sic semper tyrannis

The Military Commissions Act of 2006 (MCA) will be remembered in the future as our generation's version of the Alien and Sedition Acts. All sorts of strawman arguments have been utilized as justification for this unconstitutional legislation. It is pretty clear by the uniform vote of Republicans for this bill that the word 'libertarian' is taken to be more of an adjective than a noun and that adjective means only 'doesn't like paying taxes' rather a supporter of civil rights for all people. Instead there is a plethora of hair-splitting and hypothetical emergencies to excuse making the worst of techniques into regular interrogation policy. They want the line to be about how only they are tough enough to protect American by literally breaking terrorist's balls, but the fact that the label 'enemy combatant' seems to be under the purview of one man and one man alone doesn't trouble them at all. We'll see how they all feel when President Hillary is in office.

Alot of people argue that they do horrible things to American soldiers, thus we should not feel guilty doing horrible things to them, but since do we use them for a basis of comparison? If they do it, its ok for us to do it is not a moral standing any nation shold be prous of, especially if you are also claiming that this is a generational struggle. We kept our standards, of habeas corpus, of prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment, during our battles with Nazism and Communism, but radical Islamism seems to drive conservatives into outdoing each other in just how many freedoms they can throw on the pyre. We can all think of emergency ticking timebomb scenarios, but in those exceptional cases it is unlikely you would get a conviction and the President could always pardon them as a justifiable assault. But it is fairly indefensible to use torture as a Standard Operating Procedure, as a routine method of acquiring information.

There are alot of people out there who will whine about how the Democrats are just as bad, how we should have a third party of hellfire progressives, but they are solely in need of a history lesson. Yes, it is reprehensible that a few of them capitulated on this Rovian power play, but this absolves the GOP, the party of torture, as the majority party enacting this odious authoritarianism (even as they railed against 'Islamic' fascism) In our first-past-the-post system, there are no prizes for second place. You can't indicate your next best choice, like in a few other countries which, not so coincidentally, have multiple parties. Maybe that should be changed, but until then, you are just not going to have a viable third party here in America. Not going to happen, as people have been trying since the 1830's and each attempt has ultimately failed. Even if this dream party were to arise independent of the Dems, they would end up being de facto Democrats. It's clear that they have flaws, but the nation is drowning in this political morass and we should take the opportunity to grab a lifevest, rather then submerge waiting for a new boat to be constructed. There is no McCain Messiah waiting in the wings to be our political savior. Frankly, it is all too analogous to the catch-22 that is the Iraq War: we can allow more uncontrolled Republican rule, vote the only possible opposition party into government, move to Canada, or start another civil war. I'll take door no. 2, Monty.

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for the love of a good book

Via Ezra Klein, I finally see a 'meme' that I can go along with, regarding literary loves and hates. This is, by the way, in honor of Banned Books Week. I found this very challenging to fill out because there are so many things I could be filling in. Note that meme is i and I know I am missing from my memory. Meme is in scare quotes because althoughsuch questionnaries spread memetically but are not, in and of themselves, memes. Of course this illustrates the difference between connotation and denotation, but I digress from semantics to bring you my choices:

Name...
1) One book that changed your life?
A hard one to start off with, but I would have to say the Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins which turned me away from superstition and towards scientific explanations for natural phenomena. Dawkins shows that Darwin makes it okay to be an atheist and a scientist, a fact which has not escaped notice from the religious right.
2) One book that you have read more than once.
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, whose poignancy and romantic humanism is absorbing and intricate.
3) One book that you would want on a desert island?
I have to agree with Ezra that no one ever answers this question in a literal way, as in what they would really need to survive, in which case I would answer the SAS Survival Handbook. But if I were to answer the underlying subtextual question of what would i read if i had all the time in the world to read it and only that, then the answer would be a toss-up between the Collected Works of Shakespeare or the World Anthology of Male Pornography.
4) One book that made you cry.
Hmmm...there actually was a book which made me cry, Like a Rock and a Hard Place, even though now it is believed to be not realy true.
5) One book that made you laugh.
Parts of Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake.
6) One book you wish had been written.
An American Utopia in 10 Easy Steps by someone far smarter than me, if it is an existing book I wish I had written, I'd have to say the Handmaid's Tale .
7) One book you wish had never been written.
Ugh, the entire Left Behind series.
8) One book you are reading currently?
Diary by Chuck Palahniuk, which I just got from my local public library yesterday.
9) One book you've been meaning to read?
Palestine by Joe Sacco, which I also got from the most excellent Millis Public Library yesterday.
10) What book do you routinely recommend but haven't actually read?
The One Percent Doctrine by Ron Suskind, which I couldn't find an English edition of in the Netherlands, but whose excerpts are mind-blowing exposures of Bush Administration evil.

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where no one has gone before

well its the one week anniversary, you could say, of my return to the USA. A mixed feeling to be sure: I miss the much less complicated and expensive lifestyle I had cultivated in the Netherlands, but it fills me with a curious joy to see things anew, like the skyline of Boston rising up with a wide expanse of undulating riparian Cambridge to one side and the postcard-perfect array of Citgo sign, John Hancock and Prudential buildings providing contrast on the other side. Or the taste of a fresh-baked slice of pizza from Antonio's in Amherst, after you have clawed your way through the after-bar crowd. Or walking across the Charles at night, counting Smoots. Or sitting in the park by my house, watching the same river flow towards that bridge. Or...well you get the picture. If 'familiarity breeds contempt' then forgetting about the sights and sounds of familiar places can bring an ineffable romanticism upon their revival.

But apart from the breathtaking nostalgia, its been a long slow week trying to assemble the slot A into tab B of a new life here. Gainful employment in my desired field seems curiously out of my reach, with not a single response to my mailed inquiries. And lacking a motor vehicle has led me to become a hermit, lamenting my lack of a decent bicycle. As such, you'd think there would be a plethora of blogable topics to inspire my continued scrivening. Alas, my thoughts have remained so disoriented as of late that I have lack all but the most cursory remarks on the issues of the day.

One another anniversary, however, has struck me as highly worthy of note: the 40th anniversary of Star Trek. It was on September 8th, 1966 that the National Broadcasting Company first broadcast the adventures of Captain Kirk and co. Those first few years were rough ones for the franchise, which struggled with low ratings and some hit-or-miss plotlines. But when it was good, it was better than anything else on television at the time. Despite a limited budget, the show's special effects were superior to contemporary TV shows, its stories were often written by notable science fiction authors, and many of its production values – particularly costuming – were of high caliber.

For the longest time, I resisted Star Trek, deriding the franchise as campy and unscientifically sound, all the while hypocritically professing my undying affection for Star Wars, as if the two were mutually exclusive. Then came the prequel trilogy, when several Lucasian creative missteps led me to re-examine my earlier attitude. As Marshall McLuhan said: "I may be wrong, but I am never in doubt." Star Trek has ultimately changed the world with more substance than Star Wars ever will.

Some influences are easy to see, particularly the technical and visual aesthetic which has lead to clamshell cellphones and personal digital assistants from communicators and tricorders. Although most of the technology shown on-screen has yet to materialize, the terminology alone has enriched how we discuss technological breakthroughs, from 'beaming' something to a distant location to the Prime Directive as the name for a central ethical tenet to the space shuttle also bearing the name Enterprise. Fictional devices in the show have also been claimed as inspirations for actual devices like mobile phones (communicator), medical technology (hypospray and diagnostic imaging), and even elements of naval architecture (bridge).

Also much remarked upon was the multicultural before that was even a word composition of the cast with some of the first positive depictions of African-American and Asian people in positions of leadership and note, beyond just regulars Uhura and Sulu, but also in such roles as Federation scientist Richard Daystrom and, of course, as many an alien villain. Even though it was due to a telekinetic contrivance, Kirk and Uhura shared the first interracial kiss on television.

The Federation has an economy of abundance without money, enabled by advanced replicator technology. Labor, purchase, and sale are not necessary, as there is no scarcity to limit the satisfaction of one's material needs and wants. Greed and jealousy are thus greatly reduced. Characters often explain that the purpose of the people of the Federation is personal and universal beneficence. However, certain resources are still limited, such as those necessary to power warp and replicator technology, and interplanetary commerce is not uncommon.

Although people may deride 'Trekkies' as losers, their persistance in believing in a better more humanistic non-dystopic future is one of the greatest secular faiths in the world today, an ironic fact parodied by the Futurama episode in which Trekkism becomes an actual religion. The ability for people to become involved in creating and maintaining the mythos of Trek would lay the groundwork for today's fan-driven era of science fiction to the point where Klingon is the most widely spoken constructed language in the world. This fan-nutured canon of Trek was the progenitor of the wiki, a collaborative attempt at continuity of knowledge that almost single-handedly gave birth to 'slash fiction'(as in Kirk/Spock). Although not a money-maker in its original run, over the years Paramount has earned over $2.3 billion in TV revenues, $1 billion in film box office and over $4 billion in merchandise sales, according to a 1999 Salon article. This is from 10 different movies and 5 TV series (not counting a mid-70's animated version).

Each incarnation offered a different shading, a different layer of nuance to the overall mythos. The Next Generation brought us a very eighties revision, with uber-diplomat Captain Picard and calm and compassionate android Data. Unlike TOS – which often reflected a bold, interventionist American philosophy – TNG had a less aggressive and more socially liberal message. Deep Space Nine was the most weighty version of the Trek universe, unafraid to talk about topics like racism and religion by going beyond latex allegories and prosthetic conceits. DS9 stands apart from other Trek series for its lengthy serialized storytelling and conflict within the crew – things that Gene Roddenberry had forbidden in earlier Trek series. Only on DS9 would you find Federation operatives driven to commit genocide or have one series regular kill another in cold blood without comment (cf. Worf and Garak's murder of Weyouns 7 and 8, respectively) Voyager created many strong female characters, including the pragmatic Janeway and the former drone Seven of Nine, developing the metaphor of a starship crew as a family as they picked up new characters and showed that the Borg ain't so tough.

Finally, Enterprise went back to basics, providing a bridge between our post 9/11 world and that of James T. Kirk. But with technological change and tacit libertarianism more widely accepted as positive and the issues of both the Cold War and manned space exploration quaint, much of the original Trek message is superfluous. But the most important facet of Star Trek's appeal, that we can have high technology and remain human, that our problems can be solved without losing our soul, that still remains.

Here are, in no particular order, my ten favorite moments in Star Trek history:

"Living Witness" (VOY) The Doctor is reactivated 700 years after a controversial incident involving the Vaskan and Kyrian peoples. The actions of Voyager have become so misinterpreted that he and his former shipmates are branded war criminals. This proved to be rich in complexity with excellent performances by the crew playing their darker 'mirror' selves with relish. The final twist, that the Doctor's efforts at setting the record straight are another recreation, is all too perfect an end.

"City on the Edge of Forever" (TOS) Although time travel stories had been done to death by the time Enterprise made their central arc a Temporal Cold War, this Harlan Ellison written masterpiece is poignant and entertaining, with Joan Collins death making a devastating climax.

"Tapestry"(TNG) When a phaser blast apparently kills Picard he runs into Q in the afterlife, who gives him the chance to change history. However, it has unanticipated ramifications. This is probably Q's best exchange with Picard, the most mature and philosophical with a glimpse at a young brash Picard unknown to us and a meditation on how our mistakes are just as important in shaping us as our successes.

"Brothers" (TNG) This episode reunites Data with his father-creator Dr. Soong and evil twin Lore. It makes the list for its thrilling opening sequence in which Data comandeers the Enterprise, imitates Picard's voice perfectly and confounds the rest of the crew with a masterful use of forcefields.

"In the Pale Moonlight" (DS9) This show marked Sisko as distinctly different from other Federation do-gooders: amidst an agonizing low point in Starfleet's fortunes with its core worlds facing subjagation at the hands of the Dominion, he colludes with Garak to draw the neutral Romulans into the war using deception and assassination. When he erased his log at the end, it is a bit of a shock to the concience.

"Mirror, Mirror" (TOS)The infamous episode which first developed the idea of the parallel universe in which life is horrible: the Federation is an Empire; the crew tortures each other with 'agony booths', and Spock has a beard! This mirror universe would be developed further in a number of DS9 episodes which include a deliciously bisexual Kira Nerys and the one really good Enterprise episode.

"Author, Author" (VOY) The holographic Doctor and his nascent humanity provided Voyager with some of its most entertaining moments. This ostensibly light-hearted entry involving the Doctor's authorship of a controversial roman a clef holonovel has a fantastic point about authorship, attribution and self-determination. The final scene between two former EMHs toiling in a mine provides the perfect ending commentary to his overall character arc.

"Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" (TOS) Two aliens arrive on the Enterprise: a dissident seeking asylum and an operative charged with arresting him. Both have a face which is half black and half white. Their only difference is which half is black and which half is white. Few episodes have used a conceit to illustrate the problem of racism so succinctly, as both beam down to their ruined homeworld, where they are the last survivors of their mutual peoples.

"The Inner Light" (TNG) Picard is hit by a transmission from an alien probe which causes him to live out a full thirty years in thirty minutes. It is a very moving experience for someone we have come to know as dutiful and solitary. He had a wife, two children, and a home, everything he could not have as a Starship captain. He ends up an old man, a grandfather, perhaps dying along with the planet that may soon follow him due to its sun being on the verge of a tragic supernova. The wistful tune he plays on a metal flute is happy yet haunting. Thanks to the probe it is Picard who possesses the information no other living person has, information about the existence of an entire culture vanished from time.

"Darmok" (TNG) I've always had problems with the concept of the Universal Translator. Like the transporter, it's existence is there to smooth over storytelling and not let technical issues get in the way of a good time. That said, you'd think we's have more problems with the first time meeting a new race. This is exactly the issue explored in this episode where a race who speaks entirely in metaphor is encountered by our intrepid captain. This is Trek at its finest with an imaginative aliens, thoughtful philosophic dialogue and a compelling performance by the alien captain.

So happy birthday Star Trek...may you continue to live long and prosper.

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Respecting Liberty

By far the most interesting ballot initiative this season is from the State of Nevada. It would permit the use, sale and possession of up to one ounce of marijuana. The taxes alone would be a boon to the state's economy. Nevada has no personal income tax or corporate income tax and many California-based corporations incorporate themselves in Nevada to take adavantage of this. This is a good example of federalism in action. The most amusing part is the name of the group opposing the measure, the Committee to Keep Nevada Respectable. Imagine its filled with unironic casino owners and brothel madams. Because there is nothing more respectable than legalized gambling and prostitution. I don't gamble or go after hookers, but this might just give me a reason to visit the Silver State. It is good to see that this has at least a chance of passing with a fairly even division in in public opinion. Perhaps freedom isn't a lost cause in America after all.

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please hold for your connection

After an eight-hour flight the other day (which was delayed an hour and a half because the flight crew decided to begin fueling the plane after everyone had boarded), I arrived at Dulles Airport in DC only to be confronted with a chaotic scramble to be subjected to the scrutiny of a belligerent Customs officer, then an hour wait in another line after retrieving my luggage only to have it rechecked onto my connecting flight...which I missed as I had to wait in another hour-long line to have my shoes x-rayed. The airline was gracious enough to give my another flight home, which itself was postponed four hours.

While I have no problem understanding the need for security, this whole experience has left me with the distinct impression that measures taken since 9/11 on this front are this absurd dance, as if the layer after layer of bureaucracy were only there to give the illusion of safety. It's like the constant announcements that "We are at threat level Orange! Report any suspicious actions to the nearest TSA official!" Does anyone really expect to see us go to Blue (i.e., Low chance of terrorist attack) in our lifetimes? Even Green (next up from Blue) seems unlikely as we are still in an election year. The whole 'rainbow of death' system is a perfect example of what Bruce Schneier calls 'security theater'. Security theater refers to security measures which have little real influence on safety whilst being publicly visible and designed to show that action is taking place. This giant conflagration of smoke and mirrors not only makes me more reticient to travel, but also reminds me more forcefully about the rhetorical bait-and-switch seen at every point in the debate over security issues.

Chief in my mind on this topic is the recent and unrepentant attempts by the Bush Administration to enshrine torture as SOP for American interrogators. With a war defined so as to never end, this permanent state of emergency encourages further erosion of the balance of powers. Republicans would do well to remember that their majority is in no way guaranteed permenance. Instead their religious backers would even endorse torture to cling to power, begging the question: Who Would Jesus Waterboard?

The most recent outrage to hit the papers was the sad tale of Maher Arar, who was snatched by US authorities at JFK and sent to Syria, a country we are supposedly not talking to, and brutally tortured...oops, subjected to 'alternative interrogation methods' featuring a metal cable. No one disputes this although the Attorney General claimed that 'we were not responsible'...when a DOJ flack had to walk back his boss' statements he claimed that the 'we' referred to the fact that Homeland Insecurity handles deportations now, and not the Department of Injustice. Just like the 'we' in 'we do not torture' I suppose.

The entire thing is being positioned as an abstract semantic debate over 'vague' definitions of terms and phrases used. I can understand the desire for revenge. I can even understand the hatred and the fear. But we shouldn't take our revenge on those who are not guilty, and we shouldn't remove their ability to prove their innocence.

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Turning out the lights

This is my penultimate day in the Netherlands. In less than twenty-four hours, I will be back in Boston after a two-year absence. Naturally, I am full of mixed emotions at the prospect of being back in the United States. It seems news keeps going from bad to worse since I've been away. Still I doubt it will be so very different in Boston, of all places. We'll see. It will be very different from the Netherlands in so many seemingly minor ways.

One thing I wish I could have spent more time studying in-depth is the Dutch language. It struck me the other day that every language has a lexical class of untranslatable words, words which often encapsulate a complex set of cultural concepts. One such word in Dutch is gezelligheid, which means roughly 'comforts of home and hearth'. Today I found another uniquely cultural word: tlawmngaihna. This word comes from Mizo, who inhabit an isolated enclave on the edge of India, bordering on Burma. Tlawmngaihna is the code of ethics which forms a implicit but morally compelling force which expresses itself in kindness and generosity towards others. In this case, a single word can reflect what makes people within the culture, how they define themselves.

I can't think of a single word to capture all of the people of the USA. We are more like a union of several different countries held together by our own sense of exceptionalism. I'm proud to be from the US, but I have come to realize that we are not so far beyond other nations. Often I hear people who have never been outside the country tell me that we live in the 'greatest country on earth'. I always wondered, well how do they know? This whole experience has taught me that such statements should never be taken at face value.

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looking backward, looking forward

So in one week I will be moving back to the United States for an indeterminate amount of time. Why indeterminate? I have come to really like living in the Netherlands for a variety of reasons and it is entirely possible I can get a PhD position here and even find a place to stay. Even if I can't get a PhD position I have been thinking about coming back to live here anyway, getting a job. But I'm very skeptical about finding a job here. So I'm a bit uncertain of this working out. On the other hand, I don't know how happy I will be or what to do for a job while I am home. in any case, I will never forget what a unique and wonderful place this is and how lucky I was to have the opportunity to be here when I was.

I came here in the fall of 2004, not knowing much about the local culture. A few weeks after I arrived, a horrible crime was committed which put some of the faultlines in Dutch society into sharp relief. A controversial filmmaker was assassinated in the streets of Amsterdam. Bystanders alerted police, who ran down the killer on foot. His name was Mohammed Bouyeri, but in accordance with Dutch anonymity regulations, he became known in the news media as Mohammed B. He killed the director, Theo van Gogh, because of a 10-minute film he made with the Somalian-born politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali about the repression of women within Islamic societies, entitled Submission.

The title itself, "Submission", is the translation of the word "Islam" in English. In the film, the women's naked bodies are veiled with semi-transparent shrouds as they kneel in prayer, telling their stories as if they are speaking to Allah. Qur'anic verses unfavourable to women are painted on their bodies in Arabic. After the movie was released in 2004, both van Gogh and Hirsi Ali received death threats. Van Gogh did not take these very seriously and refused any protection - reportedly telling Hirsi Ali: "Who would want to kill the village idiot?"

He also caused widespread resentment in the Muslim community by consistently referring to them as geitenneukers (goat-fuckers). Although it is not clear whether Van Gogh actually coined the term geitenneukers, he certainly popularized it.

For a while Bouyeri worked as a volunteer at Eigenwijks, a neighborhood organization in the Slotervaart suburb of Amsterdam. He started to radicalize shortly after his mother died and his father re-married in the fall of 2003. He started to live according to strict Islamic rules. As a result he could perform fewer and fewer tasks at Eigenwijks. For example, he refused to serve alcohol and did not want to be present at activities attended by both women and men. Finally, he put an end to his activities at Eigenwijks altogether. He grew a beard and began to wear a djellaba. He frequently visited the El Tawheed mosque where he met other radical Muslims, among whom were terrorism suspect Samir Azzouz. With them he is said to have formed the Hofstad Network, a Dutch terrorist cell.

Mohammed Bouyeri assassinated van Gogh in the early morning of Tuesday November 2, 2004, in Amsterdam in front of the Amsterdam East borough office (stadsdeelkantoor) on the corner of the Linnaeusstraat and Tweede Oosterparkstraat streets. He shot him with eight bullets from a HS2000 (a handgun produced in 2000 in Croatia), and Van Gogh died on the spot. Bouyeri then slit van Gogh's throat and then stabbed him in the chest. Two knives were left implanted in his torso, one pinning a five-page note to his body. He claims to have murdered van Gogh to fulfill his duty as a Muslim. A wave of arson attacks against mosques followed.

On July 26, 2005, Bouyeri received a life sentence without parole. Life imprisonment is the severest punishment in the Netherlands and is always without parole. Bouyeri is only the 28th person to receive this punishment since 1945, excluding war criminals.

Although Mohammad Bouyeri may be a name well known in America among those who noticed Van Gogh's death, there is another second-generation Moroccan who has become more well known in the Netherlands. He represents the opposite image of a Dutch person of Moroccan descent: not assimilationist, but an innovative representative of a culture within a culture. He combines stand-up comedy with Dutch hiphop and is not only popular with Dutch youths but also welcome guest at various radio and TV shows. I even saw him in a funny candy ad the other day. His name is Ali Bouali, or as he has come to be known, Ali B.

Like France, the Netherlands has an African-flavored hip hop scene made up of not only people from Africa, but also Suriname and the Antilles in South America as well as a large population of Moroccan and Turkish people who were descended from guest workers who began to come over to Holland during the post WWII reconstruction. Their children have a legal status in Dutch society which is frequently discriminatory in effect, if not in intent. Many non-Muslim Dutch citizens fear that Holland will lose its traditional tolerance and Western liberalism, becoming increasingly influenced by Islamic viewpoints on these issues. These fears are fueled by population growth studies and projections that show the Muslim community growing much faster than that of the "autochtonen" (autochthonous Dutch).

Since I have been here, Ali B. has had a string of hits and has been frequently featured on other artists' tracks, most significantly with Marco Borsato on the song "Wat zou je doen?" for the charity War Child. Although not hardcore political, Ali has proven willing to poke fun at the foibles of both sides of the Netherlands.

In a stunning breach of royal protocol, last year Bouali jumped off a stage to embrace Queen Beatrix, a woman reowned for her stiffness and reserve. He is quite aware of the possible claims of being an integrationist by his critics, as he raps almost entirely in Dutch, but he says "I cannot be a role model. I can only be myself."

All of this gives me hope for the future. For if in a country so seemingly divided and nativist in many hysterical accounts, people can accept Ali B. as one of their own, maybe things will work out okay after all.

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Remains of the Day

Well...it's that day again. Half a decade after multiple terrorist attacks on the United States and still reconstruction is unfinished. Today we are predicted to see the most nakededly partisan and morally disgusting use of the 9/11 attacks: "[Bush] is intending to line up 9/11 families to accuse McCain, Warner and Graham of delaying justice for the perpetrators of that atrocity, because they want to uphold the ancient judicial traditions of the U.S. military and abide by the Constitution" It seems that the real news of the president's speech last Wednesday was that it would actually legalize torture, prevent the Supreme Court from striking it down, and even create a special CIA unit to perfect it. Will someone please demand some specifics from the president? I want to hear the words 'waterboarding' and 'cold cell' in these questions. If he wants to make an end-run around Geneva, he should damn well say so in plain English. It is amazing that in these five years we have gotten to a point where people are risking their careers just to say that a defendant should see the evidence against him before he is secretly sentences to death. As Ben Franklin said,

"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both."

Once again, the 9/11 families will have their desire for justice exploited and used as an argument for the legalization of torture, guilty until proven innocent courts, and war crime impunity for his pals. In fact, these 'alternative' methods make prosecution of the 9/11 plotters more difficult,as evidence procure through torture inadmissible and an affront to centuries of Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence. In fact, I think it would be something you be more likely to find under Sharia law. This works out to an AlQaeda PR victory if such sham trials take the place of our rational judgment. Proof that the first priority of these people has always been power at any price, and not keeping America safe. Meanwhile, as Democrats will get painted as best buddies with KSM, the threat of an indefinite vacation at Camp Gitmo, without charge or due process gets expanded to snatch more people in this country. The Administration is giving Osama, the mastermind of that day's events, as much time and space as he needs, as the trail goes cold because they are too involved in Iraq to notice.

By many visible measures, the US still has not recovered psychically from that day. Even the implacable spirit of New Yorkers is not enough to counter the waves of fear coming from the rest of square-state America. And back in Manhattan, the 16-acre gaping wound remains open and festering with toxic upheavals. On July Fourth two years ago, eight weeks before the Republican National Convention in New York City, Gov. George E. Pataki traveled from the Hamptons summer home of his senior economic adviser, Charles A. Gargano, to the dusty crater in the center of Lower Manhattan. The governor of New York then laid the cornerstone of the rebuilding proposal, the 1776-ft tall Freedom Tower. In the two years since, that cornerstone has been removed and recut, as those plans were torn up and been drastically revised several more times.

Many things have been planned for the site: a memorial, a set of cultural buildings, a transportation center, several office buildings, and a shopping center. All of these are unlikely to appear as planned. A host of objections, from unsatisfied families to uneasy security experts to miserly public officials, have hammered at the project designers. As the NYT said,

"Where some saw Rockefeller Center or Lincoln Center or Grand Central Terminal, others saw Gettysburg."

The new design has nineteen floors encased in solid concrete, a nearly windowless expanse two hundred feet high. Although perhaps sadly necessary, it seems further mocking irony to a building which is to advertise the virtues of a free society. There was no leadership on this issue: the mayor was busy trying to build a football stadium on the West Side, he didn't care as long as Wall St was open; the governor tried to wash his hands of it outside of a photo op or two; Giuliani was too busy dreaming about being president; the governor of nearby New Jersey was too preoccupied trying to stay in the closet. The site has become yet another NYC real-estate drama, as millions of square feet of unused office space take the place of housing in Lower Manhattan.It should be enough to point out that about as many American lives have been lost in Iraq as were lost in the towers. No one is even sure how many Afghani civilians have died since that day. We know that about 350,000 people, both foreigners and natives, have had their phone calls listened to by illegal government surveillance. Only about 25 abductions (and 'renditions' unto torture-loving tyrannies) of foreign nationals have been conclusively documented, although by Amnesty International estimates this number will one day rise to the hundreds. The cost of being in Iraq, far from being recouped by oil profits, is costing about $200 million a day with a projected total cost of $2 trillion. That presuming it will ever end, which the president with his permanent bases seems unlikely to acquiesce to.

More than any other issue, it is the US invasion of Iraq that has separated the US from the rest of world after September 11th. It has also divided the United States internally, weakened its capacity to deal with the threat of extremist Islamic terror, and made a mockery of US power. The latest revelation that Donald Rumsfeld actually threatened to fire any subordinate who tried to come up with a post-invasion occupation confirms this grim truism.

As for Afghanistan, the war which has been all but forgotten, the people have turned against us because of the need to pursue the war on drugs over the war on terrorism. Britsh and American military forces in conjunction with the sinister PMC DynCorp have been systemically destroying the fields of the poorest farmers there. The Taliban revival is directly related to these short-sighted crop eradication efforts.

My own personal memories of the day in question are not that extensive: it was a Tuesday IIRC, and I was living at the time in a residence hall at the University of Massachusetts. I was on my way to breakfast at the cafeteria when two of the lesbians on my floor called out to me from their room. They were glued to their television and they invited me in to watch with a 'you're not going to believe this...' it must have been something big if they were inviting me to watch. After a hour of people waking up to this dawning horror, including the second plane and the collapse, I went outside to try to make it to my course. The professor, John McCarthy had postponed coursework so that we could talk about what was really on our minds. We got about fifteen minutes into this, when a classmate from NY told us all about her missing father. Professor McCarthy dismissed us all almost immediately after she said that. My father was scheduled to go to the WTC that Friday, as part of a counterterrorism project, a fact which I find horrible and ironic. I'm glad my family didn't have to suffer that day, as the family of the 343 dead firemen and police officers did. Its hard to say too much about the tragedy itself, especially anything that hasn't been said before and with more poignancy.

There are better ways to insure that no other families will have a day like that. The biggest still, in my mind, would be to make a wholesale switch away from petroleum. If we had spent the Iraq War trillions on this goal, we could be focusing on ports and borders of our own country. Accepting current war estimates, going electric in our transportation would have costed less than half of what we are throwing away in the desert and this plan promises something the Iraq War was supposed to deliver, namely cheaper gas prices. One thing we now know is that anybody who talks about reducing oil use without mentioning some form of electrification is just wasting your time. Someday we may be able to look at this time and dismiss the era of terror with alacrity. But not today.

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What liberal media would that be?

The Path to 9/11, a 'dramatization' of events set to air for millions on the fifth anniversary of the attacks, contains a scene that suggests President Bill Clinton let Osama bin Laden escape. According to Richard Clarke, former counterterrorism czar for Bush I, Clinton and Bush II, and now counterterrorism adviser to ABC, the scenario, in which Clinton's National Security Adviser Sandy Berger refuses to give the order to kill Bin Laden when he is cornered by CIA agents in Afghanistan, never occurred:

1. Contrary to the movie, no US military or CIA personnel were on the ground in Afghanistan and saw bin Laden.

2. Contrary to the movie, the head of the Northern Alliance, Masood, was no where near the alleged bin Laden camp and did not see UBL.

3. Contrary to the movie, the CIA Director actually said that he could not recommend a strike on the camp because the information was single sourced and we would have no way to know if bin Laden was in the target area by the time a cruise missile hit it.

This scene and many more were completely made up by writer (and Rush Limbaugh pal) Cyrus Nowrasteh.

Things actually happened quite differently. According to the 9/11 Commission Report (pg. 199), then-CIA Director George Tenet had the authority from President Clinton to kill Bin Laden. Roger Cressy, former NSC director for counterterrorism, has written, “Mr. Clinton approved every request made of him by the CIA and the U.S. military involving using force against bin Laden and al-Qaeda.”

This is OK, says the Mouse, because we will run the following disclaimer 'throughout' the show:

The following movie is a dramatization that is drawn from a variety of sources including the 9/11 Commission Report and other published materials, and from personal interviews. The movie is not a documentary. For dramatic and narrative purposes, the movie contains fictionalized scenes, composite and representative characters and dialogue, as well as time compression.

From Americablog: "...the fact that ABC is only targeting Republicans with this anti-Clinton TV show is prima facie evidence that this is nothing more than one big fat campaign contribution from ABC/Disney to the Republican party. A contribution grotesquely wrapped in the ashes of nearly 3,000 Americans."

In a moment of supreme irony, officials in Pakistan, the Bush administration's so-called "ally" in the war on terror, said they would not take Bin Laden into custody "as long as [he] is being like a peaceful citizen." And just last year, Bush secretly shut down the special CIA unit designated to go after bin Laden.

ABC has provided copies of the movie to Rush Limbaugh and right-wing bloggers, but it refuses to give it out to Bill Clinton, Sandy Berger or Madeleine Albright. As Albright wrote:

While I have requested a copy of the broadcast, I have yet to receive one. I have been informed by some who had been given the right to view the broadcast that the drama depicts scenes that never happened, events that never took place, decisions that were never made and conversations that never occurred; it asserts as fact things that are not fact.

For example, one scene apparently portrays me as refusing to support a missile strike against bin Laden without first alerting the Pakistanis; it further asserts that I notified the Pakistanis of the strike over the objections of our military. Neither of these assertions is true.

Another scene revives the old right-wing myth that press reporting made it impossible to track Osama bin Laden, accusing the Washington Post of blowing the secret that American intelligence tracked his satellite phone calls. In reality, responsibility for that blunder rests with none other than the arch-conservative Washington Times.

The RNC went after CBS for "The Reagans", which they eventually pulled and later it showed on Showtime. But Bush gets a glow of hagiography, the vindication of historians he so desperately craves, as the show glosses over My Pet Goat and ignores, as Bush did, the 'Bin Laden Determined' PDB in its revisionist history.

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Fueling the Future

Nobel Prize-winning chemist George Olah has an idea which could save the world. It's not often I use such a hyperbole in describing a singular idea, but the issue of energy is, as I've said before, the chief technical problem of our day and the underlying reason for our current era of terror. Olah is 1994 winner of the chemistry award for his solution to the problem of 'non-classical' carbocations. His idea is that we re-orient ourselves away from illusory visions of a hydrogen economy, and become a methanol economy instead.

Why go against the gleaming hydrogen economy paradigm? Well there are a few inherent flaws making the jump from our current fossil fuel infrastructure to hydro-mobiles zipping along our
streets as big a jump as landing a lunar slam dunk.


Hydrogen is an explosive gas that, decades after the Hindenburg disaster, still causes technical problems in our storage and transport of it. Although molecular hydrogen has excellent energy density on a mass basis, as a gas at ambient conditions it has poor energy density per volume. As a result, if it is to be stored and used as fuel onboard the vehicle, molecular hydrogen must be pressurized or liquefied to provide sufficient driving range. Greater energy is thus needed to keep hydrogen compressed into a liquid state. The mass of the tanks needed for compressed hydrogen reduces the fuel economy of the vehicle.

Because it is a small energetic molecule, hydrogen tends to diffuse through any liner material intended to contain it, leading to the embrittlement, or weakening of its container. Since hydrogen causes embrittlement of steel, it is not clear that hydrogen can simply be put into today's natural gas transmission systems. Li-On batteries, as seen in laptop computers of today, would be a far more efficient onboard energy platform.

The storage and transport issues would necessitate an alteration in industry which is unprecedented in human history, requiring trillions of dollars. Hydrogen pipelines are more expensive than even long-distance electric lines. It is far more efficient to increase the voltage in these wires, than to strengthen a pipeline. Hydrogen also is about three times bulkier in volume than natural gas for the same energy delivered. Added to that is the grueling maintenance costs from the aforementioned embrittlement. Ultimately, since hydrogen is likely to be produced with the same sources as electricity , it is less economical than a pure electricity economy.
In The Hype about Hydrogen, author Joseph J. Romm argues that a major effort to introduce hydrogen cars before 2030 would actually undermine efforts to reduce emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide. As Romm states, "Neither government policy nor business investment should be based on the belief that hydrogen cars will have meaningful commercial success in the near or medium term."

It is also requires more than a bit of energy to extract. The production problem is a combination of two different problems: producing hydrogen efficiently from energy sources, and locating suitable (renewable or at least less polluting) energy sources to do it. We can either milk hydrogen from fossil fuels or use electrolysis to crack water into oxygen and hydrogen. Usually, the electricity consumed is more valuable than the hydrogen produced, which is why only a tiny fraction of hydrogen is currently produced this way.

Liquefying would require 40% of the energy content of the hydrogen. Liquid hydrogen would evaporate at the rate of 4%/day. Just generating the electricity to liquefy 1 kg (2.2 lb) of hydrogen would release 8 to 9.5 kg (17.6 to 20.9 lb) of CO2 into the atmosphere. By comparison, burning a U.S. gallon of gasoline, which has a similar energy content, would release about 9 kg (19.8 lb) of CO2. Compressing hydrogen to 10,000 psi (70 MPa) would require about 10% to 15% of its energy content, and take about 7 to 8 times as much volume as the same energy in a gasoline tank. At 8,000 psi (55 MPa), a pressure tank would cost $2100 per kilogram of hydrogen. In brief, the electricity required to generate enough hydrogen to replace all the gasoline in the U.S. would be more than all the electricity currently produced.

Methanol can be used directly as fuel (including in hybrids) or in a direct methanol fuel cell. It can be made from hydrogen in a greenhouse neutral process and used in place of hydrogen, without construction of new hydrogen infrastructure.

What are the arguments against methanol? Well there are a few. We would need at least some hydrogen to be generated in order to synthesize methanol. At present, methanol is generated from syngas, the most popular source of which is fossil-based (although this would be altered in a methanol economy). Methanol is half as energy-dense as gasoline and has a few other chemical problems: it would be corrosive to aluminum or some plastic parts in a fuel-intake system; it attracts water, creating possible engine obstructions; it has low volatility in cold weather; it is still toxic and a fire risk, but so is gasoline.


Petroleum is, to paraphrase Churchill's comment on democracy, the worst energy system in the world, except for all the other energy systems. Almost our entire infrastructure runs exculsively on fossil fuels taken from volatile and long downtrodden regions of the world. Sustainable and renweable fuels woudl ameliorate this and avoid a 'peak oil' crash of the petro-economy. It would take decades and cost trillions for the dubious benefits of a hydrogen economy. It is hard to see the hydrogen economy idea as anything other than a bait-and-switch to prevent dealing with the deeper issue of moving towards renewable energy.

Compared to hydrogen, methanol offers a few significant advantages: as it is a liquid, storage by volume and weight is more efficient and by far, safer for smaller vehicles; it can be directly incorporated in existing gas stations and tanker trucks, even blended with gasoline; it is less explosive than hydrogen and can be used to fill the tank of someone without a degree in chemical engineering; it can be made from any organic material using the Fischer-Tropsch synthesis method; and it can be used with ethanol in a diversified biofuel marketplace.


Biofuel itself has been used since the early days of the car industry. Nikolaus August Otto, the German inventor of the combustion engine, conceived his invention to run on ethanol. While Rudolf Diesel, inventor of the Diesel engine, conceived it to run on peanut oil. The Ford Model T, produced between 1903 and 1926 used ethanol. Hydrogen's role in ths new economy would be to help produce these renewable liquid fuels. This would extend the 'reach' of biofuels, which require large amounts of cultivated land to convert photosynthetic plants into chemical energy.

Switching from petroleum-based fuels extracted from ever-deeper wells and refined in energy-intensive and polluting processes, to cleaner, greener bioalcohols like methanol, avoids both the pipe dreams of a purely hydrogen future of pipelines and pressure tanks and the do-nothingism of our SUV present. With greater knowledge of micro-organisms and how plants create bioalcholic fuel, it may be possible that we can genetically engineer a plant whose pure sap can power our daily travels. The gasoline tree will be something to watch for in the front yard of tomorrow.

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what is it this time?

Just when I thought I would find nothing to blog about, Republicans have launched Iraq War PR campaign No.57: terrorism is the new Communism/Fascism. We've gone from WMDs to Saddam & 9/11 to 'last throes' to Islamofascism with nary a pause for reflection. the idea is that absent those permanent fortresses, a legion of Doom consisting of Baathists, Iranians, al-Qaeda shock troops, Lex Luthor, Destro, the Baroness and the Cobra Commander. I would be more cynical about this campign but it actually seems as if they believe that we should treat one thing as if it were another.

First, Bush issues perhaps the most disingenous disclaimer ever:"They're not political speeches," he said. "They're speeches about the future of this country, and they're speeches to make it clear that if we retreat before the job is done, this nation would become even more in jeopardy. These are important times, and I seriously hope people wouldn't politicize these issues that I'm going to talk about."Then, to steal a phrase from Dave Weigel (late of Reason/besmirched guest blogger at AndrewSullivan.com) he and his surrogates "banked left and took the Rumsfeld Expressway into False Equivalence City." The words "fascism," "Nazi," and "communist" must've focus-grouped really well since we are getting them non-stop despite any connection with the totalitarian theocratic ideology at work in modern terror attacks. Some see the hand of Rove, pushing seniors with knee-jerk reactions to Fascism/Communism analogies (no matter how weak) to lift the sagging popularity of the Republicans in this election year. Fascism is particularly nonsensical, as it consists of industrialized anti-communist militarized nationalism not medievalist guerilla pan-nationalist religious extremism.

At a campaign event with Laura Bush, Senator Conrad Burns of Montana said a "faceless enemy" of terrorists "drive taxi cabs in the daytime and kill at night."

Vice President Cheney this week said critics "claim retreat from Iraq would satisfy the appetite of the terrorists and get them to leave us alone."

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, citing passivity toward Nazi Germany before World War II, said that "many have still not learned history's lessons" and "believe that somehow vicious extremists can be appeased."

The Bush team's latest tactic involves suggestions that Democrats plan to block all war appropriations, starving the troops of supplies, armor, and munitions so they lose the war, and thus retreat, faster. This time, the mainstream media was good enough to ask him to elaborate on just exactly who these straw-men capitulationists are in the Democratic Party. Their backfilling response was no one in particular those are 'logical interpretations' of favoring a timetable for withdrawing troops from Iraq.If this were such an existential threat to civilization, why have we not tripled the defense budget, started rolling out the war bonds and worked harder to build alliances with allied nations? Osama is neither Hitler nor Stalin and Baghdad is not Berlin. Al-Qaeda and its kin don't have Panzers or V-2 wunderwapens or the nationalist support of the Nazis or the Soviets. The thought should be rather insulting to any WWII vets out there.

Instead of coming to terms (or 'adapting to change' as it were) with the ongoing Iraqi civil war and its multitudinous factions, Bush chooses not to see this because of ideological blindness. Just as not all of our friends in the Middle east are democrats, not all of our enemies are fascists. The leaders of nations such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and Pakistan are uneasy whenever Bush talks about supporting the democratic reformers and freedom on the march. of course, that whole idea of supporting democracy in the Middle East is undercut by them electing extremists when they do get democracy. The Democratic party must succeed in finally decoupling the War on Terrorism from the War in Iraq, if nothing else.

This is a recipe for national cognitive dissonance: most people are willing to support the war on terror and even see their family members off to fight it, but not without a clear victory, without any sacrifice expected and without any end in sight. Even the blood-for-oil theory doesn't apply since we are spending far more than every drop of oil in Iraq would be worth even if we stole it all.

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corporate raiders

I have met alot of fantastic Dutch-speaking natives of different countries here in the Netherlands. People from Suriname or Aruba in the carribean or from Indonesia. But the largest community of 'Dutch' -speaking people can be found in South Africa, another former Dutch colony. True, the South Africans speak Afrikaans, a variant of Dutch, but it is generally understandable by both parties. I have found the South Africans I have met to be far from the cartoon neo-nazis seen in Lethal Weapon 2, but intelligent and thoughtful people with a self-reflective understanding of the problems of race, ethnicity and class.

Bearing this in mind, several of their compatriots should not be considered as enlightened. In particular, South Africans have become the leading source of international mercenaries. In Iraq alone, between 2,00 and 4,00o mercenaries from South Africa are working, usually as armed guards. As they say in Iraq, you know you've been here too long when you aren't surprised to hear Afrikaans.

The government of South Africa has been pressing forward with legislation to ban its citizens from mercenary activity, the Prohibition of Mercenary Activity Bill. One large reason is the number of SA former soldiers under contract in Iraq. It should also be noted that humanitarian groups are worried about this bill unintentionally barring SAfricans from working for international aid groups.

"Mercenary" is often used loosely to mean any police, military, or paramilitary which the user dislikes. At the extremes, it is applied to ordinary private guards and security personnel and to any person who is paid for military-related services, including the paid professional armies of modern nation-states. Here we are using a more exact definition of mercenary: individuals or organizations who sell their military skills outside their country of origin and as an entrepreneur (particularly within a corporation) rather than as a member of a recognized national military force.

One of the biggest reasons for South Africa's anti-mercenary ban is the alleged plot to overthrow the government of Equatorial Guinea, which may not be widely known except for the involvement of the son of former British PM Margaret Thatcher. To recap: in March of 2004, Zimbabwean authorities detained a plane full of South Africans. They claimed they were going to guard a mine in the Dem. Rep. of Congo (formerly Zaire), but soon after the Eq. Guinea government announced they were involved in a coup attempt against their President-for-Life Mbasogo.

Most domestic and international observers consider his regime to be one of the most corrupt, ethnocentric, oppressive and anti-democratic states in the world. Equatorial Guinea is now essentially a single-party state, dominated by Obiang's Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea (PDGE). Like his predecessor and other African dictators such as Idi Amin and Mobutu Sese Seko, Obiang has assigned to himself several creative titles; the great major general Alifanfarón, gentleman of the great island of Bioko, Annobón and Río Muni, as well as referring to himself as El Jefe (the boss).

To ask why remove him now is to see yet again the dark and viscous hand of petropolitics: the alleged leader of this regime change sponsorship stood to gain one of the richest and untapped fields of oil and methane in Africa, if not the world. Oil reserves were discoved only 10 years ago, but have lead to Eq. Guinea having the 6th highest per capita GDP in the world ($30,000) even while it ranks 121st of hte 177 nations on the UN's Human Development Index. In July 2004, the U.S. Senate published an investigation into Riggs Bank, a Washington-based bank into which most of Equatorial Guinea's oil revenues were paid until recently. The Senate report showed that at least $35 million were siphoned off by Obiang, his family and senior officials of his regime. The country's production has reached 360,000 barrels/day as of 2004, making it the third-largest exporter of oil in Sub-Saharan Africa, an increase which had led to a doubling of the population of the capital city of Malabo.

The alleged mastermind, Simon Mann, was tied to Executive Outcomes, a PMC that did security for many war-torn locales such as Sierra Leone and Angola. Executive Outcomes, founded by veterans of the infamous South African Battalion 32, has been described as "the world's first fully-equipped corporate army." Educated at Eton and Sandhurst (the British West Point), the aristocratic Mann is said to have told his fellow plotters that they could combine Zimbabwean arms, a Boeing 727 and an exiled politician (Severo Moto Nsá) into a successful coup. Mann and his colleagues were put on trial in Zimbabwe and on August 27 Mann was found guilty of attempting to buy arms for an alleged coup plot and sentenced to 7 years imprisonment in the maximum security Chikurubi Prison outside Harare, Zimbabwe. mark Thatcher was fined $500,000 and given a four-year suspended prison sentence. Sixty-six of the other men were acquitted. There is serious concern that some confessions were forcibly coerced from these defendants.

The most troubling aspect of PMCs is how outsourcing foreign policy to them allows their client governments to obscure their policies from examination by the public by layer after layer of secrecy and deniability. When soldiers purposefully kill a civilian in Iraq, they will probably get court-martialed. If a contractor were to kill a civilian in Iraq, they might get sent fired, but that just means they can work for a different company. Surely many of the contractors are doing their job with professionalism and restraint, but if a severe and inhumane incident by a PMC were to be exposed, there would be few legal avenues available to bring its perpetrators to justice.

From a far better article than this on the modern mercenary:

In a violent and often unfair world, it is certain that the demand for mercenaries will not go away soon. If the great powers, collectively or individually, are not willing to take up the role of global police in unlikely and unrewarding places, it is equally certain that others will fill that vacuum for good or for ill. In the end, the issue of mercenaries comes down to a question of deciding what kind of world we want and are willing to pay for, both in blood and money.

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Another Overly Personal Post

As I explained in my previous post, I have been consumed with finishing my master's degree at good (very) old Universiteit Utrecht. Yesterday was my combination thesis defense/graduation ceremony. I am now officially a master of linguistics, one step (and three years) away from a doctorate. This is a bittersweet accomplishment for several reasons, but mostly because it means I will have to leave the Netherlands. I would like to return and I know that I have made friends too close to me to stay away forever. While I have every reason to go back, I can think of one very good reason to stay. I may even take the opportunity to move back to Holland next summer, but until then, it looks like I will be returning to visit my family and friends back home, albeit with a great amount of trepidation, both for losing the things that I will miss and regaining things I had been happily living without. I know it is possible to stay here, but it would require me to live below the poverty level here and outside of immigration law.

It is not that I wouldn't do something like this, but quite frankly, I haven't made enough friends here in Europe to justify living here for good. It's my own fault for focusing too much on my education, itself a reaction to how I ended up two years behind during my bachelor's degree because I was concerned more with making friends. And the thing is, I have met so many people I would love to have gotten to know better and I know there are more in my own neighborhood. I always felt guilty that my own fears of loneliness caused me extra time at Umass. As a result, I have become almost the opposite person here, focused on my studies with a tenacity bordering on obsessive. My professors were not the only ones surprised that I fulfilled all my obligations in record time. I can see all the points of procrastination where I subconsciously realized that finishing meant having to return home and subtly threw a wrench or two into my progress. Part of me misses home and feels very little organic connection to this unusual land below sea level, but it is at war with the part of me that realizes that things could be as good or better for me here than at home, if only from some hard work devoted to that end. But my family can't support me here anymore, with my twin sisters each going into their own programs of higher education. And in the end, it all comes down to money. I can't stay in the EU without getting a job here somewhere, and I can get EU citizenship since everyone in my immediate family has been in the US for at least a few generations. Although it would be poetically apt for me to become an illegal immigrant and dishwasher here, I don't have any family members to shelter and support me here when I lose my apartment at the end of next month.

I'm also a bit worried that there will be nothing for me to go back to, now that I have been away for so long. Many of my best friends have moved out of New England, to places as disparate as San Francisco and Savannah. Partly, it is upsetting that none of them have come to visit me in the past two years, but i can understand how impossible it can be to do so. i fear that the landscape I used to recognize will be thoroughly changed, with woodlands developed into housing complexes and independent stores fallen to the big box retailers. Its one thing to think that I wouldn't be able to live here in Europe because of expenses, but I wonder whether I will be able to live in the Boston area with its own peculiar expenses.

My greatest fear is that I will be persuaded to accept complacency in the form of an awful corporate position which would offer health plan and benefits at the cost of my sanity. The last job I had before coming to the Netherlands was as a customer service representative at a major insurance company. It was the best of jobs on paper, with every amenity one could want, but the worst of jobs in operation: it consisted of handling a constant stream of customers who had purchased annuities, which can be summarized succinctly as a combination of an insurance contract and a pension plan, with the drawbacks of both and the benefits of neither. I had to constantly and subtly tell customers that due to poor financial planning they would be eating pet food from now on. We were strongly discouraged from providing investment advice to anyone, as only a licensed stockbroker (who as the personal incentive to push bad investment vehicles) is allowed to. One client was hiding a great deal of money from his ex-wife, who socially engineered me into revealing this to her. A stupid mistake, but not the reason for me leaving. One day, they called us all into a meeting first thing in the morning. Our entire division, we had been told at this meeting, was being moved to the middle of Alberta, Canada. We could either be moved to another division after some training or possibly go to Alberta to train our replacements. I don't want another job even approaching the oppressiveness of that.

So once again, I am sorry if I have allowed things to go dark here these past few weeks. I've haven't found anything particularly blogworthy and since I have re-installed the operating system on this computer I have been unable to connect to Blogger. However, it seems to be part of a larger blogospheric trend, as recently reported in the WSJ, traffic seems to have a proportional relation to frequency of updating. Looking at my own meager web traffic, I can see that most of it is from a few popular posts:

1. In Defense of Defensetech: i still get the most hits from this piece, due no doubt to i being linked to on some bulletin board about exotic weaponry. Also a Google search for the "CIA's Glass Gun", a one-shot ceramic derringer undetectable by metal detectors, turns up this page. I'm not sure how proud to be of this accomplishment...
2. Michael Tolliver Lives!: This slightly autobiographical post is probably one of very few that talks about the projected return of this literary character, as the book remains to be published.
3. Sonic Weaponry: another subject which receives little attention is that of sound-based weapons which this post laments yet provides just enough technical data to envision such a science fiction scenario.

A few other posts have received significant traffic, such as one I did on an episode of the Sopranos which got linked by Majikthise a number of months back. Apart, from that, since I vary so much between topics, there is no constant pattern. I guess in the future I should post more about fictional gay Mafiosos wielding sonic rifles.

Until then, I am going to try to enhance my blogging habits, especially in reference to my newly gained expertise in linguistics. Already in the process of expunging all of these misgiving and terrors from my own subconscious, I have been making room for wider polemics and critiques which are cortically brewing. Soon I hope to dish out some of the hearty skeptical analysis striven for on this page, but until then I hope you'll forgive me this moment of agonizing self-regard.

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