DCJMar2007

Volume 40

MARCH/APRIL 2007

40. 8: WALLS OF MASS DELUSION 4.26.2007

What goes around, comes around, goes the cliché. What's going around a lot these days is walls, around neighborhoods and occupied territories and perhaps soon to be, around cities themselves—again. The U.S. in its endlessly silly, stupid and futile adventure in Iraq has walled itself off in an area called the Green Zone, a sealed redoubt from which Americans venture pretty much at their own peril these days, for much of the time it has been there. Ironically, the city that they captured with so much “shock and awe” has become their prison, outside of which friends and enemy cannot be discerned. Now the Bush administration is building (with our taxes) a wall around the Sunni area of the city that it is incapable (with our taxes), no matter how much they purge and surge, of protecting from the Shia insurgents. The Sunni don't like the idea; they think they are being walled in. Maybe they are.

The Bush administration might be taking a cue from the Israelis who have become quite the wall builders of late, either walling out the Palestinians, or walling themselves in. What's interesting about this wall building is that we might have thought that walls, which have a long history in urbanism had become an outmoded urban element. In most cities that had them they have been replaced by urban features that retain only some linguistic residue from their mural past. Many cities have boulevards, but only those that used to be walls—the word being derived from bulwarks—are worthy of the designation. Vienna's walls became the renowned Ringstrasse that circles the central part of the city. In Paris, the last walls of the city are now the Boulevard Periphique that is the high-speed, grade-separated, limited access expressway.

What made walls obsolete the last time is still around—artillery. Walls were, for a long period of the history of cities, the primary form of urban protection. To be extra muros, or outside the walls, was a dangerous place to be for millennia. Walls kept out the bad guys, and great effort and expense were levied to keep one step ahead of their efforts sap, breach, and pound down city walls. Architects and scientists, some of great renown, like Leonardo Da Vinci and Scamozzi, put their minds to devising walls that would withstand the onslaughts of advances in ballistics and to ways in which they could be used offensively. Walls were, however, often breached, so attention was also given to urban design within the city. Hence, the meandering pattern of confusing narrow streets under one type of design would confuse and ensnare invaders, giving the townspeople the advantage of sniping at them and bottling them up. Other designs were more orthogonal, with the purpose of being able to deliver troops and ordinance quickly to any point on the walls where they were needed.

The best real estate for the period in which walls guaranteed some degrees of safety was in the middle of the town or city. This was furthest from the walls, and hence furthest from what could be launched, thrown or fired over them. Eventually walls became very elaborate, thick and crenellated, and assisted by trenches and moats to deny a direct angle to increasingly powerful cannon, and to optimize the advantage of return fire. Sometimes, as in the case of towns like Palmanova, the area of development devoted to the town's defenses exceeded the settled area of the town.

But they could not last. Eventually, ballistics won the day. Better gunpowder and cannon permitted attackers to simply fire over the parapets from a safe distance and pound the city into submission. Long-range ballistics ushered in a whole new defensive approach to urban design; it became necessary to meet the enemy not at your walls, but in the field, well before they got close to your city. So broad avenues were installed that connected armories and barracks near the center of the city to the periphery. Troops and ordinance could be sent quickly in any direction from which threat came. Hinterland control was the new urban “wall,” and armies now clashed in the countryside and the winners got the undamaged city as a prize. This lasted right up to WWI, when armies used ride out to the battlefields, and then trenches, in taxicabs. The big cities were still relatively safe places to be.

But by WWII cities were back in the middle of international warfare. Most national wealth and industrial capacity were in cities, so to subdue an nation meant to subdue their cities. Since the mid-20 th Century defensive characteristics have been reversed. First the heavy bombers, then the ballistic missile, have made the least safest place to be in the middle of the large city and the safest place has moved to the perimeter and beyond. As we have learned, even commercial airliners have been “weaponized” to wreak havoc on the center of the city. The modern weapons of the Cold War not only made walls obsolete, some believed that they might make large cities themselves obsolete. [1]

But the most recent wrinkle, and one that the new walls are unlikely to have much of an effect upon, is the one that is driving the dimwits of the Bush administration bonkers— the urbanite as weapon. Bush, the neo-cons and uber-dolt Rumsfeld were well behind the curve, and are now well-ensconced behind the 8-ball. They thought that all they had to do is unleash all those technological goodies that most of our national wealth goes for, send in our soldiers looking like the Terminator and everybody would shout “Shoukran America!!! Welcome to our new democracy. Here, take our oil. Here, take my brother and torture him and debase him in front of your women soldiers. And yes, of course, we'll be happy to convert to Christianity later. But first, have some more oil.”

Instead we got guys who would walk right up to your checkpoint, squeeze a button in their pocket and blow themselves and some of America's fine young men and women to their respective afterlives. Instead, we got Humvees, and Bradleys, and even tanks blasted to junkyard scrap by cell-phones and explosives stupidly left behind by our troops who were off looking for will-o-the-wisp WMDs. Instead, we got insurgents and religious zealots and anybody else in the entire Middle East who wanted to get a shot off, or a bomb off on the American's whose commander-in-chief, had called his war a “crusade.”

Instead we got the city is the battlefield, anywhere a sniper can get a shot off, an IED can be placed under a heap of garbage, or a suicide bomber can sidle up and blow an American soldier apart. This is urban warfare as down and dirty as it gets, and walling it off will be as futile as bailing a sinking boat with a sieve.

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[1] The DoD commissioned a large study with a major think tank after WWII. The concern was the appearance of buzz bombs and V2 rockets from Germany. The handwriting was on the wall, and the wall was in rubble. The result of the study was that, in future, the most effective way to defend against the ICBM was to de-concentrate our major metropolitan regions into towns of about 75 thousand, separated by 50 to 70 miles in distance. Anyone wanting the specific citations for these studies needs to write to me because I am unable to access the citation from Hong Kong.

40. 7: MURDER AND THE MEDIA CIRCUS 4.18.2007

It is often said of war that its first victim is Truth. In the media circus that surrounds tragedies like that at Virginia tech, the second (or, third, or thirty-third) victim is Sincerity.

After the “first responders” conclude their duties, the second-responders show up. Media, with their trucks and antennae for satellite feeds, rush in like (no, I'll skip the hackneyed shark metaphor this time) seniors a free all-you-can-eat-buffet. I watch CNN from Hong Kong, two of whose reporters combined their sense of self-importance with a litany of clichés that we have come to hear at these tragedies. They pump what students they could corral with dumb questions, interspersed with the rhetorical “What makes a person do something horrible like this?” The same tape rolls over and over.

Then CNN manages to get an interview with the Virginia Tech president, who reveals himself a cool-customer who flatly dismisses any possibility that the administration—which sent out an email two hours after the first two murders as a means of alerting(?) the campus—might have been negligently tardy. The President claims that he and campus law enforcement were acting on the “best information they had at the time” and locked down the dorm in question. As though he were speaking to a herd of cattle he then said that they “assumed the shooter had left campus.” Somebody actually made this man a university president! You begin to wonder if this is going to be a gradually revealing fiasco like the Duke University “gang rape” case.

Local and state law enforcement are not far behind in covering their butts. Their first words are self-congratulatory; they are very pleased with themselves. CNN, to its credit, had a SWAT team type expert on who said it looked to him like the locals were not exactly rushing toward the action, but that ran only once as far as I could tell.

Then there is the first mention that George Bush might put in a photo op (or at least a fly over like he belatedly did over New Orleans after Katrina). After all, Toady Blair has already logged in, and so has Mr. Howard of Australia, who mentions that we have too many guns on then loose in America. This will certainly trigger a “response” from the NRA, who probably already have put in an emergency call to their spokesman-dork, Charlton Heston, to dust off his toupee and rehearse some of those “people kill people/guns don't kill people” clichés in his Moses voice. It turns out that Virginia is the second most lenient state (after Georgia) for buying a gun; you can walk in a gun shop and walk out with enough firepower to invade a campus after an “instant” background check and answering three simple questions. [1]

Before the smoke is cleared some entrepreneur is fabricating the appropriate ribbon to wear or affix to your truck—black this time, I think (we're running out of colors), and some might get out those patriotic American flags that you attach to your car window that are left over from 9-11. After all, the shooter was a Green Card holder and, technically, that makes it an attack by a foreigner.

The next responder is a young Christian CNN's woman reporter hauled on mic (did you think it would be some other religion?) some minister who explained that this was proof that there is real “evil in this world and it came and sat on this campus” and also hoped the tragedy would ”bring more people to Jesus Christ.” You just know there's going to be a lot praying and religious posturing before this is over.

Speaking of Christians, Bush shows up and “responds.” Thirty-two people had been selected by fate and a probably deranged gunman to be what George Bush later described “in the wrong place at the wrong time.” But it gets his Iraq war off the front page (even though more Iraqi and Americans have died over there than students here). You wonder if he has been briefed that a Chinese official has already logged in with a condolence that almost sound s like an apology. After all, the police have issued information that the shooter, who has killed himself, is a male of ”Asian descent.” Could there be another pretext for a “preemptive” response al la Iraq? Do they have oil? Quick, get Condi to put out that an Asian male was seen in the same city as somebody from Al Qaeda; and Cheney will be in charge of the one about an Asian male trying to buy “yellow cake” uranium from Nigeria. I can just hear him warming up the crowd: "Ya know, when those Asians hide in the yellow cake you can't even see 'em (heh, heh, heh)."

It is surprising how much media coverage there is from other countries. They not only show up in Virginia (not too far from Washington), but there is a lot of coverage in Asia. This is undoubtedly because the Virginia police continue to hold out the specifics on the “male of Asian descent.” Here, in Hong Kong, the odds favor the PRC or Taiwan. Thousands of engineering and computer science students are studying at American universities. My guess was Taiwanese aeronautical engineering grad student “lost face” by flunking a course. [2] I'm completely wrong. [3] But I wonder how wrong I am in guessing that the reason foreign media are taking such an interest in another American tragedy is that the last time our stupid president flailed out like some insane Ahab and made Americans international pariahs.

Then, inevitably, the event begins to slip into the next phase of the news cycle. The media circus begins to pack its tent. There are the pray-ins, candlelight vigils, speeches, the endless “why” questions. Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell might “respond” that God is punishing us again for Roe v. Wade. A woman state legislator from Texas found it a good opportunity to call for elimination of all laws against carrying concealed weapons. If all those kids that were killed had been “carrying,” she insisted confidently, they would have taken that “male of Asian descent” out themselves.

It's sad and tragic, obviously, and especially, for the victims and their families. But one is also left with the return to the drumbeat of similar numbers of innocent victims dying every day in Iraq. No media circus for that tragedy; more like a media “side show” these days. And we've already identified the “Male Caucasian, from Texas.”

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[1] 1) Is you wife also your sister? 2) Who won the last NASCAR Daytona 500? 3) Do you believe Elvis is really dead?)

[2] I have my reasons. I come from San Diego, California, which is no stranger to these sorts of things. For a while, San Diego held the American massacre record when a gunman killed a bunch of kids at a McDonalds back in the 70s. Later, a high school kid in nearby Santee, got his father's gun and killed some of his classmates, al la Columbine. Then an Aeronautical Engineering grad student at my own campus, San Diego State University, shot and killed his master's thesis committee (they had asked him to make some revisions), hunting the last one down in a chemistry lab where he had fled.

[3] He's a S. Korean, undergrad, English major, Cho sang-hui.

40. 6: A TALE OF TWO CITIES 4.13.2007

Everyone knows the story of Marco Polo, the Venetian who went to China, befriended the great Khan, and brought back marvelous tales of the exotic Cathay. Polo himself dictated the story from a prison cell in Genoa, and some of it took on flights of imagination. But the Italians have a saying that it doesn't much matter if a story isn't true, so long as it's a good story.

But there is another dimension of the story. Venice was Europe's gateway to the Orient in the 13th and 14th Centuries. The Venetians had the galleons, the venture capital, and the connections in the Levant that led to the fabled Silk Road. At the other end were not only the silks, but spices and other wondrous things. And, of course, markets in which to trade the offerings of the West. Europe was still in the “dark ages” and China was out ahead on a number of fronts.

Venice had pretty much of a monopoly on the China trade until Vasco Da Gama pushed his way around the Cape of Good Hope and all the way to Goa in 1497 and fate of Venice, which was already well past its economic prime as the gateway to the Orient, was sealed. First the Portuguese, then the Dutch and English would come arrive in the Orient by sea and the new gateway to China would pass to Macau and, eventually, to Hong Kong.

There interesting similarities and differences between these two gateways to China, Venice and Hong Kong. They are both cities of traders, intermediaries between the West and the East, who grew rich on taking their cut as part of the process. Neither would have made it as city that relied on local productive capacity. Venice produced glass and a few other products; Hong Kong assembles electronics and watches and toys. But location , not raw materials or production resources, has been the key to their economic success. The palazzos of rich Venetian merchants were also their warehouses, and the trading houses of Hong Kong lined their waterfronts first with godowns and today with container terminals. Trading on the increased value of commodities is their game.

But there are differences as well. Venice is a place that was literally built on the sea. To secure themselves from the invasions of “barbarians” from the north after the fall of Rome, the Venetians drove millions of larch piles into the mudflats in an Adriatic lagoon, upon which they constructed a city of unique urbanism and architecture that is only a meter off the sea. Hong Kong is essentially a large vertiginous rock and resembles Venice only in that it, too, acquires land for building, by filling in its harbor. Both cities started out as little fishing villages, but Venice grew to a city of a unique, vernacular, architecture, [1] while Hong Kong first adapted colonial British designs, and these days copycats international styles. Hong King is vertical; Venice, low and flat in profile save for its campanile .

A striking contrast is that Venice was an independent city, called and admired by the British as the “thousand year republic.” Until its re-absorption into China in 1997 Hong Kong was a British colony, ruled by a nation half a world away primarily for its benefit, and will henceforth be ruled from Beijing. Venice, after a brief period of Austrian rule regained its hegemony as a democratic city in the Italian nation; there seems little likelihood that Hong Kong will become a true democratic city unless China itself becomes democratic.

And now, Hong Kong might be losing the role it obtained from Venice— its monopoly position as the West's gateway to China. Airliners now fly directly to, and from, Shanghai and Beijing from Taiwan, America and other western countries without needing to transit through Hong Kong or use it as a compradore in its dealing with China. Western corporations that used to set up shop or addresses in Hong Kong now can do so directly in China, secure in the fact that China owns huge chunks of American debt and has a heavy dependence upon its markets there. [2]

Hong Kong is allowed, until 2056, to operate under the ambiguous “one country, two systems” doctrine, but it appears that the system to the north, and not Hong Kong will be the most dynamic system. It is already evident that bit is China that has the factors of production that have thrust onto the A list of the world's economies. That, and the acceptance of China into the WTO sealed the fate of Hong Kong as compradore .

Neither Venice, nor Hong Kong had much in the way of economic diversity to fall back on as their roles have shifted as a result of changes in transportation, politics and the emergence of globalism. Venice at least invested greatly in its art and architecture, which today permits it to function essentially as a “museum city,” a unique place that must be visited to be truly appreciated. It produces glass products and Carnivale masks for tourists, hosts artistic events, but for much of the year is nearly a ghost town.

Hong Kong has no such artistic legacy to fall back on. As a colonial city it was to be exploited, and its rulers regarded it as a temporary “home.” Hence, infrastructural investments needed to be justified on their rate of monetary return. Even its universities appear very much as appendages to corporate structure. Now the British are gone, and a Beijing-approved satrap called the “Chief Executive” is installed in the place of the colonial governor. Before they departed the British hypocritically called for democratic rule, something they had denied the people Hong Kong for a century and a half. The Chief Executive is “voted in” by a small and select group of people, not too dissimilar as the manner in which doges were placed in power in the heyday of Venice.

Recently, Jan Morris, who has written excellent books on both Venice and Hong Kong, was asked in an interview at the Hong Kong Literary Festival, which was her favorite city. Without hesitation, she said “Venice.” Hong Kong she saw as a mercantilist city, and with only fading resemblance to the city that she wrote about in 1974. [3] Hong Kong has always created wealth out of its real estate. The majority of its richest men have made their fortunes in real estate. These days it acquires land for development by filling in its harbor and by taking over older Chinese neighborhoods and clearing them for high-priced re-development. In the process, Hong Kong is selling off the very features that make it an interesting city to visit—a blend of East and West—for the profit of the few. Most recently the venerable Starr Ferry terminus in Central was demolished to make way for a roadway, and the marvelous wet markets in the oldest section of the city are scheduled for demolition to make space for high-priced high rises of residential flats.

Not that the local powerbrokers and money-makers have totally neglected the common people of Hong Kong—they recently opened a Disneyland on Lantau island, and a new Wal Mart super store in the New Territories.

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[1] Venice's lacy Gothic style is very much a product of the necessity for buildings to be both substantial, yet as light in weight as possible because of the subsurface on which they are constructed.

[2] Reputedly, some 80 percent of Wal Mart's products are made in China

[3] The World of Venice (Harcourt). James Morris became Jan Morris at around that time, chronicling his-to-her transgender surgeries in Conundrum (1974). Hong Kong was first published in 1985.

40. 5: WHAT WOULD JESUS THE LIBERAL DO? 4.4.2007

He's the darling of America's political conservatives and right-wing fundamentalist Christian evangelists. George Bush idolizes him, so does Jerry Falwell. General Boykin says He could kick Mohammad's ass (It's Boykin's that needs some kickin'). Millions of fundamentalist Christians ask him every day what he would do when they are confronted with tough choices (like whether to buy a new Ford or Dodge pick-up truck). And who is this person (ooops, Son of a God)? Well, you already guessed that one. But WHAT is thus guy (politically, I mean). Well, he's a liberal ! That's right, as in “bleeding heart, commie, pinko, homophiliac, tax and spend,” LIBERAL! That's what! How could these metaphysical Neanderthals worship someone who:

Hung out with working class people

Challenged the conservative religious establishment

Cared about sick people

Cared about children

Said being rich wasn't a good thing

Was for peace and forgiveness, not war

Seemed to prefer hanging out with guys [1]

Never asked Mary Magdaline to get a boob job

Didn't play golf

Did not own a pick up truck (even though he was a carpenter)

And, oh, he was a Jew

When the fundamentalist-evangelical Christian Right swept out of the American South on the backlash of Brown vs The Board of Education in 1954 the Voting Rights Act of 1964, among other progressive social movements (especially involving women's rights), there were few who predicted that it would make such political inroads as to bring about the likes of an idiot like George Bush, their own “annointed one.” One wonders whether how much it owed to the almost world-wide resurgence of religious fundamentalism. There was the election of the Polish Pope (or Polish Joke) who hated communism, but sought to lead the Church back to a time before Marx and Engels, and the rise of the Shia and the Wahabbists and then the Taliban in Islam run by the like of Khomeni and bin Laden. [2] In any case, although they were part of the same primitive use of religion to control rather than liberate minds, Catholic and Islamic fundamentalism only confirmed to the American Evangelical Protestant Right the need for strong Christian crusaders in political office to stave off any rise in religious relativism by those wishy-washy liberals.

The American Religious-Right(eous) captured the moral high-ground of American politics so quickly that the Liberals were rolling down the other side of the hill before they knew what hit them. Liberal Protestant Christians would not be tolerated, as Jimmy Carter learned. Anyway, it seemed he couldn't beat the Muslims, so they preferred the phony religiosity of Ronald Reagan, who learned that it is easier to buy Muslims than to beat them.

But maybe the greatest triumph of the R-R was a public relations triumph: they took a liberal Jewish rabbi from the First Century and turned him into an icon for the very things he did or would have opposed. No wonder they regarded Liberals as wish-washy; that's exactly what they were, being terrified that any re-appropriation of Jesus would mark them as being non-secular. Liberal Catholics thought they were really being cool because John XXIII let them sing Beatles tunes at mass. [3]

Liberals were blamed for the loss of the Vietnam war, a war that, like Bush's Iraq war, was lost before we even started. Liberals were blamed for drug abuse, crime, teen-age pregnancy, inflation, recession, divorce rates, abortion, pimples, hemorrhoids, and, oh, lest we ever forget, Communism and TAXES! [4] Jesus, of course, had nothing to say on any of these subjects, but is routinely presented as if it was not the devil that tempted and tormented Jesus during his forty days in the desert, but those dastardly Liberals. Conversely, religious Right-wingers maintain a strategic silence on what Jesus is on record as having a position.

Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God. [Matthew 5:9]

Resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. [Matthew 5:39]

I say unto you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despite-fully use you, and persecute you; [Matthew 5:44] Talk about a wishy-washy appeaser. This guy was a Liberal!

If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to cast a stone at her. [John 8:7] Do not judge, lest you too be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. [Matthew 7:1 & 2.] Wow, way too tolerant!

Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy [Matthew 5:7] But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. [Matthew 6:15]

Truly, I say unto you, it will be hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. [Matthew 19:23] You cannot serve both God and Money. [Matthew 6:24.] Oh, no, you mean he wouldn't approve of Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy!

Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's. [Matthew 22:21] What, he wasn't for prayer in schools and the Ten Commandments in every public building?

Love your neighbor as yourself. .[Matthew 22:39] So in everything, do to others as you would have them do to you. [Matthew 7:12.] Guess he hasn't been to Guantanamo.

If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. [Matthew 19:21] What? You mean my SUV, too?

But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. You will be repaid at the resurrection of the just. [Luke 14:13 &14.] There he goes again, taxing us and spending it on those useless social programs.

And when thou pray, thou shall not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. . . . But thou, when thou pray, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret. [Matthew 6:6 & 7] Oh, great, after we went and built him a nice big mega-church with state of the art broadcast equipment.

In short, if we are to have any faith in Jesus or his salvation it would be for the opposite reasons the people who claim him use his name. Any Jesus worth my admiration wouldn't be seen really dead hanging out with a bunch of zealous zombies who have perverted every Christian principle to suit their hatred, bigotry, greed, and bellicosity. Jesus the liberal wouldn't shown up in one of their mega-church malls if they were raffling off enough NASCAR tickets to bring all the Apostles and Mary Mag along.

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[1] Maybe some of the guys were, you know, “that way,” but I happen to think Jesus was straight and, in fact, was in a monogamous relationship with Mary Mag (you know, she of the “Holy Grail” that became the subject of that pile of trip called The Da Vinci Code )

[2] No, I haven't forgotten Meyer Kahane and right-wing Zionist groups.

[3] Meanwhile, the Pope was blessing Right wing death squads for killing “Marxist” nuns and priests in Central and South America.

[4] About the only ones that Jesus came close to having anything to say about were communism (he sounded a lot like a commie at times) and his apostle, Matthew, was a Roman tax collector.

40. 4: ANTI-DISMcDONALDSIZATIONISM? 3.20.2007

In the McDonalds in this western area of Beijing I am upstairs eating with ye-ye's, ba-ba's and kids and grandkids on a Saturday morning. Under the din I can hear the refrains of the Carpenters, singing, in English of course, “We've only just begun / to live. / White lace and promises / A kiss for luck and we're on our way. / And yes, We've just begun.” The incongruity is almost dizzying. These people don't understand a word of it and, I am likely to be the only person who knows that nobody needed a big Mac and super-sized fries more than Karen Carpenter, who sadly, starved herself to death.

But then, this was a few years ago, when there were fewer McDonalds establishments in China and the marketing invasion had “only just begun.” Now they are everywhere; just turn left at the Starbucks. Maybe they didn't understand the lyrics but, technically, they were warned by the Carpenters.

Even before “globalization” came into our common lexicon American super-brands had been employed as a form of shorthand for the cultural adulteration that comes with the marketing power of international corporations. Coke may well have been the first, with Coco-colonizaton referring to the addictive advantages of the soft drink from Georgia over local beverages, be they tea, coffee, beer, saki, kvass, whatever. Coke could be dispensed from anywhere, an one needs only to take a ride into the countryside in India, for only one example, to gauge its ubiquity; coke signs abound, even being used as the siding and roofing for otherwise primitive structures. Any mean little shop can dispense the stuff. Coke knows “distribution.”

McDonald's took American brand invasion to foreign cultures to a new level. Big Macs need to be made on the spot, hot and fresh. And then there's the fries, which McDonald's has figured out is the real addictive item on their menu. The burgers and shakes and cones don't compare with the fries. It's not uncommon to see a bunch of Hong Kong kids in a McDonald's with a mountain of fries on a tray six-inches high, snatching and catsup-dipping like a bunch of crack junkies in an abandoned warehouse. Unlike Coke, McDonald's is a place , as well as a cuisine . [1] It has air-conditioning, napkins and clean surfaces, bright lighting, and clean restrooms. Ask any American package tourist why they went all the way to China, or even to France or Spain, to end up in a McDonalds, and they will tell you about the clean restrooms .

But the cultural invasion has not been without its cultural integration. McDonalds has learned that you can't just shove Big Macs down people's throats in other countries. For a time I collected menus from different McDonalds around the world. [2] One can see that they have conceded to local customs and tastes. There was the issue of India, for example, where they don't like to grind up their cows, fry them and stick them between buns (which would be equivalent in America to having an Apostle-Burger). So they developed veggie-burgers chicken-burgers. In other places there are side dishes, salads, and sauces that bring familiar food items and tastes to share with those fries that do, indeed, seem to taste the same all over the world.

American tourists might also get a smile when cute greeters meet you at the door and escort you to the shortest line (you won't find that at a Mickey D's in the Bronx) and then ferry your tray to an open table, all with a smile an no hand out for a tip.

World traveler and author Pico Iyer insists that MacDonald's gets a bad rap abroad when they are chided for “sameness.” Iyer says there is great variety underneath the arches and color scheme. Chicken kata burgers in Japan, and spicy lentil dishes in Delhi give each Mickey's a local translation. [3]

So what's the beef [4] about the globalization of McDonalds. Some of it comes from Americans themselves; the standard grumble by travelers that indigenous cultures are being polluted by American uber -culture, part of the larger anti-globalization argument. Part of it comes from locals, certainly from the venders of local cuisine who find competing with this corporate monster from abroad impossible without access to the formula for secret sauce and those imported potatoes for those diabolical fries. [5] Both parties might be found venting their complaints near one another's piles of fries at the local Mickey D's. Some of it no doubt has to do with the negative feelings around the world about America these days. There is the nutrition argument that we are making fat, unhealthy kids in other countries just the way we do at home, and it is easy to see the effects of a Big Mac, super-sized fries, a Coke, followed Thomas Friedman has written "No two countries that both had McDonald's had fought a war against each other since each got its McDonald's." [6] Friedman is one of the more influential voices of AntiDisMcDonaldizationism. Some might argue that they are all diabetics now or are too fat to fight. In any case, there apparently no Mickey D's in Iraq, Iran or North Korea—the “Axis of Evil.” [7] There was one in Iran that lasted two days; calling that burger a Big Mohammad probably wasn't a good idea.

Recently the furor over the economic and nutritional effects of McDonalds foreign franchises appears to have abated somewhat. But a new wave of DisMcDonaldsizationism will probably come into being, fomented by bearded revolutionaries who secretly pile mountains of fries in the shadowy corners of some Mickey D's in a third world country. But, given the pendulums of political movements, it will likely be followed by a counter wave of Anti-DisMcDonaldsizationism. No, wait! A counter-counter movement would have to be called Neo -Anti-DisMcDonaldsizationism! Try saying that with a mouthful of fries.

And when the evening comes . . . we smile,

So much of life ahead

We'll find a place where there's room to grow,

And yes, We've just begun. [8]

Talk about trademark infringement. In Rangoon

they took the arches, Ronald, and the color scheme.

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[1] STOP LAUGHING!

[2] Hey, I was doing important academic research; I had to be in those places. People snickered at my research on call girls, too. Anyway, the menus were the placemats, so I wasn't stealing anything.

[3] Interview with RTHK, Hong Kong, 2007

[4] Sorry.

[5] Being a corporate monster always means your economic impact is greater. Currently, McDonalds, which uses a huge amount of input product is being chided for the paltry wages paid farm workers who harvest their vegetables. C'mon McDonalds, how are these workers going to super-size their fries?

[6] The Lexus and the Olive Tree (1999)

[7] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_McDonald's_franchises

[8] © Roger Nichols (music) and Paul Williams (lyrics)

40. 3: BUSH COMPLETES HIS TRIFECTA 3.13.2007

Many times in these pages I have opined on the cowardice and stubborn stupidity of George W. Bush. He never seems to disappoint in proving himself to be singularly unsuited by temperament and character to occupy the (stolen) presidency of this country.

Bush must have learned his cowardice from Ronald Reagan. Reagan “apologized” for his lying about his Iran-Contra violation of the Constitution by later admitting that what he said he didn't know before he apparently knew. Such epistemological trickery is not lost on George Bush, who is willing to admit he was “wrong” about things (those WMD, for one example), but he proceed policy-wise as though it had been true. He has admitted that his war strategies in Iraq have not produced the glorious results he promised, but on he goes, as if “coming clean” is just something you say for the political purposes of the moment, but “hey, we're in this thing now, so we gotta keep goin'.” Two wrongs just might make things right.

We see another expression this in the way in which the buck always seems to stop just outside the door of the Oval Office. Take the Walter Reed Hospital disgrace. Bush claimed that he just will not stand for such treatment of the troops his administration. What happened to all that Navy stuff about this happening “on his watch.” Heads rolled, generals' heads, just the way they do in Iraq when the blame really is Mr. Bush's blame, not that of others. Out of the same mouth will come how much he loves and honors “the troops” and then behind the scenes cuts their VA benefits and shoves them back into Iraq to be IED fodder combat weary, unprepared and ill-equipped.

So let's take stock of that “Axis of Evil” stuff George used to spout? You know, Iraq, Iran and North Korea, the countries George Bush put in his sights in a speech back in his tough-talking, swaggery, "mission accomplished," days. [1]

Rather than tremble in fear and roll over for George and his neo-cons, one by one, the axis [2] has reared up and made his life miserable. First, of course there was Iraq, which he was going to “shock and awe” and scare the hell out of the rest of the axis. In a way the axis of evil bastard who is no longer with us, Saddam Hussein, haunts Mr. Bush. Saddam's Sunni supporters are giving Bush fits. They turned into the “insurgents” and Bush has been successful in bringing them into common cause with Al Qaeda insurgents who have flocked to Iraq for the chance to kill more Americans. Instead of George's idea that Iraqi democracy, which is pretty much a joke, igniting a firestorm of democratic feeling across the Middle East, he has been instrumental in getting the Sunnis and Shiites to go at one another with relish and practice on American troops in between. His own generals have all but told him the war is un-winnable, but he blames anyone who opposes his war as “emboldening” the enemy and deserting the troops. [3] After five years his mission remains a “unaccomplished” and, heading for a retreat which will be quickly blamed on the Democrat-controlled Congress, he is mainly concerned with his legacy. But it's George's failure No. 1.

Desperate for a winner of some sort The Dear Decider recently did a rollover to the pudgy “Dear Leader,” Kim Jong Il. Condi Rice, that most inept of Secretaries of State, tried her best to make it sound like a diplomatic coup, but anyone could see that Kim had been bought for his price. And Kim offered little. He will get loads of fuel for the most vague promise to stop making nukes that he claims he denies making in the first place. So, in his terms, he will stop doing what he wasn't doing—but there is no time period on the deal. What Bush gets is something that looks to a stupid Red Stater like getting Kim to back down. George talks the talk, but when the politics get too rough he rolls. George refused to have his envoys meet with Kim's in bilateral talks about the nukes; only a six-sided meeting would do. But behind the scenery in which Mr. Bush was talking tough, bilateral meetings were indeed taking place between Mr. Hill and the North Koreans. And the Koreans got their deal, because this branch if the axis of evil called Bush's bluff. That's our Dear Decider; image always trumps reality, spin supercedes veracity.

Even ardent Bushies like John “Got Milk” Bolton and other Reb publicans take issue with the deal, saying Bush rolled over to Kim and gave a lesson Iran's Ahmadeijad as to how to deal with Georgie on nukes. George's failure No. 2.

Now Georgie is about to complete his trifecta in rolling over to “Axis of Evil.” Iran. Ahmadinejad is as much of a nut case as Bush and seems quite willing to thumb his nose at his protestations over going nuclear while Bush has badly weakened America's ability to maintain three fronts against the “axis of evil.” Bush snubbed the Iraq Study Commission, which recommended that he open diplomatic channels to Iran (and Syria). But to swagger-boy that sort of stuff is for wimps. But, that's just what he has ended up doing, and doing his best to make it sound like he has brought them to the table. He doesn't sound too tough these days, and there is not much swagger in his step, and there's an anxious, confused look in those beady eyes. That's the look of a guy who knows he's lost.

For good measure, Afghanistan—the one place where the is some strategic and logical reason for us to be militarily—is slipping back into the hands of the Taliban, our chosen leader, Hamid Kharzi, is a virtual prisoner in Kabul, and US and NATO troops can't seem to stop accidentally killing civilians.

If Congress steps in to cut off authority ort funds Bush maintains he is the decider and that the will of the people and the will of the Congress don't' matter. But more and more the people recognize Iraq as his war, as it has been for some time now. Most of the generals that were in at the beginning have left or were removed. Rumsfeld is gone, [4] Powell is gone and brooding over his UN debacle. Only Cheney remains, the evil, sneering behind the scenes specter. It's Bush's war and he will be blamed for losing it. He will likely lose Afghanistan as well, and any other countries in the region as well. He will lose them because he is, when the poll workers in Florida and Antonin Scalia can't help him, a loser.

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[1] The words were actually written for him by an idiot named David Frum, who has written a delusional book, An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror

[2] Unlike that WWII Axis of Germany, Italy and Japan that George's family used to have business dealings with.

[3] While he cuts their benefits, extends their tours of duty and houses the wounded in filthy accommodations when they return.

[4] Although the word is that he maintains an office in the Pentagon, hanging around like some ghostly incarnate apparition of his own epistemology (Yesterday, upon a stair, I saw a man who wasn't there . . . “)

40. 2: “HELLO, GOD? WHAT LOOKS GOOD IN THE 5th?”

(SOS, Part X) 3.8.2007

2007, UrbisMedia

Today we entered colder waters with less wind, but deeper, longer swells out of the east that added a slight roll to the ship's pitch because our heading is now a bit east by southeast. A touch queasy, and as I reflexively murmured a little prayer that it wouldn't get to the mal de mer level.

The subject was still “heaven,” so it seemed a slight non sequitur when a American woman in her sixties, I would guess, took the mic and began a narrative that was a lengthy testimonial to the efficacy of prayer. It was a long and poignant story about her husband's somewhat recent battle with cancer during which, she said, the doctors had given him only months to live. But, she alleged, prayer and strong faith pulled him through. She barely mentioned medicine or the treatment he got as having played a part. She went on at uncomfortable length about her love for her husband and for Jesus Christ, and her unshakable certainty that it was prayer that cured her husband. She was followed by an American man who had also not previously attended, but who told at almost equal length how he was also on death's bed from an infection and, he too, was saved by prayer. His wife, who ws beside him, beamed and put his survival down to prayers of family and friends. It was a bit like those testimonials one hears on those evangelical television programs. No one commented or questioned these accounts. Then again, what could one say?

Efficacy of prayer stories always remind me of my mother, the lost keys, and St. Anthony. My mother prays to St. Anthony, patron saint of lost keys and other lost articles, when she loses something, but she will also pray for things that I have lost, or misplaced. Her version of the efficacy of prayer is a catch 22. If I find the keys she will say that I found them because she prayed to St. Anthony. If I am having trouble finding them it's because we need to pray more. Sometimes St. Anthony is busy finding other things, like socks that seemingly disappear from the laundry, or luggage that gets routed to Chechnya. When the keys are found, we have obviously prayed enough and they are returned. How much we look for them, or just happen to remember where we left the keys (usually locked in the trunk) apparently has nothing to do with our finding them.

Prayer Circles are a new wrinkle. Apparently you can get yourself or your wish as the subject of one of these souped-up supplications. This is a variation of the chain-letter idea, where the power of the prayer is enhanced by overloading God's email account. It's a little scary; somebody might get a prayer circle going on you—“Oh Lord, please make Jim start growing hair again”—and I wake up some day looking like a werewolf.

I do not pray because I would feel like a hypocrite if I did. Worshipful prayer (“Oh, Lord, I love you above all Gods with all my heart, you are the best God there ever was, etc.”) seems to me like a lot of sucking up and groveling. Supplication prayer (“Oh, God, please let me win the lottery . . . and by the way, remember when I prayed how you were the best God ever . . .”) seems whiny and selfish. Prayer is a waste of time; want to let your God know that you respect him—get up off you knees and go do something nice for somebody. Do some good. I can think of about a zillion things you could do. But quit being a lazy ass who is trying to get into heaven by kissing holy butt so that later the Lord will pass you those winning lottery numbers. [1] Do some good. Wash my car.

I don't say these things to the Bible group. If it makes people feel good to pray I have no trouble with that, but these stories of lives saved by prayer make me wonder why such people are not Christian Scientists (an ironic name for people who do not believe in medicine, only prayer). Once you take two aspirin, or chemo-therapy, and then pray, the question of the efficacy of prayer is confounded.

Still, it's a bit of a problem when you don't pray. When someone is ill and you write them or their loved ones it seems a bit odd to say that they are “in our thoughts” rather than “in our prayers,” does it not? Does it do any good? I don't know. But if there is a God who cares about such things He will know of your concern and love for this person, He will say that it's good that you care. He might even like it better if you showed your concern by voting against some damn politician who cares more about tax breaks for pharmaceutical companies than about people who need medicine, or if you send a contribution to some worthy medical research auspices (rather than the lottery), or even take a little better care of your own body. Put some faith in your fellow Man; we were provided with brains, not just “souls.”

I remember when I played sports. Our team chaplain used to assemble us to importune the Lord for victory. We were also asking Him to make our opponents lose, but never said it quite that way. Weren't the other teams praying as well? I would make the sign of the cross before taking a foul shot in our basketball games. Was I expecting that the “Holy Ghost” didn't have anything better to do than to tip my shot into the basket? Prayers of supplication are our attempt to tip the laws of randomness in our favor. Fate, Chance, Luck, and Destiny will all be a little more subject to our needs, desires, and wishes, if we can enlist the favor of the prime force behind it all.

Kent asked for the mic. He prays a lot, he said, and accepts the outcome of those prayers as “the will of the Lord.” Whether he gets what he is praying for, or not, he “knows” it is God's will, and he accepts it and is happy with it. C'mon Kent, I think to myself, you would be happier if you got what you were praying for, why else would you be praying. But Kent maintains that God knows what's best for you, even if you don't (He apparently knows that you'll only use those lottery winnings whoring and gambling). This leads to another one of those religious catch-22s: “The Lord works in mysterious ways.” We hear this one a lot; it's close to being a version of Fate or Destiny, but with a “purpose.” “It was meant to be; that child died because God must have wanted it to be with Him.” Right, and he wanted that child to be returned to Him by some crazed religious zealot who hacked it to death with a machete. Right, those mysterious “wonders.”

Does Kent realize that by praying for something but accepting the result as “God's will” makes prayer a meaningless exercise? Let's take not Kent's prayer, but a well-known prayer, the most famous prayer in history. When Jesus prayed in Gethsemane that “his Father” might “lift this cup from me” but if it is his Father's will that he die on the cross, then his Father's will be done. So what Jesus was praying for is that—if his Father had already made his mind up—His “Father” might change His (the Father's) mind. And, I am not even dealing with the problem of the fact that Jesus—as the Son of God—was one of the three persons of the Trinity, three persons in One God. So why didn't He (Jesus, the Son) already know the answer to His prayer (to His Father, or Himself), which would have made his prayer superfluous. And by the way, how the hell did some gospel writer forty years after the night in Gethsemane know that Jesus was praying (and weren't the disciples all asleep even if Jesus was praying aloud?). You know, if those apostles had not been goofing off by sleeping they could have gotten together a prayer circle and maybe got Jesus a reprieve.

Nah, that would have really screwed things up, wouldn't it. Sometimes you have to be careful what you pray for.

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[1] By the way, the best way to win the lottery is to become a Filippino postal worker; they always win the lottery.

40. 1: THE END OF AMAZEMENT 3.4.2007

Take a photo of somebody from an aboriginal tribe. That's if you can find an aboriginal tribe anymore that isn't into rap music, or opening a casino. Take a little group photo, if they don't take a photo of you first. Show it to them. They'll be amazed; it's like magic to them, mind-blowing. So, if they don't kill you for “capturing his spirit” you might reflect on this a little bit.

I'm worried about “amazement”; I think it might be dying. This is not to suggest a return to aboriginality (we seem to be doing that already), but amazement. Call it “wonder” if you like, but amazement seems to be in a perilous position brought about by nothing that is particularly bad, and a lot of things that are admittedly good. Amazement is being replaced by blasément. These days it's just damned difficult to amaze anybody in the kind of world we live in.

It should be amazing that an idiot could become president of the United States. But it happened; amazing that the highest office in the land could be stolen—twice! That's politics. We should be amazed at that, but this is a country where a president when can be impeached for consensual sex. It should have been amazing that the prosecutor put the prurient details on the Internet, so that kids all over the world could ask their parents what “oral sex” is. [1] But that's not the amazement I'm talking about.

When somebody tells you something that you should be amazed about and you say “I don't wonder,” you have lost your sense of amazement. “Amazement probably comes from the word “maze,” which we know to be a puzzling configuration that it is difficult to find the exit. Now all you need is one of those hand-held GPS devices. But you're probably not amazed because your amazement glands have been hardened by the fact that we could put satellites into orbit that allow us to find our way out of a maze (and a-mazement). [2]

Much of what usually amazes us comes from technology. Politics doesn't, because people have been using power stupidly ever since we can remember, and will continue to do so in the future. Religion doesn't amaze because none of those “end of the world is coming” predictions never comes to pass and that picture of the Blessed Virgin on the side of a building turns out to be the result of guano deposits. Even social life doesn't seem to amaze us any more. There's those Jackass movies where guys do all these crazy stunts that break their bones and nearly kill themselves, [3] or people do those stupid Survivor adventures and eat cockroaches for money. So what's so amazing about that—we always knew people would do anything for money.

Still, it's technology that amazes us most it seems, the same sensation we got for the first time a hominid picked up a piece of branch and whacked the consciousness out of the guy next to him. It should be amazing, for example, that our soldiers today have Kevlar helmets and vests (if they purchase them themselves) that stop bullets, night-vision goggles, rapid fire accurate weapons, etc., but are being blown up by guys who improvise bombs out of cell phones and farm chemicals. That should be amazing, but nobody seems to be giving it a second thought except the soldiers coming home with missing body parts.

Food: When I was growing up there was no food that was really bad for you, just stuff that tasted bad. Then I became amazed that everything that tasted good turned out was bad for you. Now I am not even amazed that I don't die from the very next thing I eat. I never thought I would be afraid of my own refrigerator, but now it's like opening the door to a house of horrors.

I am no longer amazed when almost every bit of information you give to a business entity is added to a profile of your “preferences” and purchasing habits, just as I am not amazed that it is difficult these days to be almost anywhere in public, particularly in buildings and public spaces, where I am not on some sort of spy camera, or that I might draw the attention of someone with a cell phone camera who might want to surreptitiously take my photo because they think I look like Osama bin Laden.

Part of the loss of amazement is due to the excess that characterizes our world today. Remember when a million bucks was like a Million Bucks! It's like nothing anymore. You need a Billion Bucks to be amazing today! Tell a woman she looks “like a million bucks” today and you'll get slapped for being uncomplimentary. Better to tell her she looks like some CEO's salary or “golden parachute.”

Not long ago I asked someone how he was doing and he said “very excellent, sir, very excellent.” We haven't even left any superlatives to express the exceptional. “Fine” and “I'm well” just won't do anymore; people have to be more than “a little excellent” if that isn't internally contradictory. Still, I'm not amazed to hear such expressions. What's next, humungously-excellent?

Back in the 1980s author Thomas Wolfe bemoaned that fiction was more difficult to imagine because reality had become so outrageous and astounding. [4] There were things happening—from science to politics—that, if you “made them up,” nobody would believe them.” But there they were, on the front pages of newspapers. Indeed, science fiction seemed unable to out-imagine science fact. The very basis of human biology had been uncovered, and achievements like cloning, or de-coding the human genome became possible. The silicone-based world of computers ushered in access to knowledge and information [5] beyond our wildest dreams. How can one amaze a generation that can be instant journalist-bloggers, and instant Warholian celebrities on U-Tube, and then Google themselves to gauge their instant fame?

But this new world of invisibilities beneath our sensitive capabilities also brought with it a new epistemological requisite; things happened at the cellular, sub-atomic, and CPU, level that required that we believed (trusted) their reality with our rationality more than our senses. In the old days there was a rather facile division between what we knew and what we believed. We used to be able to believe what we could see and hear and touch—what was sensate to us. Things were biological or mechanical. We could see that animals, for example, got sick, just like we do. We could touch them and hear them. We could see how a lever or a screw functioned. We may not have know what the math and science was behind these appearances, but what we could sense was not so amazing to us What we could not apprehend in this manner was consigned to the metaphysical world, a place where we just sort of made things up to suit out hopes and wishes, but in which we came to have faith was “real.” Today that line is blurred. We have “uncovered” a strange world that is not metaphysical but physical. There is a whole universe, many universes, beyond the immediate apprehension of our senses. We can see and hear a lark; but what the hell does a quark look and sound like?

What remains amazing to me is that there are people who can, despite the vast advances in scientific knowledge, and its application in astonishing technology and medical advances, who, when confronted with any knowledge or its application that might in the least ways contradict their empirically baseless metaphysical beliefs, predispositions, or prejudices, deny or reject its validity. Amazingly, there are those who still prefer myth to reality. [6]

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[1] Most didn't have to ask, since they know more about it than their parents.

[2] BTW: you can find your way out of a maze by simply keeping your hand on one side of the was and walking ahead; eventually you will come to the exit. Of course, it faster if you happen to have electric hedge clippers.

[3] They must not be among the 47 million people in America who have no health insurance, which also does not seem to amaze people in the world's richest nation.

[4] Wolfe, Tom, “Stalking the Billion-footed Beast: A Literary Manifesto for the

New Social Novel,” Harper's Magazine , November 1989, pp. 45-56.

[5] And pornography, online gambling, and those junk mail fake Viagra offers.

[6] Still wondering who the hell Barbara Pierce is? Give her a Google.