People v. the Government

Today, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Liu Xiaobo of China for his fervent, non-violent struggle for human rights in his country.  The prizewinner was unavailable to collect his prize in Oslo because the Chinese government has incarcerated him for a period of 11 years as punishment for a petition he circulated calling for a multi-party system in Chinese government.  The Chinese government also refused to permit his wife to collect the prize for him, sentencing her to a period of house arrest, ostensibly for the precise purpose of keeping the notoriety of the Prize from influencing its population to celebrate a political prisoner.

A speech written by Liu Xiaobo and originally delivered before the court who sentenced him to his confinement was read at the Nobel ceremony.  Liu, in the same spirit of compassion toward those who would oppress him that must inspire his long fight for rights, wrote, "Hatred can rot away at a person's intelligence and conscience.  Enemy mentality will poison the spirit of a nation, incite cruel mortal struggles, destroy a society's tolerance and humanity, and hinder a nation's progress toward freedom and democracy."

In a fit of rage over the selection of Liu Xiaobo for the prize, China prohibited media in the country from all reporting of the Nobel committee's decision.  It sought company in its peevish indignation and lobbied other nations to boycott the prize, casting the prize as an symbol exclusive to western culture that should not be imposed on other nations with other values.  In a desperate attempt to claim autonomy over the delivery of impressive prizes, it even invented a new one: the Confucius Peace Prize.  Apparently, the first man selected to receive it turned it down, claiming that he'd never heard of it and didn't want it.  Poor China.  It probably wishes it could run away to Mars right now, where all that earthbound interest in human rights would be nice and irrelevant.

As the U.S. government prepares to level charges against Julian Assange, the founder and face of Wikileaks, for the website's distribution of leaked U.S. State Department cables, I can't help but draw comparisons between the two nations' churlish response to news that doesn't go its way.  Just as China would prefer to silence a writer and activist seeking political reform, so too, it seems, would the U.S. prefer to prevent the public's further access to the materials received and shared by Assange.  Even more interesting, aside from seeking transparency among governments as a fundamental necessity for true democratic governance, Assange really hasn't called for anything else.  He may feel one way or another about U.S. power but ultimately, his views of the U.S., as an Australian citizen, are inconsequential.  He cannot vote nor does he contribute to the American coffers as a taxpayer.  And yet.

And yet, many American politicians have called him a traitor.  (An impossible indictment as he is not a citizen of the country.)  They have called him a spy, despite the fact that he was given the material by an American military service member who simply copied files onto a CD and there doesn't seem to be any allegation or evidence that he requested the material beforehand.  And now, the U.S. Department of Justice is preparing to indict Assange under an antiquated law whose origin is is just another eerie skeleton in the deep, dark closet of American history and, even worse, whose applicability to the Wikileaks case is tenuous at best.  The Espionage Act of 1917 was the brainchild of a vulnerable and sick president, Woodrow Wilson, who sought to circumvent the First Amendment freedom of speech by criminalizing the protests of ordinary citizens-- educators, artists, activists-- against U.S. involvement in a war against Germany.

Now, the same poorly drafted, sadly intentioned, musty onion-skin Act has been slammed on the table before the ravenous, always combative powers-that-be-and-don't-want-to-not-be in the U.S.   (Senators Lieberman and Feinstein both want to see it employed against Assange.)  And the dust rising from its pages is helpfully obscuring the true facts of the Act's purpose and relevance to the matter at hand.

Like China, the U.S. apparently would prefer to sequester and confine the voices that speak against it.  Interestingly, however, the voice of Assange is not the issue here.  It's the documents that the U.S. government itself drafted and failed to secure from the prying and/or discontented eyes of its own employee.  Between the two regimes, perhaps the greatest similarity is the wish to appear competent even when incompetence is revealed.  And that, really, is just shameful.  These governments don't appear to be "of the people" but rather "over the people."  Therefore, it becomes necessary to shutdown any person, citizen or otherwise, who reminds the people of their obligation to become involved in government if they want it to change.

Pity.  Really, it's a pity.

Messenger v. Message

Really.  Is anyone surprised that the U.S. government maintains poorly guarded secrets about its diplomatic relationships with the rest of the world?  The country's ruling class can't tell its ass from an urgent need to rescue the middle class from predatory lenders who continue to feast on the rickety bones of families struggling to stay in shelter.  Thus, Congress carries on with all efforts to cover its ass but leaves families swinging floppy sticks at their mortgage holders from their front porches.

Most recently, we've seen the Senate hijack all commonsense and future financial security by stonewalling tax cuts for the middle class if the richest 1% of the population doesn't get their cut too.  Obama capitulated with the Republican hijackers, allowing them to ensure that those making over $564,000 per year will get at least $70,000 in tax savings instead of the paltry $27,000 in savings they would have seen had their tax bracket been increased from 33-35% to 36-39%.  By contrast, a family earning the median income in the country, or $55,000 per year will owe about $2,700 less than they might if the tax cuts were permitted to expire.

The best horrible thing about all this?  Congress and the White House agreed that the across the board tax cuts will simply be added to the national debt.  This, see, is the only way the politicians can cover their asses for the 2012 elections some 700 days off.

Crash.

Similarly, the Senate sits comfortably on its luscious, well guarded ass at yet another impasse-- this one confounding most observers who give a damn (including Condoleeza, HW and maybe a handful of U.S. citizens who really should tell their neighbors to get more involved) as it delays the ratification of a new treaty to reduce the nuclear arms capabilities of both the U.S. and its Cold War dance partner by another name, Russia.  The Senate Republicans argue that the New START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) is insufficient because, basically, they just don't know if Russia is going to play by its terms.  The same Republicans don't seem to remember that the treaty is a product of the quintessential Republican leadership of Ronald Reagan.  When it comes down to it, the tragedy of the New START is the same as that keeping the American people hamstrung by debt: the Republicans don't want to play with the Democrat kids on the playground because the Democrats could, potentially, swat their fat asses later... in that looming election still two years off.

So, it's with a heavy, indulgent hand that I turn to Wikileaks and all the meat it's tossing into the digital media, be it juicy (Putin and his minion, the Russian President, need some superhero underroos), dry (Prince Charles isn't as respectable as the Queen), stringy and unpalatable (Afghani leaders ask the U.S. to cover up the hiring of young dancing boys for American contractors), or really, really, really, shockingly rancid (American troops have been killing people in Yemen and Pakistan but the government denies it).  The information exposed in these cables may or may not help the U.S. if it chooses to pursue its neo-imperialist strategies around the world as it has since 9/11... that is, by obscuring its desperate pursuit of its enemies through a more desperate cultivation of fair weather friends who support those enemies in order to take advantage of the U.S.'s greatest vulnerabilities: oil addiction and a behemoth debt.  It probably won't help, actually, and that's why the freaky neocons and their lesser educated Tea Party friends are calling for the death of the messenger, rather than engaging in a more deliberate consideration of the information revealed.  Deliberation could expose too much information to a population that seems to prefer darkness to light.  Isn't this a distinct condition of an oppressed people?

Well, Julian Assange and his impressive network of skillful collaborators has presented the U.S., and I mean its people, not its government, with a really appealing opportunity.  We the People could make a choice to engage in our democracy, to review the shape of our nation's footprint internationally and to deliberate on that impression based on our national values.  We have a chance to kick our government in its over-protected ass, not for god or christ or the second amendment, but because we share a decent moral commonground that may not want to be oppressed or to oppress.  Right?

We aren't a bad people; we just don't seem to know better sometimes.  Now, we do.  Or, we have the chance to.  Read the cables.  Pass them around.  Think a little.  And don't call out for the death of a man who puts a light in your hand.  Instead, use the light.

The Wait for the Dog.

Five months and five days after we left her, she comes home.

For five long months, I've waited to see my dog.  She stayed behind in California while we moved on to find a good home, for ourselves, and really, for her.  Every house we considered was reviewed for benefits to the dog.  Every neighborhood, for its proximity to a dog run.

We settled in on the beach, not just for the views and and the incessant drone of the waves, but for the beckoning sandbox beyond our deck.  This would be her playground.

Today, the little dog is released from her 30-day confinement in quarantine.  We've visited with her often, at least twice a week but usually three, during that time.  In the first days, she was over-excited and confused to see us.  As time passed, she became hopeful that every visit was our last and that she would finally don her collar to depart.  She would sit patiently in front of the door during our visits, blocking our exit lest we forget what we came for.  Unfortunately, we had to explain to her uncomprehending, eternally devoted eyes, her sentence wasn't complete.  In the last week, I've fancied her new non-chalance as a resignation to her situation.  We arrive, she jumps and licks and tells us through wiggles and groans that she's okay but not totally satisfied with her digs.  She looks at the door and we say, "not yet."  And then she lets it go.  She heads onto her private, concrete patio to show us a toy, drink water, mutter at a bird hopping too close to the chainlink fence separating her from the best possible, but still inaccessible, world for her.  When we leave, she gets in bed and casts her dark eyes on us.  I read her disappointed compassion for us in them and I assure her that we've tried to be unselfish in this adventure, that she'll be happy at the beach, that we'll be together for the rest of her life, that she'll never have to sleep alone in a lonely, sparsely furnished kennel suite looking out on the hills and fields she'd love to romp.

Ah, but I know what she might think.  "Haven't I done this before?"

And that's when I commit, come what may, to staying on these islands.  Because, come what may, our dog shouldn't have to travel anymore.

Two more hours until they set her free.

Giving thanks

Down here, Thanksgiving isn't a holiday.

Of course it's not, silly; there was no massive campaign to share small-pox infested blankets with the Maori when those law-abiding Brits arrived to monitor from afar their more derelict brethren on the giant landmass to the west.  They didn't have to undertake that kind of deceptive inhumanity, having lugged enough virulent mayhem in their cultural and immunological baggage down to the islands after James Cook made his quick circle of the islands in 1769 to cause a massive reduction in the native population without it.

I'd like to think that the explorers and colonizers who trudged onto land in New Zealand and Australia may have finally come to grips with the karmic tragedy guaranteed by offering comfort in a snake's nest.  But, I'd be deceiving myself.  The colonizers offered a viral schmorgasbord to the inhabitants of these lands just as effectively as they did in the colonies that would become the U.S.  And the diseases were not always those of the body, but also those of the soul.  Or something like that.  Greed, prostitution, corruption probably took as great a toll as the physical exposure to previously unknown illnesses.

Okay, okay, I know.  Thanksgiving celebrates an earlier time; it's a memorial for the heady first days of colonization, when death loomed around the poorly constructed camps like an awkward colleague who isn't sure with which group he'll find his new best friend forever.  He likes the folks who've been around but these new folks are so weak and ill-prepared for the cold.  Surely, they'll hang with him.  Thank goodness for the Native Americans who let the white folks know that Death is kind of a giant nerd and the games he plays are really pretty lame.  Wasn't it nice of them to invite them to the cool kids' table all festively adorned by cornucopias just to make Death feel a little more insecure?  At least until someone tried to have a baby or something.  Poor Death, always left scuffing his heels when people get together in a friendly way.  Then again, ultimately, he always gets his way, doesn't he?

All this to wonder, isn't it amazing that I can hop from one violently claimed land to another, without suffering the violence or indeed even having to account for my forebears crap attitudes?  I'm thankful that time's passage helps heal deep sores, but more than that, I'm grateful for the occasional open smiles and frequent friendly questions about the path I took to join this tiny population on the bottom of the world.  I'm thankful that I'm not asked to leave quickly or ostracized to the point of anxiety to find my own escape route.  Most of all, I'm really, really happy that no one is offering a welcome basket filled with infested blankets.  That's really the best part of being able to live overseas.


Anyhoo, all this to say, isn't it amazing that I can continue to

 

It's Time.

The bridge.  So much easier to cross than time.

Monday mornings are the hardest but not for all the reasons they should be.  I don't have to rush into the office or wonder about the stacks of work I left for myself on Friday.  Mondays aren't hard because I suddenly have to wake up early or because I haven't picked up the dry cleaning.  They used to be the day of labor that popped out the screeching, paper-suckling baby who would grow, mature and die by week's end.  Now, Mondays are no more emblematic of the beginning of some transient, professional journey than my well-worn sheepskin boots are of my readiness to run a marathon.

These days, Monday kicks me in the pants for reasons wholly unrelated to work or stress or voicemail messages.  More than anything else, Monday is more like my caustic grandma who insisted on reminding me of the vast separation between me and the oodles of cousins who beat me to her dilapidated yard by about 8 years.  "You'll never know what it was like to play with them, granddaughter," she said though I usually thought she was gargling.  "They had each other.  And you have no one to play with."  She would put some prunes in a plastic bowl and push them into my chest until the plastic folded over on itself.  "Now, get out there so I can watch my stories."

Nowadays, Monday is nothing more than a reminder that over here, camping so close to the international dateline, I am so far ahead of the rest of the world that I can't really play with it.  While facebook messages and emails remind me that I should be picnicking in a sunny corner of the park, or sipping a beer while playing scrabble on someone's ipad, or wandering mindlessly over sidewalks I've walked a million times before but never on this very Sunday which makes everything different and new, my calendar and solitude require that I suck up the fun and save it for later in the week.  Shit, I can't even stream Monday morning radio to jumpstart the calm stoicism demanded by the five days between the weekend.  The best I can ask from Sunday radio streaming into a Monday morning is Guy Noir and he doesn't tell me how the market is doing in clear terms.  Oh, wait, the market isn't even open.

On the other side of the river, we saw something.

This Monday, I vowed to do my best to integrate with the hubbub of the actual Monday transpiring beyond my ocean view.  I got up and surged into the week, hoping I wouldn't be spotted immediately as an intruder.  Strangely, I found no traffic out there, no groaners and not a whiff of the slightly despondent, Monday frenzy that I remember from my working days.

I came home and remembered my grandma.  I don't think of her often, but today, on this very isolated and distant Monday, I'm sending a shout through the ether to her man-hungry, perfectly coiffed soul.  Nice prep, Grandma.  I am keenly aware of my separation from the other kids.

Highest and Best Use

Oh, woe is this friggin' world.  Not me, just the world.  Not even me in this world.  If it was me in this world that we were talking about, I would write, "Oh, hmm is me."  These days, I'm just wondering how it all keeps spinning.  And since the sun continues to rise over my sleeping eyes every morning around 6, I shouldn't really wonder about the spinning part as much as the other, less important stuff, like financial stability and quality of life.

I read two articles out of the New York Times today and then closed the browser, deciding that none of the other news fit to print was worthy of a read after the messages conveyed in those two timely gems.

I read this one first: Kindness of a Stranger Still Resonates.  In the midst of the Great Depression, an era so precisely named that no one wants to try it on again despite its possible fit, a Jewish refugee from Romania who'd made a small personal fortune in clothing decided to share a bit of it to those less fortunate.  He placed an ad in the local paper offering cash help in terrible times in exchange for brief letters describing the need.  People wrote about their inability to provide food or clothing for their families.  He made about 150 anonymous gifts in response to the letters he received, most for as little as $5.  He promised that no one would ever know about his generosity, confirming that he would hold the names of everyone who wrote to him in confidence until "the very end."

The other article was At Legal Fringe, Empty Houses Go To the Needy.  It highlights the forward thinking move of a born-again Christian dude in Florida who found an old law permitting adverse possession of unclaimed real property and decided to pursue it to the benefit of homeless families in North Lauderdale.  He's now being charged with fraud for accepting rent on properties he doesn't own and is facing up to 15 years in prison.  The rent he charged was well below market rate and often involved maintenance to the abandoned and deteriorating houses in lieu of dollars.  He thought it made sense to get folks into the properties and made sure to send letters to each of the banks and owners of record of the 20 properties he claimed, notifying them of his intentions.  He only got one response.  The authorities wish to remind us that his acts, while possibly honorable, also constitute trespassing.  The Floridian Robin Hood makes no claim to perfect charity.  He simply wanted to find an honest way to make a living while he helped some people out.  He even told his tenants that he didn't own the properties and contacted them when he was arrested to advise that they stop paying any rent to him.

Somewhere, in the gulf of time separating these two stories, the narrow, ruddy path of self-sufficiency and personal honor has been lost to the overgrowth of large, powerful, moneyed interests.  Adverse possession is one of the few, fine property law concepts I remember well from law school (with my sincere apologies to Professor J. Doobie aka Dobey aka Dobris).  It's a process that allows ownership of unused, unattended property to be placed into the hands of someone who has committed to tending the land in the manner of an owner, in the absence of the true owner.  Call it squatters' rights.

The concept made perfect sense to me in law school (although not in the precise terms that would have allowed me to answer Dobey's persistent queries on the subject).   If the true owner ain't around to claim the place, and someone moves on in to make a house a home, then then after a period of years, the new guy should win the prize-- ownership!  To accumulate points toward the prize over the years, the new guy would have been paying taxes, utilities, mowing the lawn, placing a hand-carved, rustic wooden mailbox he bought at the fair with his name engraved on the side.  Everyone knew he was there, enjoyed his monthly potlucks and good neighbor plates of Christmas cookies.   The new guy put the house to its highest and best use, which ultimately, I think, is the point of property law.  Thus, he can keep it.

These days, we get someone looking to put some houses to use, and to put some people who need houses into a decent situation, and he's looking at prison time.  The worst part is that the folks who moved into the houses understood the situation but found it highly preferable to waiting on reluctant social service workers or stagnant public housing wait lists for their shelter.  Instead, they moved in, cleaned up and made friends with their new neighbors.

So, if the banks and the true owners didn't respond to our heroic Christian dude's letters, and the neighbors are happy to see the nuisance house on the block spruced up, who's complaining about the dude's plan of action?  It seems to me that the authorities could have adopted the same promise of the Romanian refugee who saw how he could offer a helping hand: no one needs to know until the very end.

Blah Blah Bloviation.

Check out Exodus 7:20, yo.

Though I tried, I couldn't close my ears to the U.S. election results.  The pundits and media have called it a "red tide" which, surprisingly but absurdly, is apt.  A red tide has swept the nation.  Does no one know that a red tide was one of the first plagues of Egypt and described in Exodus as "waters... turned to blood"?  Prepare your antibiotics.  Unless, of course, you don't have health insurance.  In that case, maybe get a snorkel and wash frequently?

This morning, Hillary Clinton arrived in Wellington.  Her large plane sits on the runway across the bay from our house, dwarfing the 737s clustered around the nearby terminal.  I can see the American flag on its tall tail from where I sit.  (No, I can't see Russia.)  I read that the new Green Party mayor of Wellington rode her bike (in her trusty high visibility vest) to the airport at 5 this morning to meet her.  How sweet and impressive given the pics I've seen of Mayor Wade-Brown in her fitted cream dress greeting Hillary (in a pressed brown pantsuit, of course).  I applaud Hillary for scheduling a quick stay in friendly New Zealand in the days following the Republican trouncing at home.  Her New Zealand colleagues are sure to pose loads of leading questions about the apparent under-education of the teabaggers to which Hillary can respond with exasperated affirmations.  "No shit," I hope she replies.  And, "what the fuck, can I get a visa?"

These days, I'm procrastinating with zeal.  Instead of working through a climactic couple of chapters that have been exhaustively outlined and considered, I'm writing quaint little essays about my protagonist's disinterest in her mother's new dog and long paragraphs about the squeak of wheelchair wheels on linoleum.  I've decided to accept these diversionary tactics as antidotes to doubt, fear, confusion and maybe a little reluctance to see my plot climb over the ramp toward a resolution.

Who cares, though, right?  With a red tide approaching, it's probably best to scramble toward higher ground.  Oh wait, we already did that.  Thank goodness.

There's good news, I suppose.  Two neo-Nazis lost their bid for random municipal seats in Southern California.  Also, masturbators all over Delaware, secure in their self-love, voted to keep Christine O'Donnell out of the Senate.  Phew.

Congratulations, America, for eschewing facts once again in favor of fear.  As always, the limited education of my country people astounds.  Go team.