Occupation of Independence

I woke up at 1 a.m. last week. Something was different. I was just too cold to sleep, despite wearing a winter parka to bed, as well as boots, polartec pants, and a warm skull cap, all underneath two layers of warm sleeping bags. The catalytic propane heater was set on high; those things are fine for a mobile RVer who chases the warmth in winter, but in a real winter they must be supplemented with an electric heater that blows the air around a little. For the first time the electrical heater also needed to be clicked on high. I made breakfast, not because I was hungry, but just for the heat from the stove and for an excuse to stand and stomp my feet. The water pump wouldn't turn on of course. (I never use water hoses from the campsite spigot in winter.) But tonight was a first: the toilet froze. It was necessary to boil water on the stove and then pour it into the toilet to thaw the trap door. The water that I spilled on the bathroom floor soon froze. The thermometer said it w

It's probably true that a blogger is getting lazy and isn't adding that much value if he slips into being a mere retailer of other people's original content. Still, sometimes I can't resist. Finding a needle in the internet haystack does have a certain amount of value. Here is an audio clip by Eric Margolis, a writer who actually knows something about America's Raj in southwest Asia and the Middle East. You won't hear about him in the mainstream media. You can just push the play button to hear the audio clip on your computer. You don't have to have some gadget like an iPod.

You probably wouldn't believe me if I claimed there was already a movie about the Egyptian uprising. OK, that would be an exaggeration. But movies can sometimes express the nature of political maneuvering better than thick, scholarly books that bury the essence of things under a mountain of extraneous details. There is no excuse to do so, because politics is not terribly intellectual or complex. It is irritating to wade through 500 pages of verbiage to get at the point of the whole thing. For instance, in Braveheart a rebellion starts up in Scotland, against the English king. The lairds of Scotland had lands and titles in both Scotland and England. They played a duplicitous game regarding the rebellion, and it came across so clearly in the movie. I have no particular criticism to aim at the current president regarding his handling of the Egyptian uprising, since if the other party was in the White House they might have already sent in the Marines while they gave speeches promisi

Most of my grocery shopping is done at an Albertson's that is a five minute walk from my RV park. They made quite a fuss out of rearranging the store recently, moving things from one aisle to the next. It wasn't a remodeling or an improvement; just a reshuffling. Over the years I've memorized the prices pretty well. The store actually has great loss-leader sales, which are the only things I buy. It has always surprised me that a security guard doesn't block my entrance into the store. During all the commotion of the great reshuffling I noticed that some of the prices had gone up 25%. Or had I noticed them? Maybe my memory was playing tricks on me. Say, wait a minute, I still have a good memory. Something else was going on, and it smelled fishy. The last few days the news media has actually done a little honest-to-goodness investigative reporting about repackaging at the grocery store. For example the food company can reduce the size of the product from 16 ounces to 14

Update: An editorial has recently popped up on CNN that overlaps with this post. When Egypt shut down the internet, the blogosphere reacted with surprise and indignation. Why so? Did they think the internet was sacred or untouchable? Forget about Egypt for a minute and think of the stereotypical cartoon of a revolution in a South American kleptocracy. When the junta finally reaches the tipping point, they send troops to the national radio or TV station and proclaim victory. Then they send troops to the presidential palace where they kill anybody still there. In all likelihood the deposed dictator absconded in a private jet, a few hours earlier, with a suitcase full of gold bars and his beautiful wife, 28 years his junior. But it isn't just dictatorships. Freedom-praising democracies have controlled radio and television for many decades, in the name of the "people" of course. The most egregious example is the BBC in England. I used to think this was such a contradicti

It's so tiring to keep up with all the amazing developments in the Middle East. I need to come up for air and find something light. This winter I am putting the cold dry air to good use by walking to downtown more than in the past. It takes about 40 minutes, the back way, which is mostly dirt single-track. How nice it is to have a trail in town. Walking in town, away from traffic, is more interesting than an artificial hike in a boring forest. First we hung out at the coffee shop, where Coffee Girl (my kelpie dog) charmed the socks off 90% of the customers. (And I tend to think there is something wrong with the remaining 10%.) Then we headed over to the food co-op (blush) where I bought all of one thing. Today I decided to wait, since there were a dozen kids' bicycles outside; they were all inside, stocking up on something. They all came out at once. Immediately a half dozen girls, 8-10 years old, were cooing and giggling and fawning over Coffee Girl, and oh (!) how she glo

The punditry and politicians in Western democracies are offering advice to Egyptians, as fast as they can type or talk. It is sheer presumptuousness.  They offer noble-sounding platitudes about "orderly change" and "stability" and "dialogue." Who do they think the Egyptians are rebelling against: high-minded English of the Victorian Age? You don't get rid of a dictator by gradual reforms. The fact that Western advice takes the form of meaningless platitudes shows that Western pundits and politicians are in denial -- no pun intended -- about the kind of government we have been sending billions of dollars to, over the last thirty years. It also covers their own crimes.   Listen to their sanctimonious advice about keeping demonstrations peaceful. Did America use a non-violent approach to throwing off oppression in 1776? What country did? What gives Westerners the right to pass judgment on the Arabs' revolution? The only merit that Westerners can c

The excitement in the Middle East has forked up that mouldering compost heap of half-forgotten quotes that is this old man's mind. First I thought back to the Iranian Revolution in 1979 or 1980. A feminist from the USA went over to Iran -- why, I don't know. Did she really think that mullahs and ayatollahs believed in "You've come a long way, baby!", and that she would help craft a new society? Maybe she thought she would at least get enough publicity to lead to a career as a professional feminist; after all, fellow travelers in the Media were eagerly hoping for a modern day version of Emma Goldman in the heady days of the Bolshevik Revolution. If memory serves, the American feminist was told to get out of Iran.   Other famous revolutions started coming to mind. What was that quote from the poet Wordsworth about the intoxication of hope in the early days of the French Revolution, and something about being young? I tried BrainyQuotes dotcom. What a worthless webs

The Iron Curtain was lifted about 20 years ago. If you are old enough to remember it at all, do you remember how unexpected, sudden, and easy it seemed? It didn't seem real. Why hadn't the possibility of Communism suddenly unraveling been predicted by the Media, presidential candidates, foreign policy experts, or learned professors? Things are happening fast in the greater Middle East these days. Is it crazy to expect something really big to happen, despite the rather modest events so far? Remember how the protests in the Gdansk Poland shipyard started off modestly around 1981? I don't think anyone should get carried away and expect Islamic countries in that part of the world to suddenly become "normal." People in the West might start reading wildly hopeful reports about no-more-torture, democracy, women's rights, legalized wine in restaurants, and scientifically-designed playgrounds for children, but recall that most revolutions end up under the thumb of s

The other day I wrote about our financial problems in light of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. If nothing else it was fun to consider the irony, considering who the current president is. But the other day I saw a word applied to our financial problems that I've never seen before: pensioners are cannibalizing the young. (Sorry, I forgot the source; it might have been myBudget360.com.) A picture is supposed to be worth a thousand words. This was a case in which one word was worth a thousand words. This has never happened before to me, as a reader. American Baby Boomers inherited the mightiest industry in the world; we bequeath a hollowed-out wreck. We frolicked in the freedom of the 1960s and 1970s; we leave the youngsters a militarized-security-police state. Our parents showed us what a stable nuclear family was like; we raised the young in a bombed-out divorce culture. Just think how cheap it was to go to college or buy a house when Baby Boomers were young; now look