Volume 51

JULY-AUGUST 2008

 

51. 10: FALLEN ORDER, by Karen Leibreich, 2004 [BR] 8.25.2008

                     

“The new appointee was known to have behaved disgracefully with pupils since 1629, some fifteen years earlier. He repeatedly betrayed the trust laid on him as a priest and a teacher. Time after time he had been promoted away from the scene of his crime. There is no record of him ever expressing a word of remorse, guilt or reform. The members had kept silent through many years, but this appointment to universal superior, over the head of the ancient founder, was a step too far.” [p. 208]

The words might have come right off the pages of a contemporary metropolitan daily—but the date is 1629. Despite what bishops, cardinals, and even popes have implied, the story of priestly child abuse is not something recently “uncovered” by the Roman Catholic Church, it has been known since the very first schools for boys were established in Rome by the Church’s Piarist Fathers in the late 16th Century. The cover-ups, the denials and excuses, the moving of priests from school to school as their misdeeds became known, are not the invention of the present-day Church hierarchy, they were practiced from the very beginning.

If abused parochial kids need a saint to supplicate it should be St. Jose de Calasanz (1557-1648), beatified in 1948. It was Calazanz’s idea to start schools for poor boys in Rome in the later 16th Century. The ascetic Spaniard founded he Piarist Order and wrote its curriculum for its schools and its “constitution” to govern the behavior of its faculty of priests. He knew from the beginning that there were dangers in putting celibate priests in charge of young boys and did what he could to install safeguards. But as the schools spread, first throughout Italy, then abroad, there was no way to control the situation. Indeed, Calasanz’s rigid asceticism—he nearly starved his priests to death—left only the appetite for sexual gratification for their otherwise unpleasant lives.

Calasanz’s inability to control the lusts of his priests eventually brought down a religious teaching order that had educated such illustrious personalities as Mozart, Shubert, Victor Hugo, and Goya among others. There is probably the stuff of a half-dozen novels about the intrigues in the Roman Catholic Church that was uncovered from dusty archives by intrepid researcher Leibreich, who had to learn Renaissance Italian in order to ferret out the sordid non-fiction. The tale has nearly everything—sex, guilt, lies, betrayals, poison, torture, and some weird diseases that seem like apt punishments for the sinners they dispatched. Throw in some sleazy popes and cardinals, the Jesuits, the Inquisition, and even Galileo and this could be an HBO series.  The word is that at least on of Carravio's paintings hung in one of the schools, and some of those were more than a trifle "suggestive" of homoeroticism.

The spark of scandal might have been caused by a Fr. Stefano Cherubini, one of he Piarist teachers. With a name like “Little Angels” it sounds like something from Central Casting, but Cherubini apparently enjoyed molesting young boys. The problem was that he came from a well-connected and well-to do family, causing Calasanz to look the other way. Preceding Cardinal Law, Calasanz shifted Fr. Gropey-hands to a job as a “visitor” to several of the schools, which, of course, only increased his predatory opportunities. Thus, the pattern of concealing rather than exposing, predatory priests was set early in the RCC educational system. Everybody knew about Cherubini’s antics, letters were written, protests ,lodged, and information went all the way to Pope Urban VIII. Nothing was done.

The Piarists had other problems. Some of their teachers from the Florentine school sided with Galileo in his heliocentric view of the universe. The Church wanted to slice and dice the great scientist, particularly the Holy Office of the Inquisition (the same Holy Office that the current pope, Benedictine XVI headed for many years). Then there were the Jesuits (much spoken about elsewhere in these pages: Archives 41.1, 37.2, 33.6, 30.6). The Jebbies didn’t much like then Piarists, unfairly, I think, because their dislike seems to have had more to do with the Galileo matter—they opposed him, too—but with social class. The Jesuits have always had a predilection for political power; they were going to educate boys from a “better class” of families, boys who would ignem mittere in terram, as the motto of St. Francis Xavier, the great Jesuit missionary, proposes. Comparatively, the Piarists were educating street scum for lowly vocations, not to be popes, business and military leaders, and great statesmen, but clerks and factota. The luminaries of the Piarists came later, and were far fewer than the stellar Jesuit alumni. Why the powerful Jesuits would see these mendicant priests as competition is not clear.

The Piarists had even more trouble from within. One of their own, a Fr. Sozzi, who liked good food, wine and clothing as much as playing Fr. Fondlefingers with the students, became an enemy of Calasanz. Moreover, he befriended the arrogant and ambitious Francesco Albizzi, the Assessor of the Inquisition, a friendship from which he was able to terrorize the leadership of the Piarists, especially Calasanz, and protect his other friend, Fr. Cherubini. Sozzi eventually was able to take over the Piarist schools, elevate Cherubini, and come closet o turning the schools into brothels for paedophiles. The chaste and ineffectual Fr. Calasanz could do little about it. The rules of he Order were relaxed, some priests created public scandals with drinking, whoring, and eventually the molestations became public. Pope Barbarini (Urban VIII) died in 1644, and when Innocent X took over the old alliances, connections and protections were broken.

Some of these guys died some creepy deaths. Sozzi contracted some sort of what was call a fungal disorder or infection that covered his entire body and killed him. Four years later his friend Cherubini died of a similar virulent skin disorder.

Calasanz, the founder of the Piarists, lived on to age ninety-one. He was plagued with liver problems, but might have lived on even longer because he refused some medicines that were the same used successfully by King James I of England. But it was medicine that was used for a “heretic.” Such was his religious conviction. Although he died with his schools in ruins, Fr. Calasanz was almost immediately headed for sainthood. It was reported that his dead body "smelled like roses" and that a woman who touched it with her crippled arm was healed. There were other miraculous claims, and people began to come to his body to tear off bits of cloth as miraculous relics. Finally, the body had become stripped of covering for all the relic harvesting and it was said that, even though dead, Calasanz’s dead hand moved to modestly cover his private parts (or was this a reflex from a lifelong practice?. He should have had as much concern for the modesty and private parts of the students in his care.
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©2008, James A. Clapp

 

51. 9: OLYMPIAN MUSINGS 8.14.2008

                

                                                Deng Linlin forgets to remove pacifier before balance beam exercise.

China has a 5000 year history; only its Olympic Opening Ceremonies seemed longer. It seemed like a remake of “Flying Torches, Hidden Protestors.” But then, they have waited a long time, and they were going to make the most of it. As I had my second meal during its course I was reminded of my recent visit to Beijing this past April. My hotel, just around the corner from the Olympic Committee building already had a little shop dedicated to the games. Prominently displayed was a gold (solid?) replica of the “The Bird’s Nest,” about one-foot in length. You had to ask the price, but I didn’t (imagine having to dust a gold bird’s nest souvenir). I had seen the real structure from about 300 yards, which was about as close as one could get back in April. Last night, on my television it glowed, glittered, pulsed, emitted fireworks, displayed Chinese ingenuity and thundered with national pride. The theme was a sappy “One World, One Dream,” but it really was “We’re Here. We’re Big, We’re Getting Rich, and we Hold Most of Your Debt!”

Even considering the differences in special effects between the 1930s and today Zhang Yimou, the film director who produced the opening ceremonies, seems to have outdone Leni Riefensthal. At the broad level there are some similarities between the “puff pieces” of the Berlin Olympics in 1936 and the 08.08.2008 Beijing Games. There is no denying that there was much beauty, a lot of it in cute kids and female pulchritude, in China’s Opening Ceremonies this past weekend. There was much cleverness, creativity, and no expense was spared. China wanted to show its best side, so blindingly, it seemed that it wanted to obscure its ugly side so hypocritically publicized by “Mr. Torture” himself, George W. Bush. When Riefensthal composed her “Olympiad” piece it was only six years after sound had come to motion pictures; Zhang had to outdo the iPod and YouTube age. It took a lot of time as well, way too much time. The Wow effect just kept coming on, and on, and on.

Cowboy Capitalism China is not Nazi National Socialism in Germany, and we did not awake today to find Chinese tanks rolling into Poland (although the opening ceremonies provided some cover for Soviet (ooops!), Russian, tanks rolling into Georgia).

There were the usual references to the ancient Panhellenic Games, an anthem sung in Greek, and the first team to take the field being from Greece. But that was the extent of it. When we think of ancient Greece we recall a time and place of myths and legends, where gods and demi-gods played and meddled in the affairs of men, where heroes sought the golden fleece, battled one-eyed Polyphemos, and performed other feats which are an inspired blend of fact and imagination.

We, of course, reside in an age of facts, governed by rationalism and empiricism. Since the time of ancient Greece many a myth has succumbed to the revelations of science and to the scrutiny of history; but perhaps because humans find reality too real or too difficult to cope with, mythmaking endures in nearly every aspect of human affairs. Indeed, one of the most curious myths of the contemporary world derives from a distortion of the realities of the ancient customs and practices on which it is based.

The central tenets of the Modern Olympic games derive from and interpretation of the ancient games and festivals of Greece which 19th century Englishmen and Anglophile Americans and Frenchman like Baron Pierre de Coubertin that viewed the games as precursors to the sporting practices of English public schools. These misnamed schools, which were the private preserves for the wealthy, elite and aristocratic, perceived sport as an adjunct to their central purposes of preserving the privileges of class and training leaders for the rigors and competitiveness of peace and war. Sport was avocation, not vocation. From this very skewed and narrow perspective was birthed the modern Olympic games and its central tenet of the cult of amateurism.

Paradoxically, the reality of the ancient Olympic games is far closer to the reality of the so-called Modern Olympic games. Far from being pastimes of gentlemanly amateurism the ancient Olympic Games were as "professional" as the modern games are showing themselves in fact to be. Ancient Greek athletes won very large cash prizes (even by contemporary standards), celebrity, pensions, access to political power, and sometimes even divine status after death. Those athletes we see racing, wrestling and throwing on the sides of ancient pottery competed not for the honor of being a participant, and garlands of wild olive, but for stakes that are strikingly identical to those of contemporary Olympians. Although the ancients had strict rules to govern the contests, the ferocity with which they competed, particularly in boxing and wrestling, which often resulted in severe injury and even death, may have owed as much to material gains as the "glory of sport." Even then the promoters and hosts had much to gain from the games; city states often tried to increase the profit and prestige of their local games by declaring them to be the equal of the official games held at the traditional Panhellenic site at Olympia.

In recent years the cult of amateurism has been allowed to co-exist with the realities of professionalism in the Olympics. The ideal of the amateur, enshrined in promotional spots and, ironically, commercials, as a young man or woman pure of heart and dedicated to the ideal rises from small town America to take a gold medal and return to a life of dentistry, or insurance sales, and model citizenship. This is the myth that has replaced the ancient myths.

And now that myth has been replaced by the reality of pharmacology. Today’s athletes must not only be able to “Fortius, Altimus, Citius,” they must be able to “Pissimus” (in a cup) and pass their drug tests. Any athlete is out to enhance his/her performance, and performance enhancing drugs are a great temptation, or a necessity, if your opponent is using them. (In dressage, it may be the horses that have to be tested.) Years ago, East German and Russian women swimmers and track and field athletes had enough male hormones in them they could have done shaving commercials. No more of that, but one wonders about the body types of those Chinese “women” gymnasts who they say are 15 and 16 years old. These girls either are 12 years old, or their puberty has been retarded (maybe just by excessive practice, because boobs and hips are not gymnastic assets.) In any case, the Chinese women gymnasts have just won their first team gold medal.

From the American perspective it would almost seem that the entire purpose of these Olympics is to allow swimmer Michael Phelps to amass more gold medals than Midas. He seems a nice kid with a nice family (although the father is not in evidence, he likely being a bottle-nosed porpoise who lives in a cove off San Pedro). Never mind that, in swimming, one may enter as many as eight different swimming events of different strokes, distances, and individual and relay races. By contrast, a pole vaulter gets one shot at a medal. So calling Phelps the “greatest all time Olympian,” is nonsense, and I am sick of looking at him get all the limelight and adulation over other athletes.

It’s another example of American excess. And what is the purpose of having baseball, women’s softball, (professional) basketball, beach volleyball, and now BMX bike racing on the Olympic roster? Well, it is most likely that the American is the biggest and richest viewing market, and other countries have little chance of getting medals in them. Other than ping pong, which at least sounds Chinese, can you name another indigenous Chinese sport? Get rid of all those skewed sports, and while were at it, get rid of tennis and soccer. These sports have plenty of exposure and money.

One can’t blame China for having and over-the-top Opening Ceremonies. Host countries have been competing for years to out-do one another. This should be the end of it. Simplify the ceremonies, spend the money on something worthwhile, cut down the sport and events to what is fair and reasonably “Olympian” in character, and de-emphasize the medal count, which does nothing to advance the Olympic spirit. However, it is likely that, humans being humans, the drive to win, to be number one, to amass more gold medals that the other guy, and the other guy’s country, will persist. They will use all tricks that contravene the spirit of fair competition—buoyant swimsuits, blood doping, 12-year-old “women” gymnasts, etc.—anything that will give an edge and advantage.

And we will watch, because the “glory of sport,” tainted by greed, power, nationalism, and vainglory, is at least marginally better than we do the rest of the time.
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© 2008, James A. Clapp

 

51. 8:      SYNCH OR SWIM, AN OLYMPIC DREAM     8.04.2008

In honor of the 2008 Beijing Olympics that will open this week this essay reprises the story of Jim’s bid to represent his country in the 2004 Olympics. He is now considering selling his collection of Princess Diana memorabilia to finance a bid to join the Chinese team.

Standing on that podium, hearing the refrains of the National Anthem, Old Glory rising up in the middle – the Gold Medal position – this has long been Jim’s dream. A chance to compete, to excel, to win, to “medal,” to “bring home the gold for his country (and who knows, maybe to pick up a few endorsements, or at least some chicks), these have been the noble ambitions of a young man of modest athletic ability and high patriotism: to be A member of the American Olympic team.

But Olympiad after Olympiad Jim could only be a spectator, watching as others stole his glory as he sat glumly before his television set.

Not that Jim didn’t try to make the team. The frustrating years trying to master a “double axel” when he thought figuring skating was his sport. For years after women were asking him to do their hair. They wouldn’t even give him a tryout for the wrestling team after that. The steroids he took to be the last white guy to ever be entered in the 100-meter dash, the ruptures and hernias trying to make the weight-lifting team, that unfortunate incident with the pole that ended his pole-vaulting hopes. He was always not big enough, fast enough, strong enough, or cute enough.

The years went by and, with them, the dissipation of Jim’s athletic abilities. But his dream remained alive. There were always new sports coming into the Olympics. Beach volleyball, baseball, they were even considering ballroom dancing. Maybe one would be included that was his sport. Or, Jim reasoned (he was still able to do this with some facility), why not pick a sport that you think you would be good at and try to get it accepted into the Olympic Games? Better yet, practice and practice that sport until you’re the best, then make your proposal.

And so Jim chose his event: Solo Synchronized Swimming.

For four arduous years he was in the pool from morning to night, perfecting his moves, holding his breath under water, sticking his leg up in the air, and of course, smiling, waving and not drowning. He even thought of growing a ponytail that he could tie up into a cute little bun. And he was good, damn good, some would say.

When the Olympic Committee laughed him out of their office Jim was crushed. He shed the tears he was saving for the award ceremony. For days, the cruel words reverberated in his brain: “Synchronized swimming is a team sport, you moron, a team sport!” He cursed himself for not checking.

As Jim saw it he had one last chance for a gold medal. If they insist on it being a team sport then he would play it their way. So Jim decided to get a cute yellow swimsuit and start working out with the American team.

                                                         

 

Unfortunately, Jim got a little too close in his synchronization and was asked to leave the American team tryouts.

Undaunted, Jim said the heck with the American team, he would swim with the Italians, since he was of Italian heritage.

                                                        

 

Regrettably, Jim got his Italian gestures confused and offended the Italian team coaches.

Finally, Jim felt that his chances might be good with a team that used different gestures. So Jim decided that his best chance was to infiltrate the Chinese Synchro-swimming team because he used to look Asian when he was a boy. It also occurred to him that it will be fun taking showers with them after practice.

                                                        

 

Jim likes to get some after hours tutoring from one of his teammates.

Yeah, Go China! Go Zhongguo! Go Jim!
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© 2004, James “Yingloon” Clapp

 

51. 7: HOW REPUBLICANS RUINED THE AMERICAN DREAM, Part 1, 7.26.2008

                   

                                                     NeanderPubs, ©200 UrbisMedia

Two of the main pillars of the American Dream are the house and the car. The privately-owned home, the equity in which comprises the stored wealth of most Americans, and cheap mobility, which allows them to reside more cheaply because of the sprawl of the American metropolis, are going down the tubes. Thanks to the Republicans, who have sold them on a con job that has siphoned more and more American wealth from bottom to the top of the social structure, their dream is much diminished. It had been a masterful job of selling enough fools to put the likes of Reagan and the Bushes in the White House, the DeLays and Grahams in Congress, and Alitos on the Supreme Court. If the housing and gas crisis of today, and the bailouts—once again, of the big guys, by the little guys—don’t convince the American people that they have been conned, this surely will be, if not the end, the Wal Mart-ing of the American Dream.

In this piece, we will deal with the housing pillar of the American Dream.

Ronald Reagan, a not very bright, but affable, dupe for the Republicans, gets much of the credit for the current problem. Mr. “De-regulation” felt that the American economy was being held back by too much government regulation. Laissez faire was the answer—take the regs off and let business soar free. It did, right into the Savings and Loan crisis, the precursor to what is happening now. Most of the perpetrators walked, among them Neil Bush, bro of The Prince of Ineptitude, and the S & L’s mostly got bailed out by the American taxpayer. Dan Shore, the venerable NPR news analyst, tells a story about a person who called him during the S&L bailout of the late 1980s. The man told Shore, “I don’t think that the taxpayer should have to pay for the bailout; I think the government should do it.” Mind you, they probably still will not get it. They probably will remain easily distracted by trying to control woman’s rights over their own bodies, or worrying that gay nuptials will ruin their marriage (not realizing that financial problems of their own will be what ruins them), or that the great Muslim invasion is coming soon to their home town. They are, frankly, not bright enough to see it; the are Republican voters.

The Republican leadership loves to talk about capitalism and the “free market,” and free competition. This is their little bow to Social Darwinism. But, of course, it is all fluff; when business screw up—especially businesses with good lobbying and contributions records with the party—they don’t have to pay the consequences they way Mr. and Mrs. Public do. Suddenly, government, the very monster that Republicans run against, becomes the benevolent cash cow that suckles those businesses back into solvency. The method used to reward bad behavior is that good old reliable fear. Tell the people that, if these businesses are not bailed out, there will be even worse consequences than the problem the businesses engendered. More succinctly, Republicans pols are hypocrites. Democrats can be intimidated into this as well; if they think the public has been well-conned by Republican rhetoric, many of them may feel they have to go along. The current “rescue” of Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac, run by men who receive handsome salaries, is such an example.

The Republicans love to talk about how they won’t raise our taxes. But they get huge amounts from the taxes they do collect, which they are always pushing to raise from the middle and the bottom. Reagan also pumped huge amounts of taxpayer money into defense industries, an inflationary hellhole in which products become obsolete sometimes in a matter of days, and the rest are blown up or sold to the Iranians in the unconstitutional Iran-Contra deal. But that’s a different part of the American Dream.

With little oversight thanks to de-reg American businesses have had a field day. Many started heading off to places where labor was really cheap—their patriotism was de-regged as well—and the securities “industries” (they don’t really make anything) began having fun screwing people out of their savings with junk bonds, and arbitraging their former places of employment. Still, they kept loyally voting for their Republican leaders who promised them such life-enhancing policies and putting “under God” back into the Pledge of Allegiance. They were like frogs that get cooked in water under a slow boil because they don’t feel the temperature rising. But the dream was dying out from under them. Families needed two wage earners to keep the dream up, often neither of them with pensions, union protection, or health benefits. But food could remain relatively cheap if their politicians used their taxes to pay off the farmers; products could remain relatively cheap if some American industries could head for China or South America to keep the cheap crap coming into big box stores and outlets.

Little by little Americans allowed themselves to be cooked, their dream to be diminished, assuaged that their Republican champions would stave off the onslaught of abortions and gay marriages and hold off the infidel by putting God into every public building. And de-reg would be their economic savior. Enron could have a field day screwing California, and then their own workers, and little would be said about it. A few biggies would go down, but de-reg would remain in place. Big Pharm would be able to get some drugs (you can’t show a woman in a bra in television commercials, but the biggest drug pushers in the universe can sell you one overpriced drug after another between the evening news) out there faster and get those profits in before people starting croaking. Regulations on auto emissions would become a joke, so the healthcare that forty million Americans don’t have wouldn’t be there when they would need it. (Blame it on the “tree huggers”; blame it on the illegal aliens.)

The cooking frogs might have begun to realize that the water was getting hotter, but then planes flew into the World Trade Center buildings and the Republicans were given a gift even they could not have prayed for (or did they?) They could de-reg the Constitution! Keep the people frightened, so that the necessary huge defense budgets (underwritten mostly by our Chinese friends), but make sure that nothing seems to change at home. There would be a “war on terror,” but it would not interfere with shopping. Shopping requires money, and Americans, no stranger to the credit card have something like the lowest savings rate in the developed world. Gross private debt is enormous, accounting for $1.5 Trillion in consumer spending. Meanwhile, the no-tax Republicans would not raise a cent in taxes for their war—they put it on the national credit card. If this sounds like some crazy fairyland that might all come to crashing halt someday, it is. Americans were spending like there was no tomorrow (the tomorrows their kids would pay for).

But the illusion seemed financeable. There were those houses, those temples of growing wealth—ever-increasing equity. All that was necessary was to convince homeowners that it was safe to re-finance some of that equity out for more fun and purchases (they would never have to pay that adjustable interest rate because things always go up in America—just listen to a Bush speech on the economy). They could even get mortgages for people who had no jobs to pay them, bundling their commission payments into the deal so they at least would get paid. The Great Ponzi was being built on the altar of De-Reg, all bundled up and hidden in securities instruments and sent out to even the supposedly most clever financial institutions. Even Fannie and Freddie got conned.

The rest we know too well from the nightly newscast. The now familiar Republican scenario: “Something has gone terribly wrong, probably because of some vague thing that Liberals have done. Our businesses are in crisis and they employ our workers, so we must—reluctantly—use government to “rescue” them—for the good of the country (or else).”

Bottom line: Suddenly we learned that WE ARE NOT WORTH WHAT WE THOUGHT WE WERE WORTH. Well, at least the little guys.
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© 2008, James A. Clapp

See also, Archives, 43.1, and 43.6, on the subject of government resgulation.

 

50. 6:   FOURTH-GRADE TERRORIST    7.22.2008

The following essay is taken from my book, The Stranger is Me: Journeys and Self-Discoveries, 2007 (available from Amazon.com.)

                    

                                                                                           UrbisMedia

Heliopolis, Egypt, 1989. Mahmoud looked worried. That wasn't a good sign; after all he was my Egyptian tour manager, the guy who was supposed to soothe any anxieties my group would have in this ancient, exotic, and somewhat unnerving, land of the Pharaohs. We’d been there less than an hour and already there was a crisis.

At 2AM my fifty charges, exhausted beyond the norm by our plane’s delay in Rome, were sweltering in a bus in the Heliopolis airport parking lot wondering what in the hell had happened to Josh. I was wondering too. And more worrisome, it looked like Mahmoud was wondering, and this was his country and he was supposed to know what was going on!

Poor Josh; it had been forty-five minutes since those two armed guards took him out of the passport control line and led him away. No sign of him since, and the security guards, fondling their automatic weapons, were giving Mahmoud the old shrug every time he inquired. He came back to me on the other side of passport control and said that everything was OK, just some mix-up about the luggage, maybe. But his face (Egyptians can have very expressive as well as handsome faces) said he was worried. I was glad that the rest of the group is out in the bus because some Egyptian lady holding a baby was in hysterics over by the control desk, kids were running around screaming, and it was ninety degrees in spite of the hour in this dingy, strictly utilitarian terminal building.

The luggage. That could be the problem because Josh, despite being a very nervous fellow, was, as it happened, the one person who failed to follow my instructions not to check his luggage straight through to Cairo because we had an overnight stopover in Rome. That meant that his luggage must have been riding around on the baggage carousel for hours, arousing suspicion.

Josh was worried about what might happen to it. But maybe he was worried because he had something in that suitcase that was illegal to take into Egypt, or otherwise compromising: drugs, pornography, a weapon, political literature, bibles, one of those inflatable sex dolls? Nah, I shook my head. He was too nervous a guy to take any such chances. Hell, he’d been driving me nuts with questions: Can he drink the water? Can he wash with the water? Can he look at the water? Just what I needed, an aquaphobe on a Nile Cruise, and now they might be getting ready to hang him in a gibbet in Tahrir Square because he's a Western pervert or God knows what.

Then Anwar arrived. He'd been out there on the bus keeping the group occupied with introductory remarks about Egypt, but most of the group had fallen asleep on him. He and Mahmoud switched to Arabic. That's a bad sign; unless they use the words for “good morning,” “thankyou,” “do you have a toilet,” and “too expensive,” I'm out of the conversation. Mahmoud seemed to be explaining that the guards wouldn’t tell him anything and Anwar threw an un-reassuring smile of reassurance over my way. Anwar struck me as the more serious and businesslike of these two guys.

Presently, a line of about two-hundred Egyptian soldiers was marched in by their officers to go through passport control. They looked ragged and tired, but very happy, like they were just told they didn’t have to fight any Israelis this week. Their officers kept making them tighten up the line, until they were squeezed up against one another. Maybe he figured they could keep warm this way, in spite of the fact that it was still about ninety-five degrees at this hour and you could wring the humidity out of the air. Why would they want to make their soldiers look like a conga line in a gay bar? Another of those ancient mysteries of Egypt, I guess, like the mysterious disappearance of Josh.

My thoughts snapped back to him. I hoped he wasn't having a dreadful experience. They have ways of getting people to talk in this part of the world, and they might get their kicks doing it. He should just tell them what they want to know. Anything. Tell them he knows where Hoffa is buried. Admit that he was the second gunman on the grassy knoll in Dallas. Convert to Islam. But Josh was a really nervous guy, almost paranoid about being away from his fourth-grade class back in Petaluma. He seemed pretty naive for a guy approaching fifty. What if they pushed him into a nervous breakdown, or worse?

I tried to force words like “next of kin” from my mind when I noticed Mahmoud and Anwar had disappeared. I decided to head back out to the bus and check on the rest of the pack, walking through a pick up soccer game that a dozen young Egyptian kids who were playing under the harsh glare of the parking lot lights. They raced around on the tarmac surface shoeless as though it were the middle of the afternoon rather than the middle of night. The air was a thick stew of the spicy aromas of sweat and decay in a matrix of diesel and jet exhaust.

The group on the bus were exhausted, anxious, and getting angry. Some suggested that they be driven to the hotel, claiming that their suffering and waiting would do nothing to hasten the return of Josh. Their sympathy for him was being replaced by self-pity. But there was no feasible way to grant that request. Our hotel is way off to the west, in Giza, the driver spoke no English, and our tour managers had disappeared into some torture chamber in the terminal. I did my best to assure the group that we will be on our way soon, although I was personally beginning to doubt it. Just to get away from the complaints I headed back toward the terminal, pausing to return an errant soccer ball with an angry foot.

I was nearly to the terminal when I saw them come out of the door: Anwar and Mahmoud on either side of Josh. Anwar had his arm on Josh’s shoulder. I strained my eyes to see if any limbs were missing.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Josh blurted with a mixture of anger and sadness, before I had a chance to say anything. Now the four of us walked through the soccer game toward the bus. Mahmoud made a face to me that I took to mean “don’t bother him, I’ll fill you in later.” Josh looked haggard, but we all did by this time, so I couldn’t tell if his wasted appearance owed anything to physical abuse.

When we got to the bus a cheer went up, as much for the fact that we could now head for the hotel as for the return of the prodigal Josh. Some people welcomed him warmly, some made cracks about things that might have been in his luggage. Josh ignored them all, making his way to the back of the bus on rubbery legs where he sat in silence as we set off toward Giza. Some turned to ask Josh questions, but he just kept his head in his hands. Fearing that something terrible might have happened to him, they left him alone.

By the time we were on the long road leading out to Giza, a road that had been a trail through farms fifteen years earlier and was now lined with shabby apartments and run down shops that looked a century old, most of the group were asleep in their seats. I took the opportunity to ask Anwar and Mahmoud to give me the story, but they asked me to wait until we got the group all settled in their rooms at the hotel. This made me more nervous, as though the matter wasn’t quite over yet as far as the “authorities” were concerned.

It was well after 3 AM when I got to sit with them in a corner of the café at the hotel.

“OK, let’s have the story, all the gory details,” I insisted. I made myself sound petulant, since they know I have some control over the tipping from the group and it is well to maintain good relations with me.

Anwar complied. “The authorities suspected that Mr. Joosh. . . ,”

“Mr. Josh,” I corrected.

“That Mr. Jawsh is a terrorist.”

“What! A terrorist!? I yelped, a little too loudly. “The guy’s a fourth grade teacher from Petaluma who’s afraid of parking meters. A terrorist!?” I realized that I was shouting, my words echoing off the marble tiles of the floor and walls.

They looked around a little nervously. Mahmoud, whose English was better, corrected: “They thought he was a terrorist because he has the same name as an extremist they are searching for.”

“Sounds like bullshit to me. C’mon you can be straight with me.” Now I was whispering.

“Not only the same name . . .well, actually, his first name in Arabic would be the same, like Joosh,” Mahmoud explained. He said some name that sounded like ‘Yeshua.’ “And his last name is same as the family name of another famous terrorist.”

“So what! Lots of people have the same names.”

“But he had the same birthday as the terrorist”

This was getting to be too much of a coincidence. I considered relating the statistical story about if you get a random sample of twenty-five or so people in a room two of them will have the same birthday, but reconsidered.

“Really, did they show you this information?” I asked.

“Yes, from the computer,” Anwar replied. He didn’t seem to think this was such a great coincidence. “But they have no photo of this terrorist, so they had to contact other authorities for more information. That is why Mr. Joosh had to wait a long time.”

Yeah, so long he had to piss in his pants,” I shot back. I had noticed Josh’s pants when we were handing out room keys in spite of his keeping his carry-on in front of his crotch.

“He is OK now, they think he is not a terrorist” Anwar put in.

“No, he’s a fucking basket case. That guy couldn’t blow up a balloon, much less an embassy,” I fired back.

“The authorities would not have investigated, but the suitcase of Mr. Joosh came before him and made them begin to investigate.”

I went to bed wondering how many crazy coincidences are occurring every day around us that we never become aware of because something as mundane as an unescorted piece of luggage doesn’t call them to our attention.

Unfortunately, Josh never really got over the incident. By mid-trip people realized that little jokes about bombs, or porno in his luggage only made him more reclusive and eventually they just left him alone.

I still wonder if Anwar and Mahmoud knew more, or withheld some details, of Josh’s night of terror. I still wonder whether I was supposed to come up with some baksheesh to spring Josh. Since it involved people with guns, I was rather hesitant to bring the matter up at the time. When I suggested to Anwar that “perhaps Mr. Joosh didn’t have the money for a permit or something,” as I had my hand in my pocket, I might have been a bit too oblique for him to pick up on the suggestion that I was willing to come up with some cash if necessary. In any case, maybe he and Mahmoud took care of it out of their own pockets and figured they’d make it up later on in tips. It takes a little time to figure things out in a country that’s been making a buck off tourists since Herodotus was passing through.
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© 2007, James A. Clapp

 

51: 5: HOW BIN LADEN WON THE WAR ON TERROR 7.17.2008

                
                                                            ©2008, UrbisMedia

15 July 2008. In a speech today in New Mexico John McCain said, " I know how to win wars, I know how to win wars. I will turn around the war in Afghanistan the way we have turned around the war in Iraq." This man got shot down in the last war he was in! Shot down! He's a flop! He spent five years in prison! He only knows how to lose wars!

And, he wants to succeed a chronic loser.  In any case, “the war on terror,” George Bush style, is, in many respects, over. In part, it cannot be won because there is no definition of what winning means. Is it the surrender of Al Qaeda, or the Taliban, they way Germany and Japan surrendered?  Not a chance. All they have to do is wait us out, pretend that our actions are leading toward what we can—politically—call “victory,” and then crank it up again. Afghanistan is a good example. We thought it was all over when we ran off the Taliban. They waited in the hills and in Pakistan (our putative ally) and now they are back in control of much of the country. They also knew that given a fair amount of time the new government would become corrupt and the people would withdraw their support. They knew they could set up situations in which the Americans would overreact and kill civilians, and the government would have to answer for it.

The same is true of the “enemy” in Iraq. They know we can’t sustain our presence there. They know we are waiting around only for some solid oil deal, but we would have to protect that with military bases. Moqtada al Sadr, and/or other Shiite interests know they have the upper hand, the numbers, to prevail; that was “in the cards” the day Saddam Hussein went to ground. They know that they are already “home,” and that the Americans have to go home, that we can’t afford $10 Billion a month to stay around looking for a way to have our cake (oil) and eat it, too (our “victory”). They know that every congressional approval of another $100 Billion weakens the Americans over the long run and well into the future. They read the polls. They know this is not a conventional war, but a war of attrition, just as Afghanistan is. They know that the Americans think they are smarter than they are because the Americans equate scientific and technological superiority with greater political acumen. They know we live longer to play golf and spend huge amounts on health care, and that young Americans would rather play with their video games and iPhones than fight. They know our politics is phony politics, public relations puff that doesn’t deal with the real issues. They know realpolitik, they have lived it for generations. They will play us the way a small fisherman plays a big strong fish—keep the line just taut enough, slackening and then tightening again, until we are too tired to continue the fight.

The other reason that the “enemy” has won is because they knew the “fish” they had on the line. They at least knew they were and are smarter than the fish—George W. Bush. He became their greatest asset, and America’s greatest weakness. Perhaps they were surprised how easily it would be to terrorize Bush. Had they studied that he was really a coward who shirked his military duty, who had been and drunk and a business failure, that he was they type who would send other men to fight and would see that as his bravery. For years they had seen his type of American comes into their bazaars and souks, acting like they were superior, like big deals, and they would “take them for a ride.” They might have been surprised at how stupidly Americans would react after 9-11, running off to churches to pray, driving frantically around in their gas-guzzling SUVs festooned with flags as though their silly patriotic posturing meant anything. They knew then that the fish was hooked; the terror had been driven into the marrow of America. Perhaps they could scarcely believe the gift they were handed with George Bush, and then his ludicrous mistake of invading Iraq.

It does not matter now whether they knew beforehand that America would tear itself apart after 9-11—they, and the world, know it now. They might not have known that in our frenzy and fear we would shred our own beloved Constitution, that America would build a gulag in Cuba, and would take photos of our own torture activities in Abu Ghraib, supplying Al Jeezera and the Middle East the best terrorist recruitment instrument they could wish for. They must have laughed at the firings of generals and the political attacks on anyone who dared to tell the truth to the American people, and that, when it came time for those people to elect a new president, they seemed to care more about whether homosexuals could marry than whether Bush’s war on the will ‘o the wisp terror was destroying the economy of the richest country in the world. They must have laughed when every time it could have faced the truth American’s succumbed to its color codes for terror, continued to believe the falsehood that Iraqis flew the 9-11 planes, that Bush put idiots and sycophants into the top positions at the State Department, Homeland Security, and the Justice Department. They must have laughed when Bush and Cheney wanted to see “raw intelligence” which resulted in the CIA giving them every possible rumor of impending terror along with more reliable intelligence. They fed that rumor mill that in turn fed the terror and the Bush/Cheney propaganda machine for the war. They ignored the truth, even when their own CIA knew the truth, and became themselves terrorized by a process that was full of doom. In turn, they terrorized their country. They must have been surprised, like the rest of the world, at the callous ineptitude of the American president when one of its cities was inundated by a hurricane. What better example of what to expect if hey ever decided to unleash a nuclear or biological weapon on an American city.

Now they know that their victory is assured. The beloved American dollar has been badly weakened by the mountain of debt the war cost. That, in turn, has helped drastically inflate the price of oil, and Americans are now in a panic to sell those SUVs and trucks that were once festooned with their flags. They watch as American banks and financial institutions are failing in a housing crisis brought about by the same greedy, self-deluded policies that let them be hooked by the war on terror. They see that the war might not be quite won, but the fish is tired, it has lost much blood, and as it nears the boat and is about t be landed, its eyes still look terrified. They can see that look in McCain’s eyes, like they looked the day he was shot down—the look of a loser.
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© 2008, James A. Clapp

 

51. 4:      MUTUALLY ASSURED HOLY PLACE DESTRUCTION          7.14.2008

                

                                                            © 2008, UrbisMedia

Religion has been responsible for numerous wars over the centuries, probably more than any other cause. From the Crusades to Kosovo, and before and after, people seem to think that one of the prime duties their deities wish them to perform is that they go out a slaughter some people who don’t believe in the make believe they same way that they do. Very often, there is a good deal of looting, raping, and conquering of territory along with the objective of ridding the earth of infidels.

As a result of this process, over time there have emerged two circumstances that, ironically, might have brought about at least one salutary result—the prospect that nuclear weapons, although desired and acquired by several nations among which there are religion-based animosities, might actually not be employed as weapons of mass destruction because they are potentially “weapons of metaphysical destruction.”

Consider the Middle East. Recently, Iran, feeling threatened by both the US and Israel that some Judeo-Christian missiles are going blast their nuclear facilities, deciding to do a little practice missile launching themselves and saying that, if they are attacked, they will in turn attack Tel Aviv. It is the Tel Aviv that caught my attention, partly because I have a daughter who goes there for her job from time to time, but also because it was specifically Tel Aviv, and not Jerusalem. Why should they disclose that city they would target? Isn’t that giving your own military strategy away?

Could it be because Jerusalem is a holy city to the Muslims, as it is to Judaism and Christianity. Jerusalem contains the Dome of the Rock. It was built between 687 and 691 by the 9th Caliph Abd al-Malik. It has also been called the Mosque of Umar, the rock in te center of which is assumed by Muslims to have been the launch pad from which Muhammad ascended into Heaven accompanied by the Angel Gabriel. Up there, he consulted with Moses and then returned to earth with some new Islamic prayers. So, it is a major Islamic holy place and definitely not something Muslims would like to hit with a missile.

Of course this is also the site of the Western Wall of the Second Temple, a major holy place of Judaism. The Dome of the Rock sits on top of it. Jews would not be happy if a missile destroyed the wall. They could always retaliate by taking out Mecca, Islam’s holiest place, where the devout go to make their haj, one of the requirements of Muslims. That might set off a counter retaliation, maybe a missile that takes out Nazareth. Oh, oh, that would piss off the Christians and maybe pull that “Christian nation,” the good ole US of A into it. The Americans could blast the Iraq city of Najaf into smoldering pebbles, taking out the the site of the tomb of Imam Ali ibn Abi Talib in Iraq, whom the Shia consider to be the righteous first Imam. The Iraqis would be in a retaliatory fix because it seems that they have hidden their weapons of mass destruction so well that even they can’t find them.

No matter, because, meanwhile, the destruction of Mecca would have aroused the anger of Osama bin Laden (you remember him, even if Bush can’t seem to). Recall that it was the presences of the American military on the holy sands of Saudi Arabia that inspired him to plan and execute 9-11. He’s hiding out in Pakistan or Afghanistan, somewhere in those mountains. He would have to retaliate by making another attack on American, this time on The Crystal Cathedral, home of the “Hour of Power” in garden Grove California, and American holy place. This would in turn require an American retaliation (we’ve got missiles “up the whazoo”), taking out most of the mountain range between Pakistan and Afghanistan, but, of course, missing bin Laden.

Muslim Pakistan will take this as an attack from the nuclear arsenal of their arch enemy, mostly-Hundu India, and therefore unleash their missiles and incinerating the holy Indian city of Benares on the Ganges River to ashes, which is, of course, what they do there. But this would piss off the Indians, as you might expect, who would take out the Pakistani holy places of Quaid-el-Azam`s Mausoleum, Allama Iqbal's Tomb, Badshahi Mosque, and the Golden Mosque. You don’t even want to know why these are important holy places.

In a matter of days holy relics, the bodies of imams and saints and rabbis, bibles, torahs and qurans, pews and domes and arches and all sorts of religious paraphernalia would be floating around in mushroom clouds. In short order other religions would see an opportunity to vanquish the holy places of their competitors. The Greek Orthodox Church would get Putin to take out the Vatican, Britain would begin bombing old Norman Churches, Bush would see an opportunity to target Salt Lake City, so that Republicans would never have to deal with a Mormon candidate like Mitt Romney, Hindus and Muslims, Buddhists and Baptists, Cao Dai and Falun Gong, Anglicans and Animists, Sikhs, Scientologists and Seventh-Day Adventists, you name it, they would all be going at it, smashing one another's churches, synagogues, mosques, ashrams, holy rivers, tombs, sacred cities and shrines. Whew! That would be quite a mess.

Now if these countries ended up wiping out all of their religious sites they might even wipe out their religions, which would now have no places to fight over and pray from for the death of their enemies. Hmmmmnmn, that might not be so bad.
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© 2008, James A. Clapp

 

51. 3:   THE ROAD NOT OPEN        7.11.2008

                                   Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
                                   And sorry I could not travel both
                                               Robert Frost, “The Road Not Taken” (1915

                       

                                                                                        ©2008, UrbisMedia

Life is nothing if not a succession of choices. Some are big, some are small: what to major in; should I ask her/him to marry me?; or the blue shirt, or the white shirt? We often evaluate our lives by the choices we have made, proud of the good ones, regretful of the bad ones, and grateful for the ones that were more like the flip of a coin and turned out well. Sometimes the road taken leads to a good place, other times it doesn’t. But the unavoidable fact is that you can only go down one road at a time, and you can never return to quite the same place you were before. It is one of the wonders of life that we can never know for certain where we would have ended up had we taken “the other road.”

But what about “the road not open?” Life also includes roads that we would like to have had the choice to take, but that choice was denied to us.

I remember speaking with a friend one time about a job he had gotten. It had been a long time coming for him and he had complained when another job he had been turned down for didn’t work out. But later he got a job that was far better for him. Had he been accepted for the earlier job he never would have applied for what turned out to be the better one. Things can work out the other way, of course, but sometimes “things turn out for the better.”

“It was meant to be.” This is one of those curious ex post facto explanations that people give to events, usually negative events. It is a means of applying some meaning to happenstance, a way if reconciling just where one happens to be in life by seeing it as part of some purpose dictated by Fate, or God. “If I had been accepted by the university that was my first choice I would never have met the woman of my dreams.” People prefer to believe that “things happen for a reason.”

Such reasoning is, of course, mere convenient invention that assuages negative circumstances. If even bad things that happen to us appear to be part of a grander purpose or plan, then they are not as bad. But it is more that that, because the implication is that there is a plan, there is a script that we are playing out with our lives that it beyond our comprehension. If events are just random happenings in an existence that is without any apparent purpose, then just chance and luck govern our lives; the accident of our birth in America or Bangladesh, the currents in the gene pool that give us beauty, or intelligence, or health, or their opposites. Fate is something one must “accept,” but Destiny is something seems to have a connection to a greater scheme. With Fate, things happen; with Destiny, things seem to happen for a purpose. People tend to dislike meaninglessness; they would prefer to believe that things are meant to happen.

Others like to believe that their destiny is already “written” in the stars. Astrologers will ask when the exact hour of your birth occurred claiming tat they can discern all sorts of occurrences in your life as dictated by the alignments of the planets. all the They were doing this before even all the planets in our solar system were discovered and have been debunked by the simplest of tests. But people will check the newspaper each day to see whether it is a good day for a Pisces to “make an important decisions about money” or some other vague suggestion. In Asia, untold numbers of people consult fortunetellers to usually hear something that the fortune-teller assumes by means of a few questions or other clues they want to hear. But the important thing is that some people assume that their destinies are already written already pre-determined.

One can see all sorts of tricky little traps with this sort of reasoning. What about that business of “free will.” If all that happens is part of a script already written, then free will is a joke. But people of faith like to imagine that their god created them, but then their lives is like a test, or a quest. God gives you free will, but you must use it to find Him and accept him. Life is sort of an Easter egg hunt in which you must find the “correct” religion, which, of course, is usually the religion you were born into. There are people who convert to other faiths, many with a sword poised above their necks, others in order to make a marriage work, still others for business reasons, and a few who find some reason out of a personal metaphysical quest.

One can immediately see the sorts of problems this leads to. Christians believe that Muslims, for example, have been, unfortunately, put by God in the “wrong” religion, and must be helped to find their way to the “true faith.” The Muslims believe just the opposite. Since each is a threat to the other for earthly power and control—usually over territory, wealth and resources, as well as “souls”—there is often a good deal of bloodletting involved in reconciling “theological” incompatibilities.

So, we can see that, although the road through life might just be meaningless, or at least have a meaning beyond our ken, and its course may not be “written” but the pen is in our hand, there are some clues to what might come close to a form of “probabilistic destiny.” These won’t come from scripture, or astrologers or soothsayers, but they are available to a rational and reasonable intelligence.

One can read books other than the Bible, the Quran, the Torah, Bhagavad Vita, or the (really silly) Book of Mormon. Biographies, and histories, and books about science and biology, and literature and art, all have clues and information about how lives have been influenced and lived, about how biology, geography, and other dimensions of our existence, provide both limitations and potentials. These sources will not tell you what you should do with you life, but they will give you some probabilities, some guidelines, even some warnings. They won’t get rid of all the fear that is at the bottom of religious faith, but they rid you of some of it.

Some people get a better start than others down those “roads of life.” Why this is remains a mystery. It can be just the luck of the draw in the way carbon atoms get distributed and arranged in the universe, the currents in the gene pool. Some like to see the hand of a god in all of this, a god who has his own purpose in the disparities of life, or god the trickster, who likes to see if you can “find” him from among the babble of faiths. One can try to figure out, or pray for guidance in what your destiny is supposed to be. But you can also do your best to understand “the hand you have been dealt” and where you are, and try to make the best choices toward a “destiny” you choose for your life. You might not get it, but we should remember this: priests, astrologers and soothsayers don’t give you money back guarantees either. If you stand at a fork in the road and ask a stranger which one you should take, he is going to ask you “where do you want to go.” You can ask him to pray with you for guidance, or if he just might have a map.
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© 2008, James A. Clapp

 

51. 2: THE RELUCTANT FUNDAMENTALIST, by Mohsin Hamid (2007) BR 7.6.2008

                 

When actor Richard Gere suggested at a gathering in Central Park on behalf of the policemen and firemen who had worked the World Trade Center attack that America perhaps should find out what grievances Muslims might have against America he was booed off. It was perhaps not the time for such a suggestion, American’s having just seen Palestinians dancing in the streets at the crumbling of the towers. Many, probably most, Americans are still disinclined to ask themselves that question, a silent answer that is indicative of both our ignorance of and arrogance toward other nations. Many still believe that the terrorists were Iraqis, not extreme Wahabbist Muslim Saudis. The demonizing of Muslims in general worked better as a causas belli in a clumsy, misdirected military response that was going to inflict a lot of collateral damage and result in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. One might still be painted a terrorist sympathizer or even a traitor to broach the notion of some American foreign policy culpability for what happened on 9-11.

There have not been many attempts to get at the matter by other means. John Updike (Terrorist, reviewed in DCJ Archives No. 44.6) does a surprising job of imagining the compulsions and frustrations of being a Muslim in America. Is protagonist is a New Jersey half-Egyptian-half Irish high school athlete who need a father figure. But, Pakistani-born Moshin Hamid appears to draw heavily on his personal experience, having been schooled at Harvard and Princeton, much like his narrator, at plumbing the distrust between America and the Middle East. While Updike’s is perhaps appropriately a third-person narrative, Hamid speaks with a voice of direct experience, in the first person.

Hamid’s protagonist relates his story from a seat in a café on Lahore, where his audience is an American at his table. Somewhat fittingly, the American speaks little, and never directly, only indicating vague and incomplete statements repeated by the protagonist. We never “hear” the American’s voice, and the narrator is only referred to by others as Changez. The others are people with whom the narrator works in a small but high-powered investment firm where he is accepted and admired for his investment acuity. He makes good money, is given choice projects and he also meets a beautiful and rich, American woman. He relates his story to the nameless American from the Lahore café, having left America and his job to return home, apparently for good.

The girl, Erica, is perhaps the most obvious in a small cast of characters and encounters who represent various aspects of American society. Erica (the feminine derivative of a masculine name), whom Changez treats with the greatest respect, and with whom he has a tender, but ephemeral, affair, is deeply troubled by the tragic loss of an earlier boyfriend to a fatal disease. That’s America, blessed with beauty and prosperity, by flawed, and unable to really enjoy its blessings. His superior at the his workplace admires Changez and cuts a lot of slack for him when he later becomes troubled. American corporations are is able to look past the ethnicity of Changez because making money trumps prejudice, even after 911, which happens during the time frame of the story. The Pakistani is infatuated with America, but somehow it just can’t work for him. Curiously, the city in which Changez works, does work for him. “I was, in four and a half years, never an American; I was immediately a New Yorker. . . . I tend to become sentimental when I think about that city. It still occupies a place of great fondness in my heart, which is quite something, I must say, given the circumstances under which, after only eight months of residence, I would later depart.” Even Changez’s relatives entreat him to remain there.

Changez keeps returning to his one-sided discourse with the American in the cafe, each time cranking up the suspense by referring to a large, dangerous-looking waiter, or wondering if something metallic he can see in the inner pocked of the American’s coat is a gun. CIA agent, perhaps?

It is a business trip to Columbia that turns the narrator more towards the title of the book. He converses with a man names Juan-Batista whom he credits for pulling back the veil that kept him working as a minion of American capitalism and its intrusive policies around the world. Back in the Lahore café he tells the American: “Often, during my stay in your country, such comparisons [between Pakistan’s relative economic and technological backwardness in comparison with the U.S.A.] troubled me. In Fact, they did more than trouble me: they made me resentful. Four thousand years ago, we, the people of the Indus River basin, had cities that were laid out on grids and boasted underground sewers, while the ancestors of those who would invade and colonize were illiterate barbarians. Now our cities are largely unplanned, unsanitary affairs, and American had universities with endowments greater than our national budget for education. To be reminded of this disparity was, for me, to be ashamed.”

In contrast to Updike’s “terrorist,” this “fundamentalist” appears to not have a Muslim agenda. He sees the problem in more conflicted hues. His education appears to moderate his tone, keeping it closer to lament than to anger. Except for the suspense he builds as he and the American finish dinner and he offers to escort the American back to his hotel. It is dark now, and the streets in Pakistani cities can be dangerous.
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© 2008, James A. Clapp

 

51. 1:    CRUDE EXPECTATIONS     7.4.2008

                

                                                    © 2008, UrbisMedia

“America is addicted to oil . . .” G.W. Bush, Feb. 14, 2006

“What goes around, comes around,” some people like to say, with the expectation that, in personal or social history, one just has to stand still and things will catch up with you. It’s not a truism, of course; there are cycles in Nature, but nothing ever happens the same way, at the same time, in the same place, more than once. Still, it is hard to deny that things sometimes seem to be that way.

There is some reason to think that it might be coming around to when it is time for America to be on the down slope. Less than a decade ago, Americans could boast that we were he greatest military power and the biggest economy in the world. We were then, and still are, but less so, and just how much less so, and where it is going, are subjects of much consternation and debate. Militarily, the inappropriate and inept adventures of George W. Bush have shown the world that America’s technologically superior military forces can be bogged down and stymied by the insurgent tactics of guys wearing flip-flops.  911 proved we are not impregnable, and that our homeland security is operated by dolts. These circumstances have sapped our finances, put the country in the debt of China and Japan, and diminished the value of our currency. American has torn up the regulation of its financial system and allowed greed to run rampant. Now, the country that uses more energy than anyplace else is being forced to pay for its profligate ways in higher fuel, food and other costs. We don’t look as tough and rich as we used to, and the world sees that. We could put a lot of this on George Bush because, at this crucial juncture, when we needed somebody smart and brave to lead us we ended up with a incompetent coward.

George Bush just might be the man on the cusp of a new era in American history, one that he has done much to help usher in. The good ole US of A has become somewhat like Europe was in the Quattrocentro. In the 1400s, the monarchies of the major European nations lived high on the hog, enjoyed warring with one another, and pretty much had spent much of their local national resources. However, they had the technology, in ships and firepower, to go abroad and rip off the resources of less-developed places. That, as we well know, is how the good ole US of A got started. America was supposed to be a rich source of timber, minerals, furs (and, hopefully, gold and silver) for good ole Europe. That worked for a while, until the colonies got ideas of their own and battled for their independence from their European imperialist overlords. It is a history that doesn’t require repeating here. 

911 and the Bush administration’s reaction to it serve to expose our military and financial weaknesses. We will never know how things might have gone had Al Gore been properly installed in the White House (although the political Right confidently, and falsely, assuages its errors by saying "things would have been worse"). Wherever Dick Cheney was hiding during the days of 911, he must have been rubbing his grasping hands with glee. A few months before he had his secret meeting with the major oil company executives—the meeting that he went all the way to a favorable Supreme Court to keep from becoming public—from which not much is directly known, but from which has emerged a map of Iraqi oil fields. Nevermind that Iraq was not the country that attacked America, all that was needed is to convince a gullible electorate and Iraq would be America’s oily prize.

When Cheney did come out from under his rock, he must have been ready to Svengali his dim-witted president into a war for control of those oil fields. The WMD, the nastiness of Saddam, the ridiculous claim that it was about bringing “democracy” to the Middle East, all of it, every bit of it, was a ruse, a smokescreen and a snowjob. They took in Congress, “took out” Colin Powell, and took away a lot of lives and people rights. It is, and has been, all about oil. Dragon City Journal (No. 37.2) has been harping about it from way back, Alan Greenspan admitted it his self-serving biography, Wolfowitz has admitted it, and anybody with half a brain would understand why the two Iraqi ministries that our troops were sent to protect from looting and destruction in the aftermath of “shock and awe” were those for Oil and Interior.

The plan was for the American biggies—Exxon, Mobil, Shell, Total, etc.—to get sweetheart contracts to run those oil fields, bringing us the $20 per barrel prices that war booster Rupert Murdoch claimed we would get, and Haliburton, KBR, and Blackwater would clean up with re-building and running the country. This was supposed to be smoothed along with somebody like Ahmed Chalabi sitting in power in Baghdad. That didn’t work out and the satraps that the Bush Administration have installed have been unable to reconcile the religious factions and bring stability to the country. Some oil has been pumped, something like $55 billion worth to date, but none of that has gone to pay off the US.  We continue to pour billions into an enterpreise that may never pay off.

As a result of these crude expectations the good ole US of A is now mired in Iraq, holding a tiger’s tail. It has to keep 140,000 troops there in order to keep the place from spinning out of control, at the same time convincing our people (who would like some of that oil) that we are someday going to leave. At the same time it needs to establish a government there that will make a deal with our oil companies, but the likes of Moqtada al Sadr and Shiites want the USA out of their country. If the US oil companies do get a deal they will have to establish military bases there to protect their interests and investment, something that would be a continual source of terror and great expense. It’s a difficult balancing act, built on a platform of lies and deception. What it means though, is that the good ole US of A could be entering its Quattrocento period, a time of necessary imperialism in order to maintain not just the greedy salaries of energy executives, but also the increasingly restive middle class that has been encouraged to mortgage itself out to maintain its American Dream lifestyle. The problem is, this is the lifestyle we built since the end of WWII, when the rest of the world was busy repairing the damage. Now, China, Russia, Europe, India and Brazil are trying to achieve that lifestyle. And there is only so much crude to go around.
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© 2008, James A. Clapp