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Today's
Stories
February 16
/ 17, 2008
Ralph Nader
We
the Corporations ...
February 15,
2008
George Szamuely
The
Absurdity of "Independent" Kosovo
Patrick Cockburn
Ground-Truthing the Surge: Is the US Really Bringing Stability
to Baghdad?
Wajahat Ali
Pakistan is Burning: an Interview with Steve Coll on the Taliban,
Bin Laden and the Bush Administration
Mike Whitney
Henry Paulsen's Wild Ride on the Economic Hindenberg
Alan Farago
God and the Democrats
Chris Genovali
Alberta's Black Gold Rush
Jacob Hornberger
Courting Injustice: Scalia on Torture
Dave Lindorff
Snoops Always Ring Twice: Bush's Protect America Bill Bull
Website of the Day
Live From the Land of Hopes and Dreams
February 14,
2008
Kathleen and
Bill Christison
Palestine
in the Mind of America
Mike Whitney
Swan Song for NATO
Clancy Sigal
Strike Notes from a Screenwriter
George Wuerthner
A Bloody Sham: the Yellowstone Bison Slaughter
Peter Morici
Is Bernanke Headed for the Exit?
John Ross
Drug War Mayhem Boils Over from Border to Border
Allan Nairn
Mafia Rules in the Middle East: If You're Big Enough, You Can
Whack Anyone
Rannie Amiri
Lebanon's Warmongers
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The New Tractatus: Where Wittgenstein Meets Feinstein
Donna Volatile
Be Careful What You Vote For, You Just Might Get It
Seth Sandronsky
The Student Squeeze: Fighting California's Tuition Hikes
Website of
the Day
Conventions: the Land Around Us
February 13,
2008
Nikolas Kozloff
Meet
John McCain: Mr. Big Stick in Latin America
Alan Farago
Hell to Pay: Warren Buffett on the Goal Line
Christina Kasica
King's Dream Foreclosed: the Subprime Crisis in Black America
Vicente Navarro
How to Read the U.S. Primaries
Hall Greenland
Australia's Finest Hour
Lee Sustar
Strange Stimulation: Too Little for Those Who Need It Most
David Macaray
The Writers' Strike Finally Ends
Roderick Frazier
Nash
Celebrating Wilderness
Patrick Irelan
Hugo Chávez and High Anxiety at the NYT
Anthony Papa
Mean Mister Mukasey: AG Tries to Block Crack Cocaine Releases
Carl Finamore
Another Parade Passes Me By: Don't Let Your Movement be Coopted
by Politicians
Website of
the Day
John He Is
February 12,
2008
Frank J. Menetrez
The
Case Against Alan Dershowitz
Paul Craig
Roberts
War Without End
Dr. Trudy Bond
The Elephant at Gitmo: Camp 7 and the Torturer's Shrink
Andy Worthington
The Guantánamo Six: Why Charge Them Now? What About the
Torture?
Col. Dan Smith
The Psychology of Killing: Close In or Far Away?
Ronnie Cummins
Globalization: Standing at the End of the Road
Ralph Nader
Open the Government
John V. Walsh
Antiwarriors, Divided and Conquered
Dave Lindorff
Obama and Progressive Change: Let's Hope the Movement Transforms
the Candidate
Michael Donnelly
Who's Pimping Whom? The Clintons' Selective No Talk Rules
Ron Jacobs
La Lucha Continua: Castro's "Life"
Ben Tripp
Beggars Collide
Website of the Day
Springsteen and Youngstown
February 11,
2008
Cockburn /
St. Clair
Lessons
for Obama: When is a Delegate Not a Delegate?
Wajahat Ali
A Discussion with Walt and Mearsheimer on the Israel Lobby
Ray McGovern
Waterboarding for God and Country
Allan Nairn
The Shooting of Jose Ramos Horta
Uri Avnery
An End Foreseen?
Chris Floyd
American
Psycho: the Meaning of Mitt Romney's Exit Speech
Martha Rosenberg
School Lessons in a Lunchbox: Lunchmeat from Tortured Cows
Stephen Fleischman
The Bonnie and Clyde of American Politics
Marc Lamont Hill
Not My Brand of Hope
Liliana Segura
Obama and Torture: the Sounds of Silence and Equivocation
Peter Morici
Challenges for the New President
Christopher
Brauchli
A Drug Rant from a Former Taker
Website of the Day
Annie vs. the Blue Angels
February 8
/ 10, 2008
Paul Craig
Roberts
Does
the GOP Have Aces Up Its Sleeves?
Patrick Cockburn
Will Moqtada al-Sadr's Truce Hold?
Mike Whitney
The Great Bust of '08
Anthony DiMaggio
How the Press Covers Waterboarding
Andy Worthington
The Guántanamo Trials: Where are the Terrorists?
Linn Cohen-Cole
Hillary, Will You Renounce Your Ties to Monsanto?
Firmin DeBrabander
Notes from the Foreclosure Front: Suing Your Way to Solvency
Cpt. Paul Watson
The Other Whaling Industry: How Greenpeace Cashes In on the Suffering
and Deaths of the Great Whales
Kenneth S. Pope
Why I Resigned from the American Psychological Association
Jacob G. Hornberger
American Soldiers Will Pay the Price for Bush's Torture Policy
Robert Bryce
Beyond Group Think on Climate Change: If More CO2 is Bad ...
Then What?
P. Sainath
The Last of the Buccaneer Editors
Allan Nairn
Give Me Back My Land
Fred Gardner
/
Pebbles Trippet
"The District Attorney of Shasta County Doesn't Know the
Law!"
Andrew Wimmer
Growing Up Catholic: Ignorance is Death
Robert Fantina
America's Disgrace: the Case of Omar Khadr
David Michael Green
Partycide in Six Easy Steps: Watch the Democrats Destroy Themselves
Kevin Zeese
Is Dennis Kucinich Being McKinney'd?
Peter Morici
Wall Street Gives Bernacke a Vote of No Confidence
Chris Driscoll
Could Nader be the Come-Back Kid of 2008?
Prairie Miller
Black August: Bringing George Jackson's Life to the Screen
Poets Basement
Davies and Buknatski
February 7,
2008
Patrick Cockburn
Why
Baghdad Will Explode Again
Bill Christison
Potholes Bigger Than Ever for Palestinians
David Anderson
NBC's "To Entrap" a Predator: Perverting Justice for
the Sake of Ratings
Ron Jacobs
Innocent Flesh: Recruiting Kids to Kill
Nikolas Kozloff
Hugo Chávez's Coca: It's the Real Thing
Jane Rockefeller
The Moral Economy of an Anti-Poverty Foundation
Andy Worthington
On Waterboarding: Two Questions for Michael Hayden
Dave Zirin
Instep Intifada
Saul Landau
The "Honestest" Candidate Since Lincoln
Susie Day
Our Blob in the White House
Website of the Day
George Carlin on Voting
February 6,
2008
Cockburn /
St. Clair
Super
Tuesday's Vote for Chaos
Ben Rosenfeld
Informant Games: The Disturbing GreenScare Case of Briana Waters
Vijay Prashad
An Intellectual Hustler Lays It All Out
Joe Bageant
Nine Billion Little Feet on the Highway of the Damned
Michael Donnelly
What White Women Do In Private Voting Booths
Allan Nairn
Does the US Need a Civilizing Mayan Invasion?
Kathryn Gray
Wilderness on Edge: The Fate of Donner Summit
Ray McGovern
Powell's UN Fiasco
Sheldon Richman
The Whining Empire
Paul Cantor
/ Roger Sparks
A
Presidential Aptitude Examination
John Chuckman
Political Bits and Pieces
Website of
the Day
Save the Albatross
February 5,
2008
Winslow T.
Wheeler
The
Chaos in America's Vast Security Budget
Tariq Ali
Why I Will Not Participate in the Turin Book Fair
Stephen Soldz
The Secret Rules of Engagement in Iraq: Did Rumsfeld Authorize
War Crimes?
Chris Floyd
Strange
Fruit: America's Gulag and the Good War
William S. Lind
Saddam's Secret War Strategy: Die and Win
Martha Rosenberg
Live From the Killing Floor
Heather Gray
Conversations with Georgia Voters
Ayesha Ijaz
Khan
Obama, Bhagwandas and the Battle for a Secular Politics
David Macaray
Unions Need to Stop Being So Nice
Eliza Ernshire
Making Music and Laughing Till the Tears Run
Brenda Norrell
Hated Nation
Website of
the Day
The Things I Used to Do
February 4,
2008
Marc Levy
Winter
in America
Patrick Cockburn
The Bird Market Bombings
Saree Makdisi
Strangling Gaza
Uri Avnery
From Stalingrad to Winograd
Alan Farago
Let's Get Bambi! Someone is Slaughtering Florida's Key Deer
Ben Tripp
Spare Change: the Whine of the Progressive Voter
Paul Wolf
Civil Wars North and South
Paul Craig
Roberts
Why Were the 9/11 Tapes Destroyed?
Joshua Frank
MoveOn's Obama Endorsement: Why There's No Hope for Change
John Halle
Whither Progressive Democrats?
Website of the Day
How to Cheat in School
February 2
/ 3, 2008
Alexander Cockburn
Hot
Democratic Properties
Pam Martens
Bankers
Gone Bonkers: Global Finance and the Insanity Defense
Ralph Nader
The Great Clinton-Obama Debate: Questions They Weren't Asked
John Ross
Hilaria
vs. "El Moreno"
Wajahat Ali
Hillary, Obama and the Clash of Civilizations: an Interview with
Imam Zaid Shakir
Robert Fantina
A Colony by Any Other Name: Iraq as Stepchild of the American
Empire
B. R. Gowani
Not All Veils and Guns
James L. Secor
China in Winter: On the Western Edge of the Great Snow
John V. Walsh
The Invisible Green Primary
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Barack's Bubble, Bubba's Trouble
Dave Zirin
Who Stole the Super Bowl's Soul?
Jeremy Scahill
Blackwater and Blood
Fidel Castro
Reflections on Lula
Joe Allen
Tet Reconsidered: the Turning Point in the Vietnam War
Stephen Lendman
Life in Occupied Gaza
Patrick Irelan
What Happened to the Streetcars?
Andrej Grubacic
Ziga Vodovnik
Caligula's Horse: the USA, New Europe and Kosovo
Josh Karpoff
Dead Soldiers and the Antiwar Movement
Ron Jacobs
Carl Oglesby's War
Paul Krassner
Tom Waits Meets Super-Joel
Website of the Weekend
Company Woman: Hillary and Wal-Mart
February 1,
2008
Ray McGovern
The
Iniquities and Inequalities of War
Diane Farsetta
The Wild Career of James "Dow 36,000" Glassman
Patrick Cockburn
The
Most Dangerous Country in the World for Journalists
Tariq Ali
Et
Tu, New York Times?
Allan Nairn
Eating Dirt for Lunch in Haiti
Rannie Amiri
Collective Punishment in Beirut
Ramzy Baroud
People Power in Gaza: They Simply Did It
Kenneth Couesbouc
The Mother of All Snowballs
Peter Morici
Recession Looms
Mumia Abu-Jamal
Witha "Brutha" Like This: Bill Clinton as White Negro
Rosemary Jackowski
27 Reasons Nader Should Run for President
Scott Campbell
Direct Action to Stop the War Re-emerges
Website of the Day
Betes et Hommes
January 31,
2008
Saul Landau
Return
to Afghanistan
Andy Worthington
Horror at Guantánamo
Mike Whitney
Rate Cut as Dagger: America's Teetering Banking System
Jeff Ballinger
Sustainability for Dictators Initiative? Clinton Praises the
"Suharto of the Steppe"
Tiffany Ten
Eyck
The Saga of the Freightliner Five
William Loren
Katz
Waterboarding:
Torure or Mystery?
Alan Farago
Why the Republicans are in Deep Trouble
Col. Dan Smith
Oh Say Can You See the 2009 Budget?
China Hand
Slouching Toward Islamabad
Dave Lindorff
The Usual Suspects Once Again
Wadner Pierre
Fake Democracy in Haiti
Website of the Day
One Big Union
January 30,
2008
Cockburn /
St. Clair
McCain
vs. Clinton?
Christopher
Ketcham
The Genius of the Development Industrial-Complex
Robert Weissman
America By the Numbers: The Shameful State of the Union
Neve Gordon
An Experiment in Famine
Paul Craig Roberts
Regulation or Deregulation, Which is Worse?
Joanne Mariner
How Anti-Terror Laws Threaten Free Speech
David Macaray
Labor's Only Real Weapon
Liaquat Ali
Khan
Is NATO Committing Genocide in Afghanistan?
Raymond J. Lawrence
Prankster-in-Chief: Bush's Troubling Non-Verbal Communication
Dan Bacher
The Collapse of the Central Valley Salmon
Website of the Day
Onward Through the Fog
January 29,
2008
Franklin C.
Spinney
Bush's
New War Budget: the $70 Billion Hand-Off
Mike Whitney
The Great Credit Unwind of 2008
Alan Farago
Buyer Beware: Florida, the Candidates and the Latin Builders
Association
Patrick Cockburn
"The Americans Bring Us Only Destruction"
Gary Leupp
"We Can't Afford to Let Them Spill the Beans:" a Sibel
Edmonds Timeline
R. F. Blader
A
World Without Abortion: USA v. Romania
Ahmad Faruqui
Musharraf's Post-Electoral Prospect
Fran Shor
Obama, the Kennedys and "Change We Can Believe In"
Jeremy Scahill
Secret Trials and Criminal Convictions: the Ordeal of the Blackwater
Protesters
Allan Nairn
Bush's
SOTU: Entitlement, Justice and the War of All Against All
Website of the Day
The Ghost of Rambo
January 28,
2008
Patrick Cockburn
Return
to Fallujah
Paul Craig
Roberts
The End of American Liberty
Allan Nairn
The Breaking of the Gaza Wall
Eyad al-Sarraj
/ Sara Roy
Ending the Stranglehold on Gaza
Martha Rosenberg
Obit for the "Front Page" City
Corporate Crime
Reporter
How They Rip Us Off
David Michael Green
Kristolizing Iraq: What a Great Freakin' War
Jennifer Van
Bergen
What's Left?
Nancy Oden
Survival Tips for Hard Times
Divya Karnad
Saving India's Sea Turtles
James L. Secor
Pissed About Pistorious: Why the Olympics Needs a Gimp
Website of
the Day
Yellow Journalism?
January 26
/ 27, 2008
Uri Avnery
Worse
Than a Crime
JoAnn Wypijewski
How the Clintons Lost It, Whatever the Outcome in S. Carolina
Ralph Nader
Ambition, Power and the Clintons
Paul Craig
Roberts
How Bush Destroyed the Dollar
Paul Watson
I'm Proud to be a Pirate!
John Ross
Murder and Cover-Up in Mexico
Fred Gardner
Ross v. Raging Wire: Employer's Right to Fire Workers Held Sacred
by California Supreme Court
Allan Nairn
Little Hands with Fever: Some Consequences of Poverty Death
Joshua Frank
Why Bush Wants to Legalize the Nuke Trade with Turkey
Binoy Kampmark
Société Générale and the Economic
Meltdown
James T. Phillips
America's Sick Comedy: Bringing the War Home
Stan Cox
The Depressing Truth About Anti-Depressants
Eamonn McCann
Hillary's Lie: "I Brought Peace to Northern Ireland"
Ron Jacobs
The Horizons of History: What's at Stake in Bolivia
Seth Sandronsky
California's Health Care Crisis
Ben Terrall
The Future is Unwritten
Poets' Basement
Tripp, Gardner, Gibbons and Davies
Website of
the Weekend
City of Immigrants
January 25,
2008
Douglas Valentine
Operation
Two-Fold: How the CIA Infiltrated the DEA
Patrick Cockburn
US Troops Will Be In Iraq for 10 More Years: an Interview with
Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari
JoAnn Wypijewski
Down to the Wire in South Carolina
Heather Gray
Are We Seeing a Racial Shift in the South? Conversations with
South Carolina Voters
Marjorie Cohn
Senate Democrats Poised to Fold to Cheney on FISA
Erica Rosenberg
Environmentalists Out on a Limb: the Perils of Collaboration
Alan Farago
Jeb Bush Goes Nuclear
Robert Weissman
Reclaiming Economic Freedom
Laura Carlsen
Wild Cards: Mining the Hispanic Vote in Nevada
Stephen Lendman
Israeli Repression in the Hebron
Website of the Day
The FIX is In
January 24,
2008
JoAnn Wypijewski
Obama
as Anthologist of Uplift
Paul Craig
Roberts
President Hillary
Alexander Cockburn
Hillary Wants to Talk About Dirty Legal Dealings? Remember Her
Nursing Home Scam?
Kathleen Christison
One and Two State Solutions and the Myth of International Consensus
Jeff Halper
Power to the (Palestinian) People!
Stanley Heller
The Siege of Gaza is Broken
George Wuerthner
The Moronic Sport: ORVs on the Public Lands
Patrick Cockburn
Desperate Iraqi Farmers Turn to Opium
Jeff Sher
Just How "Good" is Your Health Insurance?
Patrick Irelan
Musharraf, the Steadfast Ally?
Charles Modiano
Restoring the Anti-War King
Website of
the Day
An Illustrated History of Trepanation
January 23,
2008
David Rosen
The
Great Disappearing Act: the Presidential Candidates and the Politics
of Sex
David Isenberg
Is
It Really So Hard to Believe That Iran Stopped Its Nuclear Weapons
Program?
Farzana Versey
Hillary's
Harem
Paul Craig
Roberts
The Empire That Must Be Obeyed
Alan Farago
Where Did All the Good Times Go?
Allan Nairn
Indonesian Intelligence Service Threatens to Kill Human Rights
Activist
Kenneth Couesbouc
Another Turn of the Screw
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
How the West was Re-Sold
Michael Donnelly
Obama Strikes Back
Norman Solomon
The Power of Love
Website of the Day
Rafah Today
January 22,
2008
Paul Craig
Roberts
Farewell
to Old Economic Nostrums
JoAnn Wypijewski
King Day in Columbia, South Carolina
Al Giordano
Divide and Conquer Politics: How the Clinton Campaign Armed a
Black-Latino Time Bomb in Nevada
Felice Pace
Power Politics in the Klamath: Water, Dams and Salmon
Paul Wolf
Bolívar's Sword
Robert Weissman
Deregulation and the Financial Crisis
Dave Lindorff
The Bush Dollar Trap
Marjorie Cohn
Cheney Impeachment Gains Traction
Richard Neville
Keeping Shakespeare in a Box
Don Fitz /
Zaki Baruti
St. Louis Mayor Booed Off MLK Platform
Ben Terrall
Cindy Sheehan and the Virtues of Divisiveness
Sam Husseini
Stoning Martin Luther King, Jr.
Website of
the Day
Defend the Mapuche!
January 21,
2008
Kevin Alexander
Gray
Playing
the Race Card
Linn Washington,
Jr.
Deferring Dreams, Delusions of Democracy
Pam Martens
How Wall Street Blew Itself Up
David Macaray
Labor's Grim Dilemma: Do We Need a Labor Party?
Uri Avnery
Look Who's Talking
Omar Barghouti
Europe's Collusion in Israel's Slow Genocide
Joe DeRaymond
Protest and Trial in D.C.
B.R. Gowani
Why Islam Should Tolerate Images
Shepherd Bliss
The False U.S. Economy
Jean-Guy Allard
Philip Agee Versus the CIA
Dan Bacher
Leaping Steelhead!
Website of
the Day
Destroyed
By a Rising Flood
January 19
/ 20, 2008
Alexander Cockburn
The
Campaign in Black and White
Saul Landau
Good Time Charlie's War
China Hand
Endgame for Pakistan?
Conn Hallinan
Desert Mirage: What Was the Bombing of Syria Really About?
Ron Jacobs
No Retreat
Dave Lindorff
A Tax Rebate Won't Fix This Mess
Andy Worthington
Canada's Humiliating Double Standard on Torture
Paul Armentano
What's the Going Price for a Joint? More Than You Might Think
Seth Sandronsky
High Crimes and Economics
Michael Donnelly
Dodging Ecocide
Patrick Irelan
The Ordeal of Dr. Safdar Sarki
Martha Rosenberg
The Drug Industry Takes Another Hit
Sherwood Ross
Making the World Safe for Despots: Bush's Global Arms Trade
David Michael
Green
So You Want to be My President, Eh?
James Rothenberg
Unimpeachable: Under House Protection
Daniel Gross
Starbucks Shortchanges Dr. King
Peter N. Carroll
In Memory of Milton Wolff
Susie Day
Croakin' on Hudson
Paul Krassner
Woody Allen Meets Tongue Fu
Poets' Basement
Wolff, Buknatski and Orloski
Website of the Day
Rocky Mountain
Blues
January 18,
2008
Allan Nairn
Killing
Civilians, Carefully
Ralph Nader
When
the Big Boys Get in Trouble, Who Pays the Ultimate Bill?
Joanne Mariner
Terrorism and Preventative Detention
Alan Farago
The Stimulus and the Meltdown
P. Sainath
Pity the Brahmins
R.F. Blader
Beyond Steinem's Feminism
Andy Worthington
A Letter from Guantánamo
John Jonik
Private Insurance is Bad for Your Health
Brian McKenna
Where Even Sharing is Prohibited: Notes from Inside a Michigan
Women's Prison
Daoud Kuttab
This Time Next Year?
Website of the Day
Those South Carolina Voting Machines
January 17,
2008
Paul Craig
Roberts
Leader
and Vassal
Christopher
Brauchli
The FBI's Bills Come Due
Robert Fantina
Leadership, Bush and the New York Times
Patrick Irelan
Eternal War
Paul A. Moore
When the Rich Pay No Taxes
Stephen Lendman
Institutionalized Spying on Americans
Beena Sarwar
Bhutto and the "State Within a State"
Walter Brasch
Buzzwords in the Echo Chamber: Change and the Establishment
Brenda Norrell
Bush Legacy in Texas Sours
Adam Federman
End of the Left?
Website of the Day
Democrats for Romney
January 16,
2008
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Return
of the Native
Franklin Lamb
The Bombing at Qarantina
Julian Sanchez
David Weigel
Who Wrote Ron Paul's Newsletters?
Sharon Smith
Ron Paul and the Left: a Slippery Slope?
Allan Nairn
Economic Indicator: No Free Lunch, No Free Market
Ayesha Ijaz
Khan
How the American Media Enables Bush's Iran Fixation
Andy Worthington
A Strategic Call to Close Guantánamo
Richard Behan
Nancy Pelosi, You Must Impeach!
Website of the Day
Obama the New JFK? He's Not That Bad!
January 15,
2008
Andrea Peacock
Breach
of Trust in America's Most Toxic Town: How the EPA is Rubbing
Poison Into Libby's Wounds
Wajahat Ali
An Interview with Seymour Hersh on Iraq, Bush Foreign Policy
and the Prospects of War with Iran
Joe Bageant
Getting Out the Bling Vote
Ralph Nader
The Candidate Taboos
John Ross
Zero Hour: NAFTA and Mexico's Agrarian Apocalypse
Elaine Cassel
Jose Padilla vs. John Yoo: Can a National Disgrace be Rectified?
Peter Morici
The Fed Needs More Than a New Communications Strategy
Beena Sarwar
Pakistan's Dirty Tricks Brigade
Robert Weissman
Big Business is Even More Unpopular Than You Thought
Binoy Kampmark
Going Tata in India
Dave Zirin
Dennis Brutus Smacks Down the Hall of Fame
Website of
the Day
David Lynch on the iPhone
January 14,
2008
Ishmael Reed
Ma
and Pa Clinton Flog Uppity Black Man
Roger Morris
Burials in the Sind
Uri Avnery
The
Hands of Esau
Mike Whitney
Bush's Voodoo Stimulus Package
Allan Nairn
General Suharto of Indonesia: One Small Man Leaves a Million
Corpses
William Blum
Oh, By the Way, the Iraqis Don't Really Want Us
Alan Farago
A Subprime Wake Up Call
David Macaray
Are Labor Unions Ready for Prime Time?
Eva Liddell
Getting Drunk with Obama
Zoe Blunt
Road Kill: New Highway Blocked by Protesting Raccoons
Website of the Day
Doug and Andrea Peacock on Grizzlies
January 12
/ 13, 2008
Andrew Cockburn
How
the New England Journal of Medicine Undercounted Iraqi Civilian
Deaths
Saul Landau
60
Years of Empire
Corey D. B. Walker
Barack Obama and the Crisis of the White Intellectual
Col. Dan Smith
Bush, Iran and the Magician of the Tarot
Eric Toussaint
The US Subprime Crisis Goes Global
Ron Jacobs
Television, Murder and Vietnam
Fred Gardner
The People vs. Christopher James Chakos
Stan Cox
Don't Take That Pill!
Jacob G. Hornberger
The Warfare State
Ramzy Baroud
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Joseph Grosso
The Anglosphere: a Special Relationship of Elites
David Díaz-Arias
Imagining An/Other Latin American Left
Stacey Warde
Before We Move On ...
Dan Bacher
Pumped to Extinction: the Decline of the Delta Smelt
Michael Dickinson
Georgie in Jesusland
Website of
Weekend
CounterPunchers Protest Outside NYT Offices
January 11,
2008
Dave Lindorff
Did
Hillary Really Win New Hampshire? More Questions About Diebold
Voting Machines
Paul Craig
Roberts
No
Escape from War and Unemployment
Andy Worthington
Six Years of Guantánamo
Kenneth Couesbouc
Banking on Thin Ice
Jeff Ballinger
Inside the Vienna Consensus
Christopher
Brauchli
Lethal Injection, the Supremes and China
Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Paying No Attention to the Presidential Campaigns
Andrew Silverstein
Bush's Weepy Visit to Jerasulem
Marwan Bishara
Bush in the Middle East
Robert Weissman
The First Amendment Gone Wild
Patrick Irelan
Damn the Small Boats!
Website of
the Day
Hillary and the Superdelegates: Or Why She Wins Even When She
Loses
January 10,
2008
Alexander Cockburn
Now
Nader Claims He Didn't Endorse Edwards
Bob Wing
Marqueece Harris-Dawson
Race Within the Race: Obama, the NH Vote and the Specter of Tom
Bradley
Michael Donnelly
White Women Gone Wild?
David Macaray
Three Big Reasons for the Decline of Labor Unions
China Hand
Bush's Delusional Policy Pushes Pakistan to Brink of Catastrophe
Ayesha Ijaz Khan
Saudi Arabia and Pakistan: Brotherly, Friendly Countries?
Rannie Amiri
Obama, Man of Kansas or Kenya?
Website of the Day
Iranian Video of the Hormuz Incident
January 9,
2008
Cockburn /
St. Clair
The
Empire Strikes Back
Dave Lindorff
The Bad News from New Hampshire: Death By Triangulation
John Chuckman
Pardon My Laughter: Watching the US Primaries from Canada
James Bovard
Stomping Freedom: Inside the Martial Law Act of 2006
Alan Farago
As Florida Sinks: the View from the Titanic
Russell Mokhiber
Why Picket the New York Times in DC on Friday?
William S. Lind
Kicking the Can Down the Road in Iraq
Peter Morici
Beyond the Sophistry: Why the Trade Deficit Matters
Josh Reubner
Sudan vs. Israel: Double Standard on Divestment
Mike Roselle
The Pursuit of Happiness
Website of the Day
Bottles of Tears on the Wall: Steve Perry on NH
|
Weekend
Edition
February 16 / 17, 2008
A China Diary
Spring
Festival and New Year 2008
By JAMES L. SECOR
4 Feb.
Most of the roads into the
country were open, until turning off toward the «,
the "urban areas." Then, the trafficway narrowed. That
there were many people walking along the road did not help. They
carried supplies for the up-coming New Year's celebration, enough
for at least seven days. New Year's, the bringing in of the Spring,
is a three-day eating and visiting glut, but the visiting and
eating begin earlier. The long lines looked like refugees: pole-carriers,
bundles, babies strapped to backs. Grandmothers or grandfathers
on their tricycles, the beds in back big enough for one person
or a person and groceries--and pedaling ever so slowly up the
centre of the road oblivious to the sound of traffic and the
blaring of horns. Deeper and deeper into the country, heading
for the village of Wuwencun (Âð¥Â) on the
other side of Xiaguan (¬Ð), cropland was covered with
snow. It was obvious these were ruined even though there was
much less snow here than 80 km to the west in flatland Shaoxing,
I saw wilted, frozen, discolored cabbage--with the occasional
yellow-centred winter variety surviving to show its bright life.
Nobody worked the fields even though it was two days before festivities
would begin. Shelters and small warehouses, holding wood, supplies
and farming implements lined the road and its frozen patches
of tarmac, many of them collapsed.
By the time we got way out
into the country and into the foothills of the mountains, the
weather was a tad warmer. . .til about 6 PM when the chill descended
along with the black, black night. A thick cotton turtle-neck,
two shirts, jeans and two pair of long underwear did not help.
I put on my cap and thick leather jacket and didn't feel much
better--and this was inside the house. Of course, the
ice cold beer Amy's father kept offering me didn't help any--and
it's rude not to drink. After dinner and two cups of Shaoxing
wine, huang jiu (ªæ, yellow wine), I all but passed
out and was trundled upstairs to my room: a bed, a chair, a table
and a wall-alcove full of. . .things--and my pot to piss in.
The transom window pane above the door was no longer there and
the thin cotton curtain over the window occasionally billowed.
These houses are, for the most
part, brick and concrete affairs, as they are in the city. They
are hollow and echo and soak up the damp and cold and hold it
in a lover's embrace. There are no heaters and no air conditioning.
The kitchen is of the older type with the addition of modernity
in a two-burner gas-top. The old pots are fitted into the paneled
cook-top which is slanted to allow easy cleaning and escape of
water out a little hole in the wall. This is a wood-fired stove;
unlike many older style houses, of which there were plenty, this
one had a small chimney. Four interconnecting bedrooms upstairs
and a veranda that went around two sides of the house. As soon
as we got in, Amy's mother, Chafeng, put out to air all of the
bedding. I tried to help but was told "no." As I was
every time I tried to help. Made me feel useless. Even though
I'm a guest and this is the appropriate way to treat a guest,
I do not like being treated like a king or suchlike. Be that
as it may, I sat at the front room table sipping my hot water
and watching the activity. Finally, Amy told me--ordered
me--to take my things upstairs.
Amy, Ruan Xiaoyan, is a student
of mine. She lives with her mother, Chafeng, and her brother,
Ruan Feng and sister-in-law Chen Mei and their 10-month old daughter,
Yingying. I have visited them in Shaoxing more than once, for
dinner. We get along well. Amy's father lives elsewhere where
he works and, as Amy and her mother say, chases his other women,
which is why they're separated. I was not really very interested
in meeting him. Amy and I have become quite close, though there's
nothing romantic in the relationship; a kind of association that
would at first raise eyebrows, then engender rumors and then
get me fired in a US university, paranoid as schools are of all
student-professor mixed gender relationships. In China, you can
be a little more human. I open up my life to my students and
they learn about foreigners and their English improves; they
get to cook and watch TV and nose around my small library. I've
been told that, in ESL academia, this is known as "immediacy."
I sometimes think it is silly that a 60-year old become involved
with his 20+ year old students but, at the same time, I think
it keeps me young: I keep up with them. I have formed some lasting
friendships in my seven years in China.
In this old house lived Amy,
Ah-feng and her parents, her grandmother and great-grandmother
living close-by, before her family moved to Shaoxing. During
her high school years, she lived with a god grandmother in Lingnan.
Grandma still lives in Wuwencun, way up on the mountain. She's
80 this year. I met her once in Shaoxing, on my first visit to
Amy's house. I'm anxious to meet her again. She's a neat lady.
Not in the least old in the head. When I kissed her on the cheek
--she did not shy away as her daughter, Chafeng, did--she returned
the kiss. . .on my neck. An 80-year old live wire! She only speaks
Shaoxinghua, the local dialect, and is illiterate, never having
gone to school. Full of smiles and wrinkles and bundled against
the cold, she looked like a gnome with her bright eyes and quick
repartee--Amy translating, of course. I would dearly love to
get to know her better, find out more of her life before it's
all but forgotten by the society around her, so bent on modernization
and materialism. She is a passageway into a time, a culture that
Mao's communism has tried to totally erase from the people's
consciousness as being "imperialistic" and, therefore,
anti-Marxist, anti-modern and unfree. But it is a part of the
country's historical identity and not totally eradicated out
in the country. She was born in 1928, during the tumultuous years
of The Republic, which was more of a time of warlord hegemony
until Chang Kai-shek (Jiang Jieshi, in pingying) rose to prominence.
5 Feb.
Bright and early, the front
doors are open. It's raining, a cold, drizzly rain. White-grey
sky behind bamboo high-lighted by the crisp white snow on the
surrounding mountainsides, the colorlessness cut by cross-crossing
telephone wires. The dogs are out barking at me and my frozen
fingers. The roosters crow occasionally. There is one in the
narrow storage room off to one side of the porch that serves
as toilet. He's dinner, I assume. Since 5-6 last night, breath
has been ubiquitously obvious.
Via TV I suppose I'll hear
about the snowed-in country but if it's raining there I'm sure
the situation will be worsening--everywhere will be frozen, temperatures
being well below zero. Air conditioners are not necessary to
life; televisions are, for there's not much to do in the evenings
and during these vacation days but watch TV with their endless
sameness of multiple musical extravaganzas. Later, Amy tells
me there's no cable connection since they do not live here during
the year but, then, the following day I find the TV is connected.
I think her father is milking off of the neighbors, old friends.
Boiling water cools very fast
in this weather and I must learn how to drink it fast and hot
even though I'd prefer to dally over it as I write or just sit
and shiver.
A few old pictures on the wall,
high enough that I can't quite see their fadedness. Several of
Ah-feng, a couple of Amy as a kid, B&W reproductions of her
grandfather, who died in his 40's secondary to something he picked
up during the war, and her great-grandmother, who died when Amy
was three (1988). Three large awards for Ah-feng, one small one
for Amy. An old pedal sewing machine in the corner--I wonder
if I can still use it? Long narrow buffet along the wall opposite
the door stocked with hot plates and five thermoses of hot water.
Although there are two folding padded card table chairs at this
round table with its cockeyed spinning Lazy Susan, I'm sitting
on a saw-horse type bench--there are three of these. The television
is blaring some old CD-recorded programs from last year. Chafeng
is in the kitchen readying breakfast at the wood-burning stove.
Her father's wandered off. The neighborhood dog pokes his head
in the door but hides his tail between his legs and runs off
at sight of the frightening foreigner. I tied the legs of the
chicken so he'd not run off: this is dinner! A grandmother
from next door brings over a bowl of greens piled high like a
dunce's cap and just plops it on the concrete floor before going
in to talk to Chafeng. Concrete floors are everywhere. The warmest
place in the house, aside from in a bed, is behind the white-tiled
wood stove and since there's never a truly raging fire there,
this isn't saying much.
I truly must speak of the toilet:
two large rubber-plastic urns with a small cut piece of bamboo
as thigh rest. Rustic. Very much better than my living conditions
the summer of 2006 in Anyang where I had no toilet, no shower
and I washed at the kitchen sink: clothes, face, hair, dishes,
food. There, the ceiling kept dropping bugs and whatnot onto
me and into my food; here there are high concrete ceilings. The
window in this WC is kept open. Whenever I go in, I talk to the
chicken, who kindly answers back. There is another long narrow
space at the back of the house that is the bathroom and, at the
far end under the stairs, storage. A sink with an outdoor type
tap high above and a flexible neck showerhead, wall-mounted,
but who wants to take a cold shower? No running hot water. The
towels are hung along a jerry-rigged "rod"--a wire--and
there is an old, crowded wooden shelf for holding toiletry necessities.
Face, feet and ass are washed nightly before bed time.
Amy keeps filling me in on
these little customs that I am, of course, breaking in my cultural
ignorance. She never tells me in advance.
Some cabbage-like plants have
been delivered. And a pot of. . .let me see. . .cut and stewed
bamboo or sugar cane. Some kind of vegetable, Amy tells me. All
from neighbors, who keep dropping in as much to renew old acquaintances
as to see the foreigner, first ever to visit this mountain village.
Dinner was boiled pig skin/fat/meat
with black tree-mold, some kind of blue beans that looked like
bloated snails, some cold meat to be dipped in soy sauce, green
salty vegetables and noodles, and rice. This morning, a different
kind of noodles and vegetables.
It's 9:15 AM.
Snowing in Shaoxing, her brother
says, by phone. I hate to imagine further west!
On the front of my canvas pencil
case: The Store To Sale Happy Virus.
10:35 AM and I'm in from my
bit shoveling the road so Ah-feng can drive up to the house when
he gets here later today. It's more difficult than I remember
(20+ years ago) but I'm also bundled up like a child and 60.
There for awhile it was snowing with the rain. Amy says the forecasters
say it'll stop tonight. That's here. I have some pictures of
her shoveling: her classmates will be astounded to see Miss Fashion-conscious
engaged in such behavior! She did a pretty good job taking twice
as long as her old teacher to clear an area half as large.
I missed the demise and defrocking
of dinner. For all that time, I could only hear the echo of my
shoveling shouting back at me.
Noon--moderate snow, no wind.
We went to grandma's for dinner.
Several aunts--her children--and us. It was a grand time with
lots of food and lots of huang jiu--heated. I finished first
and got my bowl of rice, as per custom, but I'd have preferred
more wine: the more I drank, the more I didn't care about the
taste and actually grew to like it. Am I becoming Chinese then?
Grandma's house way up on the
side of the mountain is gotten to by what can only be described,
latterly, as an animal path. We could only drive half way to
her place, then plodded up stairs and pathways that wound around
and over others' patios. I was short of breath not half way up
(asthma) and my knees were brittle with cold. In my big clod-hopper
Duck boots, I trundled along at the end of the line struggling
up the muddy trails and over the rock-strewn final approach.
Coming down by flashlight was even more alarming.
When grandma saw me, she threw
her arms wide, smiled largely and let me kiss her on the cheek.
She held my hand awhile and said. . .something. I don't think
I've ever been welcomed anywhere with open arms. I gave her the
expensive bai jiu (æ, white wine) that had been given to
me that I simply cannot tolerate: tastes like kerosene with an
alcohol content of 50-60%. Amy assured me she drank; I assumed
so, being country and older.
Before dinner, I went around
the side of the house and up into the bamboo mountain side, following
an old muddy trail. I didn't get very far: I slipped navigating
a particularly sodden rise and fell, rolling about 6' down the
hill, stopping at the base of a good leg-sized bamboo. My hands
were covered with mud but, from what I could see, not much of
my jacket. I imagine if I'd not had so much clothing on I'd have
been luckier and achieved my goal but, alas, it was not to be.
I decided, upon getting up, that another try would not be worth
the trouble and tried to clean my hands in the snow. No luck.
So, I trundled back down to the house holding out my hands that
I couldn't clean off in the snow, calling for water. Well, Chafeng
and Grandma took me in hand, all the while chiding me like a
misbehaving child, grandma much gentler, Chafeng more hysterical
over my mishap. The back of my jacket was a muddy mess, it turned
out. Luckily, both are leather, so they cleaned up nicely. Everyone
else laughed heartily at my escapade. Actually, she was furious
and, later, manipulative over my safety and foolishness as if
I'm a little boy or a foolish old man because nobody in his right
mind would do what I did. I can understand there is a great weight
on her for caring for the guest and I can understand how she'd
feel guilty if I got hurt, but there's no need for such over-protectiveness
and the expressed idea that I'm too stupid to know what it is
I'm doing. Just as is meted out to Chinese children in general:
none of the kids I see have the least little bit of adventurousness
to them. Always safe. Always reasons for not doing "because."
Tian na! No wonder they can't think on their own--they've never
been allowed. Following the Japanese with driving, Chinese parents
might be "safety parents." A "safety driver"
is a slow, over-cautious driver. As her ranting went on, I became
more and more angry. She, herself, has never done anything even
remotely close to exploring. I've been doing it all my life,
beginning with taking unannounced walks before age one. These
kids, I'm sure, have never climbed a tree or--heaven help us--fallen
down. Even the most usual and common of child things, putting
your fingers in your mouth, is forbidden, the child often getting
slapped for it. I flare up at such repression. I really got put
out at her but could say or do nothing other than promise that
when I returned to Grandma's I'd not go climbing the mountain.
At the end of the evening,
when it was dark, Grandma asked if I wanted to stay. I wanted
to--the way down the mountain was treacherous--but everyone else
said "no." Tomorrow she will come to us, they said
(they lied). I was not too terribly pleased but what could I
do? No one could understand me. They said, too, that the second
floor would not support me (another lie). I am so fat.
I believe, though, that they do not want us together.
Amy did not know the way down
the mountain as we half-fell, half-climbed down the path to the
car. Grandma lives at the top of a mountain in an old house with
a new shell built around it. Tree-beam ceilings and wall posts
with plastered walls; the exterior was originally stone; the
doorways all have high lintels, worn with time from people not
quite stepping cleanly over them. Modern front doors and a little
added on toilet--modern. What a find! This house was warmer than
the Ruan household. Comfy.
Despite everyone speaking Shaoxinghua,
this was one of the best nights in China for me. Lots of pictures
about the walls. Four generations present, though one of Grandma's
boys was not there: perhaps the day after tomorrow, I'm told,
he'll come in from Shaoxing. A grand-uncle. Grandkids and great-grandkids.
I told Amy she needed to hurry up and give her grandmother another
before too long. She scoffed at the suggestion. Here, girls don't
get married til they're around 28; the Chinese are not young
marriers. I was Amy's age when my son was born, only 49 a grandfather.
Amy kept telling me not to
drink so much: I wasn't drinking "so much." She is
being very protective of me, as if I'm too young to know better.
Like a little mother, so I was able to pun off her name, Xiaoyan,
and call her Xiaoma (little mother). However, whenever she wasn't
looking, I got aunt #3's husband to fill my bowl (Chafeng is
aunt #2; there are only two uncles). You drink out of little
bowls here, not glasses or cups or goblets. Rice bowl sized bowls.
Warm huangjiu. Just didn't seem to have much effect on me, to
tell you the truth, but boy did I like it! Later, back at the
house, I drank beer and went off at the bad directing and bad
acting on the TV (now working). I was high, I must admit. Chinese
TV is so very rotten that US TV is considered high quality and
new seasons of Desperate Housewives, Sin and the City
and Prison Break are anxiously awaited. Chinese are
very fond also of Friends.
6 Feb.
I heard it was snowing and
raining in Guizhou and Hunan--blizzard country. China telecom
set up free phone service for the stranded, something that would
never happen in America where profit trumps humanity every time.
I swallowed something down
my windpipe last night and am now coughing deeply. Inhalation
pneumonia? I don't know what's going on: I've been having alot
of trouble swallowing, as if my epiglottis is not functioning
correctly. Twice in six months now I've done this and several
more near misses inbetween. Back is sore from shoveling. Yingying
keeps shoving her tiny hands into my mouth, so I wonder if she'll
get ill; but, then, she does not put her hands in her mouth.
This is verboten in China.
I could see they almost had
her walking a couple times; with Amy, she was standing on her
own, kid of wavering back and forth on those tiny fat feet. So
over-clothed for the winter.
Wrote a very short story yesterday
based on an old American fairy tale. Changed the sex of the main
character to a boy and left him, of all the characters, nameless.
Dancing With the Devil. Old Texas tall tale.
I'm sitting out on the porch
in a small bamboo chair just like a grandfather watching life
go by. Actually, I was told by sister-in-law to "Sit."
I'm not sure she really likes me, sometimes.
Smoke from chimneys across
the way stream blue-grey wisps into the light easterly breeze,
reminding me of storybook pictures of pioneer cabins. Snow-covered
slate roofs, stone houses, some plaster- or concrete-covered
formed stone houses. No really old ones in the area, outside
of storehouses; though, down the road, I saw some wattle housing,
I think only used for storage sheds now. The snow highlights
the bowing bamboo. This would be a nice shot but for the telephone
lines. Sounds of shoveling and the pat-pat-pat of rubber boots
on concrete steps. Light grey sky but no prospect of snow. It's
so quiet and uncomplicated out here, why would anyone want a
city? Places where life is made more complicated and much more
dependant on things: some kind of autonomy has been given up
in a city. In the name of civilization and progress, a diminishing
humanity. But I think big cities will become places of disinhabited
dissolution in the coming depression. They cannot support themselves.
They are, in all their grandeur and magnificence and convenience,
fragile things built on forgotten supports. The world will fragment
into smaller self-sufficient but inter-dependant conclaves.
Today's dinner, duck, just
had its carotids severed. Horrible, gory and disgusting, those
vegetarians would say, while staring into their own demise: bad
weather, bad harvests. The rise of meat-eating and animal husbandry
assured survival and made hunters out of gatherers. Ruined crops--that
nobody was growing by design--meant depleted food supplies before
meat became accessible. Killing plants is killing life anyway,
so on that score alone vegetarian arguments are for naught. Facing
starvation, perhaps their intellectually vacuous ideological
stance would undergo a change. They are, after all, only able
to maintain their desired feeding because of the advances in
farming by, of all things, meat eaters. Vegetarians are, in their
vapidity, unaware of the inter-dependence of society: once there
was no choice. As most people are unaware. Out here in the country
it's different.
The East Indians are vegetarians
by way of religion. The ancient Chinese, Japanese and Koreans
by necessity: only rich people could afford meat. Only the rich
could afford rice, too, though the poor grew it. Mostly, the
poor ate barley or millet or some other bran. But Western history
is not filled with much that isn't aristocratic history from
the East, so it may be forgiven for vegetarians not to know this.
The ancient Greeks, who landed in the south of China, in the
old Yue Kingdom region, called the inhabitants radish eaters.
I am pretty useless out here,
mostly due to foreignness and communication deficiencies, though
I am sometimes treated as if I'm too old to be of much use. The
Chinese, even Amy who knows better, see "60" and immediately
think "really fucking old." And so I'm not allowed
to do things that I'm perfectly capable of doing. Very frustrating
for a man who's spent his entire life adventurously, beginning
with walks without warning before age one. Adventurousness is
not a known quantity to the Chinese, young or old: it's too dangerous,
they learn from an early age. Over-protected, they never do anything
that isn't guaranteed safe.
I took a walk this afternoon,
with camera, heading back into Xiaguan. Met questioning farmers
and was able to tell them who I was and where I belonged and
maybe one or two things about myself--enough to satisfy their
curiosity. Some very interesting shots: old stairs down to streams,
individual stone steps along a wall down to the mountain run-off
and a small platform for washing clothes; old sod house, people.
I met Amy and her brother on my way back and hopped in the car
to go shopping in the town. She was driving. First time on the
road. Her brother is teaching her. He's a good, patient teacher,
unlike the intolerant and ever-shouting father of mine. He, himself,
is a new driver. New car. Citroën. Picked up some of his
old friends and drove them part way home, on our way home.
When we got back, the table
in the front room was set with food and fruit and candy as offering
to. . .the spirits, I guess. Two apples with large cone-shaped
candles in them, big end up to be lit later. Amy doesn't really
know why, it's just tradition. So many young people are in this
boat.
7 Feb.
New Year's. Bright and early,
nuts and fruit and candy set for the gods--or whatever. Part
of superstitious tradition and maybe nobody but old folk know
now why this is done. Maybe I can get Grandma to tell me.
I didn't make it to midnight.
Amy did not bother to wake me as I asked but the phone went crazy
just before one, so I messaged her too.
Ah-Feng and Ah-Mei had a heated
argument. She has a very loud, wheedling voice and doesn't much
care if anyone hears her ragging on her husband. There's no possible
way she was not heard by one and all, though Amy tends to sleep
soundly and late, regardless of what's going on around her. Indeed,
she gets a little miffed if people wake her before 10:30!
So much about these houses
is jerry-rigged or second thought. You'd think people weren't
going to be staying long yet buying a house and having a permanent
place is high priority. In China, you are associated with a place,
you're registered there and if you move must get or apply for
permission (that's the only way I can put it). Always granted
but you must officially be from somewhere. A hangover from ancient
times because then you couldn't travel without official papers,
not even as a merchant. Your place is your identity, it seems,
and the government knew where you belonged. Everything in its
place. Foreigners, too, though the police will not come looking
for you--unless you've done something wrong or caused a problem.
. .or had an accident. Otherwise, the non-problem is unimportant.
In the summer of 2006, I was a "loose" person while
staying in Anyang. The Dean of the College at Anyang Teachers
University caused a problem but it was circumvented. Delusional,
he was sure I was there to cause him more trouble and embarrassment--I
had not given in over non-payment of salary and, therefore, won.
I defied authority. His bid to harass me led to the entire incident's
being put into my novel, The Constant Shell Game. All
of the perpetrators who made the novel possible are listed in
the acknowledgements.
8 Feb.
Yesterday afternoon it warmed
up nicely. I could hear the drip-drip-drop of melting snow from
the trees and bamboo. The paths are turning into pig's heavens.
I found that people were stranded
because of the storm. At Guangzhou, some supermarket put together
a big dinner for them and China Telecom offered free calls to
home. We can see with New Orleans that nothing like this would
happen in America. I do remember, though, the department stores
in Kansas City during the heat wave of 1980 opening up their
doors at night so that people could take advantage of their air
conditioning. No more. If the people had tried anything like
this after Katrina, the local police would have shot them, as
it did people trying to get away from the debacle.
I saw photo ops with Hu Jintao
but, unlike the ego-centric, clean hands opportunities of George
Bush, Hu actually took off his coat and joined in a line loading
supplies onto an airplane.
For the fist time in two weeks,
my stomach is not rebelling: I ate two bowls of porridge, this
one with gravy, not just water, as per usual. Vegetables, pig
liver and fat. . .along with something else I don't know what
and don't know how to use though I've seen it and eaten it before.
I think it's a local food, like congealed sweet potato starch
is an Anyang food (called delicacy).
Walked two miles up the mountain
to Grandma's, having not taken my meds. So. . .my shoulder hurt
to write or raise my arm and I was horribly SOB when I arrived,
solved because I'm never without my acute attack inhaler.
Beautiful weather--my coat's
off and I'm sitting out on the huge front patio in the sun, drinking
tea and sucking on candy and listening to furious dialect--totally
incomprehensible. Food is drying. Some meat or other is being
trimmed and cleaned with scissors in a big, shallow tub. Strips
of cloth in a threshing basket. Fir trees outside the house so
that up here with only a view of mountain it feels like I'm out
in the wilderness. Sounds of running water, roosters and firecrackers
don't really disturb the silence, but inbetween, and you can
hear the silence.
I've changed to drinking orange
juice.
A breeze has arisen. All of
these things around you that you don't pay attention to in the
city. Wish there were a job for me out here, out in a country
village. Away from the world and only an occasional foray into
a city for books, music, art. I did enjoy myself in Wajikicho,
Tokushimaken, Shikoku: 3000 people at the foot of the mountains,
an hour from the nearest city of any size.
I'm coming down with something--or
(and?) it's a day without meds. However, I don't feel so good.
Tired. Yingying is getting cranky, so she's probably getting
sick, too. But it's so fast to infection, if I'm the cause. It's
usually 7-10 days' incubation. I'm always cold. Trembled
uncontrollably when I went to bed at 7 PM. Now, at 11:15, I'm
up and ready to go, though I can't breathe. Sinuses/nose completely
stopped up. Which affects sleep. . .and next day mood. Ai! I'm
such a mess!
9 Feb.
I woke up at 5:55 AM (the fourth
time I woke up) and it was light outside. Amazing!--at 6:30 yesterday
it was still dark. However, later I discovered I read my clock
wrong. Duh! Nevertheless, it felt nice to wake up to light, though
it was cold. Very still. The sky is still completely clouded
over. Having seen satellite weather shots in the past, this is
as per usual. Even in summer, the eastern flatlands are pretty
much cloud-covered. There's a lot of rain in Shaoxing in spring
and summer. Weeks at a time. I don't think we had more than a
week during December without rain. Makes for a green spring/summer
though even in winter the trees sport green foliage and the grass
is green, albeit a little duller hued.
On the mound of mountain across
from the front doors, perhaps 100 metres distant, you can see
patches of grass and ground now. A little break from the bright
white snow. A gusty wind bends the yellow-green bamboo in waves
up the hillock. If it just wasn't so cold! If the house had heat!
My sinuses are no better and
my toes are freezing. I'm tired of wearing my heavy, clumsy Duck
boots and heavy leather coat, both indoors and outdoors.
Tomorrow, Ah-Feng said, we'd
go up the mountain for pictures.
The blizzard: snow began on
19 Jan and by the 24th the power lines were down and high voltage
power towers had buckled and collapsed. I saw pictures of wildly
gyrating snapped high voltage lines crackling and popping like
a horde of hysterical, frantic snakes. It's still snowing in
some places, raining in the rest of the south with sleet forecast
for Hangzhou. People were stranded on trains between stations.
There were shots of police and workers strapping straw to their
shoes to keep from slipping on the icy roads, many fell anyway.
More than half of the country was affected, 14 of the 26 provinces.
I just can't believe the environmentalist
who contacted me carrying on about coal being dirty with no concern
for the people's safety. He complained that my dig at environmentalists
was stupid (his word) and then proceeded to rant just as I "stupidly"
indicated environmentalists would. I'd said in my first article
that this storm was like the deep south and Florida being inundated
because, as with that section of the US, these Chinese provinces
never see snow.
But the blizzard here also
rose up into Henan Province, just south of Beijing, affecting
the RR hub of the country at Zhengzhou. In geographical area
the affected provinces would amount to more than half of the
continental US, China being slightly larger. As this would necessarily
include Texas, I can just imagine the conspiracy theorists busy
with a Chinese or Muslim plot. In response to my B-52 article,
I was contacted by a couple conspiracy theorists who maintained
that the missile mishap was a Chinese plot. They sent me pages
and pages of the most specious, loosely logical "proof."
To call this ad hominem writing would be polite. But at
least they had thought of people; the environmentalist saw no
people, only dirty coal and--believe it or not--a government
that should have prepared for such a disaster, as if such weather
could be predicted. I wonder what his slap in the face was for
New Orleans. . .maybe, like the Dalai Lama, it was all their
fault (bad karma). Talk about a feeling cleric!
I only hold my own country
up to criticism because it seems to think it's the absolute best
at everything but, though the US has a lead on inhumanity, the
entire world seems to be suffering the same disease: nationalism,
exclusionism. Yet we're all made of the same stuff, we're all
connected somehow--quantum physics sees this, so this is not
ideological twaddle. So, doesn't our inhumanity to others diminish
our own? By this standard, there is no humanitarian religion
in the world. I remember my friend's Catholic church trying to
raise funds to make the church and its services accessible to
the disabled--with no help from the diocese or Rome. The Church,
of course, has no money for such worldly endeavors as, I was
told, it's interested in the spiritual world. (I'm not Catholic.)
I was barely surviving on disability benefits but pledged 10
months' of my allotment. None of the richer parishioners donated
a penny--and this is known as a rich parish. Humanity is big
here, right? No exclusion here, right? All religions kill people
in the name of a humanitarian god and help only their own, excluding
the rest of the world. . .and nobody thinks anything of it. Business
as usual. What a sad commentary on the state of the world. Buddhism
with its perverted idea of karma (doubly perverted as the original
concept was a verb and therefore could be changed as you lived)
is just as anti-humanitarian. The greatest of the anti-lifers,
though, are the Rapturists and Armageddonists who don't believe
in change, simply hating life, which means every human. I thought
that life included more than humanity. God's plan, I suppose.
So, of course, the environmentalist could only see that coal
is so dirty it shouldn't be used to save people's lives. When
we do change the majority of all power over to something more
sustainable (how I hate that word! It's a catch-word), it will
do well not to totally eradicate the old, as illustrated by the
use of out-dated diesel trains in this Chinese emergency.
Nothing is ever a total this
way or no way situation, as exemplified by modern China. China's
materialistic society with its perverted Marxist values brought
in with the Communist Revolution is asking, via its 20-yr olds,
questions of the meaning of life. Could it be because material
betterment and the making of more money just don't cut the mustard?
Could it be there's more than one road to life to travel? The
world is not just an economic world, in any sense of the word.
If these economists are not bottom line monetarists (how much
is a life worth?), they are the kind who judge from final results:
efficiency. They do not pay attention to how these results were
gotten to, how many "irrational" mistakes are being
made or what havoc this final result has created in the world
in the name of efficiency. Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn
made a very funny satirical movie over efficiency experts. So
inhuman. They would be the ones, these economists, to use nuclear
weapons because nuclear weapons are economical, on all
levels. These people believe that humanity is the pinnacle of
evolution, the end evolution has been directing itself toward
from the beginning, as they see life as economical (efficient),
judging soley from final results. And we can't get any better.
All of human history and development being based on the economics
of efficiency is a curious 19th century belief reinvented but
still completely disregarding biological science, the biochemistry
of life where it all happens. But they are in good company, for
Richard Dawkins believes pretty much the same, if The Blind
Watchmaker is to be believed. Actually, we're only a step
along the way of life building (there's more to life than humanity)
and it's all chance and necessity. We don't even understand the
workings of a bacterium, how can we presume to understand the
workings of Life? Arrogance. Hubris. How is it we humans are
better than other life forms? Anyone who puts himself up as being
better, of more worth than others, is no better than an Agamemnon
who would sacrifice his sweet, virginal daughter in order to
wage war. Agamemnon was the last of a line of a house with a
curse on it. What is our curse? Who is our Clytemnestra? Even
more to the moment, who is our Orestes?
Out here in the country, though
the concerns are the same, they are phrased differently: survival
and finding reasons for it being so difficult, why the world
is so indifferent to them. Religion? Mythology? The search for
meaning is what the brain, the mind does.
The Chinese are terribly sentimental,
so this blizzard is still being played out on TV as if it were
a soap opera. Even movies made for TV are highly melodramatic.
Many, many multi-part series are filled with lots of altered
history and enough bathos to kill Anpanman, Super Mario and Godzilla.
I was burned today, scalded.
Boiling water was poured onto my foot. At Grandma's 80th year
celebration dinner. This, I was told, was a good omen for her:
she will live a long life. For me, it hurts like hell and I can't
wear sock or shoe. Perhaps my foot's cold, I don't know.
I also had my nice clean hair
smeared with birthday cake frostin |
