Boat captain, Cambodia

Man at home, Cambodia

Tha Prohm detail, Cambodia

The road from Angkor, Cambodia

Crazy Glue-sniffing Cambodian Monkey

Alleyway, Cambodia

The dorian fruit.

Coke wagon, Bangok

Campaign poster, Bangkok.

Wedding dress shop, Tanao Road, Bangkok

Everything here is madness. Beautiful madness. Nothing I read about Bangkok, this heaving, steaming, heaping, stinky metropolis, has does justice. Maybe if you compared this city to quieter, "scenic" Thai regions or to wealthier, "cultured" Asian cities, then Bangkok would seem little more than a sex-friendly transportaion hub. But I can't do that, apart from Istanbul, which is barely nominally Asian, I have no reference point to demean this place. And for that I am glad. I walk these streets with the freshest eyes and I am seeing things and smelling things and eating things that fascinate. Large spindly fruit that looks like a rhino-melon lovechild. This strawberry-esque fruit (in size and color) that is covered is delicate inch-long spikes. If mars had a sea, this would be its urchin*. Ordering a Pepsi and having its contents poured into a thin, plastic grocer's bag with ice and large straw (those store owner's keep the pfand I suppose). And just this army of woks and grills and steaming pots that fire away thru the rain beneath mildewed umbrellas, throwing make-me-cry spice and nameless fresh veggies on noodles so clear you could read the Bangkok Post through them.

And these delights are just everywhere. Everywhere. You find them in alleys so small we couldn't walk hand in hand down them without scrapping our shoulders against the shattered plaster.

Waiting for the king, Bangkok

Moto driver, Bangkok

Beginning the downhill, Bangkok

Street dog, Bangkok

Monks on a water taxi, Bangkok

Exchange house security guard, Bangkok

Iraqii Chaos: Bug Or Design?:

"“The residual unity of [Iraq] is an illusion projected by the extreme repression of the state.” After Saddam, Iraq will “be ripped apart by the politics of warlords, tribes, clans, sects, and key families,” he wrote. “Underneath facades of unity enforced by state repression, [Iraq’s] politics is defined primarily by tribalism, sectarianism, and gang/clan-like competition.” Yet Wurmser explicitly urged the United States and Israel to “expedite” such a collapse. “The issue here is whether the West and Israel can construct a strategy for limiting and expediting the chaotic collapse that will ensue in order to move on to the task of creating a better circumstance.” "

-David Wurmser, working you in the office VP Dick Cheney.

Enough? Not yet. The Beast hungers still.

Where will this stop?

"Enemy combatants" are those poor souls who can be caged indefinitely, without legal representation, or access to the courts.

Soon, an "enemy combatant" is no longer just a terrorist King George the W. claims we captured on the battlefield, but rather anyone who "'has engaged in hostilities or who has purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States' or its military allies."

By that defintion, I think any critic of this administration qualifies for detainment, or as we said in the pre-Orwellian world- imprisonment. Don't forget, as our Republican leaders keep reminding us, to openly question their authority is to appease the terrorists.

What happens when we these two lines of thought intersect, people?

Unless, someone finds their balls and puts them in their pants and stands up VERY quickly, then no dissenter marches far from the gulag.

Those words might sound grandiose. But they are not. We are frogs in the pan. We will soon be boiled. All because we had not the courage to jump.

A Pakistani Mother and daughter gang raped for twelve days because the girl continued to study for her Master's degree at home after being banned from school. Police failed to act. In order for there to be justice the women must find four male witnesses, otherwise they themselves will be imprisoned. That is the Pakistani law under the The Hudood Ordinances, which "were introduced 17 years ago when the then military dictator General Zia ul-Haq was installing shariah law in Pakistan as a way of impressing his conservative Islamic backers at home and abroad".

The leader of Pakistan had dinner with Bush last week. I wonder if this came up. If so I am sure Bush just recommended labeling the women "enemy combatants." What an elegant muzzle to the scream of injustice.

The Summer Of Death:
12,400 dead Iraqiis, from May thru August
That's a lot of hearts, a lot of minds.

"The July total of 3,590 deaths was unprecedented, it said, while the August figure of 3,009, though lower, was also among the worst yet.
In its previous report two months ago, it gave a combined figure of 5,818 for the two months of May and June. The latest two-month figure shows an increase of more than 13 percent over that number, which it described as a sharp surge at the time."

'...failing or betraying some mission you were mandated to fulfill and being unable to fulfill it and then coming to understand that the real mandate was not to fulfill it but to stand guiltless in the predicament in which you found yourself.' "

-Leonard Cohen, reflecting on his song "The Traitor",
from the documentary "Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man."
via New York Times


An excerpt from "The Traitor":

But I lingered on her thighs a fatal moment
I kissed her lips as though I thirsted still
My falsity had stung me like a hornet
The poison sank and it paralysed my will

I could not move to warn all the younger soldiers
That they had been deserted from above
So on battlefields from here to barcelona
I’m listed with the enemies of love

And long ago she said I must be leaving,
Ah but keep my body here to lie upon
You can move it up and down and when I’m sleeping
Run some wire through that rose and wind the swan

So daily I renew my idle duty
I touch her here and there -- I know my place
I kiss her open mouth and I praise her beauty
And people call me traitor to my face

My site is finally redesigned.

holland photos

"you laugh like a child, but you think like a martyr"
fyodor d., the brothers karamazov

Torture got you down?
Refresh yourself.

Daffodils:
"I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,...


...For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

-- William Wordsworth"

Really?
Really.
Had a really bad day last Sunday. I awoke truly disappointed that I had done so. Spent the day in the bottom of a well without bottom. In case you have never been there, it is not so nice. In the evening I went to sleep, wishing I had the might to stay that way.
That night I had the most beautiful dream I ever had: After playing bouncy ball with Gigi, my favorite lost dog (sorry, Ginger), I found myself in my childhood home, and then a car drive with my mother through the fields near our home. We went down into a shallow valley over which we floated in what I assumed was a hot air balloon (I never looked up).
It was the lovliest scape I ever saw, and still is. There were golden mounds of ground grain, heaps of paprikas, the size of babies' heads, red and yellow and green. Orchards heavy with fruit. I was surrounded by horizons filled with brilliant patches of color. Just lush. Into the gorgeous distance workers sowed beneath wide-brimmed hats and a vibrant technocolored sky.
We floated just above the valley's floor, and when I saw something I wanted, we would inch closer, and I would stretch down and grab it. Fresh Bread. French cheeses. Peaches. I had everything I needed. My dog. My mother. Life was perfect.

When I awoke, I was saying aloud: "daffodils."
I do not actually remember the daffodils. Indeed, while I awoke saying daffodils, I have no idea the signifigace. To be honest I could not have pick up them out of a line up. But I will say this: They are now the key to another place. When I say that word to myself, I am warmed inside against the cold "grey haze" that seeks to envelop these days: dream as memory.

I did some research on daffodils (sounds better than "googling", doesn't it?), and came across this Wordworth poem. I used to read a fair bit of literature back when I was young and I thought such things would make me seem more entertaining at cocktail parties.
But whether this is memory or magic, I do not need to know. I will judge this tree by its fruit.
"daffodils"
still works.

Read This Article:
"Al-Kahtani was interrogated for 18 to 20 hours a day for 48 of 54 days; he had water dripped on his head and was blasted with cold air-conditioning and loud music to keep him awake; his beard and head were shaved; he was forced to wear a bra and panties and to dance with a male jailer; he was hooded; he was menaced with a dog, told to bark like one and led around on a leash; he was pumped full of intravenous fluids and forced to urinate on himself; he was straddled by a female interrogator and stripped naked; and more -- all under a list of interrogation methods personally approved by Rumsfeld."

I never liked Arial Sharon. Considered him a mass murderer for his role in certain war atrocities. Saw him as an old warrior whose political interest lay in constant agitation. Did not consider him an honest broker in the peace process, thought his small, first step towards unilateral disengagement was a sinister ploy, i.e. he would make that first step his last step, disengage from the peace process, and retire behind the wall he built around the Palestinians. It was not until last month when in he quit the party he helped build, a move designed to solidify a new middle that could move forward with a solution to the Palestinian problem that I begin to think differently of Sharon.

He suddenly seemed like a man of sincerity. One more of those grizzled veterans of hard living that time tempered in old age. Like Framk McNamara in the Fog Of War. I feel as though I just got to see the real man and the caricture I had created from my readings and musings.

And now he is in a coma. He dream not yet realized, and no one obvious to carry his torch. It is more than a little sad.

There is a nice little piece in the Post that adds someflesh.

"Naturally, the common people don't want war, but after all, it is the leaders of a country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag people along whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country."

-Hermann Goering, Hitler's Reich-Marshall at the Nuremberg Trials

via Democratic Veteran