minority. What this means to me, is that some of the people that voted for Ellison must have been white and non-Muslim.

Beck made a complete arse of himself. His comments were nothing more than a blatant and shameful display of racism and ignorance. Not really surprising on CNN.

* Keith Ellison quotes from The Hill.

O.J. Simpson – What a Cunt

2006-11-16T11:36:00.000+01:00

On the 27^th and 29^th of this month, those of you in The New Amerika can watch on TV as the murderer O.J. Simpson describes how he killed Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman in 1994.

“O.J. Simpson: If I Did It, Here's How It Happened” – brought to you by Fox Television.

Now, if I had killed my ex-husband* and got away with it, the last thing I would do would be to describe to the world how I had actually done it. I would keep quiet, continue my charade of innocence, and not draw attention to myself in hopes that the world would eventually lose interest and leave me in peace. And even more so if I had children because I would want them to be left in peace (the poor motherless things).

But not O.J. Simpson, because he is an absolute cunt. His 2-part television interview is timed to coincide with the release of his book, If I Did It** (for which he was reportedly paid $3.5 million).

O.J. Simpson stood trial for murder and was acquitted. Practically all of the evidence had pointed to his guilt, but the jury was too star-struck or too retarded or too something to reach the correct verdict. Or maybe it was that the prosecutors had fucked up. Or the judge. Or that the investigating policeman was a racist. Who knows. Maybe Simpson’s book will also offer a theory on that. But because Simpson was tried and acquitted, he cannot be tried again for the same crime.

“…nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb…” – Article V, Bill of Rights.

So Simpson is protected by the law against “double jeopardy” as he was protected by his right to trial by jury and as he is now protected by his right to freedom of speech.

You go, O.J. I hope your children hate you.

* I did not kill my ex-husband; he killed himself.

** Published by HarperCollins. Fox and HarperCollins - both owned by News Corp, the company founded and controlled by that amoral neo-con arse-licker Rupert Murdoch.

More on 9/11

2006-11-14T12:44:00.000+01:00

I was over at Stop the Lie yesterday where I found an article about a symposium that had taken place at UC Berkeley on Saturday. The all-day event, called Lifting the Fog was dedicated to examination of the destruction of the World Trade Center through real science and use of the Scientific Method.

This is exactly what I am talking about. I know people think I am a whacked-out conspiracy theorist. Fine – use whatever label you want. But the participants in the Lifting the Fog symposium are real scientists who have done real research and have found evidence that conflicts with The 9/11 Commission Report.

Lifting the Fog does not claim that the neo-cons were behind 9/11, or that aliens hijacked the planes, or that Osama bin Laden is hiding on Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas. What Lifting the Fog does say is, ‘Here is our evidence. It does not match with the “official” story. We are calling for a wider investigation.’

Through the story on the symposium, I found the Journal of 9/11 Studies, an online collection of articles “covering the whole of research related to 9/11/2001.” One of the editors of the journal, Steven Jones, is one of the key people from Lifting the Fog. As a well-respected professor of physics at BYU, Dr. Jones represents the high level of science behind these projects.

As I said when I reviewed Loose Change, and it bears repeating here, “the only fact is that we don’t know what really happened on 9/11.”

Meanwhile, the other Max has ordered copies of the 9/11 Commission Report for us and we are both also reading alternative theories of what happened and we are starting the Max² Think Tank. We’ll figure things out eventually. Anyone care to join us?

Lifting the Fog’s own website is here.

Change afoot?

2006-11-09T12:08:00.000+01:00

I have been asked for my reaction to the outcome of this week’s elections in The New Amerika.

When I woke up on Wednesday morning and heard on the radio that the Democrats had taken over the House of Representatives, I thought that was better than if they had not. When I got home last night and heard that Donald Rumsfeld had resigned, I got a bit more interested. And then this morning when I woke up, I heard that Jim Webb had won the senate race in Virginia and so the Democrats had taken over the Senate too. That brought a smile to my face.

However, I find it hard to believe that there will be any substantial changes in policy in Washington. The only reason that Democrats look good is that we compare them to Republicans, who are mostly slimy, corrupt, power-hungry, immoral, loudmouth liars. But Democrats too vote in favour of laws that go against our Constitution. Democrats too are interfering with our rights as free people.

I have twice written about the Military Commissions Act of 2006:
Overwhelmed and bewildered…again, and
Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Überpresident.

Keith Olbermann has also spoken out strongly against the Military Commissions Act, although his videos that I had linked from here have been removed from YouTube “due to terms of use violation.”

Today I am not going to write about the Act itself, only about how many Democrats voted for it.

In the House of Representatives, 34 Democrats voted “aye” and 7 registered a “no vote”. In the Senate, 12 Democrats voted “yea”. Therefore even if the balances in both houses had already changed, the Military Commissions Act would still have gone through.

I’ve got another one for you: the John Warner National Defense Authorization Act of 2007. Hidden in there is a provision that revises the Insurrection Act and basically repeals the Posse Comitatus Act.

Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont had this to say about it:

“It also should concern us all that the [Act] includes language that subverts solid, longstanding posse comitatus statutes that limit the military’s involvement in law enforcement, thereby making it easier for the President to declare martial law.”

For a complete analysis that should scare the shit out of you, I recommend this article by Frank Morales.

And here are the numbers. In the House of Representatives, 168 Democrats voted for the John Warner National Defense Authorization Act of 2007. In the Senate, the Act passed by “Unanimous Consent”.

Is anything going to change in Washington because the Democrats are now the majority in both houses of Congress? I really doubt it, but I would love to be proved wrong.

Darwinian Demo

2006-11-08T10:59:00.000+01:00

Survival of the fittest - I remember learning that term in grade school. I have been fascinated ever since by the concept that it represents, and I love seeing it at work. I am a big fan of the Darwin Awards.

Imagine my delight this morning when my eyes hit upon this headline: Woman fatally bitten by snake in church. Please, I thought as I clicked on the headline, don’t let it be a cleaning lady finding a snake under a bucket. I want to read about crazy bible thumpers who speak in tongues and believe in George W. Bush and the Rapture. My atheist prayer was answered.

Kentucky. East London Holiness Church. Snakes handled as part of religious worship. Crackheads.

But I learned something. I had known for a long time that some people play with venomous snakes in church, but I never knew why. According to the Yahoo! news story, it says in the Bible that a true believer will have the ability to “take up serpents” without coming to any harm. I wondered where in the Bible, and even which Bible.

A quick Wikipedia search gave me all the answers I wanted, including the history of snake handling and the passage at Mark 16:18.

They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.

So now that this woman has died of a snakebite, should we expect that the rest of the congregation will learn something and leave off with the snakes? Apparently not. According to Wiki, a bite is explained by the fact that the woman’s faith was not strong enough or that she had sinned or that God was sending a message.

Good work, Darwin.

In satura veritas

2006-11-07T15:59:00.000+01:00

In satire there is truth. From The Huffington Post:

“So tomorrow is the big day. That’s when we go out and vote for a bunch of people who we think are going to suck less than the last people we voted for. But come on, let’s be honest -- even the new people we’re voting for are eventually going to suck just as much -- if they don’t already.”

These are the opening sentences of a very funny blog by Josh Jennings. Whilst the rest of the blog made me laugh a lot, it was clearly written as satire – in contrast to the opening lines, which, though tongue-in-cheek, are just the plain truth.

There are many reasons why I have not voted since the presidential election in 2004. One is that I believe that our elections are no longer free and fair (see my post of Sunday, 5 November below). Another is that it is one of the ways in which I can demonstrate my belief that our system of government is not legitimate, i.e. by not participating in it. A third is that I am not sure if absentee ballots are ever even counted. I know my vote for president is not counted in the state of California because the results are always decisive before postal votes are (or would be) tallied.

But my main reason for not voting can be expressed exactly how Josh Jennings put it. All politicians suck. Democrats might be better than Republicans and Libertarians might be better than both, but comparing politicians is like trying to rate whose shit smells less. You really just don’t want to be sniffing at any of it.

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
- Lord Acton’s dictum (1887)

Max’s Time Travels

2006-11-06T11:59:00.000+01:00

Welcome to another episode of Max’s Time Travels. Today, boys and girls, we travel back in time to August 1974. Are you ready?

But let’s start in the present. This morning I was reading a story about a hidden camera investigation at Orlando International Airport. What the investigation found, surprise surprise, is that TSA-Fatherland Security workers are inefficient and don’t know how to do their jobs, and that Aviation Authority workers are blind morons.

I think we have all noticed unattended bags in airports. My reaction to an unattended bag is instant suspicion, which is obviously a result of having spent a lot of time in Israel. If I see a bag which appears to be unattended, I will first look around for the idiot who left it there – he is often easily recognised by the gormless look on his face. I will speak to him and admonish him and command that he stay with his bag.

If I cannot spot the bag’s owner, I will speak up and ask in a loud voice whose bag it is. If no one claims the bag, I will report it straight away to an airline or security worker.

In contrast, TSA and Aviation Authority workers paid no attention at all to bags left unattended at the airport in Orlando, including one left for an hour just outside the Aviation Authority Office.

But I am not going to write about how pathetic some airport workers are, with their imagined authority and overall uselessness. And I am not even going to write about Rep. John Mica, Chairman of the Aviation Subcommittee, whose reaction upon being told of the bag that sat by itself for one hour was, “It doesn’t bother me – did it explode? That doesn’t pose a risk.”

Because I promised you time travel, so here we go…

The same article explains why one might need to be concerned about unattended bags: “Bombs in several airports, including Los Angeles (1974), Frankfurt (1985), Seoul (1986) and Algiers (1992) took multiple lives and injured scores of people.” I read that line and did a double-take. Los Angeles? 1974? I never knew about that. So I did some research (this is the going back in time part).

It was easy to find what had happened. A bomb had been left in a coin-operated public locker in Terminal 2, between the Pan Am and Korean Airlines counters. It exploded on the morning of 6 August 1974 at 8.10 PDT.

According to the Los Angeles Fire Department Historical Archive, the bomb killed 4 people and injured “at least a score”. According to Wikipedia, 2 were killed and 17 injured. According to the NBC Evening News, 2 were killed and 39 injured (Vanderbilt University’s Television News Archive).

It took quite a bit longer to find out who had placed the bomb, and I finally found that on msnbc. It was the Alphabet Bomber, which was something that finally sounded familiar to me. The Alphabet Bomber, as he had been named by the media, was a Yugoslav immigrant named Muharem Kurbegovich, who called himself “Aliens of America”, although he acted alone. For details of his other activities, see the link above.

Kurbegovich was arrested on the 21st of August 1974.

I was 8 years old in 1974 and I was away at summer camp at the time, which would explain why I had never before known that the airport in my hometown had been bombed that August.

Free and Fair?

2006-11-05T21:31:00.000+01:00

If you are American and you still think that we have free and fair elections, then you are either ignorant or delusional or you have been living as a hermit in the forest for the past decade or so.

Some of the stories have eventually become mainstream news, so we have all been made aware of problems with electronic voting machines, long lines at the polls, and discrimination based on race, age or socio-economic status. But many people still do not want to admit that these sorts of things can happen in the United States of America.

Well, folks, get your heads out of your butts because voting problems are rampant in The New Amerika. Today I found an article in Mother Jones entitled Just Try Voting Here: 11 of America’s Worst Places to Cast a Ballot (or Try). In the article, Sasha Abramsky presents a list that is not exhaustive, but is representative of the problems with the polling systems in many of our states. The cases that Abramsky highlights are not merely suspected, hypothetical or alleged. In fact, they are all documented obstructions that are proven to keep people from voting or voting effectively.

I will not repeat or summarise what Abramsky has written. Please follow the link above and read the article for yourself.

The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything. - Josef Stalin

Cheney, you're a dick

2006-10-31T12:44:00.000+01:00

Insurgents in Iraq have not increased their attacks in order to influence US mid-term elections. They are not “very sensitive to the fact that we’ve got an election scheduled.” In fact, the insurgents in Iraq couldn’t fucking care less.

Guess what, you moronic dinosaur, insurgents in Iraq have increased their attacks because they hate Americans and they are really pissed off, which is thanks to your regime’s bullshit war on terror and the subsequent illegal and immoral occupation of their country. Why don’t you try to tell us again how they hate us because we are free?

The insurgents don’t give a rat’s ass about elections in The New Amerika because they don’t see a difference between red state and blue state, Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, Green, whatever. All they see is The Enemy. Attacks will not subside if the Democrats become the majority in the House.

And I see what you are doing with all of your talk about how the terrorists are using the internet. I know your regime would really like to have exclusive control of the web. It all goes with the Orwellian Ministry of Truth your slimy mate Rumsfeld is setting up over at the Pentagon.

Here’s what Dick said on Fox News:

“There isn’t anything that’s on the internet that’s not accessible to them. They’re on it all the time. They’re very sophisticated users of it.”

Well, hello, you ignorant cretin, everything on the internet is accessible to everyone everywhere all the time (except where repressive governments interfere, much as you would like to). And even schoolchildren are sophisticated users.

Dick just likes to throw things out there and scare some people. He would like you to believe that if you don’t vote Republican, things in Iraq will get much worse and terrorists will be on your doorstep by morning.

He wants you to believe that his regime must control the internet in order to keep the terrorists from getting and disseminating information. And you’ve got no problem with that until you realise that you won’t get to use the internet freely anymore either.

Dick wants you to believe a lot of things that are nothing more than twisted lies.

If you believe Dick, we’re all fucked.

Newsflash

2006-10-31T08:05:00.000+01:00

Newsflash: Pentagon to open Ministry of Truth

Wanted for immediate employment: fiction and fantasy writers, no experience necessary, training will be provided. Membership in any neo-con or other right-wing organization an advantage. Equal opportunity employer; liberals and anarchists need not apply.

Fatherland Security in action

2006-10-30T16:16:00.000+01:00

I feel safer today. I have had news that Fatherland Security intercepted a dangerous package as it travelled between New Jersey and New York. The package contained one document of three pages, printed in standard toner on paper. The paper may have been recycled or may have been of differing sizes, which would of course have been reasonable cause for suspicion.

The package originated in New Jersey, having been sent as a scan from the London office of a US law firm. The ultimate intended recipient of the package was the firm’s New York office. That is like sending something to yourself, which is definite cause for suspicion. But luckily Fatherland Security stay on their toes.

Now you may be wondering, as I did, what the three-page highly questionable document was. This is pretty shocking, so please make sure you are sitting down. Page one was a Companies House* form which had been signed in New Jersey and needed to be sent back to England via New York. Page two was a piece of paper bearing the address of Companies House. And page three contained a single paragraph listing security.

I don’t know what the consequences might have been if that package had got through. We are living in such dangerous times.

Come on then - three cheers for Fatherland Security and The New Amerika.
Sieg heil! Sieg heil! Sieg heil!

* Companies House is the office that maintains the commercial register for England and Wales.

Thanks to J for the story and his assistance.

Don't be a retard

2006-10-30T12:46:00.000+01:00

New York City is about to ban artificial trans fats. Santa Monica is about to ban smoking in public outdoor areas. Proponents of the measures claim that health is the most important thing and that the government must look out for our health and prevent us from harming each other and ourselves.

Health is indeed important – no one would argue with that. However, so is personal responsibility. And so are manners and consideration for others.

If you want to avoid trans fats, don’t go to McDonald’s or KFC or other fast food places known to use trans fats. This should not be a problem in New York City, where there are so many other options. If you want to eat fast food, for whatever unfathomable reason, let the companies know that you would prefer a healthier alternative to trans fats, if you actually care, and let them make their own decisions based on the preferences of their customers.

If I have said it once, I have said it a hundred times – don’t ask the government to make decisions for you or to protect you – take personal responsibility for your own actions and your own choices and look after yourself.

Worse are the implications of the smoking thing. Even here in Prague, smoking is banned in certain outdoor places. For example, it is prohibited to smoke at a tram stop. I see the logic in the ban - tram stops can be crowded, and if the weather is bad there might be a lot of people trying to fit under a shelter. But why on earth do people need to be told what to do? I, for one, would never light a cigarette at a crowded tram stop, the same way I wouldn’t light a cigarette in a queue. Why? Good old-fashioned manners, being considerate of those around me.

When the government tells people what to do, people forget their sense of responsibility or never develop one. A person who is used to being told what he can or cannot do, and where and when, will not think for himself. He will not reason why he can smoke in this park but not at that tram stop. And he will automatically light up in the park just because he can, and he will do so without looking round to assess if he is in an appropriate place.

Being told what to do stops people from thinking. It damages an individual’s ability to reason and make informed and responsible decisions. It interferes with the development of consideration for others and good manners. When we are treated like helpless and stupid children, we are in danger of becoming helpless and stupid children. I can speak only for myself, but I prefer being treated as a rational adult and I insist on making my own decisions.

Movie Review: Death of a President

2006-10-28T14:16:00.000+02:00

I watched Death of a President this morning. It was a good made-for-tv movie. It is in the style of a documentary, very much like Gabriel Range’s earlier made-for-tv movie, The Day Britain Stopped.

The story is predictable. Bush speaks to a friendly audience in Chicago, there are angry protesters outside, Bush leaves the hotel, someone shoots him, he gets taken to hospital and dies. The nation is shocked, and Cheney is sworn in as the 44^th president. There are arrests, an investigation, and a suspect is charged and goes to trial.

There are interesting aspects to the film. One, of course, is the special effects. The appearance is that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney acted in the film. But more than that, what is interesting and provoking is the comment on the social and political Zeitgeist in The New Amerika.

The police have trouble controlling the protestors and use excess force, like in real life in Portland in 2003. One of the investigators later being interviewed admits to, while at the same time denying, racial profiling of suspects. The investigators admit to watching the movements and monitoring the communications of known protestors, whom they refer to as violent anarchists. And, most frighteningly, the US Patriot Act III is hurriedly passed in the days after the assassination.

The Miami Herald says that the movie “has nothing new or interesting to say”. The Boston Herald calls the film “a lame duck”. Fox News’ John Gibson attacks Gabriel Range and the premise of the film here. It’s an interview, Range is there to defend himself, and does so effectively.

My original premise before seeing the film was that it’s a movie – nothing for anyone to get their knickers in a twist about. I stand by that. Not only is Death of a President just a fictional story, it is also obviously a made-for-tv production and really does not deserve all of the hoopla that has surrounded its release.

But having said that, you should go and see it because it’s an interesting film. If you see it tomorrow at the Arclight Theater in LA at 5.10 pm, Gabriel Range will be there for an after-screening discussion. If you are in Prague and want to see the film, let me know – I have it on video.

Call to Bloggers

2006-10-27T16:26:00.000+02:00

Amnesty International today put out a Call to Bloggers to write about the importance of freedom of speech on the internet and to draw attention to the plight of internet users who have been arrested for what they have written.

The inaugural meeting of the Internet Governance Forum is being held in Athens from Monday. The IGF is a United Nations project. Amnesty International will participate in the forum to ensure that the issue of human rights stays on the agenda.

Here are a few examples of what can happen when people who are not protected by a bill of rights dare to speak their minds.

In Iran, Kianoosh Sanjari was arrested earlier this month while he was reporting on clashes between security forces and the supporters of a Shi'a cleric. No one has heard from him or about him since.

In China, journalist Shi Tao was sentenced to 10 years in prison for “illegally providing state secrets to foreign entities.” What he had actually done was email information to a US website about a Chinese government directive which dictated to journalists how to report on the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. Shi Tao had used a Yahoo! account and Yahoo! co-operated in his prosecution by providing information to the Chinese government.

In Tunisia, Mohammed Abbou is spending 3 ½ years in prison for criticising his government in online articles.

In Vietnam, Truong Quoc Huy has been arrested twice for participating in chatrooms, the first time, at least, on a human rights website. His whereabouts since his second arrest in August 2006 are unknown and no charges have been announced.

And in The New Amerika...

Steinbeck on the American view of government

2006-10-26T16:07:00.000+02:00

In the summer of 1947, John Steinbeck and Robert Capa, a renowned war photojournalist, spent 40 days touring the Soviet Union. The aim of their travels was to observe and record the everyday lives of ordinary Russians; the product was A Russian Journal, published in 1948.

Steinbeck and Capa spent the first few days of their trip in Moscow waiting to find out which section of the Soviet government would sponsor them, what kind of clearance they would get, where they would be allowed to go, and all that sort of totalitarian bureaucratic nonsense. At one point, the two men were in a meeting with a Mr Karaganov at VOKS, the Soviet organisation for cultural relations with foreign countries. Steinbeck and Capa liked Karaganov “very much”, and the three of them spoke together in a clear and straightforward manner. Karaganov asked Steinbeck and Capa for their views on several matters, and this is what they had to say about people and governments:

“It seems to us that one of the deepest divisions between the Russians and the Americans or British, is in their feeling toward their governments. The Russians are taught, and trained, and encouraged to believe that their government is good, that every part of it is good, and that their job is to carry it forward, to back it up in all ways. On the other hand, the deep emotional feeling among Americans and British is that all government is somehow dangerous, that there should be as little government as possible, that any increase in the power of government is bad, and that existing government must be watched constantly, watched and criticized to keep it sharp and on its toes. And later, on the farms, when we sat at table with farming men, and they asked how our government operated, we would try to explain that such was our fear of power invested in one man, or in one group of men, that our government was made up of a series of checks and balances, designed to keep power from falling into any one person’s hands. We tried to explain that the people who made our government, and those who continue it, are so in fear of power that they would willingly cut off a good leader rather than permit a precedent of leadership. I do not think we were thoroughly understood in this, since the training of the people of the Soviet Union is that the leader is good and the leadership is good.”

Consider that that was 1947 and we are now nearly 60 years later. How far we have come! In The Old Amerika we didn’t trust our government, we watched our elected representatives at every turn and we made sure they didn’t overstep their bounds. But in The New Amerika, we can trust our government just like we were taught and we don’t have to keep an eye on our representatives (who may or may not have been elected). The government watches us instead, and we don’t even need any checks and balances anymore. The training of the people of The New Amerika is that the leader is good and the leadership is good. Hallelujah!

* Thanks to Radost Mike who quite literally sold me the book.

Coming soon to a theater near you...

2006-10-24T17:51:00.000+02:00

Katrina, are you paying attention?

Death of a President will be out this Friday, the 27th of October in cinemas all over The New Amerika. I didn’t see a listing for that day for Austin, but it has to get there eventually. See http://www.deathofapresident.com/.

I will be picking up my copy of the film tomorrow. It aired on UK Channel 4 last Thursday night and friends recorded it for me.

And remember, kids, it’s only a movie.

Freedom of the Press 2006

2006-10-24T15:42:00.000+02:00

At this time last year, I posted about the Worldwide Press Freedom Index 2005. The 2006 Index was released today.

The headline of this year’s report lists the worst countries, which are North Korea, Turkmenistan and Eritrea, and the sub-headline reads, “France, the United States and Japan slip further”. As far as The New Amerika goes, that is exactly what I had expected. This year’s report notes just how far The New Amerika has fallen in the five years that the Index has existed. In the 2002 Index, The Amerika was in 17th place. Last year, The Amerika was in 44th place. And this year, The New Amerika has come in at 53rd.

From the report:

Relations between the media and the Bush administration sharply deteriorated after the president used the pretext of “national security” to regard as suspicious any journalist who questioned his “war on terrorism.” The zeal of federal courts which, unlike those in 33 US states, refuse to recognise the media’s right not to reveal its sources, even threatens journalists whose investigations have no connection at all with terrorism.

Freelance journalist and blogger Josh Wolf was imprisoned when he refused to hand over his video archives. Sudanese cameraman Sami al-Haj, who works for the pan-Arab broadcaster Al-Jazeera, has been held without trial since June 2002 at the US military base at Guantanamo, and Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein has been held by US authorities in Iraq since April this year.

Sometimes I am just so proud to be an American.

I am more proud (and less sarcastically so) that the Czech Republic has moved up from last year’s already high 9th place to this year’s 5th place.

To illustrate a bit more, and to represent the interests of some of my more faithful readers, here is how some of the other countries did.

1. Finland, Iceland, Ireland, Netherlands

5. Czech Republic

8. Slovakia – tied with Switzerland

16. Canadia – tied with Austria and Bolivia

19. New Zealand – tied with Bosnia-Herzegovina, Denmark and Trinidad and Tobago

27. UK – tied with Lithuania

35. Australia – tied with Bulgaria, France and Mali

50. Israel

53. The New Amerika – tied with Botswana, Croatia and Tonga

58. Poland (worst in the EU) – tied with Fiji, Hong Kong and Romania

134. Palestinian Authority

155. Vietnam

168. North Korea (the worst overall)

For details of the questionnaire and complete results, as well as the results of earlier years, go to Worldwide Press Freedom Index 2006.

And before signing off on this post, I would like to express my gratitude to the journalists that really do risk their freedom or their lives to ensure that we get information that is sufficient and real.

Reporters sans frontières

Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Überpresident

2006-10-20T14:58:00.000+02:00

George Fourgis, my teacher for 8th grade American history, was the best history teacher I had during all of my secondary school years. His classes were lively, he told a lot of stories, and I learned a lot of history from him. But there are two particular points that Mr Fourgis made over and over that I have never forgotten.

On our very first day of class in September 1978, Mr Fourgis asked us who we thought were the United States of America’s two best friends. Hands went up – we were a bright group, after all. We named countries – the UK, Canada, France, whatever, and we were all wrong. No one got it. Mr Fourgis loved that because he could then deliver the information to us in his favourite dramatic style:

“The best friends the United States of America has ever had, the best friends we will ever have, are the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean.”

Mr Fourgis knew he was giving us a completely new idea to churn around in our heads – he loved that too.

The second thing that Mr Fourgis emphasised throughout that 8th grade year was the importance of the separation of powers in our government and the system of checks and balances.

That is why I thought of Mr Fourgis last night when I was watching Keith Olbermann and listening to his guest, law professor Jonathan Turley, describing Bush as the first “über-president”. I thought of Mr Fourgis because we no longer have an effective system of checks and balances, and powers are no longer separated. The Military Commissions Act of 2006 has destroyed our Constitution.

I was lucky to have a teacher like Mr Fourgis, a teacher who was able to give a bunch of young kids some understanding of American history. And not only an understanding of what had happened 200 years before, but also an understanding of why and how it had happened, and why it was important then and why it is still important now.

It makes me wonder how so many of our senators and representatives can be ignorant of why our government was set up the way it was. And I know they are ignorant – there is no other explanation for how they could have voted to dismantle the system that was so carefully constructed to protect our rights and liberties.

The framers of the Constitution foresaw that we might one day have an unscrupulous president. As Jonathan Turley stated, “In fact, Madison said that he created a system essentially to be run by devils, where they could not do harm, because we didn’t rely on their good motivations.”

However it seems that the framers unfortunately did not foresee that we might have two houses of Congress that would be so collectively stupid that they would willingly choose to transform our system of government into a dictatorship.

Do not separate text from historical background. If you do, you will have perverted and subverted the Constitution, which can only end in a distorted, bastardized form of illegitimate government.
-- James Madison

"See you at Gitmo"

2006-10-20T02:01:00.000+02:00

Keith Olbermann is my hero again and again.

Keith Olbermann, thank you for saying all of the things that need to be said in such a public context and with such courage of conviction.

As for the kool-aid drinkers in The New Amerika – just keep believing what you are told:

WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.

Heddy

2006-10-18T15:42:00.000+02:00

José Van Gool: Two Friends

I have always considered that we can never know exactly what effect we have on other people. I mean whether or not we have influenced them at all, whether consciously or not, and whether positively or negatively.

I had a friend in Ústí nad Labem whom we called Heddy. I guess Heddy was 18 when she arrived for her gap year adventure of teaching English in Czechoslovakia. Heddy was beautiful – she had amazing black hair and looked like Snow White in Doc Martens and a nose ring. And she was smart and confident and funny. Heddy hung out with the big kids and she fit right in with us – drinking, smoking, generally misbehaving, and having an awesome time. And 5 months after she had arrived, Heddy went home to England.

We stayed in touch for a long time. Heddy visited me in Prague several times and I visited her once in Bristol. I’m not sure when we last saw each other. We talked a few times when I was living in England, but in spite of saying we would visit each other, we just never did. That was lame. And then Heddy moved to Oz and there may or may not have been a few emails and then there was nothing.

Until today. I got an email from Heddy with apologies and directions to Heddy’s blog. And Heddy directed me to a specific post where she had written about the 5 people whom she considers her role models. They were in chronological order and underneath “My Mum” and “My Teacher”, there was “My Friend” - and it was me. Wow. Gobsmacked. What an amazing way for an old friend to reassure you that she has not forgotten you.

“My Friend - I was really lucky when I took a gap year between school & university and I spent 5 months teaching English in Czechoslovakia. I met a really cool group of people & grew up about 5 years in 5 months!! Max is about 10 years older than me & had already experienced a heap of stuff. Again, she is so strong & independent & we talked about everything! How important it is to have friends who help you grow & not try & put you down!”

Thank you, Heddy.

Just another day in The Shire

2006-10-18T12:20:00.000+02:00

For a second, I thought I was looking at The Onion, a satirical publication, rather than at The Huffington Post, normally a fairly intelligent and ruminative journal of news and opinions.

The top headline read “CHENEY: SITUATION IN IRAQ GOING ‘REMARKABLY WELL’…”

I almost laughed out loud. Those words immediately made me think of Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf (aka Comical Ali), the Iraqi Minister for Information during the American invasion. That’s right – the man that in April 2003 persisted in his claims that American troops were about to surrender to the Iraqis when in actuality they had already occupied most of Baghdad. The man that had by that time developed a cult following because he was perceived as being absurdly funny, but completely harmless.

A bit further down on the page was “Santorum Compares Iraq War to Lord of the Rings”, with a photo of Senator Rick Santorum next to a photo of Golum. From the salon.com story:

“In an interview with the editorial board of the Bucks County Courier Times, embattled Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum has equated the war in Iraq with J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. According to the paper, Santorum said that the United States has avoided terrorist attacks at home over the past five years because the ‘Eye of Mordor’ has been focused on Iraq instead.

“‘As the hobbits are going up Mount Doom, the Eye of Mordor is being drawn somewhere else,’ Santorum said. ‘It's being drawn to Iraq and it's not being drawn to the U.S. You know what? I want to keep it on Iraq. I don't want the Eye to come back here to the United States.’”

What the fuck?! That analogy doesn’t even work. Unless Mount Doom is supposed to represent Washington, DC and the fascists in charge of the country are actually orcs.

But these are the fantasists that are running The New Amerika. Things are going to get a lot worse.

Today’s New Amerika Headlines

2006-10-18T00:12:00.000+02:00

I found the comparisons interesting.

Aljazeera: Bush toughens ‘anti-terror’ laws

BBC: Bush signs US terror trial bill

CNN: Bush signs bill to interrogate, prosecute terror suspects

Crooks and Liars: Hello darkness my Old Friend…

Huffington Post: Bush Signs Controversial Interrogation Bill

LA Times: Bush Signs Bill on Terror Prosecution

Lidové noviny: Bush podepsal tvrdší výslechy teroristů – Bush signs rougher interrogations for terrorists

Monsters & Critics: Bush clears way for continued CIA interrogations

New York Times: Bush Signs Bill Setting Detainee Rules

The Times: Bush signs Guantanamo military trial law

Keep your friggin’ cross under your uniform and shut up

2006-10-16T12:52:00.000+02:00

the Hope diamond

Will everyone please stop shouting religious discrimination. It’s getting to be like the boy who cried wolf. And it’s getting bloody tedious.

The bilingual teaching assistant that won’t remove her veil. Forget it. If kids can’t see your face, they are not going to understand you. Take off the veil or accept that you no longer have a job. It’s not religious discrimination, it’s a matter of practicality and fairness to children. Perhaps you should consider a job where the veil might be an asset, like something in the food industry where it could contribute to overall hygiene.

British Airways worker. Get over yourself. The issue is not religious. The issue is not your stupid little cross. According to British Airways, the policy is about jewellery in general. If you would like to wear a necklace with your airline worker’s uniform, you must keep it under the uniform. It doesn’t matter if it’s a cross, a star, a heart, a circle or the goddamned Hope diamond. And if you don’t like BA’s jewellery policy, go find yourself another job.

Ann Widdecombe – go ahead and boycott BA if you want. You’re an arse.

Francis Wheen – where are you? Mumbo-jumbo is winning again.

The truth about freedom in The New Amerika

2006-10-12T12:42:00.000+02:00

According to The State of World Liberty Project, The New Amerika is only the 8th freest country in the world. From the 2006 Index:

“Still Land of the Free?
“The United States of America came in at #8 - surprisingly low, considering that the American government model was driven by classical liberalism and limited government, and it has been the model for other countries pursuing free markets and individual liberties to follow. Unfortunately, recent government crackdowns on free press, increased restrictions on individual freedom, high personal and corporate income taxes, refusal to grant military prisoners a criminal trial and the rapid expansion of government all contributed to the US's downward spiral away from being the ideal model of freedom.”

The 2006 State of World Liberty Index is based on statistics collected in 2005. I reckon that The New Amerika would have fared even more poorly if the statistics used had been more recent.

The Index uses three criteria for its evaluation and rankings. They are:
1) individual freedom,
2) economic freedom, and
3) government size and taxation.

For the purposes of comparison, I am going to use three of the countries where I have lived + Canadia + France (a representative socialist country) + the first and last countries in the 2006 rankings.

(Blogger won’t take my word table so please bear with me.)

Overall Rank (final weighted average)
Estonia 1 (85.25)
Canadia 3 (82.34)
UK 7 (81.96)
The Amerika 8 (81.96)
Czech 23 (76.34)
France 48 (69.11)
North Korea 159 (6.80)

Economic Freedom Rank
Estonia 8
Canadia 9
UK 5
The Amerika 6
Czech 23
France 35
North Korea 126

Government and Taxation Rank
Estonia 6
Canadia 15
UK 22
The Amerika 20
Czech 53
France 135
North Korea 156

Individual Freedom Rank
Estonia 5
Canadia 9
UK 11
The Amerika 19
Czech 4
France 14
North Korea 139

I think it is absolutely pathetic that The New Amerika does not come in at #1 in every category. The Old America would have.

But I am pleased to see that the country where I have chosen to live has outranked even Estonia in individual freedom. Now you will understand that I am not talking out of my arse when I say I feel more free over here than I do when in The Amerika.

You can find all the rankings as well as information about sources and methodology on the website.

On the veil debate

2006-10-11T17:52:00.000+02:00

Last week Jack Straw called on Muslim women to not wear full veils in the interest of community relations. His remarks, first published in the Lancashire Telegraph last Thursday, have set off a large-scale debate in the UK and elsewhere.

My gut reaction to Straw’s remarks was negative, that he should not be telling anyone what to wear or not to wear. As you probably know, individual rights are of fundamental importance to me. But the world we live in is far from ideal, and reading and discussion have led me to believe that the issue is actually a lot more complicated.

Of the things I have read, an article in The Sunday Times, Why Muslim women should thank Straw, by Saira Khan, made the greatest impression on me. Saira Khan, herself a Muslim woman, presents compelling arguments in support of Straw.

Khan calls the wearing of the veil “an extreme practice” and asserts that “it is particularly wrong in Britain, where it is alien to the mainstream culture for someone to walk around wearing a mask.” Khan suggests that women who say they ‘choose’ to wear the veil are deluding themselves, that they have chosen only to restrict themselves in terms of freedom and potential. She points out that many women are literally forced to wear the veil.

According to Khan, the veil debate has been going on in the Muslim community for years, and, she says, non-Muslims should be included in the debate because it also affects them. Khan finishes her article with two messages. The first is to British Muslim women:

“If you want your daughters to take advantage of all the opportunities that Britain has to offer, do not encourage them to wear the veil. We must unite against the radical Muslim men who would love women to be hidden, unseen and unheard.”

Khan’s second message is for Muslims who are after a “Talebanised” society:

“If you don’t like living here and don’t want to integrate, then what the hell are you doing here? Why don’t you just go and live in an Islamic country?”

I have to say that I agree with Saira Khan.

Where does the requirement to wear a veil come from? I have been told that it is not in the Koran. Is it an interpretation of a law that is in the Koran? Or perhaps it is just something that men have made up to subjugate women.

I really wonder about radical Muslim attitudes towards women. Radical Muslim men clearly do not respect women in the same way they respect other men. And if they do not respect women and they think that all women should be covered from head to toe, how do they view women who wear trousers or tight dresses and show a bit of bare skin and cleavage? We must be nothing but Jezebels and whores. That is a problem.

The veil issue brings up much larger questions on immigration, assimilation, compromise, and individual rights, to name a few.

One basic question we should ask ourselves is how do we feel and what do we think when we see a veiled woman? If I make eye contact with a stranger, I might smile at that person and they might smile back. Would I smile at a veiled woman? Probably not. There would be no point because if she were to smile back at me, I wouldn’t be able to see it.

Airport "Security"

2006-10-09T17:44:00.000+02:00

I flew back from London Gatwick this morning. I hadn’t worried about liquids because everything was packed and I was checking my bag. But standing in the line for security I remembered the 500 ml of Islington tap water in my carry-on, so I drank it and threw the bottle away. Then the man in front of me took out a tiny pot of lip salve and asked the man who checks boarding passes if he could take it through. The man said ‘no’ so the first man put some of the salve on his lips and gave the pot to the boarding pass man to throw away. It was then that I remembered the expensive Dior lip gloss in my handbag and realised that I would be pissed off if they made me throw that away. But I was not going to be stupid enough to ask and thereby draw attention to it.

I put my carry-on bag (with my handbag inside), my leather coat and my shoes through the x-ray. I walked through the metal detector. The security lady waved me on and I went to retrieve my things. No one asked me any questions and no one wanted to look in my bag.

I hung about in the departure lounge, did some shopping, got breakfast and waited for them to announce the gate for my flight. When I got to the gate, I decided to take inventory and find out how much in the way of lip balms, creams and liquids I had actually got through security.

I checked the pocket of my coat: one tube of lip gloss and a stick of lip balm.

I checked the pocket of my carry-on bag: one tube of lip gloss.

I checked the small cosmetics case inside my handbag: one lip balm, one lipstick, one small tube of hand cream, one travel size liquid spray deodorant.

And finally, I checked the outside pocket of my handbag: one tube of lip gloss, one tube of lip re-hydrator, one lipstick and the Dior lip gloss.

Total: 11 forbidden items. And, yes, in fact, I do feel rather proud of myself.

2006-10-05T13:00:00.000+02:00

Max is away

The Max Coat of Arms

2006-10-03T17:33:00.000+02:00

I just opened an email from a distant cousin – one of my eccentric relatives who is involved in tracing our family history. Her email inspired me to read about the town in the Brest region of Belarus (formerly part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth) where one branch of the Max family lived for a while before going to The Amerika.

The town is called Pruzhany (Пружаны). Today I discovered that Pruzhany has its own coat of arms, which I have decided to adopt as my own. I mean, it’s a snake wearing a crown and swallowing a baby – how perfect is that?

Overwhelmed and bewildered...again

2006-10-02T17:48:00.000+02:00

Max having a bad day

It’s not a big problem. It’s just that there is once again so much out there that pisses me off that I want to write about all of it, but I can’t write about any of it. I don’t know where to start and I don’t know where to stop. I don’t know how to put it all together so I will just spit out what I can.

The New Amerika

The Military Commissions Act 2006 makes me want to throw up. I have read some of the Act and I have read commentary on the Act, and I absolutely cannot come to terms with it. Every senator and representative that voted for the Act is a traitor to the USA, although perhaps a good citizen of The New Amerika.

Problems with the Act include the legalisation of torture, suspension of habeas corpus, legal detention of even US citizens under “enemy combatant” rules, and the placing of the president above the law. Our Constitutional rights and protections are being stripped away as we sit back quietly and thank Idiot Bush for keeping us safe.

What the fuck is wrong with the people of The Amerika?!!

Terrorised Prague

I had an email from my mom yesterday – she had read in the Jewish Journal that Prague was on high alert for terrorism and that Jewish sites were a main target. She asked me to be careful if I was going to synagogue for Yom Kippur. I am sure she did not appreciate my answer:

"Yes, Mommy, we are on high-ish alert, but I don't buy into the fear-mongering. If something does happen, however, please don't assume I'm at services. I may not go tonight because I am in the middle of reviewing a 70-page contract and really want to finish it today. I may go, but just don't assume that I am dead if you hear of a bomb going off. Try to ring my mobile, or I will ring you if I hear about it first.

"Love, Max"

But all I can think about is weird “anti-terror” legislation suddenly being passed here in Czechia, like in The New Amerika or the UK, and then where am I going to go?

Baghdad Burning

It was posted on Information Clearinghouse today – something I too had noticed - that the girl that writes the Riverbend Blog has not posted since August. I had emailed her earlier – no response. I wonder what has happened to her, but how can you really worry about someone you don’t know who lives in the middle of a war zone? I may as well worry about everyone in Iraq and Afghanistan and Darfur…

- not to say that I don’t.

Idiot Bush: deluded and in charge

“The only way to protect our citizens at home is to go on the offence against the enemy across the world...So we will remain on the offence until the terrorists are defeated and this fight is won.”

Okay, I am literally sick to my stomach now.

There is more, there is so much more – the contents of Bob Woodward’s new book, Condoleeza Rice’s bullshit reaction to the book, school shootings, the strategic distraction of the Foley emails – list to be continued any way you want.

Transylvania II

2006-09-30T13:28:00.000+02:00

a view from Hotel Sighişoara

the house where Vlad Ţepeş was born, Sighişoara

main entrance to the citadel and the clock tower

view over Sighişoara from the clock tower

Transylvania I

2006-09-30T13:13:00.000+02:00

the Braşov sign on Mt Tâmpa

Strada Republicii, Braşov

Piaţa Mică, Sibiu

Cascada, the falls along the Transfăgărăşan road, Romania’s highest asphalted road

Lake Bâlea, the glacial lake at the top of the Transfăgărăşan road

Orthodox wedding in Bucharest

2006-09-28T19:01:00.000+02:00

the church

inside the church

Romanian line dancing

Sightseeing in Bucharest

2006-09-28T18:35:00.000+02:00

the old Securitate building incorporated into a newer structure

the Athenaeum

the view down a random street

Ceauşescu’s House of the People, the 2^nd largest building in the world

some peasants in the Village Museum

In the footsteps of The Amerika

2006-09-26T11:32:00.000+02:00

Here we go…

Yesterday I read in the Czech news that Prague had been on a heightened state of alert since early Saturday morning due to an unspecified terrorist threat. Whatever - I hadn’t noticed anything at the airport on Sunday.

Today I read in the Czech news: Terorista chtěl napadnout Londýn letadlem uneseným z Prahy – Terrorist wanted to attack London with a plane hijacked from Prague.

Apparently, back in 2002, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (of 9/11 fame) planned an attack on London’s Heathrow airport using a Czech Airlines plane. This information comes from the autobiography of Pervez Musharraf, the president of Pakistan.

Or actually, as the article says further down, KSM wanted to use any passenger plane from any of the airports in Czech, Slovakia, Croatia, Poland, Romania or Malta. The reason? Laxer security. No shit.

Thus far, those of us east of London, and especially when on a flight heading yet farther east, still enjoy the feel of metal cutlery when we are served a delicious airline meal. I don’t know anyone who has been forced to insert his contact lenses at the airport in Prague so that he can dump out the three drops of solution in the lens case, or anyone who has been forced to drink her own breast milk.

At the airport in Bucharest on Sunday, the walk-through metal detector was set at a high enough sensitivity to catch the under-wire in my bra. The female security checker did not have one of those wand thingies to wave through my aura, so I instead got a good old-fashioned frisking, which I quite enjoyed. But I digress.

One night last week in the hotel bar in Sighişoara, Tan and I ended up talking to some other tourists. There was a couple from North Carolina who were pretty adventurous travellers and had been a lot of places. But Ellen was explaining that she would never travel to a Muslim country, not even to someplace like Montenegro or Albania. She was practically pleading with me, as the only other American in the bar, to understand why she was afraid. I told her that I did understand, but that I also recognised that she was a victim of the fear-mongering that goes on in The Amerika. Her husband absolutely agreed with me, in the manner of vigorously nodding his head at me (although safely out of his wife’s field of vision).

Is that where the Czechs are headed? Towards everyone being brainwashed into fear? I don’t think so. The news says that we currently have tougher security measures in place - cameras and police checks, etc, but Czechs don’t scare easily. After having been under both Nazi and Soviet occupations, it’s going to take a lot more than ‘an unspecified threat’ to ruffle Czech feathers.

And then there are the comments of Jiří Langer, the Czech counter-intelligence chief, which pretty much sum up the Czech attitude to terrorism:

“When there is a bomb attack at a seaside resort, other foreigners do not visit the location for some time. On the contrary, Czechs go to this particular site because the prices of the stays fall.”

Take that, evil terrorists!

2006-09-15T17:00:00.000+02:00

Max is away

What Max did on 9/11

2006-09-12T10:45:00.000+02:00

rtm called me yesterday at 16.37 to inform me that there was going to be a one-night only showing of the film Loose Change at Cinema Oko to mark the anniversary of 9/11. I immediately agreed to meet him there.

I had never seen Loose Change. I downloaded it from the internet months ago, but I didn’t know how to work out the codecs. I never worried too much about not seeing the film, being that I have read and watched so many other things about how the events of September 11, 2001 happened or did not happen. But I was not going to pass up an opportunity to see the film on a big screen.

Vanity Fair magazine published a feature about Loose Change and the young men who had made it in the July 2006 issue. I had been excited about that story and extremely impressed with the filmmakers – “three kids from a hick town in upstate New York”. Dylan Avery had set out to make a fictional film about himself and his friends “discovering that 9/11 was an inside job, and doing something about it...and basically that happened in real life.”

I told one of my Czech colleagues I was going to see the film and what it was about. “You believe those conspiracy theories?” he asked me incredulously. Damn – once again I had forgotten that normal mainstream people, no matter what nationality they are, still drink the kool-aid.

Loose Change was fantastic. A lot of people in the cinema, mostly 20-something Czechs, had seen the film before. Although the events of the film are horrifying no matter who carried them out, parts of the film elicited laughter from the audience – not because the bits were funny, but because they were so absurd in terms of what the government has been selling to the people as truth.

As an example, the recordings of phone calls that supposedly came from flight 93. The flight attendant who was reporting that her colleagues had been stabbed, first class was full of smoke and no one was answering the phone in the cockpit, was doing so in a calm and steady voice, and there was no screaming or any other sound of panic in the background. And one of the passengers who called his mom identified himself by his full name: “Mom? This is Mark Bingham…. There are hijackers…You believe me, don’t you?” Weird.

Some of the information was old hat to all of us wacky conspiracy theorists, e.g. controlled demolition of the three World Trade Center buildings, the impossibility of a plane having crashed into the Pentagon, some of the alleged hijackers being spotted alive and well long after the events, the motives behind destroying WTC 7… But some of the information I had not heard before, especially that relating to the huge amount of gold missing from beneath the WTC.

Max’s message for 9/11: If you have not seen Loose Change, SEE IT. Is it fact? No. Loose Change offers a lot of theories, and evidence to back up the theories, but the only fact is that we don’t know what really happened on 9/11. What is inspired about Loose Change is that no one could possibly watch it and still believe what the government wants us to believe. And questioning, thinking for yourself, and just saying ‘no’ to the kool-aid is what it’s all about.

Thank you, Dylan Avery, Korey Rowe and Jason Bermas. You guys are awesome.

To purchase Loose Change, or to watch it for free, go to http://www.loosechange911.com/

More Stupid Rhetoric

2006-09-06T12:20:00.000+02:00

I saw this story last night just around 11 pm, but resisted the urge to stay up to write about it. I figured it would still make me angry in the morning.

Bush compares Bin Laden to Hitler

My first thought: Oh dear, Bush actually believes the crap that comes pouring out of Rumsfeld’s mouth. And once again, the irony weighed heavily upon me.

“Underestimating the words of evil and ambitious men is a terrible mistake,” he said.

I direct you straight to the words of evil and ambitious men, otherwise known as Project for the New American Century.

But, he added, the US and its allies could be confident of victory in “the great ideological struggle of the 21st Century” because “we have seen free nations defeat terror before.”

Oh, really? Have we? Which free nations have defeated terror? It seems to me that terror goes on and on until it just sort of peters out by itself, if ever. And it also seems to me that the neo-cons are more full of manure than all of the newly fertilised corn fields in Iowa.

“The best way to protect America is to stay on the offence.”

Allow me to interpret that for you. The best way to protect The Amerika is to continue taking away our citizens’ liberties in every way we can and to invade more countries.

Other goals in the US strategy include denying terrorists control of any nation or area they could use as a refuge.

Meaning we are going to invade Iran.

He defended the controversial Patriot Act and terrorist surveillance programme...“If al-Qaeda is calling somebody in America, we need to know why in order to stop attacks.”

And if Max is calling her little sister in The Amerika, we obviously need to hear what they’re talking about too. That Max is really dangerous – I hear she wants to learn how to shoot a gun.

And the audience applauded. Idiots.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/5318204.stm

Invasion of Privacy

2006-09-02T13:25:00.000+02:00

I was alerted to this one on www.stopthelie.com. From there I was directed to this article, “The New Census: An All-Out Assault on Your Privacy” by Jarret Wollstein. From there I linked to the survey questionnaire.

According to the article, “The American Community Survey” is designed to replace the census. For now, it is being sent to 1 million households in The Amerika each year. I have read the survey. The intrusive nature of the questions is so unbelievably ballsy that my mouth fell open as I was reading.

From the “Assault on Privacy” article:

“This new ‘census’ form is 24-pages long, and demands that you lay bare every detail of your life, including how much you earn, what your home is worth, details of your health, when you leave for work, previous addresses, pregnancies, monies received from government, and on and on.

“I say demand because you can be fined up to $1,000 for each of the 72 questions you don’t answer or which you answer ‘incorrectly’. However, so far no one has been fined for not answering, nor are they likely to be if public resistance is strong.

“The ways the government could use this information to harm you are mind-boggling. For instance, any financial discrepancy with IRS or Social Security records could result in your criminal prosecution. Knowing when you leave for work could enable police, acting under the Patriot Act, to secretly enter your home.

“The American Community Survey also demands that you report on the activities of relatives, employers and roommates. Joseph Stalin could hardly ask for more surveillance powers.”

As the article points out, Article I of the Constitution grants the government the power to conduct a census once every 10 years.

From Article I Section 2 of the Constitution:

“The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct.”

It is entirely clear when you look at Article I Section 2 that the only purpose of the “Enumeration” is to apportion representation in Congress based on the relative populations of the states.

The Oxford Dictionary of English defines the verb “enumerate” as “establish the number of”.

What that all means is that the government is allowed to count the people, and nothing more.

The American Community Survey is simply a clear and obvious penetrating invasion of privacy. It is illegal, immoral and dangerous. If you receive one in the post, my advice is to burn it.

It's a Movie

2006-09-01T10:58:00.000+02:00

Death of a President will premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, and will be shown on UK digital tv channel More4 shortly thereafter. The film is about the assassination of George W. Bush in Chicago in 2007.

Certain people have been offended by the film. I have collected some of their comments from the BBC website so that I could tell them how stupid they are right here on my website.

John Beyer of MediaWatch called the film “irresponsible.” He claimed that it might inspire someone to really assassinate Bush. As he told the Daily Mirror: “There’s a lot of feeling against President Bush and this may well put ideas into people’s heads.”

Max says: Yes, there is a lot of feeling against “President” Bush, but if anyone wants to try to kill him, they are going to do it regardless of a fictional film. They already have the ideas in their heads. Don’t make a movie into more than what it is – a movie.

The White House said, “We are not going to comment because it does not dignify a response.”

Max says: Ha ha, you lose, you just commented. Assholes.

The Texas Republicans don’t like the film either. Spokesman Gretchen Essell: “I cannot support a video that would dramatise the assassination of our president, real or imagined.”

Max says: Thank you for acknowledging that our “president” is only imagined. As for the video - it’s a film, a movie, Hollywood-style entertainment. It neither deserves nor needs your support.

Ms Essell also said, “I find this shocking, I find it disturbing. I don't know if there are many people in America who would want to watch something like that.”

Max says: I want to watch it! I’ll buy the DVD as soon as it comes out so I can watch it over and over and over – if I ever get round to buying a DVD player.

And, by the way, Gretch, you are full of shit. In the world of today, which is filled with terror and illegal wars and other types of indiscriminate violence and human suffering, how the hell could anyone find a mere political assassination shocking? Your view is naïve and pathetic, and you should probably just shut your mouth.

Olbermann on Rumsfeld

2006-08-31T20:59:00.000+02:00

I just found this video on Crooks and Liars. It is Keith Olbermann, at his best, delivering a passionate and intelligent criticism of Rumsfeld’s speech of Tuesday night. It is absolutely brilliant – please watch it.

Doublespeak

2006-08-31T13:13:00.000+02:00

So yesterday afternoon I was sitting at my desk, minding my own business, and flipping through the news. I came upon a story on yahoo about a speech that Donald “I am Satan” Rumsfeld had given the night before. Upon reading the story, I left my body. I simply had to, because the earth had started turning the wrong way and everything was suddenly upside down. I felt really floaty, and not in a nice way.

In his speech, Rumsfeld accused critics of the administration - opponents of the war in Iraq, liberty activists, people that are fond of our Constitution and want to preserve it – of supporting fascism. Those of us who are not with the “president” are foolishly trying to appease the Nazis of the 21st century. We are silly and we have been misled. We are suffering from a “kind of moral or intellectual confusion about who and what is right or wrong.”

I am having another out-of-body experience.

I did not hear or read Rumsfeld’s entire speech, but the bits I did see were pure examples of doublespeak.

It was a time when a certain amount of cynicism and moral confusion set in among Western democracies, when those who warned about a coming crisis -- the rise of fascism and Nazism -- they were ridiculed or ignored. Indeed, in the decades before World War Two, a great many argued that the fascist threat was exaggerated or that it was someone else's problem.

...some seem not to have learned history's lessons.

The irony nearly killed me.

Max's Problem

2006-08-28T19:46:00.000+02:00

Frustration.

My problem, my frustration, comes from feelings of powerlessness and futility. I start my day off listening to The World Today on BBC World Service. Then I listen to the news on Radio Česko. The news is always bad and I always leave my house in a depressed state of mind.

I try to resist buying a newspaper on the way to work. I have just heard all the news and I don’t need to re-experience it. But if I don’t have a book or a magazine with me, I end up buying a paper anyway. What the hell, the magazines I read are full of bad news anyway, and I don’t read very much fiction anymore, so books are not much of an escape either.

Then I get to work and I am sitting on my fat arse in front of a computer all day so I can indulge my addiction to news through the medium of the internet. That is the worst, of course, because on the internet I am not limited to mainstream news. On the internet I can read the libertarian news and the anarchist news and understand that there are other people out there that realise what’s going on, but still it all keeps going on.

Today I found an article by Paul Craig Roberts called Can Anything Be Done? In the article, which I hope you will read for yourselves, Roberts describes being attacked (verbally, I mean) by readers because he doesn’t trust our government.

That is the whole thing for me. We were taught at school and in our homes and in our churches or synagogues that the US government was a good and honest government. And it seems that most Amerikans go on believing that throughout their whole lives. All I can say is, What the fuck?!! Can people really be that unbelievably stupid? Can people not find a way out of their childhood delusions? Well, Max, I say to myself now, you have the answers. The people in The Amerika really have been brainwashed to that extent. And that is why some days I have no hope at all.

The closing line of Roberts’ article: “Government got free of our control when we forgot the teaching of our Founding Fathers that government is always the greatest threat to our liberty.” And there you have it.

America: Freedom to Fascism

2006-08-27T12:06:00.000+02:00

I hope this is another one of those things that I heard of later only because I am overseas. I hope every person in The Amerika already knows about Aaron Russo’s film America: Freedom to Fascism. I hope it has been or will be playing in mainstream cinemas all over the country, and then the world. If you hadn’t heard of the film before now, please keep reading and please make sure you see the film.

Aaron Russo is a mainstream Hollywood producer. Wikipedia also lists him as a “Libertarian political figure and tax protestor.” Russo had initially set out to investigate whether or not there was a legal basis for the federal income tax, but a light bulb went off for him and he ended up going much further. He ended up tracking America’s descent into fascism.

“What is being sold to the American people today as ‘Americanism’ – if you peel off the label, you find so much similarity to what we were fighting against…communism, Nazism and fascism.” – G. Edward Griffin, author of Creature from Jekyll Island.

There is a lot in the film about illegal taxation and the Federal Reserve Bank. If you watch the trailers or the promotional video (links below), you will see everything I saw and some of it may surprise you.

One part of the video I found particularly enlightening, and terrifying, was a sample list of executive orders that presidents have created:

“President Bush has signed executive orders giving him sole authority to impose martial law, and suspend habeas corpus.

“This gives him dictatorial power over the people…with no checks and balances.

“Executive Order #11921
Provides that the President can declare a state of emergency that is not defined, and Congress cannot review the action for six months.

“Executive Order #10990
allows the government to take over all modes of transportation.

“Executive Order #10995
allows the government to seize and control the communication media.

“Executive Order #10997
allows the government to take over all electrical power, gas, petroleum, fuels and minerals.

“Executive Order #10998
allows the government to take over all food resources and farms.

“Executive Order #11002
Postmaster General to operate a national registration of all persons.

“Executive Order #11000
allows the government to mobilize civilians into work brigades under government supervision.”

I checked. All of the executive orders are real. Most of them, however, were signed long before Bush ever got into office.

Another issue Russo addresses is that of a national ID card, which legislation comes into effect in May 2008. I wrote about the Real ID Act last September. Russo goes further into the implications, that RFID chips could potentially be used to track all of our movements, all of our meetings and all of our spending.

“It is absolutely Orwellian – Big Brother looking over your shoulder at absolutely everything you do.” – Katherine Albrecht, author of Spy Chips.

Russo also touches on the confiscation of weapons in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. For anyone who did not see a problem with that, given the circumstances, please rethink the situation.

Amendment II to the Constitution says, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

Do not forget the context in which the Bill of Rights was written. The purpose of the Second Amendment is to ensure that the American people can protect themselves first and foremost against the tyranny of our own government.

There is so much more, and all I have seen are the trailers and the promotional video.

America: Freedom to Fascism promotional video

America: Freedom to Fascism website and trailers

Special thanks to Saigon Dan for the scoop. I miss you.

Saturday, 4.30 a.m.

2006-08-26T13:22:00.000+02:00

I had been out drinking and even dancing and had got home a little after 4. It must have been about 4.30 when I turned on my bedside light and scribbled this into my notebook:

Gretchen hanged herself on Thursday. She didn’t do it necessarily because she was unhappy. Maybe she simply didn’t want to live anymore. Those two things probably go together often, but they don’t have to. I am sure they can happen quite independently of each other.
I didn’t know Gretchen.

Max in Meltdown

2006-08-25T17:26:00.000+02:00

I am having one of those days – no, one of those weeks. I haven’t been able to write, I’ve been sleeping a lot and I think I nearly became a bunny boiler yesterday.

I know exactly why I have been losing it – it is that recurring overwhelming feeling that the world has gone completely irretrievably mad and there is nothing I, or anyone, can do about it. It’s the feeling that, more than any other, makes me want to go out and drink a lot, find a man to bring home with me and then copulate with him for hours and hours and hours like there’s no tomorrow. Because that is exactly how I feel – like there is no tomorrow.

A local American girl hanged herself yesterday. I didn’t know her personally, but you hear about these things. Suicide doesn’t shock me anymore.

I met a lovely bloke last week. Here is how he stands up on the three basic requirements:

1. Single – I thought so, but now I’m not so sure. Hence why I nearly became a bunny boiler. The worst thing is that I think he might have mentioned a wife, but I don’t hear well on the phone. So it could be that he thinks I know he’s married, but I don’t know, or it could be that he is not married and I am just wacked, or…. I am going to have to straighten that out. Next week.

2. Heterosexual – Oh yes. Most definitely yes. Very nicely yes.

3. Of an appropriate age – I don’t know how old he is, but I would say yes, more or less.

Lovely Bloke knows about my blog. I never gave him the URL, but he knows that if he searches “Marcel Rimel” (wank-a-thon), he will find it. I suppose the worst thing that can happen is that he’ll read this, get some insight into my mindset, and run for his life. Hey ho. Maybe I should just send him the URL and get it over with.

But the thing that does it to me is reading the news and seeing in black and white (and colour) that the world really has turned upside down and nothing makes any sense any more. I can’t name everything that is wrong and there would be no point. We all live in the same world. Read your own internet news and develop your own despondency. Stop feeding off mine.

Bill O'Reilly Hates America, and I love Keith Olbermann

2006-08-19T17:12:00.000+02:00

I have just seen a video clip from MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann from June 2006. Maybe some of you in The Amerika already know all about this, but it was new to me.

In the clip, Olbermann blasted Bill O’Reilly so beautifully that it nearly brought tears to my eyes. I stumbled upon the clip at www.ifilm.com, where it was titled Bill O’Reilly Hates America.

Olbermann was exposing O’Reilly, not for the first time, as a liar and an idiot. I love this sort of stuff. The topic was O’Reilly’s fictional account of what had happened in the Belgian village of Malmedy in December 1944.

On two different occasions, October 2005 and May 2006, O’Reilly had presented a shockingly twisted version of what had transpired in Malmedy. O’Reilly claimed that the massacre in Malmedy had been perpetrated by American troops on German troops that had surrendered. In fact, the massacre happened exactly the other way round.

O’Reilly’s version was his lame attempt at defending Abu Ghraib (the October 2005 broadcast) and Haditha (the May 2006 broadcast), by claiming that atrocities were a time-honoured tradition for American troops in overseas wars.

Olbermann said he would be prepared to accept O’Reilly’s story, if it had been told only once, as the mistake of an ignorant man. But the second telling of the warped narrative had infuriated him.

The Countdown researchers made sure they got the facts straight for Olbermann. This is what really happened.

It was during the Battle of the Bulge, one week before Christmas 1944. Near Malmedy, in Liège, a French area of Belgium, Battery B of the 285^th Field Artillery Observation Battalion encountered a German Panzer-SS division. The Americans were in jeeps and trucks, the Germans in tanks.

The battle was short. 11 Americans were killed in the battle, 2 were killed fleeing and 7 escaped. 6 Americans were taken as POWs. Another 113 Americans surrendered, and within 15 minutes, the SS had shot them all.

In January 1945, when the Allies took control of the site of the massacre, 84 bodies were recovered. Many of them had been shot in the head at close range, some of them still had their hands held up above their heads.

When O’Reilly was called on his glaring and disgusting error, even by some of his own viewers, he claimed that he had been referring to American reprisals for Malmedy, which are alleged to have indeed taken place. Fox News, in the meantime, doctored their transcripts of the programmes so that they read “Normandy” instead of “Malmedy”. Pathetic attempts at covering filthy tracks.

It’s a good clip if you enjoy seeing Bill O’Reilly taken down by a man of substantially greater integrity and intelligence.

Additional source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malmedy_massacre

Literary Meme

2006-08-14T20:35:00.000+02:00

Thanks to Cousin Sara J, I have to do this chain literary confession. What the hell, it looks like it might be fun.

One book that changed your life: Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. I am not really sure how it changed my life, but discovering Kurt Vonnegut as a teenager seemed incredibly important. I have read and reread all of his books, especially the earlier ones. As a teenager (me not him), his style greatly influenced my own writing. And I had the opportunity to hear him speak once in Berkeley – he speaks just as he writes and it was an amazing evening.

One book you've read more than once: Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. My favourite book of all time. I think it illustrates better than any other book I have read the absurdity of the world we live in. I can’t even count how many times I have read Catch-22 or how many copies I have given away. One interesting observation about the book – Brits don’t get it. All the Americans I have ever talked to about Catch-22 have only praise for the book. Almost all the limeys I have ever talked to about Catch-22 say that they didn’t like it. I have also heard Joseph Heller speak – it was at a book fair in Prague not too long before he died. I got to hear everything he said twice because he spoke in English and his words were interpreted into Czech.

One book you would want on a desert island: Everyone else seems to be picking complete works – fair enough. After all, you never know how long you will be stuck on that desert island. I would want the complete works of F. Scott Fitzgerald. I discovered The Great Gatsby in my mother’s library long before I was old enough to understand it, but I loved the story anyway. I love Fitzgerald’s novels and his short stories, and I actually do own a complete collection - it is currently taking up an entire shelf in my mom’s library in LA.

One book that made you laugh: How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World by Francis Wheen. I refer you to my book report of last October.

One book that made you cry: Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. Like my lovely Aunt Cookie, I love Russian literature. The irony in this choice of book for me is that my ex-husband also committed suicide by throwing himself under a train.

One book you wish you had written: The Trial by Franz Kafka. In fact, I almost wish I were Franz Kafka. Not really, because he was an uptight and unhappy man, but to be able to write like him… And I do have an earlier post related to The Trial. I love Kafka and have read all of his fiction – even a few of his shortest stories in German. I know where he lived, where he worked, where he hung out and I have visited his grave. Repeatedly. There is a lot of Kafka’s world still in Prague – both physically and metaphysically. I like that.

One book you wish had never been written: The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. I have not read it, I have not seen the film, and I hope the hype is just about over and I never have to hear anyone talking about it again. I might have agreed with Aunt Cookie but, frankly, there is a better chance that I will someday read Mein Kampf than that I will ever read Dan Brown’s book.

One book you are currently reading: Untold Stories by Alan Bennett, The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand, and Kafka: The Decisive Years by Reiner Stach. I realise that is three books, but they are what I am currently reading.

One book you have been meaning to read: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon. It is sitting on my shelf, my bookmark is at page 60 in the 800-page abridged version, and someday I will get back to it.

Tag five people: Ludovic, Knottyboy, Evil Pig, Miss Mickey, Last Muse

S.2453

2006-08-09T17:05:00.000+02:00

What with wars in the Middle East, contested elections in Mexico, volcanoes erupting and the imminent threat of a bird flu pandemic... not to mention phone taps in Clarence House, global warming and 9-11 movies...

Do you have any idea what is going on in the great halls of the US capitol?

Here’s one thing: S.2453, the National Security Surveillance Act of 2006, brought to you by VP Dick Cheney and Senator Arlen Specter. It was introduced in the Senate in March of this year.

If S.2453 becomes law, what it will effectively do is make FISA and the Fourth Amendment optional for the “president”. That is not an exaggeration. The government would be able to spy on and search our homes and businesses without warrants or any sort of judicial control. Can you say data-mining? We would not be able to challenge any act of government spying before an independent court. Call it a war on terror, call it what you want. It still looks like good old-fashioned fascism to me.

Here’s another thing: HR 5825, the Electronic Surveillance Modernization Act, introduced last month by 10 representatives in the House. Under HR 5825, in the event of a terrorist attack in The America, FISA and the Fourth Amendment would cease to exist for a period of 45 days, which period could be renewed for an additional 45 days – over and over and over again. Ad infinitum, in fact.

These bills are a serious problem. They represent direct attacks on our Constitution and our liberty – concepts that Americans once held dear, and some of us still do. Who the fuck elected these morons?!!

For more information on the bills and how to take action, please click on the “Stop the Surveillance Bills” button in the sidebar.

Hezbollah TV

2006-08-08T13:35:00.000+02:00

I had not known that Hezbollah had their own tv station. I had never thought about it. Then this morning, reading the paper on my way to work, I came across an article on the opinion page entitled “Mediální bomba Hizballáhu” – Hezbollah’s Media Bomb. I thought it was interesting so I have translated the article in order to share it.*

The article is by Pavel Kohout and it appeared in today’s Mladá fronta Dnes.

Hezbollah’s Media Bomb

The terrorist organisation Hezbollah was still relatively unknown in the 1980s, but now it stirs world events. Hezbollah owes its rise to power not only to the support of the Syrian and Iranian governments, but also to the power of the media. In that respect, Hezbollah also received help from western technology and western finance.

In 1991, Hezbollah took advantage of the legislative chaos in Lebanon and started pirate television broadcasts. The organisation later obtained a licence and the television station Al Manar became a legal civil communications medium. In the year 2000, Al Manar began satellite broadcasts worldwide in Arabic, English and French.

If the word “islamo-fascism” existed, propaganda station Al Manar would fit the definition perfectly. In 2001, they broke the “news” about the alleged Jewish conspiracy that had organised the attacks of September 11th. Not even Goebbels could have thought up the plot of the television serial “Zahara’s Blue Eyes” in which evil Jews kidnap Palestinian children and take their organs for transplant; the protagonist Zahara in this way loses her eyes. Another serial “Al Shahat” – The Diaspora – was based on that anti-Semitic classic The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Al Manar’s broadcasts were always full of advertisements for the armed elements of Hezbollah. Animated souls of suicide bombers came to rest amongst rose-coloured clouds in blue heavens. Al Manar also broadcasted interviews with the mothers of real suicide bombers. A woman in a black chador would talk about the heroism of her son who had blown himself up on an Israeli bus. “In comparison with others, I have sacrificed nothing. Yes, I have sacrificed a son, but other mothers have sacrificed two or three. I hope that more of my sons will become martyrs,” she declares to the camera. She is so overcome with happiness that her eyes are flowing with tears.

A western viewer might doubt that the tears are really tears of joy, but the moderator does not allow anyone to doubt. At another time, Al Manar broadcasted film of the suicide bomber Salah Ghandour in action and the subsequent interview with his widow, the mother of three small children. What joy, what happiness! And of course many new recruits for “martyr operations”.

This terrorist propaganda was until not long ago disseminated, entirely legally, through western media outlets. For example, the television company Globecast (a subsidiary of France Telecom) broadcasted Al Manar programmes to North America through transmitters belonging to the Bermudan company Intelsat. (Intelsat’s management is in Washington.) European company Eutelsat, with its headquarters in Paris, broadcasted to Europe and North Africa. The company New Skies Satellites, registered in the US but operating from The Hague in the Netherlands, also broadcasted Al Manar signals. The firm Asiasat, registered in Bermuda and owned by the Luxembourg company SES, broadcasted Al Manar’s programmes to Asia. Hispasat broadcasted to South America, its main shareholder is Eutelsat.

In short, capital and technology from Europe and the USA helped propagate terrorism without limitation for several years. Not until the new year of 2004-2005 were the broadcasts of Al Manar prohibited in the USA, Canadia, Australia and all of the EU countries. There is a question as to whether the prohibition is enforceable by law. Protests have been called by left-orientated human rights groups. It is simply not acceptable to restrict the freedom of expression. It is simply not acceptable to impose censorship on private media companies. But the human rights of the victims of terrorism did not interest those who were fighting for freedom of expression.

Nevertheless, in the end, the Al Manar broadcasts were markedly restricted. Western media’s main reason for breaking with Al Manar was probably not the official prohibition, but rather privatisation. The shareholders of Intelsat and Eutelsat did not want terrorism on their airwaves. Not all capitalists are willing to sell ropes that in the end may hang them.

* Disclaimer – I have warned you before that I am not a talented translator. Read at your own peril.

BBC blows (so to speak)

2006-08-07T16:20:00.000+02:00

Today I was reading about Google wi-fi on the BBC News website when I came across an editing error that made me laugh out loud.

“And Mountain View isn't the first of its kind. In 59 other regions in the US, cities and companies have built similar networks, both fee and free-based, according to a research organization called Muni Wireless.”

Thanks for the giggle, BBC.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/5251646.stm

When Max loves her job

2006-08-05T13:00:00.000+02:00

This is an example of things I am asked for at work that just make my day. On Thursday, I got this email:

"Max, could you tell me, please, what is the correct common English word for these things? Thanks!"

Wank-a-thon

2006-08-05T11:39:00.000+02:00

Another bright point yesterday was seeing this headline on www.seznam.cz: “Čech chce vyhrát maratón v masturbování” – Czech wants to win masturbation marathon.

I read the article (of course!) and learned that the marathon, a charity event, takes place in London today. Other information gleaned from the article:

- Winning depends on the length of time a competitor can masturbate and the number of orgasms.

-The current record, from The America, is 8 ½ hours.

- Competitors have the choice of masturbating in a single-sex room or in a mixed room.

- Any physical contact amongst competitors is strictly forbidden.

I googled and found this.

- The event is the UK’s first Masturbation Marathon, and it is modelled on an event that has been held in San Francisco for the past 5 years.

- In addition to the single-sex and co-ed rooms, there are solo booths.

- There will be naked invigilators to make sure no one cheats.

- Channel 4 is covering the event and will broadcast the programme at a later date.

Back to the Czech article…

Marcel Rimel, a 20-year old from Ostrava, is the sole Czech competitor.

“My aim is definitely to win, I can feel it. I still need to decide whether I am just going to compete in the compulsory discipline, that is duration of masturbation, or if I am also going to go for the number of orgasms. According to that decision, I will adjust my final ‘training’.”

Update - I found these 2 pertinent websites:

http://www.masturbate-a-thon.co.uk/

http://www.masturbate-a-thon.com/

Max’s Happy Morning

2006-08-04T12:49:00.000+02:00

It’s Friday. Maybe that is why so many people seem to be in good spirits.

Last Friday the temperature got up to about 34ºC. That is 34ºC with high humidity and without air conditioning. The temperature right now is about 16ºC. Maybe that is why people’s moods have lifted.

I got up on time this morning, but I still left my house late. I’ve realised that most of the time it’s just because I don’t really want to leave my house at all. I got downstairs and a blast of air reminded me that it was cold out and that the coming rain would therefore be cold. I went back upstairs for a cardigan and an umbrella. I own two umbrellas in spite of the fact that I hate umbrellas, but I could not find either one.

The construction on the tram lines near my house has been under way for nearly 5 weeks. Still over 3 weeks to go. The middle of the main road of my part of Žižkov is an open pit. The tram rails have been dug up and everything under them is being repaired or replaced. The pavements have also been torn to pieces because there are electricity cables for the trams and who knows what else under them. There is not a lot of room to walk. But because of the construction, instead of turning the first corner and being at the tram stop, I have to walk about a kilometre to get to the next one. Sure, there are buses, but I prefer walking.

There were lots of old people out this morning and as I was walking towards the tram stop, they kept getting in my way. But I held my swearing under my breath and didn’t knock anyone over. I only sneered a little bit at the Jehovah’s Witness who stands glassy-eyed by my tram stop with her magazines.

I got off the tram in front of my bank. I walked in and saw the same young man that had helped me two days ago. I approached his desk and he looked up. I smiled and he smiled. He remembered me. Being foreign is sometimes an advantage. When I told him that I was again having problems with internet banking, that I had already fucked up the new code he had given me on Wednesday, he just smiled some more and said he would give me another new code. We talked about what had gone wrong and how to make sure nothing goes wrong this time. He was really sweet and didn’t treat me like I was stupid (which I probably would have done if we had traded shoes). I left the bank feeling good.

I decided to stop and get a coffee on my way to the office. There are not a lot of places to get take-away coffee in Prague, but a bakery near my work makes a decent latte. In Starbucks sizes, it would be “teeny-weeny”, but it’s normal over here. Every time I go to that particular bakery, it seems they have hired someone new who has not yet learned to use the register and who will probably never learn because her iq is only 32. But this time there were 3 of them at the counter, meaning a combined iq high enough to not only use the register, but also to make the coffee quickly. And all three of those girls smiled at me too.

There has been no rain.

9-11 again

2006-08-03T21:15:00.000+02:00

We have all talked about the 9-11 conspiracy over and over again. We have all talked to idiots who refuse to believe the irrefutable evidence that the events of 9-11 did not happen in the way our government has told us they did. I will not apologise for talking about 9-11 again.

All I have to say today is that you should look at this website: http://www.tyrannyalert.com/800.html.

Tyranny Alert has a 25-page report with lots of photographs (so even morons and those of us with attention disorders can read it). It is well-structured and well-organised and offers all of the evidence in one place. The report has citations and links to other sites. Please have a look – you will find it enlightening.

Max

Mel Gibson cartoons

2006-08-03T20:10:00.000+02:00

Ed Stein, The Rocky Mountain News, Colorado

Ingrid Rice, BC, Canadia

For a complete collection of cartoons on the same theme, go to http://cagle.com/news/MelGibson/main.asp

“Live bombs in court create chaos” – BBC News

2006-08-03T16:57:00.000+02:00

It seemed to make sense at the time.

Five men were arrested for possession of explosives in Bangladesh last December. They are allegedly members of Jamatul Mujahideen Bangladesh, an illegal Islamist organisation. The men are currently on trial in Dhaka.

Evidence was brought into the courtroom yesterday. Security force officer Captain Tareq Rahman Khan watched the public prosecutor open the box to show the explosives to the judge.

"I got the shock of my life," he was quoted as saying in the New Age newspaper.

Captain Khan immediately alerted the court to the fact that the bombs were live and the judge called a recess so the court could be evacuated.

The best part as reported by the BBC:

Officials blame police for not defusing the devices before coming to court. The police say they were not asked to.

Hate

2006-07-31T15:32:00.000+02:00

Marge Piercy published a book in 1991 called He, She and It (or Body of Glass outside the US). Wikipedia describes the book as a “feminist science fiction/cyberpunk novel”. Max describes it as “bloody good”.

The book takes place in the not too distant future. Wikipedia says 2059; Max doesn’t remember exactly. The world of the novel is in bad shape. Gigantic multi-national corporations have taken over the world and the environment has been devastated. Much of the world is straight out of Mad Max - devoid of law and order and extremely dangerous.

In other words, an entirely believable future.

The novel also takes place in the past as it incorporates the legend of Rabbi Löw’s Golem in 16th century Prague.

There is one aspect of the story that has always scared the bejesus out of me. Prior to the time of the narrative, the Middle East had been destroyed in a nuclear war. Maps in the year 2059 have only a black zone where Israel and its neighbours used to be.

And guess what. The world blamed Israel for starting the nuclear war. And the world did not stop there. If Israel was being blamed (rightly or wrongly), it followed that all Jews everywhere in the world were at fault. This defective logic led the world into a new age of rampant anti-Semitism.

Meanwhile, in the non-fictional world of today…

Mel “Hateful Bigot” Gibson was arrested for drink driving in LA at the weekend. It is reported that Gibson yelled anti-Semitic epithets at the arresting officer, repeatedly asked the officer if he was Jewish, and stated that “the Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world.” Amongst other unpleasant things.

A man forced his way into the office of the Seattle Jewish Federation last Friday and shot six women, one of them fatally. Three were taken to hospital in serious condition.

For lists of other incidents all over the world, see http://www.adl.org/ and click on ‘Anti-Semitism’.

Max's Weekend

2006-07-31T13:02:00.000+02:00

I have been busy and that is the only reason I did not manage to write this past weekend. Abby V was here from the London and Free & Easy was here from Bucharest.

Cocktails and Politics

Friday night was mostly about cocktails and discussions of current events and politics. Abby V is a political journalist. The Belgian was out with us too, and he is one of the most well-informed people I know.

We had the kind of discussion that I love. Three people, three different backgrounds, three different sets of opinions, but all three well-informed, all three able to express ourselves, all three able to listen to each other, question each other and to agree and disagree calmly.

(Only three because Free & Easy was off in her own world dreaming about the rugby.)

We also had a very nice dinner and finished off with a nightcap at a bar that specialises in single malt whiskies – I had a non-chill filtered Clynelish, which made me happy.

Day of Culture

Abby V and I were determined to get some culture into our weekend. After a lovely brunch at Fraktal, we walked down to the Old Town to see the Jan Šibík photography exhibition entitled Stories. Jan Šibík is a photo journalist and Stories contains some of his most harrowing photos - Sri Lanka after the tsunami; Afghanistan, Iraq and Liberia at war; an AIDS hospice in Ukraine; Angola, Palestine and more. Amazing, beautiful, poignant photographs. You can see many of them here: http://www.sibik.cz/kniha_stories_01.htm.

After our second coffee break, Abby V and I headed to the Mucha Museum. I had never been before and, to be honest, I wasn’t expecting much. Alfons Mucha is arguably the most famous art nouveau artist and his work is pleasing to look at, but I find that it all looks the same after a while. The redeeming feature of the museum was a film about Mucha’s life and work. Now Abby V and I are obsessed with making a trek to Moravský Krumlov to see Mucha’s defining work, the Slavonic Epic. http://www.mucha.cz/

We then had a beer and snack break and I introduced Abby V to pivní sýr – beer cheese. Beer cheese is a soft, smelly cheese that you mix with mustard, chopped onions and beer, and then eat on bread while you are drinking more beer. Abby V liked it.

In the evening we changed our cultural focus from the visual arts to music. Abby V and I went to a jazz club to hear the Matej Benko Trio. They were fantastic and I would definitely go to see them again. http://www.matejbenko.com/

(Free & Easy was at a wedding.)

Sunday

Our day of rest, of course.

One small victory for Max

2006-07-25T17:32:00.000+02:00

…or two small victories if you count the battle with the post lady.

The receptionist called me at about 11.30 this morning. “Max, you have post here that you need to sign for personally. Can you come downstairs now? And bring your ID.”

I told Soňa that I would bring whatever I could find. I grabbed a copy of the photo page of my passport, and my wallet.

The post lady had my envelope and the register I would need to sign sitting on the counter at reception. “Hello. Here’s my passport,” I said cheerfully as I put the photocopy on the counter.

Very predictably the post lady said, “Huh? What’s this? This is not a passport. Don’t you have your passport?”

I explained to the post lady that I don’t actually need my passport to get from Prague 3 to Prague 5 so I had left it at home. But it was her lucky day because I had the photocopy on my desk. She didn’t like any of that.

I offered her two photo driving licences – one from California and one from the UK.

“Huh? What’s this? Don’t you have an občanka?” Občanka being the Czech national ID card.

I spent the next three minutes convincing her that, where I come from, a driving licence is an občanka. The receptionists occasionally piped in to back me up.

Finally, as she mumbled something about how they would never accept a photocopy at the post office, she accepted my photocopy and let me have my envelope.

I took my letter upstairs and then forgot about it for about 40 minutes. Finally I opened it and it was actually good news.

The letter is an official declaration from the Financial Authority that I do not owe any back income tax. (I won’t say anything else on that subject so as not to incriminate myself.) I have been told that when I get similar declarations from social insurance and health insurance, we will be able to take everything to the Foreigner Police. I don’t know what happens after that.

The process of sorting out my old trade licence has been going on for about 7 months. The problem was that I had not used it since 1998 but I had never cancelled it because I didn’t know that I was supposed to. The whole thing has been superbly ridiculous and hilariously bureaucratic.

I could describe the whole exercise, Der Prozeß, if you will, as being classically Kafkaesque. The never-ending aspect of it, the unpredictability, the hoops to be jumped through, never knowing if you have done something to their satisfaction or if you will be asked to do it again, not knowing if and when the rules will suddenly change. And of course not knowing if they will suddenly take you away for execution. But I don’t describe things as Kafkaesque because that adjective is so overused in this town. An example: I read a restaurant review online in which the reviewer described the service as Kafkaesque. My conclusion was that the reviewer had never read any Kafka, but was simply a poser and a twat. The only way the service in a restaurant could be Kafkaesque would be if all the waiters suddenly turned into giant cockroaches. That never happened.

Max on the Middle East again

2006-07-25T16:12:00.000+02:00

It appears that I may have missed the bigger picture.

I always read news on websites that are anti-war. The one-sided stories began appearing immediately after Israel started their offensive in Gaza. Well, that is not quite true – there had been anti-Israel stories before. In fact, there are always anti-Israel stories. But then with the war against Hezbollah in Lebanon, some of the views expressed have been so extremely anti-Israel that I have actually been shocked.

I am a regular reader of Strike the Root, which I would describe as a high-quality and hardcore libertarian site. One of the regular features is a reader poll. I had never been offended by anything on the site, until their poll that read as follows:

Do you think Neocons, Zionists and conservative Christians want the war in the Middle East to continue? (19-23 July 2006)

That offended me. To me the question showed a lack of understanding of what Zionists and Zionism are. To me that question was anti-semitic.

But I have continued to read all of my usual sites that are anti-war, as well as mainstream and other alternative press. And I have continued to take in as much as I can, to think for myself and to try to figure things out. Reports that “President” Bush did not want an immediate cease-fire in Lebanon made me realise that something was rotten.

“What the fuck?” I thought to myself over and over. People are being killed on all sides. Lebanon is being bombed back into its recent dark ages. Why would any rational person want to put off a cease-fire?

Why did the poll writer for Strike the Root group Zionists together with neo-cons and conservative Christians anyway?

Neo-cons are the occupiers of the White House, Project for the New American Century - sick, greedy, power-hungry war-mongers who don’t spare so much as a thought for anyone but themselves.

Conservative Christians are seemingly waiting for the Rapture, and for some reason they need all hell to break loose in the Middle East.

Both groups support Israel in their own twisted ways for their own twisted reasons. Neo-cons want to use Israel for their own purposes, just as they use the American government and the American military for their own purposes. Conservative Christians need the Jews to be in Israel in order to bring about Armageddon and their salvation party in their Christian heaven. Apparently, sometimes the two groups overlap.

Where do Zionists come into the equation? Did the poll writer mean the Israeli government? Is the Israeli government actually co-operating with people whose aims are world domination and Armageddon? What is really going on? What is the bigger picture? I, for one, do not pretend to know.

And finally, a message for Strike the Root:
Choose your words more carefully. You should learn what a Zionist is before you throw the word around. Thank you.

http://www.strike-the-root.com/

A Demonstration of US Arrogance

2006-07-20T11:43:00.000+02:00

Upon opening today’s email from Prague Daily Monitor, two headlines caught my eye.

“Czechs against proposed US missile base, says poll” and, under it,

“Cabaniss: Czechs oppose US missile base due to lack of information”.

William “Cannabis” Cabaniss is the ignorant and arrogant US ambassador to the Czech Republic.

Jaroslav Hadrava of Median, the agency that conducted the poll for Mladá fronta Dnes, agrees with Cannabis: “People do not have enough information about what the permanent presence of American units would mean for them. So worries and often fear prevail in them.”

Perhaps Jaroslav “I like to talk out of my arse” Hadrava does not know enough of his own nation’s history. Which is surprising, because Czechs have a fascinating history and most of them know it well.

The Lands of the Bohemian Crown were absorbed into the Habsburg Empire in the year 1526 and the Czechs were ruled from, and occupied by, Austria until 1918.

Czechoslovakia existed as a free and democratic republic from 1918 to 1939.

The Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was occupied by the Nazis from 1939 to 1945.

Czechoslovakia was more or less free from 1945 to 1948, which is when the Communists took over. In 1968 Warsaw Pact forces invaded Czechoslovakia, and the Soviets remained in occupation of the country until 1989.

Czech and Slovakia have been free since 1989.

Which means that, in the last 480 years, Czechs have been free, unoccupied and autonomous for about 41 years. I think that is enough information for 83% of Czechs to rationally decide that they are opposed to a permanent US military presence on their territory.

Max against missiles

2006-07-19T12:41:00.000+02:00

They started in north Moravia this morning. A team of about 20 US military experts is looking for a place to put some missiles.

The project is part of a US anti-missile defence system, an umbrella, so to speak, that will protect all of Europe from North Korea, Iran and any other “rogue” countries that decide to attack us.

The US Department of Defence wants to build a base for missiles and they are considering three sites in the Czech Republic, as well as sites in Poland and Hungary. A team has already inspected the sites in Poland, and a team will go to Hungary later this summer. The Polish newspaper Przegląd has claimed that a deal has already been made between Washington and Warsaw for a base in northeastern Poland. I hope they’re right, but only because it would keep the missiles away from Czech.

The sites the US missile team is inspecting in the Czech Republic are all military training areas (vojenský výcvikový prostor) and they have all previously hosted Soviet troops. The locals have not missed the irony.

The missile experts are in Libavá today. Vojenský výcvikový prostor Libavá is about 25 km northeast of Olomouc. The majority of local residents are not very happy about the prospect of a missile base. They don’t believe that a US military presence will bolster the local economy or, in fact, provide any benefits at all.

The other scheduled stops on the inspection tour are Jince and Boletice. Vojenský výcvikový prostor Jince is near Příbram, about half-way between Prague and Plzeň. Boletice is in Šumava and only 5 km from Český Krumlov.

Many in the Czech government seem to think that a US missile base on Czech territory would be a positive thing. Particularly ODS, who apparently like the flavour of American butt. Only the Communists have come out unequivocally against the project.

And Max. I am with the Communists on this one.

Go Radio Ulster

2006-07-16T19:02:00.000+02:00

Here is a nice little audio clip from the BBC. It is from the 6^th of July and it is a Radio Ulster presenter voicing his opinion of George W. Bush. The BBC had to apologise for the presenter’s comments.

I would like to thank X for sending the clip to me for this blog.

And I would like to thank knottyboy for hosting the file on his server and writing the code for me. (Max is not the computer goddess she would like to be.)

Anderson
Bush clip - 117kb

Opens with any mp3 player, click link to begin download.

Max on the Middle East

2006-07-16T11:26:00.000+02:00

I find it difficult to write about Israel. I find it difficult to talk about Israel. People often want my views on the subject because I am fairly knowledgeable about it (and because I am Jewish). I have lived in Israel, I have studied Israeli history (from ancient to modern) and politics, and I have even taught modern Israeli history and politics. I know the people and the culture fairly well.

I am always frustrated when people exhibit ignorance of the history and politics of the region, yet also express strong views. People tend to take sides in a discussion, and refuse to acknowledge that there is another side, or even other sides. The situation in the Middle East is far from black and white.

I have always been frustrated when people introduce the idea that either (i) Israel shouldn’t be where it is, or (ii) the Palestinians are not a real nation of people. I have simple answers to those arguments. First, Israel is there and you are wasting time in a pointless discussion instead of focusing on the real and current issues. Second, no matter what history you have been taught, you cannot deny that the Palestinians exist as a nation in today’s world. No matter what you say, you are not going to make Israel or the Palestinians disappear. The problem is not going to go away.

Since 1987-1988, when I lived in Israel, I have been certain of the following:

The Palestinian Arabs would eventually achieve some degree of autonomy.
Israel would eventually withdraw from at least some of the territory that lies outside of the Green Line (pre-1967 borders).
The Palestinian Arabs would fuck up through some form of aggression.
Israel would use the Palestinian aggression as an excuse to go back in.

And it has happened exactly like that.

Then throw Lebanon into the mix, and we have a two-front “conflict”.

People have accused Israel of over-reacting and called their response disproportionate. Look at history. Israel’s response is always “disproportionate”. Look at a map. Israel is a little tiny country surrounded by large and mostly unfriendly Arab countries. What do you expect them to do?

People have said that it is not the Palestinians or Lebanese who are waging war on Israel, it is Hamas and Hezbollah. The Palestinians elected Hamas. You could just as easily say that the US is not occupying Iraq, it’s just the neo-cons. Sorry, the argument does not work. Hezbollah do not control the Lebanese government, but Lebanon tolerates their presence and activities, which makes Lebanon responsible under international law. It is a fair argument that Lebanon does not have the power to control Hezbollah, but that is not Israel’s problem.

Many people are justifiably upset that Israel has attacked infrastructure in Gaza and that it is the innocent people that are suffering. I won’t defend Israel for destroying the power plant, but, again, look at history. “Disproportionate” – perhaps; completely predictable – absolutely, and Hamas knew it.

Hezbollah from the north and Hamas from the south have been firing rockets into Israel. Just this morning, rockets came very close to hitting an oil refinery and gas storage tanks in the port of Haifa, Israel’s third largest city. People have been killed. Israel has to defend itself, and they are within their rights to do so.

It is a tragedy that innocent people are losing their lives and their homes on both sides. I have heard people argue that Israel is somehow more guilty because more Palestinians and Lebanese have been killed than Israelis. But this is not a game and it’s not about keeping score.

Where is all of this going? I don’t know. I hope that international intervention and diplomacy can bring an end to this latest conflict before it widens. But it is very scary that there is that potential for escalation.

I found a very good article this morning in the Baltimore Sun. It was written by Shibley Telhami, who is the Anwar Sadat professor for peace and development at the University of Maryland and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. It is titled “The limits of escalation” and it analyzes whether Israel’s strategy of demonstrating strength can work.

http://tinyurl.com/ozjlj

NatWest 3: an abuse of law

2006-07-15T19:03:00.000+02:00

The case of the NatWest 3 provides a fine example of why we should worry more about legislation that is passed “to protect us from terrorists”.

I am not concerned with whether the NatWest 3 are innocent or guilty. I am concerned that they have been extradited to the US without a preliminary hearing in the UK, which could have determined whether or not there was sufficient evidence to support their extradition. I am concerned that they may not be given the same rights as American citizens in custody in the US. I am concerned that their human rights have been violated because they may be stuck in Houston (I could stop right there, couldn’t I?) and have no way to work and support their families. It could be up to two years before their case is actually brought to trial.

The NatWest 3 could be tried in England. They were in England when they allegedly committed the crime. England has a fully functioning judicial system that meets (and possibly surpasses) American standards. The US is basing its claim for jurisdiction on the fact that money was wired between the US and England, based on which England would have an equal claim for jurisdiction.

The UK-US Extradition Treaty of 2003 was originally agreed “to protect us from terrorism”. Ensnaring people who are suspected of a white collar crime, and hardly dangerous to society or “our way of life”, is an injustice and makes a mockery of a law that was supposedly enacted to protect citizens of both the US and the UK. The situation of the NatWest 3 is a fine example of how “anti-terrorism” legislation is being used against ordinary citizens.

Zamek w Przegorzałach

2006-07-09T22:10:00.000+02:00

This was my fifth trip to Kraków and I saw two things I had never seen before.

The first was the Festiwal Kultury Żydowskiej w Krakowie - the annual Kraków Festival of Jewish Culture, which was in its 16^th year. The old Jewish area of Kazimierz was full of music and cultural events, the highlight of which was a huge street party and concert on Saturday night. It was fantastic, but I am not going to write about it. If you are interested, see http://www.jewishfestival.pl/.

The second thing: on Saturday afternoon, A said she wanted to take me out of Kraków and show me something special. We drove to Przegorzały to visit the zamek (villa) there, which is on a hill overlooking the Wisła river and has an amazing view of the countryside between Kraków and Oświęcim. It was absolutely gorgeous and we sat on the terrace there and had coffee.

There’s more. Like most places in Poland, the zamek has a history. Hans Frank, Governor-General of Occupied Poland from 1939 to 1945, used the zamek as a summer residence. The story A told me is that Frank did one or two things to the zamek in order to impress Heinrich Himmler, although it is not known whether or not Himmler ever made it to the zamek. The thing Frank did, which is still in evidence in the foyer of the zamek, is that he ordered the construction of a granite fountain in an interesting shape.

Because a picture is worth 1000 words, here is a photograph that I took, standing on the edge of the fountain to get the full effect from above:

2006-07-04T18:33:00.000+02:00

Max is away again

Soccer etymology

2006-07-03T16:25:00.000+02:00

This post will be my last about football. I promise.

For years I have had to listen to limeys making fun of the word “soccer”. After seeing it used on British tv a few years ago (the show Soccer Saturday), I did a bit of research and found that it was a British-coined term, a shortening of “Association Football”. Whenever the limeys disparage the word “soccer”, I inform them that they are the ones who made it up.

As the ridiculing picked up again two weekends ago when Jono and Big G were with me in Prague, I decided to present the evidence right here.

“Soccer” is indeed short for “Association Football”.

From http://www.wordorigins.org:

The Football Association was formed in London in October 1863 when representatives of eleven clubs and schools met in an attempt to standardize the rules of the game. One of the rules prohibited the carrying of the ball, a rule that would lead to the Rugby-oriented clubs leaving the Association several months later. The name “Association Football” was coined to distinguish it from Rugby.

By 1889, the abbreviation socca’ was in use, and the spelling soccer had made its appearance by 1895.

From http://www.etymonline.com:

1889 – socca; 1891 – socker; 1895 – soccer. originally university slang, from a shortened form of “Assoc.”…they could hardly have taken the first three letters of the word.

So piss off with your notions of superior language, limeys.

Fußballweltmeisterschaft Report

2006-07-03T15:06:00.000+02:00

…or the Agony of Defeat

The atmosphere in Dortmund was magical. The England-Portugal match was excruciating. I actually worried that I might have a heart attack during the penalty shoot-out. I didn’t, but I swear my grey hair count doubled (to 8 – still nothing to worry about). I was in regular radio contact with Jono in London – that weird went with P&O to watch the match in a Portuguese bar. Good thing I wasn’t there – I would have killed people.

Olive and I had driven to Dortmund earlier in the afternoon. We checked out one of the public viewing areas – a huge screen on Friedensplatz, but decided we couldn’t do it because it was about 32ºC (90ºF) and there was no shade at all. We walked round and became part of the pervasive carnival mood. The whole city centre was lined with beer, sausage and souvenir stands. I bought England paraphernalia – a red and white lei and a wristband. I wore them proudly, even after the match. There were flags everywhere, displayed on buildings and on people. People were happy.

I decided we needed to find an Irish pub – I wanted to be amongst limeys to watch the match. Olive asked a couple of people and we were directed to Limerick’s, which was nearby. We went in at 4 o’clock when they opened and staked out a prime table directly in front of the big screen.

It was actually a very exciting match. Except that England didn’t win. It was shocking when David Beckham went off with an injury at 51 minutes, but the team had enough depth and maturity to play without Beckham. It was even more shocking when Wayne Rooney got sent off at 62 minutes, and incredibly frustrating because it was down to his own stupidity. I reckon Rooney would have got only a yellow card for stepping on Ricardo Carvalho’s testicles – that could have been unintentional, after all. But then he shoved Cristiano Ronaldo and the referee gave him what he deserved. What a cunt.

England played well one man down for the rest of the match, but not quite well enough. The crowd in the pub was screaming for a goal. If there is one certainty in football, it’s that England do not win on penalties.

At the end of the 30 minutes of extra time, waiting for the penalty shoot-out, I thought I might throw up. I was shaking and tried to remind myself that I wasn’t actually English. The rest is history. England are out.

Olive tried to be sympathetic, but she was still over the moon from Germany’s win over Argentina the night before.

2006-07-01T06:00:00.000+02:00

Max is away

The High Price of American Gullibility

2006-06-29T22:37:00.000+02:00

An article by Paul Craig Roberts from www.lewrockwell.com

This excellent essay expresses a lot of the same ideas that I have expressed on this blog with the added bonus of some facts I had not previously come across. Rather than summarise it for you, here is the link. It is an enlightening read.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/roberts/roberts164.html

Don't try this at home

2006-06-29T12:44:00.000+02:00

When global news and politics become too depressing, it is refreshing to find comic relief in the stupidity of the people around us.

Translated from www.novinky.cz:

Man wanted piercing, ended up in surgery

At the end of last week, doctors at the hospital in Jablonec had to treat an unusual injury. A young man from Jablonecko who had wanted to give himself a home genital piercing ended up in the care of local surgeons. His attempt at piercing had not gone as planned. Emergency services took the young man, with a bleeding and very swollen wound, to the hospital.

JABLONEC NAD NISOU – “We had never before treated a wound similar to this one,” said Petra Krajinová, Jablonec hospital spokesperson. Doctors had to cut into the young man’s penis in order to drain the clotted blood from the hematoma. The young man should not suffer any long-term consequences as a result of the experience. His recovery, however, will not be pleasant.

“There are more and more complications due to attempted piercings. Every month we treat at least one such case. Generally, most of the cases involve very young patients, under 20 years old. I would say mostly girls,” commented Liberec surgeon Vladimír Výborný.

Doctors generally don’t want to do piercings. From their perspective, it’s just an unhealthy fashion trend.

Intimidation of the Press

2006-06-28T11:49:00.000+02:00

the new co-operative

The leak is “treasonous” and The New York Times should be prosecuted under the 1917 Espionage Act, according to Rep. Peter King, chair of the House Homeland Security Committee. In his usual one-word way, “President” George W. Bush has called the disclosure simply “disgraceful”.

The government claims that keeping track of our banking activities is necessary for the “war on terror” (yawn). But watching bank transfers is not going to stop Ali, Ahmed and Muhammed from blowing up cars in Baghdad or themselves in New York.

The New York Times and other US papers broke the story last week: the Treasury Department has been subpoenaing information from SWIFT, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, for years. Most international bank transfers go through the SWIFT system – in fact, about $6 trillion every day.

The administration says they only go into the SWIFT database when they have specific information about a suspected terrorist. Yes, of course, just like they are only monitoring overseas phone calls made by terrorists. And just how would you define “suspected terrorist” anyway?

Before The New York Times broke the story last week, Treasury Secretary John Snow had “invited” New York Times executive editor Bill Keller to his office to try to “talk him out of publishing” the story. Snow has since claimed that letting the terrorists know that we are watching their money has put lives at risk.

Eric Lichtblau, one of the reporters who wrote the New York Times story, disputes Snow’s allegation. “This is not giving away information that is tangibly helping terrorists know what they don't already know.”

And that is the bottom line. The terrorists already knew they were being watched. The only people who may not have been aware of the bank spying were us, the American people.

VP Dick “Dickhead” Cheney thinks it is “a disgrace” that The New York Times won a Pulitzer Prize for reporting on the government’s domestic telephone surveillance programme. But Cheney has it completely the wrong way.

The New York Times and other papers have done us a great service by not allowing the government to intimidate them, and by telling us what we have every right to know. They deserve more awards.

Come on England

2006-06-27T21:04:00.000+02:00

…or if England fail, I have decided to adopt Argentina.

Jono and Big G had just arrived at my flat. We were having a beer in the sitting room. I muttered a “sorry, but I have to do this” and turned the tv on. G smiled and settled in more comfortably, pleased that he hadn’t had to ask. It was Saturday at 17.00 and time for the Germany-Sweden match, the first game of the second stage.

We drank our beers, watched the match and talked football for a little while before heading off to the Old Town. We walked by the giant screen on the square, but had no interest in standing in a crowd of sweaty Germans to watch the rest of the match. We instead sat sipping sekt on a roof-top terrace, where we could remain aloof from the crowd but still hear their buzz.

Sekt having been sipped, we made our way to Chez Marcel for dinner. The traditional French brasserie had been transformed into a bar de sport français. So there we were – 2 limeys and a yank in the Czech Republic, in a French place run by Algerian Berbers, watching Argentina and Mexico play football in Germany on French tv.

I was 100% behind Argentina, especially as I have 4 of their players on my fantasy team. A couple of Argentinians had come into the bar wearing their country’s football colours and it seemed that everyone in the bar was supporting Argentina. The score was 1-1 after 90 minutes so the game went into overtime. Maxi Rodriguez’s winning goal at 98 minutes was stunningly beautiful. Argentina were through, and I had got points for my fantasy team.

G was dazzled by my knowledge of the Beautiful Game, but mostly because he is a chauvinist and doesn’t think girls (or Americans) can know about football. At any rate, he has promised to take me to an Arsenal match back in London. Hooray!

On Sunday we watched the England-Ecuador match in the beer garden at Riegrovy sady. England’s win, which was not pretty, means that I will get to see England play when I am in Germany next Saturday. I’ll be watching the match on a giant tv outdoors somewhere rather than in the stadium in Gelsenkirchen, but it’s all very exciting nonetheless.

Come on England!

Iran Again

2006-06-23T12:34:00.000+02:00

Timing is everything. I heard this on BBC World Service radio this morning: The US military commander in Iraq has accused Iran of providing covert support to Shia extremists in Iraq.

And from the BBC News website: Although the US has no evidence that Iranians were operating directly in Iraq, Gen Casey said "surrogates" regularly attacked US troops.

Let’s examine the first part of the latter statement. The US has no evidence – that sounds oddly familiar. Of what else have we had no evidence? Let’s see...there was Saddam’s connection to Al-Qaeda and 9/11. Then there was WMD. And of course, we have had no evidence of criminal activities concerning most of the prisoners held in Guantánamo Bay and other illegal prison camps. There seems to be a pattern here. When I was a kid, you weren’t allowed to accuse anyone without evidence. Suspicions and hearsay were not acceptable. It is obvious those rules no longer apply – at least not to some.

Looking at the whole statement again, here is my analysis:
1. We have no evidence that Iranians are operating in Iraq (stated clearly).
2. Iranians are not operating in Iraq and/or our intelligence is still shit (inferred from statement).
3. We want to accuse Iran so we have come up with a “surrogates” theory – whatever that means (postulated from statement).

The Brits have also claimed that Iranians are training insurgents and providing explosives and other materials.

Some analysts fundamentally disagree with Gen Casey, e.g. Karim Sadjadpour of the International Crisis Group in Washington. He told the BBC that Shias have not had a big influence on the insurgency, that the outside help comes from Sunnis and Jihadis from countries like Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

The thing is, I don’t even care whether Gen Casey is, in fact, right. Knowing the truth is not going to make a difference.

What bothers me right now is the timing of Gen Casey’s accusation. What bothers me is the US’ stockpiling of reasons to attack Iran. What bothers me is the possibility that Americans may still be as gullible as we were 3 and 4 years ago in the build-up to the invasion of Iraq.

Ups and Downs of the World Cup

2006-06-18T10:16:00.000+02:00

Yesterday was exhausting. Czech played against Ghana at 18.00 and Team USA played Italy at 21.00. I watched both games at home, kd came over to join me.

I had been out with kd and Scouseman in the afternoon, and barely got back in time. In fact, I missed the Czech-Ghana kick-off because I was downstairs in the beer store stocking up for the evening. No big deal, I thought, what’s going to happen in the first couple of minutes?

So when I turned on the tv at about 3 minutes into the match, I couldn’t believe that it was already 1-0 to Ghana. It’s history now, the Ghanaians outplayed the Czechs and won 2-0. Headline on the BBC’s website immediately after the match: Ghana stun Czech Republic. To say the least.

Interesting observation: during celebrations, i.e. when Ghana scored and at the end of the match when they had won, player number 15, John Pantsil, took an Israeli flag out of his sock and waved it around in front of the cameras. I wondered why. Just now, I googled and found what may explain the flag. From Wikipedia:

John Pantsil, né le 15 juin 1981, est un footballeur ghanéen. Il joue au poste de défenseur avec l’équipe du Ghana et le club de Hapoël Tel-Aviv.

In case you didn’t get that, Pantsil plays for Hapoel Tel Aviv football club. He has also played for Maccabi Tel Aviv. Mystery at least partially solved.

On to the next match…

Italy and the US drew 1-1. The game was a big disappointment for Italy, but somewhat of a success for the US. While the 1 point the US gets for the draw may not help the team in the tournament, not losing to Italy whilst playing a man down (9 to 10 because of red cards) was a big psychological victory. And if DaMarcus Beasley’s goal had not been called back for offside…

US goalkeeper Kasey Keller was the hero (and named man of the match). Italian Daniele De Rossi was the villain. His “sickening, needless” elbow that bloodied Brian McBride’s face was “the undoubted low point” of the World Cup tournament, according to the BBC.

The important thing was that Team USA showed that they can play at World Cup level and that making the quarter-finals 4 years ago may not have been a fluke after all. The Americans looked like a different team than the one that had lost 3-0 to the Czechs 5 days earlier.

The USA-Ghana match on Thursday should be a good one. So should Czech-Italy, for that matter.

Quote of the day

2006-06-16T10:57:00.000+02:00

Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.
-- Charles Mackay

Thanks to kd for the quote.

Living the World Cup

2006-06-13T12:11:00.000+02:00

I love the World Cup tournament. It is so much more exciting than, for example, the Olympics. No weird or boring sports, just the Beautiful Game. And the fact that it is in Europe this time means that the games are in the afternoons and evenings so that I can actually see most of them.

I ducked out of work 30 minutes early yesterday to meet friends to watch the US play the Czech Republic in their first match of the tournament. I had been looking forward to this game since the schedule had been announced weeks (months?) ago. I wanted to support my team, the Americans. But when Jan Koller headed in the first Czech goal just 5 minutes into the game, I did not feel sad or even disappointed. It’s not that I suddenly didn’t want the Americans to win, it’s just that I wanted the Czechs to win too.

I had been talking about the conundrum with some other American Praguer footie fans for days. What do you do when you have two countries – a native one and an adopted one (we have all lived here for a long time), and they play head to head? We wanted the US to win and we wanted Czech to win. In case you are not familiar with the game, only one team can win each match – it’s in the rules. We were not hoping for a tie because that wouldn’t do either of the teams any good in the tournament.

So this is how it played out. Koller had scored and we couldn’t be sad about it. When US star Claudio Reyna’s awesome shot hit the Czech goalpost instead of going into the net, we all groaned. But then at 36 minutes, when Tomáš Rosický scored with a breathtaking kick from 25 metres, we all cheered along with the Czechs. Rosický scored again at 76 minutes and the Czechs won 3-0. (Rosický also scored 17 points for me and I have moved up to 2nd place in my fantasy league.)

And the worst is over. It is unlikely that the US and the Czechs will meet again in the tournament, and I can support both teams in all of their matches. I also support England, but they are not on the same level for me as my top two teams so I will not feel torn and tormented if I have to root against them.

The tournament goes on… In addition to lots more football, I am looking forward to being in Germany during the World Cup. At the beginning of July, I will be visiting Olive, who lives near Dortmund. Two quarter-final matches will be played while I am there. Olive and I have already agreed that we will watch the games outdoors on the giant screen tvs that have been set up everywhere, either in her town or in Dortmund. Dortmund is one of the World Cup cities – the first semi-final match will be played there the day after I leave. And of course there is a chance that one or more of my teams will be playing that day – that would be very cool.

Suicides. Not "acts of war".

2006-06-11T12:30:00.000+02:00

Three prisoners being held at Guantánamo Bay committed suicide yesterday morning by hanging themselves with clothing and bed sheets in their cells. The three were the first successful suicides, although dozens of “detainees” in the illegal prison camp had previously made attempts.

The US military has made the outrageous statement that the suicides of the three men, two Saudis and a Yemeni, were “acts of war”.

Anyone who has known someone who has committed suicide knows that suicide is an act of despair, not of war.* I have read Moazzam Begg’s account of being a prisoner in Guantánamo, and it is very easy to see why someone would want to commit suicide there. Moazzam Begg had help and hope as a UK citizen; I imagine that two Saudis and a Yemeni could easily have had no hope at all.

Many rights groups have made statements, all of them expressing the opinion that the men had been driven by despair.

These people are despairing because they are being held lawlessly. There’s no end in sight. They’re not being brought before any independent judges. They’re not being charged and convicted for any crime. – Ken Roth, Human Rights Watch

The Guantánamo camp commander, on the other hand, is certain that the suicides amount to war.

They are smart. They are creative, they are committed. They have no regard for life, either ours or their own. I believe this was not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us. – Rear Adm Harry B. Harris, Jr

“Asymmetrical warfare”? I don’t even know what that means, unless it means that the three men were very small and powerless against the behemoth war machine that was keeping them illegally imprisoned. They were three men who were effectively stateless and therefore could not commit “acts of war” on behalf of anyone but themselves. They were being denied rights as prisoners of war so it is wrong to suddenly accuse them of committing acts of war.

Semantics aside, killing oneself in isolation cannot be an act of war, or even of terror, by any definition I know. It is fundamentally ridiculous, and even offensive, for a military commander to refer to a suicide as such.

* with the exception of suicide bombers, suicide plane hijackers, etc, whose acts can be said to be “of war”, but which sometimes also have an element of desperation.

A piece of Bohemian history

2006-06-10T21:52:00.000+02:00

Gabčík and Kubiš receiving medals from Dr Edvard Beneš,
president of the Czechoslovak government in exile

Last weekend, Kim and I were walking up the river and decided to stop into the Orthodox Church of Saints Cyril and Methodius, which is famous for being the site of the last stand on 18 June 1942 between the paratroopers who had killed Reinhard Heydrich and the Nazi troops who had been hunting them down. Seven Czechoslovak paratroopers died in the church, of whom two had actually carried out the Heydrich assassination. They were Jan Kubiš and Jozef Gabčík.

There is an exhibit in the church’s crypt where the paratroopers had been hiding and where four of them died. I had been through the exhibit a few times before, but this time was a little bit different.

The first thing was that I noted the address of a safe house in which Jan Kubiš had been hidden right after the assassination. None of the safe house addresses had ever meant anything to me before, but this one did because it is on my block, just 2 doors down from where I live now.

I asked the man working in the museum if they still showed the last part of the Czech film Atentát (Assassination, 1964) that depicts the siege of the church. He said that they were now only showing the film for school groups, but would we like to go up into the church? The church itself is not normally open to tourists, but he was about to take a Ukrainian church group in there.

This was where the visit got really different. The Ukrainian church group had its own guide so the museum man showed a few things to me and Kim and gave us a bit more information than was in the exhibit down in the crypt. For the first time I got to see the top side of the entrances through which the paratroopers and later the Nazis had entered the crypt. The man also explained to us further how the Nazis had found the church.

The exhibit in the crypt says only that another paratrooper, Karel Čurda, had given away the location of the paratroopers’ hideout. But the museum man told us that the Nazis had obtained only the name of the church, and they had not known that the paratroopers were there. When a couple of Nazis walked into the church to have a look round, three of the seven paratroopers were on watch in the choir loft. It was only because they opened fire that the Nazis realized that resistance fighters were there and called for back-up.

The rest of the story is well-known, that the three paratroopers who were upstairs were killed in the firefight, and that the four paratroopers down in the crypt eventually committed suicide to avoid capture. Karel Čurda was hanged for high treason in 1947.

The Heydrich assassination itself remains controversial because the Nazi reprisals, which were expected, were brutal, horrific and excessive. Over 5000 Czechs were murdered in the reprisals. The incidents that are the most infamous as Nazi atrocities are the destruction of the villages Lidice and Ležáky.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Anthropoid

Blind to the big picture

2006-06-10T13:30:00.000+02:00

Rupert Lees: Blind

Result of an AP-Ipsos poll: “Support the troops, but oppose the war.” The sentiment is easy to understand: “The military is our sons and daughters…” – but it is just sentiment with no rationale to back it up.

The American people want to believe that Haditha and Hamdaniya, i.e. deliberate killings of civilians, are just isolated incidents. And perhaps they are, but how many more do we need before we stop calling them ‘isolated’?

“Support the troops, but oppose the war.” How is it ‘support’ of young men and women to send them far away to an inhospitable country that is teeming with insurgents and where guerrilla warfare is a fact of everyday life? What kind of ‘support’ are they getting when they come home without limbs or with emotional wounds that go untreated? What kind of ‘support’ are their families getting when they come home in flag-draped coffins?

What kind of ‘support’ is it to send the troops back to Iraq for a second, third or fourth tour of duty? Each time they go back, the likelihood of them snapping and committing atrocities is greater. It happens to every army in every war.

“The military is our sons and daughters and, of course, we wouldn’t systematically engage in something that defiles American values.” – Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania.

Open your eyes, Kathleen. I find it terribly distressing that such a stupid statement could come from the mouth of the director of such a prestigious institute. But, then again, perhaps the definition of ‘American values’ has changed since 2001. This war in Iraq is defiling my American values every day. Sending troops over there to be blown up by roadside bombs defiles my American values. Killing innocent people, whether deliberately or ‘collaterally’, defiles my American values.

It is nothing more than a government and media-generated illusion that the troops are protecting freedom and democracy, it is an absolute lie that they are protecting the US. Every death, whether American military or Iraqi civilian, is nothing more than the waste of a life.

The US cannot win the war in Iraq. Democracy cannot be imposed. The US went into Iraq on the basis of false intelligence and lies. If you oppose the war, the only way to support the troops is to bring them home and stop sacrificing them to the greed of the few who are making fortunes out of the occupation of Iraq.

http://tinyurl.com/o5ch4

Max's Morning

2006-06-02T11:44:00.000+02:00

I normally listen to BBC World Service radio in the morning whilst getting ready to go to work. I often hear things that grab my attention, but by the time I am at a computer and ready to do some research and write about them, I have forgotten what they were.

This happened yesterday or the day before, when I listened to a US ambassador being interviewed, and what he was saying and how he was saying it really rubbed me the wrong way. By the time I was ready to write about it, all I could remember was that either his first or last name was William(s), he was ambassador in a Latin American country (no idea which one) and he was talking about the “war on drugs” in a manner that was really condescending and patronising towards the government and the people of whichever country he was ambassador to. I made a perfunctory effort to find a US ambassador called William(s) in a Latin American country, but then I just gave up.

So today I made a real effort to remember things - for example, scratching the word Texas into my arm with my fingernail while I was in the shower. It worked because I can now recall 4 things from this morning’s news that upset me (aside from the mess with Arsenal and that Belgian football club).

I am not going to write about one of them, which was the revelation of another possible My Lai style massacre in addition to Haditha. As I discussed with my contact in a major media enterprise yesterday, that certainly deserves its very own post and I am currently negotiating with said contact for a guest blog.

Instead I am looking to the land of the free and the home of the brave - The America.

First stop, new New Orleans or, more specifically, the Renaissance Trailer Park, which houses 2,500 or so former residents of New Orleans. The BBC went there and interviewed some “temporary” trailer park people. FEMA erected the trailer park on the grounds of a juvenile correctional facility or, as the BBC interviewer translated it for a worldwide audience, a youth prison. The trailers are small, but FEMA has furnished all of them with large colour televisions – the opiate of the masses. I couldn’t see on the radio, but I would guess that the majority, if not all, of the trailer park’s residents are black, and it doesn’t seem like anyone is making any effort to get them out of there and back into real homes. That last part is conjecture, based only on what I heard in the interviews. I will not say that it is the government’s responsibility to get the trailer park people back into real homes, but the trailer park people seem to be waiting for the government to do something. Therefore, the least the government should do is to communicate with them and let them know they are waiting for something that is not going to happen so that they will know that they should start making things happen on their own.

Second stop, the border between Texas and Mexico. The state of Texas announced yesterday that it is planning to install hundreds of video surveillance cameras along its border with Mexico. The video footage will be broadcast live on the internet so anyone anywhere can fulfil his or her fantasy of being a border policeman/woman. Governor Rick Perry sees his plan “as no different than the neighbourhood watches that we’ve had in our communities for years and years.” But I see it more as a “spy on your neighbour” scheme, a “be a good citizen and be the eyes and ears of the police state” programme. The Electronic Surveillance Curtain – the new and improved 21st century Iron Curtain.

And the final stop for today, my home state of California. Muscle-boy Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has given in to the fascists in Washington and has agreed to send the California National Guard to the border with Mexico. The four southern border states will be signing a Memorandum of Understanding with the DC dictatorship which includes provisions on costs and rules of engagement, amongst other things. For example, Guardsmen are prohibited from handling detainees, but they are allowed to carry guns. Call me cynical, but that looks to me like they will be allowed to kill but not touch. Odd.

So, in summary, just from this morning’s BBC radio news, we have black people in concentration trailer parks, average Joes being called upon to spy for the police state and a southern border that is about to be militarised along its entire length. Nice.