Monday Morning Workout

Well, it’s Monday morning and let me get right down to work. The question of the day is whether or not the FBI possibly dropped the ball in not following up a request from the Russian government to check out why Tamerlan Tsarnaev wanted to spend six months in Russia.

For those of you who have just emerged from spending last week at a Buddhist retreat—in which case you definitely had a better week than the rest of us—Tsarnaev, the elder of the two brothers who put a bang into the Boston Marathon, wasn’t working, wasn’t going to school, and had a wife and infant. So the FBI looked into the matter, and went to the house to ask, presumably, “hey, you’re not a terrorist, are you, Buddy?” And he said, “Nah, who, me?” 

(Sorry, been a while since I’ve written any dialogue—wanted to see if I still could….)

Well, that was absolutely the right answer, so the FBI went home, turned on the TV, and forgot the whole thing. Now, some of our good senators—that loveable bunch of nearly all white guys who squelched background checks last week—are raising the question. Did the FBI blow it?

Gentlemen, skip the investigation, save yourselves the dough (or better, send it to me…). Here is your answer:

Duhhhhhhh….

It’s right up there with the 20 or so Saudi Arabians who were so interested in flight school, in flying the plane but had not interest in getting it down. Or the immigration people, who months after 9/11 authorized one of the terrorists to continue to stay in the US.

OK, let me proceed to the next issue (wow, working at this pace, I’ll have the deficit whittled down by the weekend….). Should we hold the younger brother as an “enemy combatant?”

Well, you know who’s coming down where on this issue. The Republicans say yes; the Democrats say no. Now then, what’s my answer? Well, let’s rephrase the question: is it justified, in this case, to suspend the 800-year old right of habeas corpus?

The New York Times has already quoted an official who says he’s not going to “Mirandize”—and I’m surprised the Times let that get by—Dzhokhar, something that is, apparently, now constitutional. But calling him an enemy combatant puts him in the same status as all those prisoners in Guantanamo, with presumably the same stuff directed at him as at the prisoners in Cuba.

“Hey,” you say, “this kid KILLED four people, maimed over 150, and spread terror over the entire city of Boston. Of course he’s an enemy combatant!”

OK—but be careful, driving down that road; I give you the case of José Padilla, our very own Puerto Rican Taliban.

Or not—just a guy of Puerto Rican descent who grew up in Brooklyn but was arrested in Chicago and charged with some serious stuff—traveling to Afghanistan to work with al-Qaeda, planning to stage attacks in the US, and finally plotting to build and detonate a “dirty bomb,” an explosive containing radioactive material. So for three years, Padilla was held as an enemy combatant, where, in his version, this was done to him:

Padilla alleged that he was subjected to prolonged isolation; deprivation of light; exposure to prolonged periods of light and darkness, including being “periodically subjected to absolute light or darkness for periods in excess of twenty- four hours”; extreme variations in temperature; sleep adjustment; threats of severe physical abuse; death threats; administration of psychotropic drugs; shackling and manacling for hours at a time; use of “stress” positions; noxious fumes that caused pain to eyes and nose; loud noises; withholding of any mattress, pillow, sheet, or blanket; forced grooming; suspensions of showers; removal of religious items; constant surveillance; incommunicado detention, including denial of all contact with family and legal counsel for a 21-month period; interference with religious observance; and denial of medical care for “serious and potentially life-threatening ailments, including chest pain and difficulty breathing, as well as for treatment of the chronic, extreme pain caused by being forced to endure stress positions.”

–      United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, May 2012.[1]

Nice, hunh? Well, for three years lawyers wrangled about the whole thing, and finally it was decided: Padilla had to be tried as a civilian. And then the government finally had to charge him, and guess what? Well, let Democracy Now tell you the story:

There is no mention in the indictment of Padilla's alleged plot to use a dirty bomb in the United States. There is also no mention that Padilla ever planned to stage any attacks inside the country. And there is no direct mention of Al-Qaeda. Instead the indictment lays out a case involving five men who helped raise money and recruit volunteers in the 1990s to go overseas to countries including Chechnya, Bosnia, Somalia and Kosovo. Padilla, in fact, appears to play a minor role in the conspiracy. He is accused of going to a jihad training camp in Afghanistan but his lawyers said the indictment offers no evidence he ever engaged in terrorist activity."[26]

Oh, so I guess they were wrong. So sorry! Here’s what a guy named Andy Worthington had to say:

[Seventeen] years and four months seems to me to be an extraordinarily long sentence for little more than a thought crime, but when the issue of Padilla's three and half years of suppressed torture is raised, it's difficult not to conclude that justice has just been horribly twisted, that the president and his advisers have just got away with torturing an American citizen with impunity, and that no American citizen can be sure that what happened to Padilla will not happen to him or her. Today, it was a Muslim; tomorrow, unless the government's powers are taken away from them, it could be any number of categories of 'enemy combatants' who have not yet been identified.

Right—we have or we think we have a video of Tsarnaev putting a backpack with a bomb right in front of an eight-year old boy. That’s pretty hard to defend.

Which may be my point—does anyone think that Tsarnaev is not going to prison? Of course not. My question is should we throw out our constitutional rights to get information through torture, information which most experts say is unreliable?

Answer: no.

Well, quite a morning’s work!

When a Thing Doesn't Have a Name

Were they or weren’t they?

Well, Anthony Tommasini of the New York Times weighed in on Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s opera “David et Jonathas,” and the verdict? Yeah, David and Jonathan were an item.

We’ll never know, of course, and there are days I wonder whether we should care. It’s also true that nothing exists in a vacuum, and the culture and mores reigning in tribal Jewish culture over two millennia ago are completely distinct and separate from ours today.

So what was between Jonathan and David? Well, whatever it was, it was major; here’s 2 Sam 1:17….

Now it came about when he had finished speaking to Saul, that the soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as himself. Saul took him that day and did not let him return to his father's house. Then Jonathan made a covenant with David because he loved him as himself. Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that was on him and gave it to David, with his armor, including his sword and his bow and his belt. So David went out wherever Saul sent him, and prospered; and Saul set him over the men of war.(NASB)[6]

Strong stuff. And of course there are the famous words that David spoke after Jonathan’s death:

Saul and Jonathan, beloved and pleasant in their life, And in their death they were not parted; They were swifter than eagles, They were stronger than lions... "How have the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle! Jonathan is slain on your high places. "I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan; You have been very pleasant to me. Your love to me was more wonderful Than the love of women. "How have the mighty fallen, And the weapons of war perished!"

Wikipedia presents several views on the question of what was up between these two guys. The traditional view is that it was platonic, but it may have been homosocial. And yes, my red squiggling computer, I didn’t know the term either. After wading through a lot of psychological jargon, I happened on the common name for a homosocial relationship….

…bromance.

Right. So they were intense friends, but that never turned physical. Or did it? Some scholars argue that it was edited out of the Bible—don’t turn to me for any answers.

Whatever it is, or was, guys have had strong relationships for thousands of years. Remember all that gushing stuff that Lincoln wrote to his friend Joshua Speed? Do that today, and everybody will assume that you’re gay, but it may have been the custom of the time.

I think today of my father, who had a deep relationship of decades with John Bunch, the chief engineer of the City of Madison. They spoke daily, they saw each other about every week, both families went camping together. And though, yes, the two wives got on well enough, it was the two men who were the emotional heart of the relationship. As I write, I can see my father sitting on the floor—something he never did—next to John Bunch, sitting in a big easy chair. Bunch is repetitively caressing Jack’s knee. I, 17 and very closeted, am wondering—what’s up with these guys?

The truth is I don’t know, though I very much land on the side of “nothing sexual.” But then there was my mother, who did have a lesbian relationship for a year. And that would have been in the early ‘40’s—not particularly enlightened years. So maybe Jack and Bunch, on one of those bourbon-drenched nights, did get it on; it wouldn’t surprise me.

OK—it would.

Nor do I think it likely that David and Jonathan got it on.

Just don’t get me started on Walt Whitman….

A Cold Day in Sunny Puerto Rico

It may be a slight fever brought on by an emerging cold—I have a sore throat and congestion as well—or it may be that it’s real. Which is to say that everything feels a bit surreal, today.

Consider it—we shut down the largest metropolitan area in New England yesterday. We poured nine thousand cops into Watertown, Massachusetts. The schools closed, businesses closed, the transit system closed, two sports events and the Boston symphony concert were cancelled.

All of this for a 19-year old kid?

Right—it might be the years of Wal-Mart bleeding through, but my first thought was how much was this gonna cost? Second was—get ready. Do you really think that it’s going to be long before the next nineteen-year old kid swipes his mother’s pressure cooker? I mean, who wouldn’t want, in their teens, to be sufficiently the source of attention that Obama cancels his day and holes up in the situation room with his cabinet?

Oh, and guess who found the guy? A guy just outside the search area who finally could leave his house and saw blood on his boat. So he peered in, and there was Dzhokhar. Right—so did Dzhokhar shoot? At the police, yes; at the neighbor, no.

Nor did the two brothers harm the owner of the Mercedes SUV which they had carjacked. And really, it may be time to grow up, sigh heavily, and learn to do what the British did for all those years when the IRA was bombing the city.

Scoop up the bodies, cart away the debris, wash down the sidewalk—as quickly as you can.

Oh, and then there’s the other tragedy that got completely displaced by our fascination with a 19-year kid. Susan said it best:

Poor Texas, its explosion entirely (well, mostly) eclipsed by the apocalyptic search for two young adults in Boston. But then the bad guys in Texas are much less dangerous: a corporation, lobbyists, regulators, the state government. And there were fewer deaths and injuries -- oh, wait . . .

Love that mordant tone! And it appears Susan is bang on—I read an op-ed piece in the New York Times about Texas’s famous antagonism to regulation. In fact, the attorney general for the state described his day as something like this (of course I can’t find the article now): I wake up in the morning, drive to the office, spend all day suing Obama, and then come home again.

Oh.

Then there’s the story about the Suicide Prevention in Gun Shops program. Well, that was clearly up an alley I had to sojourn, so I checked it out. And half of the gun shops are now distributing suicide prevention materials. That makes sense, in a sense, since guns are the most common form of suicide—accounting for more deaths than all other methods.

Well, well—an interesting notion. And are we going to put smoking cessation materials in tobacco shops, and diabetes prevention material in candy shops?

Oh, and speaking about guns, what about the woman who sat down in a hotel lobby next to the Twin Towers Museum, and felt something hard beneath her? It was Monday, just as the bombs were going off in Boston, and thus she was doubly alarmed to find that the hard object under her tush was a gun. Sensibly, she gave it to the front desk, which sensibly locked it up and notified the cops. Since the emergency response team happened to be meeting at the time, the news went straight to the top.

Well, they were in a bit of a swivet, as someone might say—was there a relationship between the bombs in Boston and the gun in the lobby of a hotel next to the World Trade Center?

Nope—it turned out that one of the guests had gone to see the museum, seen the metal detector, asked if he could enter with his weapon, was told absolutely not, and then return to the hotel, where he put the gun, not sensibly…

Do I have to tell you?

Perhaps this cold has warped whatever shreds I have for the talent of critical thinking, because the only thing that made sense, today, was the daffodils that are blooming absolutely everywhere in New York City.

They first showed up in the spring of 2002, after having been planted by volunteers in the fall of 2001, which had one particularly lousy day for the city of New York. So the Dutch got it into their heads to give a little gift to the city of New York, and they sent over a gazillion daffodil bulbs.

I love, I just love, stuff like this. It’s on a par with dear Queen Victoria sending over 15,000 books (number invented, but it was a lot) to Chicago after the great fire, to replace those lost from the library. Which of course Chicago had never had—so they had to run out and build one, quick.  

Those broad-shouldered boys thought big, and they produced a masterpiece. Even has a Tiffany dome—take a look.

OK—I’m at three pages, 871 words, and one great photo.

Now can I go to bed?

Update from Boston

I might just as well be honest—I have wasted an hour and a half looking at police, ATF agents, FBI agents, drug agents with dogs, and other assorted law enforcement personnel, all of whom…are looking at a grey house at the corner of….

…oh wait, the media has been asked not to reveal precise locations.

So, if Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, one of the two brothers suspected in the bombing at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, is reading this…HAH! You won’t get it from me!

I tell myself, ‘hey, if nobody is working in Boston, why should you? Who needs to read Iguanas every day?’ And at any moment, the cops could move in, there could be a gun fight, and maybe even an explosion, since authorities—I know this fact because I’ve heard it thirty times—at a Boston-area hospital have reported that Dzhokhar's brother, who is now dead, came in with gunshot wounds AND shrapnel. This means that he had an IED—please notice how casually I’m using the term—strapped on him. (For those who don’t know, I can now smugly tell you that it’s an “improvised explosive device.” (¿Bíjte?)

There is a nineteen-year old kid (the media reports him as armed and extremely dangerous—“we know,” said one broadcaster darkly, “just what he is capable of…”) who last night robbed a convenience store, shot dead an MIT policeman, wounded critically an MBTA agent, and hijacked a black Mercedes Benz. As well, he kidnapped the owner of the vehicle before releasing him unharmed half an hour later.

And now, the entire Boston metropolitan area is under lockdown. Stay in your homes, we are warned. Do not open your door to anyone but a duly identified policeman.

Well, let me take a break here to show you this photo:

Readers—attention! The individual on the right with his arm place over the torso of the other individual and in front of the glasses containing an orange fluid that might be orange juice is the highly dangerous suspect, Dzhokhar. If you see this individual you should NOT try to apprehend him, but rather seek shelter immediately and then proceed to notify your local law enforcement agencies by calling this number: 1-800-494-TIPS.

OK—so I’ve done my duty here both to my readers and to society at large. I can also inform you—since I went to the bathroom and then just thought I’d update myself on this emerging situation—that the president was briefed overnight on the developments and has activated the situation room at the White House. Great—we got Barry on it, and if he can bring down bin Laden, a 19 year-old should be child’s play. 

I myself am thinking of contacting—no, not official enough—of communicating or putting myself into communication with local, state, or federal law enforcement personnel to notify them that the individuals in question seem to be in a kitchen with two stoves. This appears to me to be a fact of extreme importance, though at this point in time and in the investigation process it may be premature—or even dangerous—to speculate or make hasty conclusions. More important is the fact that both stoves appear to be functional—at least one of them there appears to be a pot that may be connected with the recent activity of food preparation, as evidenced by the presence of apparent food items on the table. There is a steam kettle on the other stove. This could be significant if the brothers are, as media reports them to be, of Russian origin. The Russians love their tea!

This just in—the grey Honda with the license plate CRV-E58 has been located, so we can all cross that off the list of things to monitor in this fluid and emerging situation. Oh, and no fear, Canadian readers—the border patrol is monitoring the border and working in close communication with United States officials. So you’re safe up there.

I break to report—with shame—that ABC news has made a horrible gaffe and is very wrongly reporting the name of a Watertown street which is being evacuated. Guys! Get a little professionalism here, hunh?

Well, I’ve done my duty, I do think, down here in sunny Puerto Rico, of keeping my readership abreast of the troubling developments taking place even as we speak in the city and neighboring communities of Boston, Massachusetts. I’d like to urge you, as so many others have done, that your personal safety and the personal safety of those you love is the number priority for you at this point in time.

Lastly, all indications are that, yet again, the two suspects were quiet, good students, fine athletes, courteous, and even played the piano! So, if you or anyone you know should happen to know an individual with some or all of those characteristics, I urge you immediately to contact local authorities and report any suspicious behavior or activity.

Thank you for your cooperation in this matter. 

Blood On Their Hands

Well, it’s nothing we can feel good about. The United States Senate has been bought; we are governed by merciless, mercenary, utterly amoral men and women. They voted their pocket, they caved to pressure, they listened to lies.

They have blood on their hands.

Maybe it’s a good thing. Maybe, after all, it’s better to know whom you’re up against, who your enemies are. And maybe it’s good to get angry, to start screaming “SHAME ON YOU” as two people did.

And as you can see in the clip below, Patricia Maisch seems like an improbable person to have been escorted out of the Senate, yesterday. In fact, even at age 56 I’m still instinctively intimidated by these ladies of a certain age who so many years ago told me to sit up straight and respect your elders and don’t put your elbows on the table.

The question, of course, is not whether they should be ashamed—of course they should—but whether they have any capacity for it. The next question is what to do about them.

Here are the 54 people who yesterday said, “fuck you,” to 90% of the American people.

Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn. Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaska, Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., Sen. John Boozman, R-Ark., Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., Sen. Dan Coats, R-Ind., Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss., Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho,Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., Sen. Deb Fischer, R-Neb., Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., Sen. Mike Johanns, R-Neb., Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark., Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev.*, Sen. James Risch, R-Idaho, Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., Sen. David Vitter, R-La., Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss.

*Reid voted no as a procedural move so that he would retain the ability under Senate rules to bring up the measure again should supporters believe they've mustered enough votes to secure passage.

Source: U.S. Senate

And here are the email addresses of those 54 people:

http: //www.alexander.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=Email, http://www.ayotte.senate.gov/?p=contact, http://www.ayotte.senate.gov/?p=contact, http://www.baucus.senate.gov/contact/emailForm.cfm?subj=issue, http://www.begich.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=EmailSenator, http://www.blunt.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/contact-form?p=contact-roy, http://www.boozman.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/e-mail-me, http://www.burr.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Contact.ContactForm, http://www.chambliss.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=Email, http://www.coats.senate.gov/contact/, http://www.coburn.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/contactsenatorcoburn?p=ContactForm, http://www.cochran.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/email-me, http://www.corker.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=ContactMe, http://www.cornyn.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=ContactForm, http://www.crapo.senate.gov/contact/email.cfm, http://www.cruz.senate.gov/contact.cfm, http://www.enzi.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/contact?p=e-mail-senator-enzi, http://www.fischer.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/email-me, http://www.flake.senate.gov/contact.cfm, http://lgraham.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Contact.LandingPage, http://www.grassley.senate.gov/contact/contact.cfm, http://www.hatch.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/contact?p=Email-Orrin, http://www.heitkamp.senate.gov/contact.cfm, http://www.heller.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/contact-form, http://www.hoeven.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/email-the-senator, http://www.inhofe.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Contact.ContactForm, http://www.isakson.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/email-me, http://www.johanns.senate.gov/public/?p=ContactSenatorJohanns, http://www.ronjohnson.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/contact, http://www.lee.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/contact, http://www.mcconnell.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=contact, http://moran.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/e-mail-jerry, http://www.murkowski.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=Contact, http://www.paul.senate.gov/?p=contact, http://www.portman.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/contact?p=contact-form, http://www.pryor.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=ContactMe, http://www.reid.senate.gov/contact/index.cfm, http://www.risch.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=Email, http://www.roberts.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=EmailPat, http://www.rubio.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/contact, http://www.scott.senate.gov/contact.cfm, http://www.sessions.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=ConstituentServices.ContactMe, http://www.shelby.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/emailsenatorshelby, http://www.thune.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/contact, http://www.vitter.senate.gov/contact, http://www.wicker.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Contact.EMailSenatorWicker

Unfortunately, these are contact forms, so it’s not possible to do a copy / paste and mass emailing. So I’m going to spend half an hour, copying and pasting the message below to all 54 senators.

I’m pissed.

I have never before written to a congressperson, but today I cannot remain silent. As well, I have always been proud to be an American; today, because of your actions, I am not.

You have failed to pass a simple measure that would have saved lives. By doing so, you have put lives jeopardy, because you feared the financial power of the gun lobby groups.

I'm glad one American had the courage to shout "Shame on you!" You have ignored the 90% of the American people who supported this measure, you have jeopardized American lives, and you have lost all of our respect.

Marc Newhouse 

Bombs or Redbuds?

I won’t do it, of course, tempting as it might be. But I do have to wonder—is it advisable for the New York Times to tell everybody that the al Qaeda magazine Inspire has an article titled “Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom?”

What I won’t do is check that out—do I need Homeland Security knocking at my door? And what would I do with the information, anyway? Besides, the NYT has given me all the rudiments of the recipe: place small nails, ball bearings, or metal shards in a six liter pressure cooker, reads the opening sentence of the recipe. Presumably, we top with melted cheese (gruyere if fancy, Velveeta otherwise).

News flash—and remember you read it here first—we’re never gonna know who made the bombs, put them in the garbage cans, and left the scene, after having set the kitchen timer on each of the bombs. All we’ll know—I’m guessing or perhaps extrapolating here—is that it took ten seconds for him (sorry, guys, but I think it’s one of our own….) to set the timer of the first bomb and then walk to the next garbage can, where he set the second.

Garbage cans, as you will know if you’ve been to London recently, are very lethal affairs, as deadly as pressure cookers. Unbelievably, unimaginably, the Boston Police Department (BPD) is unaware of this simple fact, a datum a 3-year old child could easily grasp and expound upon.

Yes, the danger is everywhere—kitchen timers, pressure cookers, garbage cans. And now, with the Internet, it’s easy to slip into the kitchen, get down to work, and cook up a little bomb or two. And in the case of the Boston Marathon, you can run out and get the ingredients months in advance. The brads that tore through so much flesh may have been bought in December, during the Christmas rush.

“We can never be safe again,” is the take away (nod to my corporate past) from one writer, a man generally wise and perceptive (read—I usually agree with him….).

Well, yes and no. Susan said it best in her comment about yesterday’s post. Remember that line in the Bible about living by the sword? Well, we’ve been doing that for too many years now, and we’ve pissed off too many people. Now, of course, we don’t like it when the “terrorist” walks into the kitchen to conjure up a bomb, not mac and cheese.

Which leads me to ask—what did you make in your kitchen two days ago? What would it have taken to impel you to take the pressure cooker, put the brads, BBs and metal shards into the pot, to glue it, to fix the timer, to put it into the back pack, and then to repeat the whole process? Because there’s an extra though vital ingredient to that recipe for a bomb, something besides the brads and metal shards—rage, hate, vengeance.

OK—kookiness. Somebody, breaking news on Yahoo informs me, sent a letter with suspicious white powder to Obama. Somebody also sent a letter with ricin to a senator from Mississippi. All the nuts, apparently, are stepping up to the plate and pitching right in.

In the days after September 11, 2001, I used to amuse myself with all the ways you could create disaster. Well, everybody was doing it—imagining subway gassings, warning us never to eat at salad bars, giving gloves and masks to the receptionist, as she opened the morning mail. And since the entire United States was filled with terrorists, just itching to bring down the God-fearing US of A, and since they were willing to give their lives to do it, I conceived a very simple way to create mass mayhem.

No, I won’t tell you. I love my country—as batty as it is; as paranoid as it is; as horribly as it acts, on occasion. We’ll struggle on. And no, I don’t think it’s impossible ever to be safe. I think if we could ever start acting well, if we stopped torturing people and bombing civilians in illegal and immoral wars, the rest of the world might be better off. Oh, and they might stop hating us, or at least not hate us as much.

More breaking news—the Senate, which is supposed to be thinking about gun control today, was locked down briefly when someone without clearance was found delivering packages. Oh, and Obama is speaking live right now about the suspicious letters.

Lastly, I leave you with the image that somehow encapsulates this whole ridiculous and tragic affair. Yes, I acknowledge the menacing Haz Mat truck, the police cars, the men ducking into the secured building, the whole scene one of response to menace and peril. I prefer to look, however, at the lovely redbud tree, in glorious and full flower, serenely sure that there is no, no danger.

Round Two

You know the story as well as I do: the two explosions; the 78 year-old runner blown to the street; the smoke lifting; the stunned man filming the event, who can only keep saying “Oh, my God.”

So it’s happened again, a dozen years after September 2001. We have spent billions of dollars on “security,” we’ve lost significant amounts of freedom, we have allowed the government to strip us of rights in order to “protect” us. In addition, we’ve lost the ability to think, and fallen victim to fear. Does anybody really think that having zillions of people scrutinize us as we empty our pockets and take off our shoes and belts and go through metal detectors at our airports is making us safer? Wouldn’t a simple lock on the cockpit door have done the trick? And why, since hijacking has been around since the 60’s, wasn’t it standard procedure to lock the cockpit?

So yes, I watched the videos compulsively yesterday, until it occurred to me—it wasn’t doing my stomach any good. Nor was it being particular useful to the people of Boston, so why was I doing it?

Later I wondered—under what circumstances would I ever put a bomb (or two or four, however many there were) in a crowd full of innocent people? Would I ever? Would I ever have so much hurt, so much pain, that it would give rise to that level of rage and bile?

I hope not.

OK—Adolf Hitler. When would I have the necessary knowledge to justify putting the bomb under his desk? Would I need to have seen the concentration camps? Would hearing accounts be enough? Would just seeing the Jews crammed in the cattle cars be sufficient?

So now the country is watching a city block of Boston, Massachusetts, and scratching their heads and saying, “why do they hate us?” The answer, most people think, is that there is such a thing as evil, and the people who perpetrated this deed were evil.

Well, I think there’s an alternative explanation, and the New York Times reported on it today. “US Practiced Torture After 9/11,” announced the headline, and my response was, predictably, “duh….”

Of course we were practicing torture—will anybody in the world forget that sadistic photograph of the female soldier, her cigarette dangling from the side of her mouth, her foot resting on top of a heap of naked prisoners? We admitted that we water-boarded, it was reported that the justice department had written memos, and that we had signed off on these “interrogation” techniques, but that no—national security, we couldn’t read them.

So it was a true “dog bites man” moment for me, but not, apparently for a Republican guy named Asa Hutchinson, who served under Bush as head of the Drug Enforcement Agency and undersecretary of the Homeland Security. He was the Republican balance to a bipartisan report, and he initially started out believing that no, there was no torture committed. But here’s what the New York Times has him saying:

“This has not been an easy inquiry for me, because I know many of the players,” Mr. Hutchinson said in an interview. He said he thought everyone involved in decisions, from Mr. Bush down, had acted in good faith, in a desperate effort to try to prevent more attacks.

“But I just think we learn from history,” Mr. Hutchinson said. “It’s incredibly important to have an accurate account not just of what happened but of how decisions were made.”

He added, “The United States has a historic and unique character, and part of that character is that we do not torture.”

Yeah? Wanna ask the rest of the world?

I read once that there was a British maxim—a man is judged by how he treats his enemy. And nations as well; that said, how well do we score?

Well, the Army Field Manual on Interrogation may reveal a hint or two; section M allows for interrogation sessions for up to 40 consecutive hours.

“Doesn’t sound like much,” you say. Right, but try staying awake from 8AM Monday morning to midnight the next day—that’s 40 hours.

And the very fact that it was officially permitted led to other things, not officially permitted. Here’s one chilling sentence from the Times story:

The C.I.A. not only water boarded prisoners, but slammed them into walls, chained them in uncomfortable positions for hours, stripped them of clothing and kept them awake for days on end.

Oh, and here’s another one:

The core of the report, however, may be an appendix: a detailed 22-page legal and historical analysis that explains why the task force concluded that what the United States did was torture. It offers dozens of legal cases in which similar treatment was prosecuted in the United States or denounced as torture by American officials when used by other countries.

Nor does the report spare the Obama administration:

While the Constitution Project report covers mainly the Bush years, it is critical of some Obama administration policies, especially what it calls excessive secrecy. It says that keeping the details of rendition and torture from the public “cannot continue to be justified on the basis of national security” and urges the administration to stop citing state secrets to block lawsuits by former detainees.

Well, you know where I land on this issue. Obama didn’t want to focus on the past, he said, he wanted to focus on the future, going forward.

Lovely sentiment.

Bullshit.

No president is gonna go after a former president, for the simple fact that every president is going to BE at some point a former president.

So now we know. Oops, so sorry—looks like we went a little overboard.

Is that enough?

Let’s see—what time is it, over there in the Hague?

Don't We?

Well, the situation on Capitol Hill, it seems, is getting a bit heated. The Senate Judiciary Committee is trying to figure out what to do about a difficult question—should somebody with a criminal record or a history of mental illness including violence be allowed to buy a gun? Forty percent of guns sold in the US do NOT include a background check.

This is a difficult, difficult question for our senators, who perhaps see things in this question that we simpler souls do not. Because a large majority—is it 80%? 90%? Who cares…the numbers are ridiculous—a large majority of the American public, as I was saying, support universal background checks.

And according to the New York Times, tempers flared at a luncheon for Republican lawmakers last weekend. Senator Susan Collins was pissed—she’s getting attacked, she said, by the National Association for Gun Rights (NAGR) which has deep ties to Rand Paul. Then Portman got into the fray, saying that he’s spending time raising funds for Collins, and she’s obliged to use it to defend herself, instead of getting her message out or attacking the opposition. Then Ted Cruz of Texas jumped in, and said he had nothing to do with it. (Cruz, apparently, is an ideological fan of Paul.) Then Paul, offended, left in a huff (OK, the New York Times actually said “stormed out of the room.”)

According to the NAGR, the National Rifle Association (NRA) isn’t sufficiently vigilant or militant in protecting “gun rights.” Yes, you read that right—NAGR president Dudley Brown thinks that the NRA is “negotiating backroom deals with left-wing Republicans and Democrats for half a loaf of gun control.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/04/slew-of-gun-rights-groups-flex-muscle-89781_Page2.html#ixzz2QXPj1sCy

Some people feel differently, like former Colorado State Senator Jean White, who got shot down in the primaries, and then saw a Democratic opponent win the general election. She says the NAGR is a godsend for the Democrats; several others agree. In the meantime, the NAGR took in and spent 7 million bucks last year.

Collins is also upset because the ads—coming from out of state—suggest she doesn’t act or talk like a Mainer; she grew up in northern Maine, where everybody had guns. And the ads hit pretty low—her face doing a slow dissolve into the face of Obama. Oh, and they call her a “gun grabber.”

Guys, this is insane. And it’s a typical example of how, by trying to be reasonable with crazy people, you end up in the end in completely crazy positions.

What we should have said, those decades ago when we were worrying about “Saturday night specials” (remember those halcyon days?) was this:

1.     The Second Amendment applies to the right of the citizenry to arm themselves and form militia. You have no individual right to own a gun.

2.     OK—for historical reasons, you can own a rifle and engage in hunting.

3.     The only purpose of a handgun is to kill someone. Sales of handguns are illegal, and illegal trafficking will be strictly punished.

4.     No attack weapons, semi-automatic weapons, etc. Rifles, period.

5.     As technology evolves, you will be required to upgrade your weapon, which means, yes, a national registry. We know that you have a car—why isn’t that a big deal? So you’ll be getting letters, periodically, saying that your gun has to have a Breathalyzer, a GPS chip, a PIN lock…whatever.

6.     Duh, background checks…..

7.     Sell guns through the mail, the Internet, gun shows? What, are you crazy? Guns are sold only through licensed shops, whose records are inspected annually.

We should have said it; we didn’t. So the gun people kept claiming more ground. Eventually, they got the Supreme Court to reverse two centuries plus of constitutional history and say that the Second Amendment allows individuals to own guns. More and more laws got passed protecting gun owners and gun “rights.” Gun makers got immunity from lawsuits; it became illegal to fund research on the effect of gun policy. As everyone went farther and farther into this crazy land, the NRA and the other gun “rights” groups had to whip up the masses more and more on progressively more crazy issues. Now, they are forced into attacking their friends—like Collins—by making up absurd claims. Oh, and also by lying.

And they have now, of course, put the Republican Party in a real jam. Because they are about to show their true colors to the American people. They’re about to tell 80% (or is it 90%) of the American people to go to hell, that they don’t care what they think or how many kids get killed, because nothing, in the end, is more important than the next election.

As deeply as I care about the issue, it may be time to focus on the way our campaigns are funded. Because now, we have a terrible example of how a single-issue constituency can completely subvert the democratic process by injecting twin amounts of money and lies into campaigns. Add to that the fact that corporations can now contribute freely and we have a looming disaster.

It may be time, it may be well past time, to do what Norway does. About 74% of campaigns are publically funded. Oh, and another wonderful piece of news: political ads are banned on television and radio.

I’d go further, of course. It seems crazy to me that a candidate can opt out of accepting campaign funds. Level the playing field—give everybody the same amount of dough, and let the best candidate win.

I mean we all do want an honest government, don’t we?

Didn’t hear the answer—don’t we?

Don’t we? 

On Singers and Performers

Confession—the news is so bad I’ve turned to music to get me through the day. So I devote half an hour to reading about North Korea, Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan—oh, and let’s not forget those politicians pondering the seriously hard question of whether any lunatic (literally) should be able to buy a gun—and then I take a walk. Or rather, it’s “then we take a walk.” This week, Ralph Vaughan Williams joined me, and excellent company he was. He told me, which I didn’t know, that he had volunteered for World War I when he was 41—well past the age when he was compelled to. And he had served time as an ambulance carrier in the fields. Then he came home and saw the whole thing happening all over again, fifteen years later. He didn’t go, of course, to the Second World War, but he wrote a bitter, very dissonant symphony—completely unlike his usual stuff—about it. Years later, he said, “I don’t know if I like it, but I meant it.”

Second confession—Vaughan Williams died in 1958.

Or not. The music is going strong, there is a Vaughan Williams Society promoting his work, and if his words were resonating in my mind, on the morning trot, well—is he really dead? And so to the greater glory of Vaughan Williams, I wrote a post about him, and put it in a new blog, Words on Musick. (Sorry for the affectation—that “musick” business—but somebody had already got to “music”). The next day I got into Cecilia Bartoli singing all those wonderful arias written for castrati—the ones only a manic singer on cocaine can sing. They’re fun, they’re (mostly) more a romp than music, but who cares? There’s a place for Mozart, a place for Broschi.

Right, so that lead me into the world of the soprano, and I wasted an hour which I cheerfully have watching a BBC documentary on castrati—the singers who had parts removed to preserve their voices. And I discovered two or three remarkable singers. There’s Radu Marian, a guy from Moldavia who for medical reasons never entered puberty (though I noted today that he sports a mustache—don’t know what that’s about….) Anyway, Radu has a clean, high voice—fully soprano, very pure, and yes, I mean it when I say high. He could break glass.

Another singer, as well, Michael Maniaci, who like Radu never entered puberty—they’re both astonishing singers. Right, so it felt that the world needed to hear me weigh in on this, so I wrote about that.

It’s unfortunate, how easily just doing something three days in a row becomes a habit. What to write about today?

Well, there is the intemperance of commentary on YouTube; has anyone noticed it besides me? Or is it that musicians—I’m skating quite close to the truth, here, just to mix a metaphor—are an irritable, irascible bunch? Anyway, the YouTubians / YouTubists / YouTubers / nothing-satisfies-the computer-these-days are going at each other with sabers over the question of Simone Kermes. Here is one of the more temperate remarks—I fear to introduce the more incendiary to the Gentle Readers of this blog:

Whatever she's taken, I think I want some too! She has such a gorgeous voice but the coloratura just isn't accurate at ALL from the word go although she has way better technique than Bartoli (it's hard to do it properly!) All this drunk-auntie-at-a-wedding dancing, what is all that about? It is so vulgar I actually sort of love it. Quite frankly the best Rodelinda in the world (IMO) doesn't need to "prove" she can sing this (or not). 8/10 for singing, 10/10 for chutzpah!

This from the hugely talented and universally acclaimed…La Prima Ragazza.

I think you get my point. One of the reasons nobody listens to classical music much is that regular people have been snobbed out of it. Yeah, in the movies, classical music is OK. But actually go to a concert, with all the formality, the protocol, the anxiety of when you’re supposed to clap…. And what if you don’t like the music?

Well, Kermes gets called by Mosart200657 “The Operatic Lady Gaga,” so I decided to check her out. And here she is, romping her way through Come Nave in mezzo all’onde.

Well, as always, I’m mixed about it all. I think Ian Bostridge said it best: pop music is now the mainstream; if you really want to be counterculture, listen to Mozart. And isn’t it hypocritical to keep viewing popular music as somehow the underdog?

And why does Simone Kermes have to emulate Lady Gaga? Why does she have to sell herself—isn’t the voice and the music enough?

That said, I’m not so sure that I can comfortably pan her. If she wants to romp around on-stage, why not? Yes, it’s all a bit campy, it may also distract from the aria, but it’s another point of view, it’s something to see. My only problem with it is that Kermes will never out-gaga Gaga.

When are we going to admit the truth?

She easily out-sings her.