EXPERIENCING BELGIUM
Monday, March 20, 2006
Gving Thanks for Belgium and the Belgians
Posted by Matthew Crouch at 18:55It’s easy when experiencing Belgium as I have to become absorbed by everything about Belgium and the Belgians that can be difficult or tedious. Every so often I have to take a step back and run an inventory on my life before Belgium and after Belgium. Despite the persistent damp weather and the people from these here southern lowlands who often times reflect the weather in their personalities – well - I really have more to be thankful here than my previous life in the Vaderland in the US of North America. Of course the sky overhead is not dramatic here in the ways they were back home and the seasons are always a bit dimmer than from my Ohio years. You have to pay attention more and look for the subtle shifts in the season in these parts of old Flanders. Back home in old Ohio the weather changes were often times extreme, sensual and nearly psychotic in their procession. Here there can be the most awe inspiring afternoon light in the clouds. The light will look celestial and the clouds seem to literally break apart to give way to something called Heaven. I can tolerate the rampant air, noise and light pollution of Belgium and indeed perhaps even forgive Belgium for it. I often times wonder how much Diesel, mercury and lead have accumulated in my veins yielding my crazy hot headed Americaness to raise its dubious head and voice. In this sense of a toxic world the whole of Europe is ailing as much as anywhere else. At least we here are to some degree conscious of the earth, air, water and noise if not the light pollution. Although the infamous Belgian light pollution has entered even the consciousness of the Belgians who are beginning to delight in de-lite-ing Belgium to see the night sky, many for the first time over their own country.
You see unlike the Americans the Belgians do travel to unique and awesome places. It only takes one night in Namibia or in Jordan’s desert or in say Bolivia or even Southern Morocco and you learn what the night sky is all about. The Belgians do go to these exotic places for nature and only incidentally look up and become knocked out by the majesty of the unexpected galactic night sky. Now the Belgians are asking why are pay to light the night sky with an intense sodium orange? Why illuminate the many streets of Belgium dissolving any hiding space of refuge? Once upon a time the stereotypical thief from this part of the world wore all black and carried a flashlight and skulked from one place to another in dark recesses. Someone with a flashlight was a suspect now thieves don’t even need a flashlight the way is already well lighted for them. Indeed the electric company manipulating politics to light every corner of the world might just be the real thieves. Pandering the idea of fearing the thieves and you can manipulate a populace to pay a massive electric bill to an international elite of ruthless Oligarchs – or in the American’s case fight for a corporations greedy interests in the name of war and democracy.
But I digress.
I am writing to give thanks for Belgium and indeed unlike the land of my birth my new homeland is getting better. It is sincerely a relief to live amongst a society rising above history, politics and shame while rebuilding their corner of the world to be a better place. You have to love Belgium for standing up to global henchman in word and deed (even if those very henchmen inevitably retaliate behind the scenes to manipulate and economically undermine an autonomous) land for possessing an admirable and just conscience for humanities welfare.
In Belgium we have everything that the American’s from their Marshall plan days taught was good about forging out a new state from the shackles of history. Ironically places like Belgium and Germany and now even Arabia along with every other corner of Europe have performed better in these very ideas of a society the Americans once stood for. If you are looking for the land of the free and the home of the brave try Belgium – you might just be surprised – if you can get used to the damp.
Even poor old Brussels has risen like a phoenix from the cold wet ashes of a post World War II building and demolition scheme to create a mini New York City in a once grand old Dame of a city that the old Belgian King Leopold II gave a dramatic face lift to ages ago. Indeed Brussels sustained more self inflicted colossal infrastructure damage from greedy and ignorant developers since the 1958 world Expo than from World War II fighting. I first saw Brussels in the summer heat wave of 1992 – the city facades were dirty and blackened by diesel grime and streaked with acid rain marks. By 5pm the city life vanished in a mass exodus to the suburbs and the only life of the weekends were found occassionally after midnight at the grand parties of the enigmatic now sadly gone and forgotten by restoration at the old Vaud Ville Theatre.
And yet Brussels is still rising out from under all those cars and trucks. Life in the streets without automotives is returning. The people of Brussels are becoming curious about its paved over rivers and islands in the old city as our collective consciousness rises with the water level: They aren't urban myths those rivers and islands are still down beneath the paving stones clogged with the sewage of ages. I remember bicycling around la Villette in ’97 and not seeing one single fellow cyclist now even in the cold and snow or rain you share the streets with your fellow bicycling comrades. Indeed often times in the center those on bicycles will make better progress in traffic than their four wheeled, automotive, war fueling, oxygen polluting bourgeois alternative types will.
These days and nights the streets of old Brussels are alive well past midnight and even until the morning arrival of bridge and tunnel type and track type commuters from the suburbs and provinces arrive. In a land like Belgium the cafes set their own time without dubious liquor laws. Cannabis isn’t a sin although the EU might just take away all rights for tobacco smokers – but in a world with grand old out door public rooms smokers aren’t put off by being put outside with their beers in fresh air anyways. I wish I could go back in time to late nineteen-eighties when I was lost in gay old Ohio depressed by being stuck in a boring part of the world trapped by nickled and dimed wages trying to better myself to no avail. I wish I could go back in time and cheer up that loner version of myself and say you won't believe this but in a few years time everything you know and take for granted will not exist for you in old Ohio in the monotony of suburban midwest. You might not believe it but you'll be counted among the Belgians - not that back then I knew who or where the Belgian's were!
While the US tortures it’s own citizens with issues of economic paralysis for low wage labor - while hypocritically being among the worlds wealthiest nations – denying less fortunate Americans healthcare while having simultaneously the best care in the world; By denying the less fortunate debt saddled poor transportation alternatives; the Americans are forced to support the “war in Iraq” at every petrol station they are required to frequent and pay homage to with their dollars just to get to work and back in their broken down rusty jalopies. American’s will go without a roof over their head before giving up their automotives and there are few dignified home ownership options for the hard working laborers called the working poor of America.
God Bless Belgium and give me a life in Belgium any day over the drudgery of life in the States. We Belgians might not appreciate being the warmest people amongst ourselves unless discreetly tucked away behind closed doors! In those salons of privacy where we also cultivate our unique and varied senses of humor! We might mistrust someone who smiles while chewing gum and talks too much but we are hard at work making a nation that takes care of itself while establishing a world for the better not worse. We have Healthcare, transportation and housing options and culturally enriching public funded arts all of which to be proud of. Ideas we here probably learned by Ms. Liberty's example that the Americans before they became monopolized by military based industrial corporation schemes lost via their credit card debts in exchange for a materiality the American's didn’t even need… I might be American made myself but there is very little anymore made in America that did not arrive from China. I might be American made and genuinely mistrustful of Monarchs and their Kingdoms -having grown up in a land that threw out a Crown ages ago – But Georges Bush I and II if nothing else taught me how to live in a monarchy! In the twisted world of 21st century life – I live in a land of the free with a modest King and Queen who give a polite nod toward style and high Art. They are a Belgian thing – not my thing – but I respect a land that shares its wealth with those in need of a job or who for health reasons cannot make a living or make ends meet. I respect a world with appalling weather that works hard to keep a roof over everyone head – whether they are citizens or just passing through or even here illegally. I respect a world that cultivates freedom of thought, expression, speech, gathering, enterprise and publishing while providing sanctuary for religious interests while working hard to keep religion out of the state governance. I just pray that Bush guy in Washington and his various henchmen and women involved in spreading an unrestrained malignant and socially destroying form of economic corporate fascism stay away from Belgium and the rest of us in the land of the free and new home of the brave in exile in the new EUtopia of good ol' Europe.
Thursday, March 16, 2006
I Do Not Know if it is Even Legal to Think This Way Much Less to Self Publish Such Thoughts
Posted by Matthew Crouch at 01:01
Here is the document I signed and below is my big textual signature.
YOUR COMMENT TO CONGRESS
TO: Your Senators
CC: (Your Representative)
FROM: (Your Name and Email)
SUBJECT: Censure President Bush
__________
Dear Senators,
(Your personal note)
President Bush should be censured for breaking the law by illegally wiretapping American citizens.
When the president misleads the public and the Congress and willfully and repeatedly breaks the law, there need to be some consequences --that's how the law works for everybody else. Censuring the president is a reasonable first step in condemning his actions.
Sincerely,
(Your Name)
(Your Address)
Given that I live abroad and generally only phone home to North America and then only to speak to my Father or a few friends back in old Ohio - I assume a hand full of “intelligence” agencies listen in on my private Trans Atlantic phone calls. I believe the Bush II Administration is guilty of much more than this. Censure is too polite a word. Was Mussolini censured? He was hung out to dry on a wall with his wife for Corporatism and crimes against humanity. Politically speaking Italy hasn’t even yet recovered stability since the aftermath of the Mussolini regime. Take a lesson. To think we thought Clinton was a liar - compared to this Bush II administration and all the Democrats and Republicans who prop up this dictator and his administration - well - fornication in the Oval Office was just something to snicker about.
I do not want on my hands the blood of our service men and women, or the people of Iraq, or the suffering in US run detention centers around the world to be on my conscience and before my God. This government and nation is way out of bounds. What Eisenhower and Benjamin Franklin warned us about - despotism - has set in. It is time for house cleaning at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and within the Pentagon. We must take a stand against this as we did with the Crown ages ago for now it is a moral obligation upon every American citizen’s shoulders. We are now obligated to clean house and tax the corporations responsible for this mess to rebuild the nation so We the People can restore our government and aim toward Democracy with a clean conscience.
Our Republican and complicit Democrat leaders in support of the current administration are an insult to We the People - Just how stupid do you think We the People are? Just how much more do our criminal leaders think they can get away with at our national expense? Is the US going to be a sovereign Nation or privatized country club for a few corporations and their CEO’s at the expense of admirable and educated citizenry intent on building a great nation?
Let us re-examine our foreign policies with Korea, Viet-Nam, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Colombia, Guatemala… Can our Republican and Democrat leaders please read up on our involvement with undermining Iran’s President Mossadegh in 1953. Now we have made Iraq of today where our policy seems to be to divide a nation along ethnic and religious lines to reduce its basic social fabric to non-existence to control Iraq’s assets for a few henchmen running our Corporate-ocracy back home. Would someone just tell us why the US Government is doing this? Why are we the American’s so brazenly acting beyond reasonable state and moral limits? Is it really only incessant greed that has destroyed a great experiment in Democracy? Would someone please tell me where I can return my US citizenship – I do not want to be a part of this criminality any longer…
Tuesday, March 14, 2006
Only in that Infamous Guantanamo Bay Prison Will I Be Able to Sleep
Posted by Matthew Crouch at 17:09Experiencing Belgium replies to Ohio politicians lies and misinformation.
The following is a personal response to an e-mail received from an Ohio Senator which is posted below this transmission.
My guess is the DeSwine office replied to me personally via contact information from MoveOn dot Org – I don’t recall sending DeSwine or his office a personal e-mail and neither do I see myself on a first name basis with him or any one who works for him… He and his office can write me a Dear Sir or a “Dear Mister Crouch”, letter but not a “Dear Matthew” – we are not on a first name basis if we were the DeWine office would have written to me from an e-mail address that accepts personal e-mail replies…
Not until Mike DeWine and his office can recite by elementary memorization the Bill of Rights will I have any respect for these types of henchmen and henchwomen and those in between. As a citizen taxpayer consumer that is not too much to expect of an elected “official”. Memorize and abide by Bill of Rights and stop perpetuating fear and stand up for something real.
Actually this DeSwine e-mail which slimed it’s way into my inbox ended up being caught in one of my junk mail filters which is a relief because it is truly a load of junk. I like how the e-mail starts all form letter like – thank you for contacting me – (well you aren’t welcome actually I’m pissed off at you and incidentally at all the Republicans and Democrats and Naderites like you) – then IMMEDIATELY the propaganda starts…
“As you know following the attacks of September…”
We all know which attack as CNN drilled it into or psyche’s so much that this information is now etched into our genetic make up and will now be passed on in our DNA to all subsequent generations.
We are like Pavlovs Dogs – when we hear or see or read 9 11 September 11th, 2001 or WTC or United Flight 666 whatever and like ding, ding, ding, ding, pin ball like machine bells and whistles go off in our minds and we become zombies and do and say whatever we are told. Like what do these people in power at the State, Federal and Military Industrial Complex level think we are – Idiots? Who works for whom? Whenever I coincidentally look at my digital clock and it reads in red letters 9:11 then ding, ding, ding... if I hear a plane flying over head ding, ding, ding then I see the crash and burn followed by the pillars of smoke crumbling to the ground. But I come out of my shock stupor when I then inadvertently imagine their Pentagon broken and in pieces and on fire then I get a smirk on my face as Allah almighty God guides my wayward mind back to reality.
These Ohio “yes men” Republicans are doing only what is easy exactly what the Bush II military administration tell them – DeWine has no originality he can’t even do the job he is elected to do in such a way as not to jeopardize his political “career”; he does what he is told from the top and not from the constituents at the bottom and willingly milks Nine-Eleven for all it’s worth. He is a carpet bagger pandering “terror” fear and paranoia so we the People will throw out out our last protection on earth the Bill of Rights. So yeah some Ohio types know what’s going on even if our representatives don’t. You are not a politician unless you stand up for something that will risk your “political career”.
Burn the Bill of Rights, Eliminate the Constitution by legal maneuvering based on the concept of “terror” - without these obstacles then those we “elect” can eliminate their constituents who disagree or oppose the Bush II administrations self constructed fairy tale of the Al Qaeda myth. Throw your annoying opposition in a prison even Hitler of the Israeli’s would be proud of or likewise have protesters murdered behind their homes at night and cover up the job as if it were anonymous black urban violence.
This is Ohio and so goes Ohio so goes the Nation – the Fast Food capital of the world – now there is something to be proud of and the waistlines of gluttony prove it.
Fuck You OHIO your only relevant claim to fame is you paved over with parking lots and strip malls and industrial farming the natural landscape Jefferson praised – Ohio lies under a brown haze of putrid hamburger stench and frying grease. To cope, a large percentage of the state of Ohio smokes black market dope illegally grown in Meigs County by university students. Fuck you Ohio for being Bush II accomplices. Fuck you Ohio for a second illegal term from two jerry-rigged elections. Fuck you Ohio you get what you deserve – lives worked out of and shopped in those stores of your beloved needful things - cheap sheds of shopping called Wal-Mart, Meijer, K-mart, Giant Eagle, Whole Foods, Borders, Barns and Nobles, Petmart, Gap, Gap kids, McD’s, Burger Grunt, White Castles assholes – how many more shopping malls and acreage of tarmac parking lots will Ohio tolerate from out of state investors until Ohioans can’t afford respectable housing, transportation, basic food and healthcare before the likes of Ohio Republicans are thrown out of their posh lifestyles and into the economic reality they gave to the Ohioans. Incidentally all the boring Democrats can be chucked out with them for following their fear game from the beginning. Naderites included.
And to think this “Senator” and his office signs off his letter respectfully… He doesn’t respect you or me or your land or your town or city or your state or your country or your planet or your eco-sphere. He and his kind are liars and you Ohio and America are in a drug induced sleep.
This ends this transmission from the Experiencing Belgium desk in Brussels where there is the freedom American’s once believed in and died for. There is no freedom of thought in America; there is no freedom of Speech or Press in the United Military States of the America’s and now also of Arabia.
Send me to Guantanamo Bay if you want for thinking and writing as I do. At least there in that illegal Guantanamo military prison my conscience could rest from the guilt by association for the oil blood of Innocent Ohio and other American soldier boys seduced into their military deaths. Torture me please in Guantanamo Bay as if it were Abu Ghraib – torture me so I can forget what we are doing to our own service men and women and a whole nation minding its own business. Torture me until death arrives in sweet relief from the guilt of this corporate war and crime against humanity. My conscience would sleep better at night if this Beast of our present state of a Nation weren’t killing genuine decent human citizens of Iraq – I do not want their blood and suffering on my hands or conscience. I do not support the Bush I and II administrations and their extension of the Reagan militarized administration which trained and paid for the Mujahadeen of Afghanistan to fight the Soviets. If America would just clean up its own massively decaying, polluted and unsightly once majestic backyard in North America then we could stop being guilty for the perpetual ghosts of previous administrations mischief abroad for personal corporate Bush profit. It’s bad enough we stole our land from an indigenous population only to pollute it beyond belief before teaching Israel how to do likewise.
I Do NOT want to be considered American. Show me where and how to resign away my American citizenship and I will gladly do so to relieve my aching conscience. For me Nine Eleven was a huge relief because we deserved it. I do not support these administrations of my home state and country. I do not want to be held accountable for this war for these unwarranted corporate reasons. What America and Israel are doing is unconscionable and there is no justification when clearly these people in power must incessantly purvey fear to justify their manipulations of history and humanity.
Drafting Legislation in Ohio That Would Authorize Surveillance
Posted by Matthew Crouch at 15:17March 2, 2006
Dear Matthew:
Thank you for contacting me. As you know, following the attacks of September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush authorized the National Security Agency (NSA) to begin monitoring international phone calls in which one party is in the United States and one party is a member, or suspected member, of a terrorist organization. In a time of national emergency, I expect the President to take such actions to protect our Nation, even if those actions are not specifically authorized by statute.
Public and congressional awareness of the program now has caused a great deal of debate and has sparked a series of hearings in the Senate Judiciary Committee and briefings in the Senate Intelligence Committee; I am a member of both committees and have participated fully in these hearings and briefings.
There are legal and constitutional questions about whether the President must, after a period of time, come to Congress for statutory authorization of the NSA program. Certainly the country and the President would be stronger with such authorization. I believe that statutory authorization and congressional oversight for this program would avoid a divisive debate in Congress and throughout the Nation. That is why I am drafting legislation that would authorize the surveillance of terrorist communication, but would also ensure substantial congressional oversight.
Again, thank you for contacting me. Please feel free to contact me anytime with additional questions or concerns.
Very respectfully yours,
MIKE DeWINE
United States Senator
RMD/bf
Disclaimer: The email account that this message originated from does not accept inbound messages, therefore please send all electronic correspondence through our webform located at: http://dewine.senate.gov.
Monday, March 06, 2006
OsKarZ with Kalashnikov fantasies
Posted by Matthew Crouch at 15:55Last night I unwillingly caught a glimpse of the Oscars – while tossing and turning with another night of insomnia in Brussels, Villette I defaulted into watching TV – At that hour that means channel surfing through boring Euro zones via cable. I have never been able to stomach the osKars… I am impervious to its magic appeal. I suppose I could watch it if I recorded it and could fast forward through what I don’t like about it… (I say that every year and every year I forget) I turned the OskarZ on accidentally while channel surfing paused when I saw scenes from The Corpse Bride – then scenes from the newest Wallace and Gromit which I haven’t seen… then I realized it was the OsKarz and I was like, oh dear… there is Tim Burton in gentlemanly form getting sidelined to some very annoying Britishers. Not that I don’t like Wallace & Gromit but the Corpse Bride was a First and Wallace & Gromit are like on their 3rd sequel by now…
Then a mechanical wax museum like effigy of Dolly Parton was rolled out onto that Las Vegas-esque stage looking like a hybrid feminine Frankenstein constructed out of discarded Barbara Streisand, Joan Collins and Joan Rivers body parts. This monstrosity happened to jerk around like a marionette on strings or dare I say a Ms. Bojangles… while appearing like a science fiction androne cybergenetic genetically modified clone based loosely on the corpse of a pseudo country “western” signer based in Appalachia and that nasty Nashville… sss$nAyshVille - Actually I am something of fan within reason to Ms. Parton and her career – but what I saw on stage representing Dolly Parton looked like a public service announcement on why NOT to have plastic surgery. But the mechanical jerkiness of the andrones movements suggested an electronically controlled armature underneath all that padding and stretched, genetically modified, begged, borrowed or stolen, human skin. But where was Dolly? She was probably in the TV land audience looking like everyone’s dignified grandmother, with thinning white hair with a body incapable of defying gravity on its own all while going unnoticed watching the spectacle and gasping wondering who that mess on stage was supposed to be…
“noooo that isn’t supposed to be meeee – that’s not in my contract!!!!!!!!!!”
then going back to knitting in her rocking chair while keeping a weary eye on the computer tracking her vast economic empire. Somehow I prefer Johnny Cash courageously aging naturally in everyone's face and nearly dying as such in an unforgettable last Music Video performance. Perhaps Ms. Parton is an American national collective pychic Grandmother of sorts and maybe it would behoove her to act like one while onstage!
With all due respect for an Appalachian sister, like that other Oscar – Mr. Wilde said “negative attention is better than no attention”…
My pal and comrade Bart told me on Anspach Blvd - (la Villette’s answer to Santa Monica) today in that pretend 70’s skyscraper zone that looks like it belongs in some Matrix post apocalypse scene - that Brokeback lost to Jim Jarmusch’s Crash*… Shame on Jim… What I don’t get is the last time I saw Crash it was some movie by someone important – a boring movie in fact mixing pornographic titillation with automotive destruction – that crazy movie lost in an alternative OzCarz that year to the Beloved John Greyson and his delightful Canadian feature film-ette titled Lillies… So for that reason I haven’t even had any desire whatsoever to see the new and improved Crash. Maybe Jarmusch’s Crash (actually Broken Flowers) is a good movie but I still have the heebeegeebees from the last on screen Crash from the previous decade.
The only entertaining moment of the Oskars of that brief visit I made – was watching Reese Witherspoon so charmingly fiddle with those annoying envelopes that are so characteristic of the misery of the Oskars. Women dressed to the hilt with layers of fake nails on their finger tips trying to casually open those anachronistic paper envelopes while employing all the crass waspy poise of 1950’s Beauty Pageant – at least Ms. Witherspoon could do that with her trademark irony and compelling smugness over the absurdity of it all. Or so I see her. She was the highlight of my fifteen minute visit with that abominable Hollywood institution - the Wizard of Oz-Carz. I just can’t wait until the day when all those oversized plastic oskar effigies come magically to life from all of Hollywoods hysterical self centered paganism and yielding Kalishnikovs those golden calves take to the stage to machine gun down anything in the audience that moves. Now that would be something to watch and remember! As it is last nights oskars was just another expensive but cheap spectacle best forgotten already: A carnival of Vanity and an exercise in gluttonous Futility intended to distract American’s from what their President and his administration are doing and not doing in Iraq and elsewhere.
*This is blatant mis-information as Jim Jarmusch has nothing what-so-ever to do with either Crash movies. Jim Jarmusch movies are excellent and powerful masterpieces which have molded and shaped my life with their imagery. Life in Villette is chock full of mis-information do like we do and deal with it.
...Or like my very special pal back home explained to me: "Crash has nothing to do with Jarmusch, Crash is some ridiculous Hollywood exercise in self-congratulation over its supposed liberalism. Also (this Crash) has nothing to with the (19)90's movie same-titled by David Cronenberg. The Oscar-hogging Crash is a piece of garbage and too many people voted for it in order to have a reason NOT to vote for BBM (Brokeback Mountain). I can’t get too excited about any of it - Nice that George Clooney won, and the script writers and director for BBM".
By the way Crash when pronounced in proper Ohio dialect is two syllables with a y sound in between... say it this way "KraY-ssSH"
