Fear and Pressing in Central Texas

I'm off to a business trip tomorrow and wanted to treat myself to dry cleaning and pre-ironed shirts every morning while away, so I took my load on Tuesday to my local dry cleaner. I dumped the pile of shirts and pants on the counter.

The attendant looked at the pile, then mournfully at me. "Sir," she said, with a Mexican accent, "I can take your clothing, but it won't be ready for at least four days."

The sign outside read "same day cleaning," and the usual turnaround was about 36 hours. I cocked an eyebrow.

"It's the pressers," she said. "They left Monday morning and never came back." She pointed to a "Help Wanted" sign displayed prominently in the window. "No pressers at all. We just got back Saturday's dry cleaning. Don't just take my word for it," she said as I thanked her for my candor and scooped up my clothes, "is everywhere. Everyone running."

Two other dry cleaners also had help wanted signs, and I stopped by the next day, hoping to avoid expensive hotel cleaners, with my load at a local family chain. They too had a 'Help Wanted' sign on the door.

"Any chance of getting this done by Friday?" I asked.

The clean-cut young man behind the counter nodded confidently. "Not a problem," he said. "After five today if you liked."

"So you've got no problems with pressers?"

"Nope," he replied. We're doing just fine."

I left lighter in arms and full of hope. Came back this afternoon to pick up the clothes.

"You still have the sign up," I said to the young Hispanic woman behind the counter. "How's the work in the back?"

She shrugged.

Then another young man, from the same owning family I think, wriggled past her in a vain attempt to catch an incoming phone call. He was sweating, and there were people crawling all around the hanging rails of bagged laundry in the next room.

"I'm glad you were able to keep your workers," I said to the man. "I had problems at other stores."

He gave me a tired look. "It's quiet in the back right now," he said. "There's no one working in the back. And the conveyor belt is broken, so we have to pull everything off by hand." He wiped sweat from his face. "But we're only down two pressers for tomorrow and," he pointed at the sign, "maybe some others will come back."

I assume by "others" he means 'low-paid, hiding from the INS' kind of others, and not the unemployed citizen or eager high schooler others.

"Don' worry," my cashier said as she handed me the bill. "My sister come back tomorrow."

"One down," the man said. "I just have to find one more."

The rumors around town are rife with planned raids at public schools, illegal immigrant detention camps south of Waco, and general fear.

I wonder if my pre-Holocaust parents felt similarly to the missing pressers. At least I'm pretty sure their end will be less certain than that of my parents.

A Joke...

Q: What do you get when you hire a right-wing commentator and a reporter to the White House?
A: A Common Porter. Someone to shoulder the burden of "Message of the Day" for a debased chief executive.

When Bullshit Calls Journalists Listen: Iranian Superweapons

Journalists are wimps.

Iran, the country that doesn't have the spare parts to keep its thirty year old aircraft in the air, has superweapons! Missiles that can't be tracked, can avoid radar, yet are MIRVed. Torpedoes that fly underwater at over 200MPH, also sonar-evading. Read about it in any major media outlet!

While Teheran has 'created' its own fighters, tanks, missiles and other weaponry, the reality is that they have adapted (read repainted for the most part) North Korean technology. Guns for oil... just like Kuwait, Saudia Arabia and now Iraq.

Just a few weeks ago the papers broke the story about how Saddam Hussein had kept the fiction of weapons of mass destruction alive not for the ears of warmongering Bush klansmen, but for his own people, to keep them in fear of what he'd done to the Kurds.

And now the mass media is doing it again, with silence, with acceptance, instead of with jeers. The country that can't support keep its own planes in the air, the country where millions of its citizens in mud brick houses, a country that hasn't had an original thought since the corrupt Shah was ousted, a country that looks to North Korea for even slight technological achievement, is assumed to have leapfrogged all the advanced technology research centers of the world?

Reporting this idiotic pap, in this way, plays right into Bush administration hands that would rather ratchet up the fear, for internal political purposes, than portray Iran as the pathetic hotbed for suicidal radicals that is really is.

So what if this is a real threat? Where' the news media analysis to support that? How do we assess such developments? From Karen Hughes' situation room? From Rumsfeld's office? From unnamed sources in the Bush administration? Me, I'd rather hear an analysis by a report who has spoken to real rocket scientists, or to non-factional experts in the field. Instead we hear translated half-quotes from Iranian television and their military press office releases.

Journalism isn't just about the scoop interview or the 'first to the presses.' It is about analysis of the data, the credibility of the source and the 'big picture.' Even if embedded reporting is sexier. Try harder, folks, try harder!

[A side note: In preparing this blog entry I researched over one hundred separate articles. The vast majority, as you can read through these links, all hark back to the same AP piece written by Ali Akbar Dareini, their Iranian reporter. They were retouched or lightly edited for the end news outlet. Perhaps there aren't anywhere near as many journalists as we think...]

Languaged stetted, ASAP?

There have been some pieces in the news lately about the crossover of IM and text message 'speak' into English. The cries of purists are amusing (kind of like the minority Canadian Quebequa wanting all signs in their province in French), especially since English is the original bastard language; just ask anyone who grew up with a rational language structure how hard it is to learn English!

We've architected English, verbed nouns, mashed words and done everything possible to give Americans more words than every not to know. When I recently had a co-worker talk about polyhierarchical taxonomies, she and I were the only ones in the room (with a group of college grads and educators) that could even parse the concept. Of course, anyone ever stopped for speeding knows what a radar gun is.

So now, IMHO, we LOL, sometimes even ROTF, in <3 with these book new words. To be added to lasers and scuba gear.

Hebrew, a language with a paltry 150,000 purely Semitic words compared to English, has been conjugating acronyms for millenia. Prime Minister Golda Meier used the phrase "Zabash'cha' to create the word 'it's your problem' from Ze Haba'aya Shel'cha.' When referring to a deceased person, Hebrew-speakers will say "Zahl" after their name, or "Zatsal," meaning 'blessed be their memory' or 'blessed be that holy person's memory' respectively.

English, with its incredible palette of words and phrases, changes slowly, word meanings generally outstripping new words. But as technology speeds memetic infection, each new communication facet will bring its own changes to work, culture and vocabulary.

Check out The-Ping for a short discussion on technology, linguistics and a universalist vocabulary.

H5N1 to 0

I think it's clear that the H5N1 "bird flu" is coming and is, in fact, here to stay. It's longevity and continuing spread remind me of the West Nile Virus more than a seasonal influenza.

While I am sure that the avian kingdom is in no danger, and that this is not the dinosaur die-off of the eon, I'd like to point something out: we're breeding for failure.

When I lived in Upstate New York, near Binghamton, the hilltop around our house was mostly fallow fields and woods. There was a flock of turkeys that had made its home on our property. I think 'herd' when I say 'flock,' because they were mostly ground-bound, and took some kind of odd joy in running in circles around our house just after dawn.

Okay, they're not the most brilliant birds, but compared to the ones I worked with when living on a kibbutz, these were Einsteins. The latter were SO dumb that when it was going to rain we had to bring them inside, because while they, like their wild counterparts, would face the sky and open their beaks to drink, they lacked the part of the gene involving closing said orifice before they drowned. If they didn't first fall over from the absurd weight in what humans call the turkey breast. These were the 'Pomela' Andersons (or Loni's) of the bird world.

When H5N1 hits, it's the wild birds that will bear the brunt of the illness. We humans will safely ensconce our stupid, bred-to-be-eaten meat puppets in hermetically sealed havens (where, after x number of weeks, they'll be taken out back and metaphorically shot). This will further reduce the spread and tenacity of the affected wild species, and further weaken our already shaky wild ecology.

Don't get me wrong: I'm a firm believer in eating whatever can't argue its way out of the cooking pot. But I am concerned that in this mechanist society, where everything gets turned into a time-and-motion industry to push for the bottom dollar, that we are selling the global gene pool short when breeding for eatability instead of viability.

I'll pay more for bigger bones, smaller "breasts" and healthier, more sturdy, animals. Ones that more relate to the ones that charged around my house at dawn than the ones, raised in cages, that are as close to sessile as animals can get.

Now I'm Confused...

Inflamatory cartoons have sent the Muslim world into a tizzy, if not frenzy. Non-Muslims insulting the Prophet Mohammed is seen as a horrible, terrible thing.

So what's with the suicide bombers killing fellow Muslims in mosques, on holy days? Where's the anger? Where's the lashing out against terror? Where are these imams with their folders filled with cartoons now? Will the Sunni declare a holy war against the Shi'a? (No, wait, that's already been tried.) And if not, then why not? Could it be that it's okay for Muslims to blow each other to gobbets, while entire continents be held accountable for the acts of deluded Danish cartoonists?

This is a clash of Western vs. radical Muslim culture. Not Muslim, as the vast and overwhelming majority of Muslims are law-abiding, honest, peaceful people. But in our culture, radical fascism is met with legal action. In countries harboring or pandering fanatics, radicals are used as fuel for their unholy fire against rational, human conduct among -- and within -- nations.

Cartoonish Behavior

Yah, it's offensive, blah, blah, blah. There's almost too much media reaction to the original offense -- except for the insane response by legions of enraged primitives. Thanks, Richard, for use of the cartoon.

Muslims are as wise, and dumb, as good and as bad as any other religion. Islamic rule has been tolerant, has fostered the sciences and has created art forms that are as breathtakingly beautiful now as when they were created many centuries ago. Now that I've gotten your attention (or at least confusion), lets deconstruct what's going on.

1. Muslim laws apply to Muslims. Otherwise Jews would get upset about non-Jews eating non-Kosher, Hindi would massacre anyone coming out an American McDonalds, and Southern Baptists would really Crusade to convert non-believers by forcing everyone to adopt their moral standards. Oops, that latter's already happening... Shi'ites have pictures of Mohammed, as do other Muslim sects. I guess it's not as much fun to torch one's own embassy.
   
2. Protesters, at most charitable, are being manipulated. Less charitably, they're taking any excuse to rage against The Machine. Danish imams went on a pilgrimage to other Arab nations, taking with them portfolios not only of the offending, but also of much more henious ones that were never published, ones with bestiality, just to name one ugly. This was a calculated terrorist attack, one that has resulted in several deaths by this writing, millions of dollars in damage to innocents' property, and uncounted millions in lost revenue by companies that probably despise the cartoonist even more than some Arab nations. The French, who have been far less sympathetic towards the inroads Islam has made, and the plight of the millions of young Muslims discriminated against for generations, seemed to have escaped this directed wrath for the most part.
   
3. Terrorist countries are using this incident for their secular gains. Get serious, Assad -- your idea of a good time during Ramadan is more along the lines of a trip to Paris than a delicious fast during the summer heat. Syria is a secular dictatorship, run by a clan in the same manner as the Saud family runs Saudi Arabia. Not like the Jordanian Hashemites, who have the good sense to run the country as if it were a democracy in terms of how they treat their subjects. So Syrian "protests" are no more spontaneous than their Syrian handlers allow. Because Hamma, as Thomas Friedman pointed out, still rules: cross an Assad and you get dead quickly and brutally.
4. Glass houses, stones. Oddly enough, one doesn't hear many protests about the almost continuous stream of vituperative calumny and calls for the genocidal murder of, for example, Jews. Oh, right, I forgot: we don't count. The cartoons (pictures are good for the vast majority of illiterate Arab Muslims) are the perfect medium to showcase the Jews and their sins.
   

Okay, picture time.

The Bomb Cartoon	Nope, not gonna put it up again. I agree with the Muslims on this one: ugly, nasty and negative. But there were others that I have a different view, so here is an exemplar below.
	Is this Mohammed? Not according to the caption. Is this an insult to Islam, saying that too many men have martyred themselves in the name of Islam? I'd see this being printed in any of the secular or non-fanatic Islamic countries, including Egypt. I agree: too many people have died as martyrs. Period.

Yes, there were more cartoons. Like compulsive haters, I could put up a whole pack of these, and just keep people wound up (but Spongebob should do for this rant).

The point of all this is freedom. Western freedom to express ones views, and the freedom of terrorists to use whatever is at hand to advance their instilling terror in others.

The more terrorists and their uneducated lackeys burn things, the more they rant, the more irrational they behave, the more they distance themselves from the community of nations.

Maybe Iran wants this. I think Iran needs this. Remember Salman Rushdie and the death sentence imposed against him? Iranian. Certainly Iran is benefiting from this. (Note to self: how bad are the protests in Saudi Arabia relative to terror-held countries?)

Western nations need to keep centered on the freedom of speech, the value of real democratic freedom, and a careful, watchful eye on a part of the world that really doesn't like any of us very much.

A Plea for Filibuster

Last week I found a bumper sticker for my car. "The last time we mixed politics and religion," it said, "people were burned at the stake."

Yes, I bought it. No, I don't think we're near there -- yet. But I am scared (a serious step up from worried) that President Bush and the religious right are at the cusp of controlling all three bodies of government. Judge Alito is a penultimate, if not the final plank in this ship of nightmares.

There are 11 states where women need to be rich, have friends, or be very brave in order to have even Roe-protected, first trimester abortions. As the father of a young teenager, I agonize now over whether I'd need (as opposed to want) to know about my daughter seeking an abortion. And what is at stake here is the freedom for me, as a parent, to decide that agony.

As a writer of fiction, of political commentary and on the Middle East, I look up articles and download information from the darker side of the Internet. I e-mail people that I don't know that I'd want to meet in real life. These communications feed my art. I suspect that they are also grist for the NSA mill, and the basis for assumptions they might then make about people I know. And their friends. And others.

Cartoon by Richard Bartholomew

It's because of my passion for freedom, for an unbiased judiciary, that FISA makes sense. And precisely for the same reason that Judge Alito's penchant for fawning at the office of the President makes be believe that he is not the right choice to be one of the nine among equals, to sit at the country's highest bench.

Let's not kid ourselves; a liberal candidate is not in the cards. And a wise and balanced (or is it 'fair and balanced'?) conservative is a better choice than a wild-eyed game changer.

I guess the core of my concern is that Samuel Alito is not his own man, does not represent the American citizen, and would not give the individual the rights they deserve especially in the face of the corporate Goliath.

Please help stop Judge Alito from assuming a throne from which he will help rule for the rest of his life, against the People's common and secular interests.

SSDY (Same Stuff, Different Year) -- Almost

First off, a happy and productive new year to all. This is year two of the blog, and, owing to feedback and posting interests, I've split my 'Pulse' blog into three:

• The Pulse, discussions regarding politics and personal life,
  
• HaDofeq, Middle Eastern-related political and personal posts, and
  
• The Ping, technical and technological posts

I'll be doing political, social and personal commentaries on this blog. So, without further delay, let's start the New Year off with a list of things recently realized:

• Getting out of Iraq is akin to stepping out of a crocodile's mouth -- after he's shut it. Elections only prove that ink works on fingers in that part of the world. But don't take my word for it...
  
• If they're not troops, and it's electronic, I guess Posse Comitatus doesn't count and we can chase after those sneaky reporters instead of worrying about the silly NSA cuties.
  
• So long as your spouse doesn't get paid to do nothing, a politician's spouse can be paid any amount so long as he or she is not absolutely immobile
  
• Indians really are givers, and the White Man hasn't lost his touch at taking
  
• We seem to be helping al Qaida along in its mission to extend it's terror reach
• We're investigating the former House Majority Leader DeLay (check this out!) and current Senate Majority Leader Frist for financial improprieties, and investigators will be working in 2006 in a target-rich environment as they try and tabulate just how much bribery and graft has gone on since our nation's checks and balances were thrown off kilter.
  
• The laws enacted by an outraged Congress after Watergate have been broken by a President who can't be bothered follow the laws (after all, we're trying to catch terrorist law-breakers!). Watch the US ignore the protests from the judicial bench!
  
• The Average American, with crushing credit card debt and no appreciable rise in their standard of living is no better off now than before Bush and his criminal cronies took power. We are sinking into debt at a rate that boggles the imagination; check out these graphs:

To the left is a graph of the US national debt (up-to-date).

The chart to the right is a drilldown of the national debt for the year 2000, the year the Bush administration stole into office.

I have a cure for any despondency this entry may have caused you: talk to your neighbors, co-workers and friends about the issues. Don't let this administration turn away yet another fiasco into more looting opportunities. Refute, respond and admonish people spreading falsehoods. And most of all, don't give up; the mid-term elections are coming, and many current "peoples' representatives" in Washington are going to need to file change-of-address forms before the year is out.

This is a year of action, and of change. Don't lose hope.

An important footnote: I'm honored to be able to provide an occasional cartoon commentary as drawn by the incomparable Richard Bartholomew, whose rendition of the NSA appears in this blog. He has a web site with additional cartoons, and a blog.