Just for the record...

This brief post is in response to the comments on my post of Thursday, 6th October.

Everyone is welcome on my blog. In fact, I am amazed, flattered and very happy that you all keep coming back. I love the discussions, and I don't mind when they go off topic. I think it's great that we have such differences of opinion, and I only hope that people sometimes think about the other positions, because we all always have something to learn.

I like the humour, even when it comes through as sarcasm.
I really appreciate the well thought-out and elucidated comments.
I would love it if people would always show respect for each other.

However, as Skeeter very wisely said, sometimes our tones and our intents are not conveyed properly through our comments. Perhaps that means that sometimes each of us needs to be a bit more careful about how we say things, and sometimes we just need to give others the benefit of the doubt, or have thicker skin, if you will.

Please keep coming back. I crave the attention.

Wedding

St Bride's Church, Fleet Street, London

Interesting facts:

1. The church's tiered steeple was the model for the traditional tiered wedding cake.

2. The parents of Virginia Dare, the first child of English parents to be born in America (1587), were married there.


Karaoke tour of London

2 vintage Routemaster buses, more champagne, songbooks at the ready, everyone singing at the tops of their voices, some dancing in the aisles, general hilarity. We quickly became a tourist attraction, and rightly so.

Jono: "I could do this every day."

Delfina Studios, Bermondsey Street

More champagne, canapés, and a jazz band. The weather was fabulous so we were able to be outside as well. Then an excellent dinner and entertaining speeches. After dessert and coffee we went back out into the reception area where a dance floor had been put down and an Irish band had set up.

I watched the Irish bride and groom and wedding guests dancing, and then the inevitable happened, the inspiration came and Max, too, became Irish for a while.

The band alternated with a dj. Jono sent me over to the vodka luge where I managed to indulge without spilling any vodka on my new lace top. And we danced and drank and chatted with all sorts of people until about 1 a.m. We were, of course, amongst the last to leave.





Jono and I got a cab home where his housemate, V, was still celebrating her birthday. More champagne in the garden.





* Late note: this just in from Juicy the maid of honour -- apparently on Saturday we got through 450 bottles of champagne, not counting the mini (375 ml) bottles of Veuve-Clicquot we had each received (with a straw) upon leaving the church (and some of us had seconds of those on the karaoke bus). How many wedding guests, you may be asking. Not sure - maybe 150.

Max is away

Things are getting worse all over

As I have criticised the loss of freedoms in the US and the UK and the draconian legislation in those two countries (e.g. the Patriot Act and the Terrorism Act, respectively), I have been saying all along that Europe is not far behind.

Benvenuto in Italia! Due to anti-terrorism legislation passed in July of this year, you must now show identification to use a computer in a privately-owned internet café in Italy. The Italian authorities have ordered all providers of public communications services to make photocopies of passports of everyone who uses the internet, phone or fax. Customers must sign a security disclaimer.

The law also requires internet cafés to keep logs of which customers use which computers and their log-on and log-off times. New public communications business licences are mandatory as is tracking software. The software records all sites which are visited by the internet café customers; the internet café managers must deliver the list generated by the software to the police on a regular basis.

The new measures not only add up to a blatant invasion of privacy, but they have also hurt business. Internet café owners in Italy report that their business has decreased by 10% since July.

An additional disturbing aspect to the situation is that the Italian people have not organised any protests against the legislation - which reminds us that Italy was, after all, the birthplace of fascism.

A Limey Making a Difference in The America

I asked my friend K if I could post an e-mail she had received from her husband, Alan, who is currently serving as a volunteer for hurricane recovery in Biloxi, Mississippi.

K’s response:

I was hoping you'd ask! Yes, please...and thanks!

By the way, the Red Cross is not liked down there, but the Salvation Army is...however, this group is just about 50 people making a big difference immediately...

Alan is volunteering with Hands On USA. www.handsonusa.org; here is what Alan wrote:

Hi Honey,

Finally after a week I am getting round to try and journal what I have seen and experienced since coming down to Biloxi!

It’s very hard for me to see so many houses and families affected by what happened here, the scope of the destruction is simply mind-boggling. We are trying to make what impact we can within Biloxi and the neighbouring cities, but there is so much that we cannot do, which I find frustrating.

What really counts each day is the people we are helping, those who are trying to help with us and the organization that is supporting our efforts, but mostly the love and support that I get from you. Because without you I simply could not be here making what impact I can.

It’s strange, but within 24 hours of working you become a veteran. I laughed at this when I was told on arrival, but it really is the case.

The first day was watching (and working), the second was organizing and working, the third was leading and working. I had with me 14 other people who are all working their butts off to clear trees and debris from people’s homes. They are looking to me for the next job, planning the day, packing checklists and executive decision making on the jobs - go figure!

One thing that does amaze me is how we continue to gel and function as a team through the ever changing dynamic of the group. People are joining and leaving every day and no two days are the same.

Here is a chronicle of my day:

I woke at 7am and headed down to a breakfast that was prepared by other volunteers, who had awoken at 5:30. I had planned my day the night before, so I knew which priority A tasks to do first etc... (p.s. a priority system that I introduced).

We had a number of new people, so I ran down the day for them and made sure that they had the kit for cutting trees (hat/glasses/gloves/sunscreen). After we sourced another car and got the coolers packed and Gatorade in the igloo we set off for our first job.

This job was for Lillian, a 78 year old lady who had recently lost her husband. On my first day we had cleared her yard of a big tree, 3 feet in diameter at the base. Her neighbour had cooked us lunch as a way of thanks, then donated a dolly for moving trunk chunks, then donated $275, Lillian then also donated $100. So today’s job was to clear her yard of a collapsed shed as way of thanks. She insisted on giving us another $100 donation (which we plan to spend on her and deliver her some treats).

Job done, off to number two. That was in Murrey St, part of the grid the city of Biloxi assigned to us to help co-ordinate our relief efforts (we help all over, but more so in our grids). We had five work orders to perform, so I broke up the team into three and set them at it.

I headed onto a side job with two others. This job was across town to an area very hard hit, all the houses are condemned and many are off (or NOWHERE NEAR) their foundations. Very scary and definitely very smelly, lots of dried raw sewage about the place.

Lionel was waiting for a FEMA trailer to arrive that day so he would have somewhere to live while we rebuilt his house. So we removed a rusty marquee from his driveway and towed out two flooded cars from the side of his house. We thought that his driveway might be too narrow for the trailer, after having seen them at other locations, so we did more work. We cut down a tree in the middle of his front yard and smashed up the concrete holding the fence posts and removed his front fence. No way could FEMA not deliver for this guy.

On each job, we make sure that each person we meet has water and ice and Hepatitis A and Tetanus vaccinations, there is a lot of sewage and rust around here.

We rejoined the main group and they had torn through 4 jobs and we helped them finish off the last one. One of their jobs, they had been cutting through brush and lopping off high-up limbs and while pulling on a branch, it moved and they saw the dog that was chained there, long dead, but it ripped apart. There were also rabbit cages with dead rabbits. Not pleasant at all!

We then had lunch at a centre set up to cater for all the Biloxi emergency services. Good food and a welcome break. On the way out I sat with a table of officers and let them know that Hands On support them by coming in and performing work that they would try and do on their days off. And we wanted them to be able to relax after dealing with such a catastrophe. They visibly appreciate the gesture even if they are ok. Today one of the officers gave us a job to help out on his daughter's house. That saved him from having to do it.

After lunch was my second Priority A job. A family that lived in a poorer part of town. I had worked on their house earlier in the week, gutting out the interior. The stench when the freezer, having been without power for three weeks of 90+ heat, spilled its freezer juice was something I’ll never forget.

Today, the city had still not cleared the roadside debris, so I once again had the pleasure of meeting that freezer! We cleared out his back yard and it contained a large tree on his roof and two boats (not his) and much debris. We saved this man and his family so much work and he was very very grateful.

Each job has a story to tell and most people are more than willing to tell it. One man had water surge to 30 feet and settle at 25, the insurance companies are trying to tell folks here that their houses were flooded and they do not have flood insurance, but we know that the house was damaged by storm driven water and I guess it’s the age old situation with insurance companies!

I will send you the picture of us sitting in one of the boats being pulled through his drive by a truck!

The last job of the day was for Larry, an 80 year old who walks with a cane. He had an 80 foot pine fall in his yard and had no hope of getting it removed - he could not afford to pay contractors to remove it. A neighbour had helped to cut and remove the limbs, but we still had a few thousand pounds of lumber in the trunk. While the crew was unloading I noticed that the city was clearing the curbside of debris, using a construction side bucket & grabber and dump truck.

I went to speak with the crew boss and explained the situation and the relief organization we are working with. He went against the city rules and brought in the machine to rip the trunk and root system and loaded it all straight into the dumpster saving us a couple hours of cutting and lifting! As we were leaving, Larry’s wife came home and was so overjoyed. She had already resigned to having that tree as a part of her yard for years to come and she was close to tears that it had been taken away.

Well, I’m bushed and that was my day. A good day, but hard for a software engineer! More of the same tomorrow, and every day until I head back.

Making a difference, one yard at a time.

Love you,

Alan

“President” Bush said yesterday that he would consider using the armed forces to enforce quarantines should there be an outbreak of avian flu in the United States. It would thus seem that Bush has never heard of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878.

The Act reads as follows:

Whoever, except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress, willfully uses any part of the Army or the Air Force as a posse comitatus or otherwise to execute the laws shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.

The Navy and Marines have been included in the Act by a Department of Defense regulation.

There are exceptions to the Act, e.g. episodes involving nuclear materials, but my search (cursory as it was) did not reveal any mention of ‘in the case of disease or pandemic’.

It would be a good idea to have a plan in place to prevent the spread of disease should there be a mutation of avian flu which produces a strain that is passed from human to human, but our military should not be involved. Besides, last I heard, they were pretty busy in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Enlightenment

Today I started reading the book that JK sent me, How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World by Francis Wheen. So far, so good.

I have already found one passage in the book that I like so much, I am going to use it in the title part of my blog (or as much of it as will fit). It was actually quoted from Roger Scruton, a contemporary British philosopher and self-described political activist and conservative. I found Scruton’s article "What Ever Happened to Reason?", from whence the quote was taken, in City Journal:

http://www.city-journal.org/html/9_2_urbanities_what_ever.html.

The Enlightenment made explicit what had long been implicit in the intellectual life of Europe: the belief that rational inquiry leads to objective truth. Even those Enlightenment thinkers who distrusted reason, like Hume, and those who tried to circumscribe its powers, like Kant, never relinquished their confidence in rational argument…For the ensuing 200 years, reason retained its position as the arbiter of truth and the foundation of objective knowledge.

Reason is now on the retreat, both as an ideal and as a reality.

An Accidental Guest Blogger

Today I would like to share with you an e-mail (well, most of it anyway) that I received a couple of days ago from my friend Veronica (not her real name) in The America. I think Veronica’s words speak for themselves.

Subject: O Canada

Dear Max

Well, this mightn't come as too big a surprise but Kaz and I have made the decision to emigrate to Canada next year! We are super-excited, for myriad reasons.

1) This country is FUCKED because our administration is FUCKIN' CORRUPT.

2) This area where we live is so goddamn expensive that I've just had it. I've had it! (To wit: we realized that to stay in this house I'd need to go back to work and I don't want to.) So, we decided to seriously downsize [plus Kaz wants to buy a house for cash because, as you probably already know, those crazy Nuts don't take loans -- they pay cash for everything. Bless them.]. We live in a pretty posh (and fuckin' conservative & WHITE) area, so we were looking at not just smaller houses on smaller plots of land, but not-as-tony neighborhoods. We thought we saw the perfect house, Max: a real fixer-upper (which is our thing) on a nicer street, but it was listed for $799K, which is high (in our opinion). Let's just say we were wrong because when I spoke with the listing agent he told me it'd sold for $952K and he didn't think it was a fixer-upper but rather a teardown. Holy fuck. To spend nearly $1M for a teardown in an okay neighborhood?

3) The Bay Area prides itself on being über liberal and ethnically diverse, but those are simply west coast prevarications. It's only "liberal" if you subscribe exactly to the common (albeit parochial) doctrines -- divagate at all and you can no longer be "liberal" but rather "wrong." So I, who am a Socialist and ostensibly more "liberal" than these dotcom limousine liberals, am "wrong" because my views don't jibe with theirs -- doesn't matter that mine are more progressive. Um, okay. And diverse? Sure, there are lots and lots of different colors here, but nobody's intermingling, that's for goddamn sure. And even those of us who do (like me, for example) are then kept out of one community or the other. The whiteys like to make "Asian driver" jokes and the local Jap gakku-en (like a nondenominational temple) told me, in not such subtle terms, that while I'd be welcome to attend the festivals it wouldn't be a good idea for me to volunteer or accompany Leo to Jap playgroup. Like I'd let my fifteen month old son attend by himself, for christ's sake. Never mind that I'm more Jap than some of them -- having lived there and speaking the language. My Chin-Am friends have said that within the Chin-Am community it is equally predatory. Shame on them all.

4) This is a car culture. Now don't get me wrong, I do love my car, but living in a more urban setting would just be so awesome! How wonderful to put Leo in his stroller and walk a few blocks and be at the shops / cafes / park / library / his school / public transport. Unless we move to San Francisco (and talk about très cher & uptight!) we can't do it here.

But we can in Toronto. We can fulfill all our above objectives (and more) thereby giving ourselves and our future family a much more fulfilling quality of life. And that rocks.

…

You know, after I had that delicious chat with you when you were in SmelL-A I began to hear many, many grumblings about the state of our nation and the administration. It's been quite interesting, actually. You were like beginnings of this wave and then more and more there it was being reported in the media. The media is still shameful in its blatant disregard of representing public opinion or aggressively pursuing the "truth" (whatever that is anymore), but at least now we're getting a peek at what's going on in the hearts and minds of Americans with a live red blood cell count.

I love you, Mireille!
Veronica
xo

Note: Mireille is Max's secret Frog name, taken from the video series that Veronica and I were subjected to in our French course. The actress that played Mireille in the series, Valérie Allain, went on to star in many fine films of the pornography genre.

Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith

A Book Report

I have just finished reading Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith by Jon Krakauer. The book begins with an account of the murders of Brenda and Erica Lafferty in American Fork, Utah in July 1984. Brenda was 24, her baby Erica was 15 months old. They were murdered by two of Brenda’s brothers-in-law, Ron and Dan Lafferty, fundamentalist Mormons who had been excommunicated from the mainstream Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS). The remarkable thing about the murders was that Ron and Dan Lafferty truly believed that God had commanded them to kill Brenda and her baby.

The book goes on to describe the modern Fundamentalist Mormon movements, giving details of their beliefs, their settlements and the people who lead them, as well as providing interviews with men and women who have left - or escaped, depending on your perspective. The book also offers a comprehensive history of the LDS church, which is absolutely fascinating and greatly increased my knowledge of the religion and its origins. The history covers both the mainstream church and the fundamentalist sects that split off from it.

I had previously known of the persecution of the Mormons and thus why they had been driven west to Utah, but I had not known how violent some of the Mormons themselves had been. The Mountain Meadows Massacre of 1857 is perhaps the most extreme example.

I had known that polygamy had earlier been a part of LDS doctrine, but I had not known that the introduction of the principle of “plural marriage” had nearly torn the church apart and that the subsequent banning of the practice was, arguably, the reason for the fundamentalist split.

The book is extremely well-researched, and the edition I read (June 2004) included the LDS church’s response to the first edition (July 2003) as well as Krakauer’s response to the response.

“Powerfully illuminating…. An arresting portrait of depravity.” – The New York Times Book Review

“Scrupulously reported…both illuminating and thrilling. It is also the creepiest book anyone has written in a long time.” – Newsweek

Having finished this book at the same time as watching The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear, I could not help noticing the parallels in the stories which show how fundamentalist religious conviction will always eventually manifest itself in violence.

* Thanks to Little Sister for pushing me to buy the book.

The Power of Nightmares

I have just watched the first part of a 3-part BBC documentary that Monkey gave to me. The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear by Adam Curtis has been shown twice on television in the UK - October/November 2004 and January 2005. It was aired in Canada in April 2005, and was scheduled for July 2005 in Australia, but cancelled because it was decided that the screening would be “inappropriate” after the bombings in London. An edited version was screened in Cannes in May 2005.

The documentary has never been shown on American television. You can download it for free at http://www.archive.org/details/ThePowerOfNightmares

I am not going to tell you what you should think about it. I will only say that it is interesting and compelling.

I do not know enough to judge how accurate the material is, but I learned quite a bit just from Part 1 – Baby It’s Cold Outside. I know less than I should about the politics of the 1950s, 60s and 70s; the film actually filled in some of the gaps, e.g. the origins of neo-conservatism and some of the activities of Team B.

I would be interested to hear what anyone else thinks about it.