EXPERIENCING BELGIUM

Experiencing Ohio: The Prodigal Son Revisits Dollville

2007-06-26T16:44:00.000+02:00

The Experiencing Belgium desk is once again being broadcast to you from abroad. We (me, myself and I) are coming to you from Central Ohio - Revisiting family and enjoying horizonal horizon lines, big sky, hot and mostly dry weather. Observing life wherever I am from my dislocated vantage point on the world I inhabit from the confines of my tricky brain.

Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders once sang of going back to Ohio. Given the lyrics of that song she wrote I doubt she returned. Meanwhile we here at the Experiencing Belgium desk on location in Ohio just Wikipedia'd the information on Chrissie Hynde I was refering to and discovered much to my surprise that Rush Limbaugh used this uncanny song on his radio show - not surprisingly without permission for quite some time. Ms Hynde much to my pleasure contributed those settled on profits to PETA. Ethical Treatment of Animals is hard to come by from a part of a world that has no ethical treatments for the land it stole from the indiginous people who once had this land a more civilized place than the USA now is or at this rate ever will be. Ethical Treatment of animals is hard to come by from a state that doesn't really have a good history with ethical treatment of its human inhabitants who are daily fed McDonalds at the greasy fried food feeding stations.

So the Experiencing Belgium Desk has gone back to its old Ohio origins. I am not a rock star with an income that persists off of lyrics I previously wrote or songs I never sang on the road tours I never made. From contracts I never had. So why have I gone back - because I can. Despite my attempts to get stripped of my US citizenship for expressing my dissent and discontent with the state of the states by excercizing my rights to freedom of speech and expression and religion - I did not get stripped of my citizenship in the states. The petty brain dead homeland security thugs who welcomed me at JFK let me back in at the border, so I here I am writing to you from my origin on planet earth. Those very brain dead thugs who do nothing whatsoever to bolster my confidence in the third world quality of US airports and skyway security.

It only took me one trip through a UAE airport on even economical Gulf Air to wake me up that all is not well with the airlines in and out of the US of A. Talk about being ripped off by uncle Sam. Dubai is more of what the American Dream is about than anything you can see from the car or plane when traipsing through JFK or Laguardia. Those two airports look like something left over from the surplusses and excesses of the 1950's and 1960's Doris Day like make believe material worlds of forgotten and discarded American Airline dreams - dreams that went down with Pan Am and Allegheny Airlines or Trans World Airlines - to name but a few.

I am a bit ashamed of what greets tourists coming to the states for the first time to see the American Dream and majestic landscapes that called to them. So I flew back to the states to visit dear old dad. The Homeland Security systems that greeted me went through each and every photo I brought from my travels abroad since home last from the exotic Arabia Felix. The security guy was pleased with himself for taking as much time going through each photo slowly so as to take enough time for me to get bumped off my commuter flight to home in Ohio - and ignoring the rest of my baggage contents. Was any security precaution met by his looking at my personal photos as if I were showing him about travels like I would my family? He certainly saw things he had never seen before and lost his somewhat professional demeanor when cultural curiousity and fascination from an unknown and exotic (to statesiders) land kicked in. Those few non-professional travel photos I made while in Yemen do have a power from their contents. It's not my camera use that has the power captivate it is the beauty of the land from the Prophets that mesmerizes the viewer.

So the Homeland Insecurity Thug who intentionally took his time like an Israeli guard before a citizen of Palestine at an Israeli Occupied Forces Checkpoint did get me delayed enough to get bumped off my Delta connection flight. This is why I despise the American airlines - all of them. This whole system of getting bumped off flights is trickery for greedy airlines - airlines who over price tickets and employ security tactics built on fear of terrorism to exact profits from compliant consumer air travelers. This is not a nation this is one big collective strip mall in a once was born out from statesmanship.

"...Hi, welcome to America, we are on an Orange Alert for terrorism, You have been bumped off your connection from a trans-Atlantic long haul flight because of terrorism - Homeland inSecurity takes time you know - even though your flight hasn't left yet - fifty other people were vying for your seat - and in the interest of our profits we sold it to them - have a nice day and fly Delta/American/United/etc again..." But not on the ticket you bought and paid for abroad at your flight origin...

Now I am no fan of Angloland over there in the USA-UK especially Heathrow - like JFK - is best to be avoided when flying. However upon arriving late in the UK at Heathrow my flight from Bru-town airport in Zaventem, Belgium - (built by Hitler and his henchmen) - was beyond late from such a short flight. And yet the kind folk at Heathrow professionally doing their security and airline work told me to run that my connection (on a big old Jumbo jet no less) was waiting on me and to RUN. I did run and run through that massive airport. It seemed they kept that big ol' plane waiting on me and shut the door behind me. Compared to my third world reception at JFK, Heathrow was delux and we all know Heathrow has been so third-world-esque for quite sometime - ask any Australian traveler.

So at JFK I went back to British Airways to inquire about how to get home as my Delta connection was no longer valid. They could get me on a flight out of Laguardia or I could go the next day if I had friends to stay at in New York City! Compare that to my last 17 hour layover in the UAE where I was put up in a five star hotel in my choice of two - one at the airport or one in the city - I chose the city to see more of the UAE while there. The long taxi drive was worth the views of that strange Emerite in the Arabian Desert. The Hotel nice and the food very good and spicey genuine Pakistani fair and halal! British Airways actually asked me if I had someone I could stay with in New York City - they didn't offer me hotel accomodation because they were all out of hotel vouchers for the day. Not that there weren't empty rooms BA just didn't want to pay for Delta's incompetant standby preferred/bumped off customer flight plan services - the idiots who work at Delta would not make eye contact with me about any of this - so I threw my arms around and called out for someone to please get me on my connection from Belgium to back home. The handsome Seikh guy in the blue turban wouldn't look at me or help - how could he? I am sure he knew my situation because I wasn't the first long haul trans-Atlantic person arriving - within time to ketch their flight - because of getting bumped off the list due to being only slightly delayed at the Israelis Homeland inSecurity at JFK. He was just doing his job by its description - he didn't agree with it but that was how he had to provide customer disservice to ensure his job. Actually all of Delta's personel were of the customer service school you especially get in and around New York City - customer service defined by what the employee cannot do - not by what they can do. Funny though how the feminine types always have such flawlessly manicured extra-long finger nails...

Take my advice if you are a citizen abroad or planning on visiting the US don't do so at this time wait at least a few more decades. Nowadays you will be treated like the criminal you are at the border by Homeland inSecurity Inc. You will thus miss your connection flight and it will be your fault for being a foreigner or a US Citizen who dared go abroad for awhile. If you flew through the UAE you will see what airtravel as defined by the likes of the Americans way back when during the Pan Am age - perfected by amazing airlines like the Emirates or Indonesian and Singapore lines. If you saw those places and airlines then you know that making a US domestic connection is a life risking venture upon third world airways to transport patriotic fat American asses from family styled Casino weekends in Las Vegas.

So here I am back in what I am now calling Yo-Hio. Yo-dude-Ohio - land of astonishingly over weight people hobbling about on two diabetic and swollen ankled feet. Though there appear to be sidewalks they don't get used as walking is grounds for suspect by Homeland inSecurity services inc. Sidewalks are only used by bicycles with training wheels - those kids who then fall with training wheels in place are naturally selected out of the gene pool when they fly off their childs bicycle into the automotive traffic one meter away.

Actually I am here in yo-Hio for my dear pa Kettle is 80 years old. Back in 1989 the doctors gave him six months to live so don't believe anything your doctors or your health care insurance company or commercial TV ads for prescription drugs have to say. My brother and I believe dad will out live us all. That said I confess I needed some big sky, green fields, delapitated old barns, and a bit less people per square kilometer than what is available in Belgique or even Wallonia.

As I had been set up in a flat in Brussel Sint Joost ten Node (Bruxelles Saint Josse t'Noode) or as I called it Quartier San Jose - which just happens to be one of the smallest quartiers in Bru-town and is the most densely populated part of Belgium with the most varied global community residing there - and all contained on built up narrow streets with less than a meter wide sidewalks. I needed some space. Horizontality. Time to be alone - and yes amigo some monolingualism - and of course the certainty of summer which Belgium does not offer.

So I am here in the badlands of Ohio's tarmac parkinglots and strip malls and fast food fry venues along side freeway lanes of aimless traffic littered with corpses of roadkill deer and racoons. Fortunately if you know where to go you can avoid those places and seek out the remnants of an Ohio that Charles Burchfield once found glorious in its mundanity to paint. Thankfully he did paint so we don't forget what Ohio once was and what it could be. I bet he had no idea that Ohio would get progressively worse and not better.

And Ohio is worse even in these more recent times. I was last in Ohio two years ago. Back then people who had great jobs during the end of the Clinton years had been made redundant and were under employed. Most have now moved on into other accomodation and lost their dreams of home ownership. Or at least become disillusioned by it. Although you don't dare say two words - Inflation - or - Depression - Ohio is looking like the present 21st Century version of those misfortunes. Ironically it was Ohio who tipped the scales for Bush II last but nobody told him or more probably they did and he didn't care having gotten what his daddy wanted.

Yet despite all the obvious visual clues about the economic situation in Ohio there seem to be now more than ever more and more retail shopping strips set behind vast acres of asphalt. More roads for more such shopping places are being built or laid out and possibly, perhaps waiting optimistically for an economic tide to change. It won't be long until there is only one farm left in Ohio - after the Amish country secceeds from Ohio to form their own independent territories of the past within this present depressive Ohio.

I think I woke up one morning in Sint Joost from that zolder/grenier apartment to see another depressing Flanders Sky which never in all those years I spent under it felt anything but foreign. I looked at my two passports and thought the blue one gives me the ability to live in the desert or at the artic circle - along one of two Oceans. Or safely locked away in an inland sea of rolling prairie grasses - or at least what was once an inland sea of rolling hills of prairie grasses. I have changed my sky but my mind is still the same. Summer has begun and the heat rises. The sun dries things out until the rain falls and then a hot sticky humidity sets in to these here southern lowlands of North America on the southern side of the Great Lakes. Autumn in all is majestic colorful foliage will come if Judgement day doesn't preceed it followed by a Winter coldness Flanders hasn't seen in ages. I don't know where I will be when but it doesn't matter now that the internet is everywhere - I can be anywhere - even where I am not where I say I am. Though I am not that interesting to fabric such lies. I am here in Old Ohio to be close to dad - to reaquaint myself with my brother and sister and their families intentional and unintentional that they find themselves in.

Ohio when you are away from the rampant excesses of it's military industrial complex economy is astonishingly beautiful. The sky bigger than I remember. The clouds mesmerizing to glance at. The night sky when away from the rampant light pollution of suburban sprawl is unlike anything Flanders has seen in many, many years. There are better places to be with a blue passport. Arizona or Californian or Nevada deserts. Mountains in the pacific northwest which are really like its own Ecotopia nation. Or southern life in hot and humid climates close along the edge of the Gulf of Mexico. There is Appalachia or Rocky Mounain life at high altitudes. Or just getting high and getting by in the interior of Ohio as a metaphor for the whole of the midwest or just a pipe dreaming state of mind.

You can find more out about Experiencing Belgium on experiencing Ohio at
plasticvillette.blogspot.com

if but only they in Ohio knew

2007-04-27T17:46:00.000+02:00

…Just another beautiful day here in Villette la Morte…
The weather has me thinking of spiraea bushes in bloom in Ohio which I think occurs in latter May. When I think of spiraea blooms with their popcorn like blooms on boughs of what also looks like late snow. I think of tall grass, trees with big trunks and huge canopies, wooden houses, porches, rocking chairs and porch swings.
Peeling grey painted porch floor boards where a cigarette pack and a Zippo brand lighter lay abandoned next to a pair of coffee cups (not mugs). Proper cups which sit filled full cooling sweetened with cream and sugar – unintentional café au lait but they didn’t know that then there in the North. That coffee cup resting in its place on a saucer on the porch floor boards along with an elegant and very tarnished silver spoon lying nearby… I remember these familiars to my grandmother and great aunt Ethyl - Ethyl as thin as her sister was fat - whose liver spotted brown hands covered with a transparent skin through which I could see veins and tendons similar to the artwork on the cracked and delicate porcelain coffee wear. Siamese Cats - twins of a sort – named Buttons and Bow's - I don't remember them as two separate cats because they looked alike and were never near each other. Buttons died early so I didn't notice. Buttons and Bow's being in my kid brain one cat who later we called Ms Bow's - a cat called buttons seemed appropriate - cats eye reminding me of buttons blue green tigers eye buttons. I made no association between buttons and bows being sewing items. Bows was like a name that only meant that cat Bows. It didn't refer in my mind to shoe laces or ribbons. Miz Bouwz I suppose was enough. Looking back at my geriatric women hero's from my childhood and seeing that matronly domestic associations for cat names now seems simple minded and pitiful in a way. So I don't choose to remember my dead hero's in that more honest light. I instead think of mystical cat button eyes and the feminist Miz Bouwz with a name without sentimentalist femininity. Miz Bouwz liked to hunt and kill mice for sport and for the sadistic desire to watch her prey suffer for amusement before being disregarded. This is the fierce association I have of the dead women from my Appalachian Irish origin East Ohio Clan.

All of what I remember and miss about Ohio is missed by Ohio herself from beneath the tarmac and stripped mall foundations of concrete and capitalist conspiracies of legislated and legalized greed.

You can never leave anywhere in North America because it all gets paved over while you are gone.

You just must accept the Beast of Capitalism and its familiar of the Concrete Conspiracy and find what’s left which is only a memory of someone else’s forgotten memory anyway. No place is real anymore.

Less and less I suppose of anything is.

When I remember the media circuiting through our collective propagated electronic thoughts the idea that Bin Laden had masterminded, like a board game, the misplaced and misused events of what we know as Nine-Eleven – when Bin Laden was shown saying in sphinx like cat like elegance or having said with subtitles that American will become a shadow of what it once was. Well, the thing is Bin Laden couldn’t have helped to reduce America to a shadow of itself because America already was a shadow of what it once was. America had reduced itself to a shadow of what it once was. That sad fact is what many cannot bear to admit so better blame been hidin’ too long bin Laden.

Don’t believe me? Then look to the buildings of your county seat if you even know you had one or the state of your state’s statehouse. Look to the streets and avenues of your home place. Only ask yourself where has your once grand High and Main streets gone: Out in the rural squalor to be a tarmac retail snake pit experience.

Every obsessively patriotic American should be required to spend a weeks holiday in downtown old town Detroit City for a reality check. So goes Detroit so goes the Nation.

It took the media sacred events of Nine-Eleven to help American’s just to begin to wake up to the fact that somewhere in the latter half of the twentieth century America became a shadow of what it once was – and worse what it once stood for. Thank the trans-national Military Industrial Complex made up of crooked politicians and even greedier corporate exec’s. Bin Laden just opportunistically took advantage of what already was which we all failed to see since Korea and Viet Nam through to not just one big family trip to Iraq but an ongoing and unending ghastly sequel. And now those events past and present have become a memory of a memory and the original event has been misplaced and forgotten - an event that has become a shadow of what it once was. Like New Orleans has become yet another shadow of what it once was. Like Ohio has been for too long a memory of someone else’s forgotten by old age dementia memory.

Read Jean Baudrilliard if you can of Simulation and Simulacra, incomprehensible at first but much less dangerous to the public than that other French philosopher by the name of Sartre. One Ohio virtue is those two writers don’t get read much there.

Ohio and the present day Ohioans no longer remember what they once were. Hard working, well or at least adequately educated and extremely generous folk who longed for a better life who could fiercely speak out if not all out fight in defiance of any form of legislated cruelty…

What Ohioan remembers their past life as determined and dignified guardians of the only form of Public transportation Ohio has ever known – known as the Underground Railroad? The Ohioans and their Old Ohio history was as colorful as the land of the Ohio Territories (the rowdy old, old west that became east of the commercialized old west we collectively remember as a Warner Brother’s cartoon) - that a slave owning President Jefferson wrote of – like love letters to a southern colored mistress livestock property whom he might have lusted for and nurtured and fucked with consent – and like the forgotten wax recording Empress of the Blue’s Bessie Smith so eloquently tied to remind us – that ain’t nobodies business but their own if they do or if you do. I prefer this image of a memory’s memory for Ohio. A politically incorrect black mammy or interracial colored girl with fair curves under beautiful café au lait skin and passionate mysteries modestly concealed, just barely beneath all that Ohio humidity. Fierce defiance with a thinly veiled tribal aboriginal pagan woodland and prairie people’s past civilization lost magic and ritual for surviving the extreme four season’s weather shifts and temperature disparities.

Where did all Ohio’s green go? Now only found on chemically enhanced suburban lawns upon which chemically enhanced suburban youth ignore. Where have the rolling hills gone? Where did the wetlands go – and the migratory birds that depended upon them? Why did all of that same ecosphere the Ohioans depend upon have to be traded to become accessory building parts for meaningless wars in other places on a different side of the planet?

For wars that were fought
For lies to conceal
The profits we made
By our corporate zeal
To employ the voters back home
Who for the price of their laborers’ careers
Many would have to send their son’s as a sacrifice for
Just to feed the rest of the family

This is how the Ohioans stopped being known as Defiant malcontents.
And this is how the Ohioans became Complicit and thus assimilated to what became in truth the economics of Northern Aggression Inc.

There is not one single war in the history of this planet between men that was ever finished or that ever stopped burning in the hearts of men. Every war in some form or another is still burning somewhere on some part of this planet – thriving on blood – like an Anne Rice virtue-less Vampyre.

The Ohio in the history books is made of up of strong men and women with backbone who had they known their very jobs would have cost them their sons those old Ohioans would have chucked their jobs and their homes to keep their sons out of Viet nam or Iraq.

Ohio has always been a hotbed, a loathsome sore spot for the powers that be. Defiant Ohio could start that fearful spark of a revolution of the grass roots sort that might reshuffle the corporate war hawking military industrial complex… Those incorporated Northerly Aggressors that might sell the products of war for unfortunate places to buy if Ohio would just realize the planet is at present a much more peaceful place than all Ohio will ever willingly admit. No one in Iraq or Afghanistan or Cambodia or North Korea wanted what they got from the American’s and neither did the American’s but nobody in Washington asked the Ohioans – because the Ohioans were too busy finding the trappings of discount shopping in the retail snake pits of this present shadow of what America once was - before Bin Laden that enigmatic Arab pop star shot across the media’s sky and showed us what we Americans couldn’t see before us in our very own back yards.

We have only ourselves to blame for the America that is a shadow of what it once was for our grand parents and great grandparents and all the men from all those wars who died so that we could what? Shop and sit in traffic and set up house in cheap plastic housing?

If we could show todays average Ohioan in their present material lifestyle to any of the real hero’s of the American Revolution, the Civil War, the Spanish American War, The Great War, The Sequel and its ever the moreso hallowed and sacred Holocaust – if we could show to the service men and women who died in those places – what they died for as seen today in any corner in Sleepy Ohio – methinks they would have burned their drafts cars in dignified defiance and run south or north across those arbitrary and insane invisible boundaries that fence off the Majesty of North America into shameless, shameless greed.

If our Ancestors buried under the surfaces of North America could come back and judged us
What would they say?
About what we have done
To what we were given
And what we took
From a people we didn’t even recognize
As our own humanity

I fear if the dead came back like old Ezekiel’s bones are gonna rise again – them bones, them bones, gonna rise again. If they do – I’m running as far as I can from America because they’ll be carrying the weapons of war we produced to kill for profit to judge us with for our misuse of the land we stole to discard as a resource commodity to exploit.

What will the dead say about the grand old buildings they left which we discarded for the plastification and synthetic oil product based lifestyles we built? The dead beneath the soil of North America will ask where the prairies went, where the forests went, where the cut and filled hills and valley’s went. Where rivers and streams now damned for electricity and water went. Where the quiet went – where the night sky and the stars went… Where the firefly’s, crickets and June bugs of Ohio went – not to mention the bee’s much less the swans…

Sometimes North America is too big to grasp – and that is what Ohio is for. It is an example of where we were and where we have gone. Sadly it is a polluted misused sodomized without consent, old and forgotten state with trapped souls inside whose only sense of freedom is the trap of the consequences of commodity making negative freedom as a mass control tactic.

Imagine a Ohio that not many remember – not even the Ohio or prairie and woodlands and wetlands that its indigenous tribal civilizations dead remember and long for. That Ohio I long for but can hardly even imagine. Start to imagine the Ohio from before the great automotive age.

Remember wooden or brick houses set along lonely dirt roads. The Ohio sun screened by the natural protection of green leaves. Remember Ohio woodlands in autumn colors. Picture that wooden porch concealed modestly behind Spiraea bushes with a view on one side of tall prairie grass and on the other woodland and wetland contentment. Remember the trees from the virgin forest of North America harvested to make clap boards that would still shelter defiant, loud mouthed, generous, good hearted, contrary, people with barely concealed colorful lives. Lives not confined beneath the hills and valleys with ancestors of more ancient and hospitable hosts who knew how to keep the land free from the likes of us from this present an appalling futurama drama.

Who remembers Ohio this way – sadly too few – if but only they in Ohio knew.

Beyond the Power of Nightmares and into the Trap

2007-04-15T13:24:00.000+02:00

Inscrijvening In Scheveningen

2007-04-12T13:22:00.000+02:00

Hey, yeh, hey,

It's another sunny beachful day at the seaside in coastal Western Hollandia.
My meds run out after I take them today so my Flemish Primitive pal Peter will be coming from Villette bringing me the medicine I will need to stay longer. Not that I need to be telling you this just so you know. I confess it is a luxury problem. I almost brought more (meds) when I departed on what was going to be a two night stay but really I thought I would only stay two days and not more... But the quiet in the dunes and the weather have me feeling like I should stay and listen to what the dunes have to say. I would rather stay on here longer getting used to this wickedly strong meds my Villette psychiatrist started me on. I am going along with her plan but am skeptical of starting/needing such strong meds.

...Meanwhile...

The weather is perfect...

So, I don't want to go back to bru-town's inner city air pollution and automotive car corridors unless i have to...

...Meanwhile...

I haven't spent that much money - because the dunes are free so long as you don't break the law here and go off the trails. I don't like fences - because every fence reminds me of Palestine or my sister rotting away in a mid Ohio "Reformatory" for women. Not that I want to forget her - There hasn't been a day in my life in the last 30 years where I have forgotten her. I just don't want to think of the walls of security and control and razor wire and bureaucracy that have her penned in like an animal. Which might explain my sympathies for Palestine and the Palestinians.

I think alot in the dunes here at the beautiful and well preserved coastal eco-systems which Scheveningen (which means leaning - like the Leaning Tower of Pisa in Italy) rests in. These seaside landscapes are like a living Old Dutch Masters painting or so I think when in the protected areas on the barbed wire lined paths - on the other hand it looks and feels like New Mexico. It's more therapeutic than the psychologists therapy sessions my depressive brain requires to keep me functioning in the real world - Perhaps these dunes are doing alot more for alot less money than those psychiatrists and psychologists who know me better than I know me. So being here in Scheveningen is doing me alot of good. I would like to stay through the weekend but not for the weekend masses who will start to arrive tomorrow.

Meanwhile I am having a strange time in my interior life - in my head I mean. I continue with my attempts at no sex (including no solo sex) so I am not confused by other people...

One conclusion I have had in my quiet solo dune time is the realization that we (mart and batt) began building our house together in december '91 - The present physical form is the house that technically rests in Villette which is sadly not in my name at all and never was. I believe we began building that house long before we got married. I still maintain that my inheritance should go into that property investment. Which would help even things out financially though not entirely - but eventually I will be working and could contribute to the household again. So given that my soon to be ex so quickly and freely gave it to someone else hurts more than I can comprehend or articulate.

I am not going to fight it legally either - I am just going to let my material life on this planet evaporate. The fact that my soon to be ex has taken away the our-ness of those bricks and given it so thoughtlessly to someone else by default - is all the betrayal I need to stimulate me to sign divorce papers - an act that will break my heart to do but I will do it. I still believe and will continue to demand for the rest of my life a settlement of some sort - a consolation - not half of the property value but a consolation that takes into account the years from late '91 to early '07.

The fact that my soon to be ex does not want to be included in my inheritance to invest in the property is pure foolishness on their part. I have only pain and sadness about how the virtual side of our house building and homemaking has gone and concluded since we began it at Libby's magical house - (a time and place that has been and will be among some of the happiest times I have known) - I don't expect nor do I want to change anything now - as much as it feels painful to face up to the inevitability of divorce I will run towards it not away from it.

Honestly, I feel betrayed. These feeling are real - deep and valid. I see this is what is going down with the legal edge and say so be it. I will in time accept it and live with it and flourish from and beyond it. But I still believe I am owed some sort of consolation, compensation and settlement of 'x' amount. X being the variable that we choose - but we differ now greatly in everything so now the variable x has to represent each others side of this terrible equation. I think my soon to be ex's rationalizations for for why I get nothing might make sense on some level but I do not approve: It is a matter of ethics and our own personal sense of morality and obligation regarding our private lives together since '91, personal choices and issues that are nobody elses business but our own...

As far as my miserable financial performance these last years in Villette this was something we defaulted into together. Rightly or wrongly and we must share even in that. Now that I am being treated for these defaults we made together as the medical condition they indeed are, that depression illness now only serves to make me feel more violated by our present direction apart. This point of view of ours of late does not include my recovery - which implies we need or perhaps want me sick to impliment another person into our home.

When I think of that home in it's material and non-material sense it feels like it has been stolen and then absentmindedly given to someone else.I know I have been difficult and a handful lately and for too long but I feel betrayed. It is not by having a lover but by giving a lover the part of our life that was not any one of ours - that was only ours and partially mine - to give that to a complete outsider to a 15 year process - this is what I find wrong.This is how I can hold myself up to face a divorce - many times I am sad and lonely and hurt over it all. I know it is equally as difficult the others point of view but as always my soon to be ex has the upper hand, the controlling interest percentage - it never was a completely half and half agreement but that was our decision - choices we made together. If my soon to be ex feels justified because of my quasi religious experience at present - I am sorry - but I had to have some tools to get in touch with myself - time in nature is more effective than time in religion but in brussels, indeed in this part of the world - nature is hard to come by. I needed to reconnect and go full circle with some childhood spiritual and religious community experiences I had to sort out. For me Islam was an ingenios way to do that while making a stand politically against the powers that be in the west.

Despite the contradiction of my life I do very much believe in what Islam is. However this going full circle in a religious sense was important so I wouldn't forget a large portion of my life experience prior to '91 when my life went away with my soon to be ex. It will pass anyway - I am still me - and if anything, I will have accomplished what Allen Ginsberg accomplished politically and personally and artistically in his time and place in history regarding the structures of the world by going all Eastern like. This is easy to understand on an academic level but to grasp this aspect of my interior life is impossible for someone else because neither do I grasp it all and the is the way faith and ritual play out. I must pass through this - I keep telling myself this. Indeed perhaps nothing ruined our home more than getting married. Ironically, for that reason I am all for putting an end to this marriage - to give the freedom and space to sort ourselves out (alone or with someone) I just wish that house and home wouldn't get chucked away to someone else. I never expected things to play out this way. I believe we needed that house as a house to sort out ones self in architecturally and in its precise urban setting of old Brussels vlaams - My soon to be ex's new soulmate I believe is an essential tool for my soon to be ex at this time as is my muslim brothers for me at this time...

I just don't want to be turn me out like this without some sort of material/capital to work with of our mutual property as a parachute to my own autonomous life. It feel like someone took me in a car outside the city and left me on the side of the road with hardly a penny to my name. I want a divorce - and I want at some point the capital to go abroad and further complete myself in a non-western culture environment. This is what I think to get me through these hard time - to go abroad for a year or so. This will in reality not cost a lot of money.

That old narrow house are is the only home I know. It is my only connection to family and place that I have on this planet and my ex doesn't seem to care that I do have quite a claim on it because we began investing in that property from the moment we lived in a borrowed Libby's house. The fact that not surprizingly my ex see things otherwise I find ethically wrong. Yes, it is technically the law - and the law is not on my side. I can understand and accept that my soon to be ex's point of view and I will take it like a gentleman and end up a better person for it. I am sorry so many years in Brussels were wasted in our mutual life by my depressive condition - but I should have been getting mental help earlier. I needed to get in touch with myself and make myself useful again and sooner than I did. I was a sick parasite. But again I feel we made those choices together perhaps by default. I know my soon to be ex is in a much better situation now and I know this because I see it and also especially I see it in the dogs.

There have been many times this year where I really needed not to be alone and without the dogs and nobody were there. Nobody and I learned I am stronger than we both thought. I want to go abroad and see if i can get teaching work to do and fund a year overseas and find out if that is possible...

I would like to see about higher pay work teaching English in the UAE - and I would really like to bum around Maroc or Egypt for a few weeks here and there somehow in the next year. Given the cost of living in those places is not like it would cost to do that in western Europe. Going abroad, it might really be integral in establishing who I am post me and my ex - post depressive - post gay - post married - post american etc....

Muslim, me.

I know I am asking alot of myself and the world we live in but I believe its not just money here I am asking for help in - I am an anomolly - Like Michael Jackson converting to Islam and living in Arabia disquised in modest womens black layers of veiling fabric - I need some sort of belief from in myself that I know what i am doing. I don't need to wear the clothes of a woman though from any culture thank God but I do like Moroccan mens hooded Jalalyba's or thobes. I still want bru-town to be my home base but for the moment I think it is essential that I am not there so much in the next year. Of course I still have to go see dad pa Kettle in Dollville, Ohio and do some time there - perhaps more frequent but shorter stays. Certainly he will help me with the money to do that or so I naively hope. There have been many times this year where I really needed not to be so alone and I just rolled over and went to sleep and cried in my dreams.

Nobody was.

This is what i have learned not from the dunes.

By sitting there watching the dunes move, grow and erode in geologic time has done me wonders.

Everyone should find a place to do the same. This is what I learned from reading Terry Tempest Williams book RED writing about the soul of the Colorado Plateau that every North American whether from there or not carries in them.

To my soon to be ex - if you only knew that the grass, wind, sand, rocks and trees are saying. To anyone who is willing to listen to earth in on its own slow paced geological clock. There are many ways to kneal down and kiss the earth in humility and awe- as that 13th century Sufi poet once wrote... if we only knew, if we only listened to what the earth was chanting.

Experiencing The Netherlands

2007-04-10T09:55:00.000+02:00

It is so weird to read anything from the Anglophone media report of life in Belgium. For example - see the link - there is according to the NYTimes a cult of Medievalism going in Flanders like say Americans with their cult of re-enactments of Civil War scenes. I think daily I obsess over the literal past one walks through there (in Bru-town) and generally I find people (t)/here could care less about the past. In fact they seem to see it as something dirty to wash away. In Brussels I don't think a day goes by where I don't see the old forgotten typically Belgian style antique doors, staircases and windows laying in rennovation dumpsters parrallel parked on the streets - those old beautiful well made fixtures to be replaced by modern international building design show elements. We all know what French doors typically mean but nowadays even the Belgians have forgotten what Belgian or Brussels style doors are and how they differ from French doors. Belgian doors can be found on balconies facades of old town houses. They are three piece doors with the center being larger and wider than the two sides, one side of which is stationary. Then that NYTimes article went on a bit about Belgium going through something of an identity crisis and that whole Flemish nationalist party stuff. Belgium has had an identity crisis since 1830 when some Saxon Couberg however they spelled it was a landless royal in search of a country to keep as a fashion accessory. What a climber.

The New York Times should be paying me to write properly on life in these here southern low lands of Western Europe. I think though the US media is only interested in propagating their own views on places and not interested in really what is going on in the places they appear to be reporting on or rather manufacturing "news" on. Meanwhile, I still don't think New Mexico has been an actual state in the USA for 100 years - yet. So I assume the NYTimes knows even less about New Mexico.

So goes Belgium so goes the EU... Poland is aggressively, shockingly, working against gay rights EU obligations for religious reasons even though it is just now a part of the EU. Latvia has some creepy state initiated (as opposed to a religious ideal) racial and anti-gay rights issues that are being implemented and it's rather shocking but everyone else is like, oh, that's Latvia. Try growing up now-a-days with samesex feelings in Romania now that its part of the EU. Meanwhile, Holland and Denmark are more creepy than the Vlaams Belang Flemish Nationalists and don't get me started on how smug France is being while being no different that BE, NL or Denmark. France just manifests its own racist ideas in smooth suppository Latin like ways by disguising it under the veil of what it means to be French.

The Danish/American couple that were couching surfing through here on the wekend were sooo smug. The Dane was a man who I guess survived heroin addiction and reminded me of a born again AA type, so we talked about BJ in Ohio and how his recovery is hampered by ineptitude of not just the American system but with an ineffectual Ohio system twist. The Dane recovered from heroin because of a remarkable heroin survivors program in Denmark - I wish we could send BJ there. The Dane's woman - the American, Jewess - whom I actually really liked was beyond belief - she aparantly believes in racial theories - so I kept my mouth shut just to hear what foulness she would let out. It was a good tactic on my part - otherwise as you know from my reading my blogette, Experiencing Belgium, that I tend to come across crazed and delusional and all Grey Gardens like - not to mention at times totally illiterate... But the American's racial ideas were a bit over the top as she thinks Israelis are beneath Eastern European Diaspora Jewry - which my old Israeli pal back in Tel-Aviv would just love to set her straight on and put her in her place beneath him - all of which is fine by me but she was just so annoying and Evangelical about her views - meaning her way of seeing the racial pyramid must be spread: Like in some form of hand ringing obsessiveness that if she doesn't get others to believe with her then she might have to admit maybe she is also like Grey Gardens little Edie just plain wackoo...

I went to the beach today first to the protected dunes which I find such contentment in as I learned how to do from reading Terry Tempest Williams. I like this seaside enviroment here because - I figured it out today - if you didn't hear the ocean it looks alot like Colorado Plateau New Mexico. I prefer the more quieter desert but the seaside air is perhaps even better. Of course today is a holiday and I swear some Dutchlings share the same DNA as a more bovine species such as their forefathers used to chase the tails of to make a living making cheese... I found some little used old brick path probably left over from the war and sat on the side of that. That was the closest to having some space to myself. It was strange that no one else saw this path because I just turned off a busy bicycle pedestrian trail - actually it's more a non-automotive super highway with three lanes - thus, yay - no cars! Just horses, bicycles, pedestrians... then there was this little path but nobody was using it and it lead to some really beautiful natural places of rolling hills of scrubs and shrubs... it doesn't just look like NM but it looks like a flat version of San Francisco around Mount Tam... just as magical and if I could just find some place to be comfortable I would sit there for hours... There was not, however, the smell of sage brush or juniper. In fact there really wasn't any smell at all - just the sense of sea saltiness.

Meanwhile, most of the nature area paths were overrun by idiot people in such an evocative and thoughtful and peaceful landscape yahoo's yakking loudly on gsm's or dangerously riding bicycles in gaggles of lycra clad Eddie Merckx style pro-cyclist types, like it's some bicyclist petit tour de France in spandex on bicycle paths chocked full of bovine family idiots on bicycles... get me out of here - so I did by finding that path less taken - no wonder here people fall into compulsive sexual encounters in the dunes given the stress of these hoards of noisy people....

On the other hand lots of youngsters though were learning how to ride their bicycles without training wheels which I liked seeing. I can remember learning how to ride a bicycle like it were yesterday. Learning how to ride was the easy part. Learning how to make turns and stop was frightful... I remember where I got the hang of it and when: Next to a big old Juniper shrub on a corner which I fell into. I love the smell of prickly juniper to this day from growing up in a synthetic suburban cantonment like Worthington Estates was... or is... who knows, who cares...?

Meanwhile, my beard is only like one centimeter long, meaning it is very short and it still gets alot of attention because of its saffron or roux color. Some woman pointed to me and said I had a Flemish cut beard. Like I am sorry, Ik spreek ook Nederlands, and I was right there - do these people think they live in some Matrix program and that I am not human? ...to quote Clare from Six Feet Under to her brother Nate with the kid and that annoying wife - from an episode I saw ages ago... or maybe, do I just look deaf - ?

Most of the people I see here though look like they could do with a broader gene pool to play in -I should know.............. from my own family tree or rather twisted weather ravaged Juniper family bush (no not that Bush bush family but a twisted and tangled family vine not a family tree if you will) not quite a healthy family tree experience. Yes, that was my portal experience into the trapping of this mortal coil.

Some Indonesian fluff chic of a middle aged gay male accosted me at the seaside today. Slightly bearded as (s)/he was with his/(her) hair in a pony tail the size of a fist on the back of his head - except given the way his hair is naturally it was a black puff the size of a tennis ball - which if you looked at him square on the face you didn't see. I was laying in the dunes to keep out of the wind (in my clothes) though some guys were totally naked and it's just not warm enough for that, yet. When this guy with the black tennis ball poof on the back of his head approached me, again those angular movements of walking like from the Todd Haynes movie SAFE - this because of the soft sand of the dunes makes walking difficult. But I was obviously not interested. The look he gave me though: Eyes looking over these silly glasses giving me the impression of a woman while holding some towel over his naked chest... Square cut bathing suit worn ridiculously high... Womanly movements and yet simultaneously man. Transexual? Perhaps, who knows. It was probably Jan Morris... (the author of Trieste: The Capital of Nowhere - great read by the way). I am all for people like that having rights and indeed I'd even hang out with them if there was a chemisty of some sort. I used to do my grocery shopping in German Village, Columbus, Ohio, back in my Dollville days with a handsome yet pre-op Vietnamese young man. I liked looking like a straight opposite sex couple happily going shopping because that was what people wanted to see us as and not for what we really were. But this "two spirit" guy/gal in these Dutch dunes was all sordid and silly at the same time. I mean I was looking at a physical man and yet seeing the spirit of a woman vaguely obscured by the masculinity of a male physique.
Whatever.
To each his own.

Meanwhile, I found an image in one of the magazines here in this little quaint Dutch house I am staying in - sadly no step gable roofline - of a woman I liked - yes that way - opposite sex attraction way. I am struggling with opposite sex attractions and feelings it is so humiliating. It started again from perusing some mag like Arena or Squeeze with fashionably clothed models strewn about in lascivious socially decadent ways, that the more I see these magazine advertisements, the more appalling I find them. It seems worse than porn like, somehow. I mean at least porn knows what it is and knows its limits and the viewer knows it is porn and that's that. But these fashion mags are more deviant than porn because they pretend not to be using porny situations to sell us things we don't need by making us feel inferior to the models and the sets they pretend to be living in ... so anyway - I got a boner over this vague image of a woman somehow exposed and clothed at the same time... I blame having to fuck Bart into oblivion all those years when he was tired of me and was in his "do me" phase - so I was saying, I blame Bart for this new bi or opposite sex curiosity. I still haven't had sex with a woman and it's about time... Maybe I am saving myself for opposite sex marriage because in that regard I am rather technically still a virgin. I just feel sort of guilty about it. I mean I'm not supposed to want this, right? Which isn't to say I didn't like eating my Algerian pals hot young bitch bubble butt asshole all night even if he couldn't be fucked hard or long enough because if I do it the way he wants he usually hits me afterwards with this reflex of getting pissed off for fucking him so hard. Naturally, I liked that and found it irresistable and totally adorable - even if I got a black eye from it. I like how he then would as quickly as he reacts physically suddenly apologize so profusely, instantly afterwards... But why am I digressing into this sort of sordid filth that dare not speak its name? I haven't been naughty like that for quite sometime. And really it is time I set aside things like that in my life and also in my writing. So my apologies there 'bout that. My soul is still not yet unhooked from my human flesh and bones with natural and unnatural animal desires.

I still have no clue about going home to Dollville to see the dad...

I think I will look for a cheap flight from Paris non-stop to Detroit and get one of my nephews to fetch me there after I tour Muslim land in the motor city. I am curious to see how Islamic Detroit compares to say Islamic Brussels - as I find those cities rather similar - gutted and destroyed by post WWII capitalism eating itself and yet somehow still clinging to life. In both cases if it weren't for Muslims those cities would just become desertified post urban squallor. So I find this parallel of a tale of two gutted cities interesting. Naturally, I want to explore it. I guess I will have to rent a car there though since there is no more public transportation worth its weight in Detroit... Or perhaps my Dollville friend Chris will meet me there as he too likes exploring post city spaces, plus he knows Detroit already. He likes driving and roadtripping and we get along while we pretty much agree on nothing but architecture and urban planning or rather disintigration.

After the states I want to go either back to Yemen or to Morocco or Egypt as I haven't been to anywhere African. I still want to make it to Namibia and Mali one day before the teaching program I want to do starts in the autumn in Villette. I want to look for teaching work abroad, if nothing comes up then I will do the program in Bru-town. If I do find work abroad then I will save the Bru-town program for the next school year.

I am seriously very interested in working as a short term (one year) contract English teacher in the UAE - in particular Sharjah the really conservative town near Dubai. Nobody wants to work in that conservative environment as westerners drawn to that part of the world want Dubai so they can maintain their decadent Western ways - the very ways I want to unlearn and unhook in myself. Sharjah is where you have to start if you want to work in Dubai now. Actually I think Sharjah would be fun for a year - I really don't want to work in Dubai - but I would like to see it in some context that I could afford to see it in as it has gotten shamelessly expensive. I just didn't know about the place when it was affordable. Dubai is what we here at the Experiencing Belgium desk call the Inter-Galactic New Las Vegas in Arabia. I mean I really believe that Dubai is the New Las Vegas and better yet totally inter-galactic at that! Las Vegas (Nevada - the gambling town) has devolved into a family values theme park experience. Dubai ironically has replaced the old neon Vegas in a science fiction like way. Despite the social problems in the labor of building Dubai - not to mention the environmental ones - I still find Dubai to be unlike anything imaginable - and thus I really must start up the Experiencing Dubai desk there - soon! Plus the pay is way better for teaching English than in Yemen as well. Does anyone out there know if the UAE needs a professional blogger to build up and export virtually the image of Dubai as the Inter-Galactic New Las Vegas of Arabia? Well then, please write me here and make my dreams of Dubai come true!

The computer here at this present Experiencing The Netherlands desk is next to a window - I keep seeing middle aged and aging Neanderthal Nederlanders (the Dutch in Holland if you have a short attention span) who were out in the sun and got beet red stumbling around with large cans of beer in their hands. The younger ones looks like Tommy Lee and Pam Anderson home video wanna beez like my nieces and nephews. Looking like they just got back from a porn set or a gym or both.

thats all for now...

From this from this here present Experiencing Belgium desk now temporarily installed as the Experiencing The Netherlands desk in Scheveningen at the seaside longing to be the Experiencing The U.A.E. desk in Dubai.

Memories of Suburban Tears

2007-04-08T10:23:00.000+02:00

Yesterday I went riding on the non-automotive bicycle pedestrian path here in Scheveningen (Google earth it if you need more information on the place) north into the dunes - the wilderness is protected so you can't go crawling into the dunes themselves but then who needs to? Not everywhere is Fire Island - though on the beach side here it is just that... didn't go there though. The light reflected off the dune grass looks velvetee green. I can stop looking at it.
For two days in a row now I saw some young woman of non European origin in camouflage clothes with a camera who seemed more interested in shamelessly voyeuristically photographing the people in the wilderness trails place though she simultaneously seemed to be projecting the image of a bird/nature photographer. Whenever I looked at her - her camera was pointed on me. She had strange movements - like the main character from the Todd Haynes film SAFE who near the end moved strangely, angularly, across a rural New Mexico landscape. That same movement was captured in the affische poster for the film. It's an image I cant get over as if it means something else that I just cant put my finger on. Then I went up these old wooden stairs to a small lookout point with one bench and was watching the sun on one of the many ponds behind the seaside. So many birds and fresh air... and most importantly that quiet from non-automotive areas... then along came an annoying Dutch couple who didn't speak to me upon entering a tiny public space - their arrival breaking my solo meditative nature observation meditative moment then they were followed by the creepy photographer woman - who in this strange little space of a lookout point seemed more like a shamelessly voyeuristic Mossad agent except such an agent would never be as silly or as bumbling as she.
So I left...
...continued north and found another lookout point. Sat just outside the legal area on a soft mossy dune side - and then an annoying UK family of three arrived making so much noise just as I was getting all nature quiet contemplative like. Again what those people had to photograph I don't know what but when they arrived they didn't bother to speak to me either even though they sat down less than one meter away. Then I heard the camera click and again when I look its pointed at me despite all the other amazing scenery to photograph...
...then they left.
It felt creepy like - on the one hand - impolite and unwanted almost sexual overture like and on the other hand it felt like idiot undercover Euro pol international police... Which given the proximity of a military training facility in the dunes I figure they are part of some international military police academy the sequel training facility for working incognito.
...And so after the annoying UK family-ette left I dissolved into the landscape and enjoyed the moment of aloneness very much. Then bicycled home very fast to where I am staying for the exercise. Made some tea and ate two bananas, some very good dates I bought here imported from Iran but from a Turkish shop - had tea and dates with fresh yogurt, toast with jam... The dates being so good like confiture on a pit or stone.
For the moment I am alone. I can hear the music of the next door neighbors computer playing anything from Phil Collins Miami Vice theme to Italianate Operettas. I am not annoyed by this in fact it stave's off falling into feeling too alone.
In Schreveningen it seems the church bells go throughout the night marking the hour and half hour. I haven't heard this in Belgium. I like church bells like I like minarettes. There are many silent minarets nearby in Den Haag/De Hague. Church bells make me think of Poe's For Whom The Bells Toll... or is it Bell Tolls...? Everytime I hear church bells I am somehow happy to be reminded that I am mortal and that we all die - it makes me thankful to be alive at that moment so it is not depressing.
The bicycle trails here though remind me of growing up in Worthington (Ohio) with the bicycle trails along the Olentangy River - I would go there back home in Dollville a lot and sit on the bench next to that polluted morass - smelling the diesel of state route 315 and the noise of that across the river beyond a chain link prison like fence - not to mention the helicopters and planes from that small air field out there. There is a Fishing Access off Wilson Bridge Road between the bridge and the entrance to the office park on the north side - where the access is. My father had alot to do with the idea of a little space there being set aside probably 40 years ago as a fishing access. Some town planner knew my dad and it was dads suggestion that perhaps made the river park there possible. That parkinglot access for fishing was still there the last time I was in Worthington though now it is has evolved more into a public recreation and sports access - occassionally there are still fisherman using the place as it was originally intended. At the bottom of the fishing access is a car park if you walk along the trails south from there to state route 161 or on to Antrim lake - that was where I used to go to be alone and find some solace in the fake man made environment there. If you go there and find a bench perhaps I sat there too back when I used to be really depressed with chronic depression and fatigue and would go be alone there and often times I would just cry and then feel better looking at the nature remnants. Memories of Suburban Tears.... I actually would wonder about what woodland Native people lived there - I would think about the old farm that had been rendered obsolete by real estate developers in the 1960's. No wonder I grew up a depressive lost kid a condition which still dictates much of my lifes current limitations.
Ok enough of that... I received a short note about a blog in a comment section of my Experiencing Belgium blogette which I am posting here for you - the link not the comment.
I liked the essay at that blog about the shock of moving to Atlanta - interesting though all the same - to use the cliche from Gertrude Stein about Oakland, California at the turn of the last century - "There is no there, there" which now applies to most North American cities. The essay about Belgian Waffles was worth reading too especially if you want to know more about Brussels.
Back to coastal Holland - I really do like the scenery here in the nature area - and honestly it is better than the Prozac effect. the sense of clean seaside air. I really am thankful to be this much farther away from my ex and all that discarded amputated gangrene bodily limb that has been festering away for five or more years...
Or maybe Siamese twins being cut apart would be a more accurate description of my state of being human at present.
...but i don't want to default into isolation and the loneliness of bachelorhood that so many men and even women know so intimately. It is sort of raw like - and I admire those who are accustomed to being alone with dignity and a humor.
...but i don't much like Dutchlings in public park spaces.
...even as strangers on the streets here...
In that sense all this here makes me appreciate Sint Joost/San Josse in Belgium and it's anarchic linguistic melange but me thinks I should spend more time in nature...
That will be my new albeit late new years resolution.
By the way - there is a ground floor apartment beneath this space small and cozy Dutch house - it must be tiny - and there are sometimes two or three annoying low life Dutchlings who are often there - total Dutch white trash - which there is no shortage of. Sorry but it takes one to know one and so I am an expert on this... Appa-inbred-lay-shia-an as I am... (Appalachian - wikipedia it if you don't understand the difference between white trash and redneck or hillbilly).
...the house I am staying in is not so far from a tiny version of a found object art museum of a house. In fact my host Tijs while on the beach saw what I thought was a pile of garbage consisting of ropes and plastic strings mixed up with dried seaweeds and I thought he was going to be a good Protestant Dutchling and chuck it in the trash can at the beach entrance, but no, he took it home and threw it in a heep on the floor next to the fireplace. After he departed for Paris I hung it on the wall on a lonesome nail above the eating table... Now a huge pile of sand sits on the floor boards where that thing lay.
There is a Pathe cinema nearby in a disguisting casino like coastal strip of concrete conspiracy such that you could be anywhere and nowhere at the same time. But you cannot eve see the sea behind those buildings. What kind of idiotic developers do this - so I may go there to the cinema solo after Easter to avoid people. I haven't seen a movie in ages or a DVD - don't even know what to see or whats on or worth the trouble.
I want to become the ultimate tourist and travel back in time to see places I visit as they were intended prior to the petroleum automotive age destruction we live in. Schrevening when it was a seaside village had as a the tallest monument the church which still standing after two world wars has been rendered obsolete by being dwarfed and hidden from the sea by the Concrete Conspiracy.
My host in Schreveningen who I have hosted many times back in Villette is charming and sweet towards me and honestly I don't understand him at all - I admire him very much and perhaps even envy him - anyway his partner lives in a fab house in De vague Hague. So Tijs divides his time between here and there - it is just that I am not sure what he thinks or is passionate about in general. I know he is passionate about the ecosphere human life depends on but it is more like I do not comprehend how northwestern Europeans express or live out their interior passions.
At least here in Holland the keyboard I use us a qwerty board lol I am so tired of Belgian azerty keyboards.
See you around the bend where hearts can heal and souls can mend
as the Baghdad Burning blog goes.
Which the bend I guess being referred to there is the Tigris and Euphrates river bends for which there are many bends. I like the idea of a bend or wrinkle in time as that great children's book by L' Engle was titled.
See you around the bend in time where hearts can heal and souls can mend. I need such a place along such rivers. Unfortunately of late for Iraq and Baghdad the river bend tends to be the mythical river Styx that separates the underworld from the realm of the living. Whether we all know it or not we are all longing for the area around the Tigris and Euphrates to be healed after the global military industrial complex ruined such a historical place for corporate profit.

Concrete Conspiracy

2007-04-07T13:01:00.000+02:00

The Experiencing Belgium Desk is temporarily being brought to you from the seaside of Western Holland. The threat of spring time summer like weather sent me fleeing from Bru-towns Villette to a friends little dutch brick couch sharing dot com's house not far from Den Haag/De Hague. Having nearly fully recovered from a Brussels bicycle automotive collision I am now walking and bicycling again - meandering aimlessly like I do through life through the very well preserved coastal dunes of Nederland/The Netherlands. I am astonished at how clean and fresh feeling the air is here after too long in Bru-town's Sint Joost ten Node/Saint Josse te Noode/or as I call it San Jose, Belgium.

The negative ion charged seaside salty air is great for modern day urban based asthma sufferers like me. The sprawling sand dunes and grasses of the Dutch gold non-stoner type, the bushes (of the non-first dysfunctional family variety from that other side of the Atlantic which everyone, everywhere is totally fatigued by) and on, and on to the scrubs which give way to the larger shrubs and then to small trees. The small trees then yield to the bigger trees and to the ponds and meadows that can be found somewhat inland behind the dunes which are a pleasant last stand of wildernesse from this part of old Europa still preserved by such a remarkable people. One must thank this lowland nation for its heroic stab at wilderness protection. The seaside quiet found in these dunes is better for finding mental relaxation and fresh air to breath than most wealthy nations will tolerate for their people in this age of the concrete conspiracy.

The concrete conspiracy? What is this Concrete Conspiracy you say? It is anything concrete - from buildings to parking garages to walls around the remnants of old and new Palestine, to the roads and bridges of control we let our taxes pay for. I am convinced there is a Capitalistic based Concrete Conspiracy going on in this age of war mongering Plastification. Concrete condominium corriders at the beachside are what define most lands sea boards. But here in some places in Holland you find that someone, somehow, held back the concrete conspiracy to allow for an ecological island of what once was the rampant and common wilderness between civilized village life islands. Now like everywhere there is an inversion - all those Dutch little villages which were once in hind sight now probably utopian places we can only long for - surrounded with a huge and dangerous and life threatening wilderness to pass between; like Little Red Riding Hood making her way to grandma's house in the next village over - a long healthy walk away - or quick bicyle ride - or now sadly a stay on the automotive parking lot of a concrete and tarmac freeway that costs us our soul - this is the beast or wolf with big bad Bush Vampire like fangs - who feed upon the innocents - those Bush like fangs which are all the better to eat our fairy tale characters of our family life that still inhabit our at present varied and personal mythologies of life and hope from our retail like roadkill lives in a global dictatorship played out by a relentless form of Capitalism based in a Zionist like concrete, oil and plastic Beast of our Apocalyptic Age...

Diary of a Mad Man in Sint Joost but not Ivan Illych Despite Having a Beard

2007-03-22T17:08:00.000+01:00

Some days or nights go better than others in my new life in San Jose Villette Bru-town otherwise known as Sint Joost ten Node Brussel or Saint Josse ten Noode Bruxelle. Sometimes it is just tough not having the commodity luxuries I took for granted - like a computer - 24/7 hi speed internet - digital cable TV - a DVD player - good and dependable heat that I controlled. The company of biologically based home security of the K9 variety... It's the soaps from Qatar I miss from digital cable.

Sint Joost has some very San Francisco-esque hills and some extremely narrow sidewalks. It's actually a beautiful old quartier in Brussels - perhaps the best preserved due to his history of poverty and immigration. Anyhow it was this past Saturday morning and I rode my bicyclette over to where the cheap shops are for some groceries and laundry detergent. Loaded down with the shopping I carefully descended a hill with the brakes on going slow. About halfway down the hill is the intersection for my street and just a few meters before that suddenly my hand breaks snapped - I kid you not - it was like some fate - and then suddenly were two cars in the intersection and then we hit and I was thinking - oh dear I'm not on my bicycle and I'm not on the ground - yet... Then I landed on a nice gravely patch. Fortunately nothing was broken and the people who hit me are nice Muslim neighbors and they took me to the hospital and had me checked out and get this - waited on me in the waiting room! They were very nice and very concerned - but it was all like a rough game of rugby. Then they drove me home with the groceries that they picked up off the ground for me. Sometimes Brussels can be really charming and surprising and very human despite its post World War Two demolition and building spree.

Today I had an unusual Villette moment on the Metro - I was headed to the center to use the computer at my old place when on the way toward the Metro I ran into one of my bearded Muslim brothers who then proceeded to walk me to the Metro stop - once there he knew all the Moroccan men (labor) types who worked at the Metro so I got to shake hands with handsome Maroc men - it felt like a Fight Club moment where all the working class guys know each other - as in "don't fuck with us, we drive your cars, cook your food, wash your clothes, etc" I don't remember the author's line (that guy with the impossible to remember let alone spell exactly last name Chuck Palahniuk) but it was a good warning about how the ruling elite should not fuck with the labor masses...

Then on the Metro I was reading Terry Tempest Williams (a post Mormon recovery type) who is some outdoorsy type poet from New Agery retaildom I remember from being a Nickled and Dimed US laborer. Anyway I have a copy of this book a I bought on my last trip to Ohio three years ago from Half Price Books that I was just getting around to reading titled RED - Passion and Patience in the Desert - About the Colorado Plateau and those who are from or drawn there - as I have been drawn there for many years. Great book by the way especially to read in Urban 21st century Villette. Whilst reading the book I noticed a handsome young Hassidic guy in black and a beard get on the car and I resumed reading. There was some other fellow kinda short with nice blue grey eyes and a short beard who got on the car as well. Anyway when I got to my stop they got off too and both were near me at the door - I'm not sure why but the short guy asked me if I was American and I said yes - and then immediately he asked if I were Amish - I said no but that I come from that part of the states - and he said me to, where you from, not Cleveland? and he had this nice accent with almost east coast sounds in it that often times I can hear in Clevelanders voices - though he was too alert speaking to really sound Ohioan. So I said I'm from Columbus and then I said what a moment to meet someone from back home like this. Then we were in some urban hoard on a ridiculously narrow escalator and the short guy said they had to ketch a flight and I took a look in the eyes at the handsome and formidable and tall Hassidic guy and said Shalom and offered my hand to shake - while asking if it were ok and he smiled and said Shalom and we shook hands and parted ways. Then I kissed my hand the way some Arab guys do when they really like person they shook hands with (tho they do this in front of the person).

I wanted to say that I wish I were flying away with them because I am just sick of these grey skies and the cold air and the landscape of Bart and all that is behind me. I have always found Hassidic guys interesting - because they are pieces of another time in Europe that I like having around - like grand old belle epoch architecture with such dignity. I especially like their beards and gentle manners. The only time I ever have even the slightest interaction with them though is on the trains in Belgium. So maybe those two men on the Metro were real people and it was a nice coincidence or maybe they were "undercover" agents of some sort - If you ever saw the Brad Pitt Robert Redford Spy Hard movie (where sometimes on screen Robert Redford looks like he is envying Brad Pitts youthfulness and it isn't clear if this is the character or the actor) - then you might understand why I enjoy assuming such paranoid conspiratorial ways of thinking. You know like in the film Enemy of the State. It's moments like that couched between North African street life in the parts of Villette I inhabit - Getting on the Metro in my multi-cultural ghetto to then get off in another such neighborhood in a different part of town. At least in these quartiers the city feels like where I belong and more importantly where my ex doesn't. Maybe that explains why I have become such an Arabophile.

Last night my aging WWII veteran dad called and left a message on my voice mail. He sounds more like himself after this last round of annual winter hospitalization. This time of year he always seems to go through a big illness. Anyway when I called him back he wanted to say that he and my brothers wife wanted to pay for me to come over and I said that wouldn't be neccessary but when would they like me to come? They didn't care when but they both seemed worried that given my ex's current ways I should know I can depend on them. Which was nice to hear.

Groetjes uit Sint Joost ten Node!

2007-02-22T18:05:00.000+01:00

The infamous Experiencing Belgium desk has now moved from downtown Bru-town to a sunny rooftop location in Sint Joost ten Node! On the plus side - no annoying tourists snapping pictures and no more provincette suburbans walking the streets to gawk at us multi-cultural inner city natives. Another welcoming benefit to the humble commune of Villettes version of San Jose is that bearded folk aren't a spectacle of unintentional players in street scene performance art! When daytrippers from the provinces come into town and point to me and say in Dutch "look there is King Leopold the second" - despite their linguistic assumptions I understand everyword being said and I take it as the anachronistic compliment that it should be. There still are a few virtues in reading up on King Leopold II Ghosts from some Christmas pasts.

Meanwhile I just finished reading an English translation of Georges Rodenbach's old novella Bruges la Morte. Despite the annoying introduction by a Franco-centric Anglophone who goes by the name Hollinghurst -This book from before the turn of the last century still rings true for Brugge/Bruges of today and certainly for the whole of this present Flanders. If you are wanting to get into the psyche of Belgium then this old tale will teach you the twisted inner workings of social life in these here damp Southern lowlands of Northern Europe.

The Plastification Process and the Dark Side of a Psychic Moon

2007-01-17T01:52:00.000+01:00

If you're reading this blogette for the first time or are checking back again then I have to say that I must make an overt apology. The Experiencing Belgium desk has been a bit cranky and incoherent and that grammatics have fallen to bits of late. The past few months have been a personal challenge. It's been an adventure of sorts - you could say to be poetic that I've been traveling to the dark side of my psychic moon. That would be putting it mildly. In reality the confession is that I've been unaware how depressed I got in '06. I'm prone to depression - that's my challenge in life - it always has been. Sometimes though life over powers me and I become lost and fall victim to my brains swamp like murky eco-systems. No doubt that morass I call my brain easily gets toxically polluted by an unhelpful mind controlling mass media that seeks not to inform or educate but to further the exploits of a brand of Capitalism without ethics or beliefs.

A few posts here recently have been incoherent and though I checked and re-checked the essays obsessively prior to posting them I missed too many glaring mistakes. Much of the writing has been a survival technique and a catharsis which I didn't have the better sense to file away and not post. I've gone off on in unfriendly ways about "the Americans" who I find all too willing to devolve into shameless consumers and patrons of the freeway who then wile away their life while sitting in traffic (when not transversing the endless parking lots of North America).

I confess I go on much too much about "the Zionists" while trying to grasp the repercussions of the swelling corporate-o-cracy bubble in the West in my minds machinations of conspiracies to explain that which cannot be comprehended about planet Earth. And I have gone on to no end or what end just so I could know something. No matter what I think or what I write I can't much less talk back to the likes of the US media or the BBC or change what is being done and to whom much less really know anything about actual people or places and unnecessary suffering so that the rich can get richer in their wars with each other.

I used to think we were all explores in the information age but we all know this is the misinformation age. We are all being blinded with information which easily enables those with money and power to get away with exploitation. Maybe the world will end when the Mayan calendar runs out. Our world's ecology is falling apart obviously. Just look up at the sky. It's not falling but it is over run with con-trails from the sky ways -it's no longer a clear blue day, ever. Our night sky is lit up with light pollution so that we can't read the stars so we follow Hollywood stars instead.

I just don't trust a political system which asks me to turn off little lights and save on energy sources when there are international departments of energy over the planet lighting every road and highway beyond belief. Just like no one protests the ugliness in Iraq which has become a Biblical bloodbath. Who is refusing to not fill up their cars gas tank with war based petrol? And in this age of plastification brought about by oil products if you want to protest the war you better stop shopping too - but then what are six billion earth bound souls suppose to do?

Forced apathy hurts.

Why We Fight

2007-01-01T14:03:00.000+01:00

EB note: This documentary explains everything one needs to know about the present Corporate-o-cracy that every American founding father warned the future of. A message reiterated last by Eisenhower. Heart breaking look at where the United States over the last sixty years has gone wrong. The following text comes from the Google Video description of the documentary and is worth a read.
(EB)

Is American foreign policy dominated by the idea of military supremacy? Has the military become too important in American life? Jarecki's shrewd and intelligent polemic would seem to give an affirmative answer to each of these questions

The American Documentary Grand Jury Prize was given to WHY WE FIGHT, written and directed by Eugene Jarecki. http://festival.sundance.org/2005/docs/05Awards.pdf

What are the forces that shape and propel American militarism? This award-winning film provides an inside look at the anatomy of the American war machine.

He may have been the ultimate icon of 1950s conformity and postwar complacency, but Dwight D. Eisenhower was an iconoclast, visionary, and the Cassandra of the New World Order. Upon departing his presidency, Eisenhower issued a stern, cogent warning about the burgeoning "military industrial complex," foretelling with ominous clarity the state of the world in 2004 with its incestuous entanglement of political, corporate, and Defense Department interests.

Deploying the general's farewell address as his strategic ground zero, Eugene Jarecki launches a full-frontal autopsy of how the will of a people has become an accessory to the Pentagon. Surveying the scorched landscape of a half-century's military misadventures and misguided missions, Jarecki asks how--and tells why--a nation ostensibly of, by, and for the people has become the savings-and-loan of a system whose survival depends on a state of constant war.

Jarecki, whose previous film, The Trials of Henry Kissinger, took such an unblinking look at our ex-secretary of state, might have delivered his film in time for the last presidential election, but its timing is also its point: It does not matter who is in charge as long as the system remains immune from the checks and balances of a peace-seeking electorate. Brisk, intelligent, and often very, very human, Why We Fight is one of the more powerful films in this year's Festival, and certainly among the most shattering.— Diane Weyermann

http://www.whywefightmovie.com/

Dhaik kar Roza Nazar Meri Jhuk jaati hay . Haq Ya Rasool ALLAH!

2006-12-13T04:57:00.000+01:00


Sheikh e Kamil, Great Naqshbandi Saint of Sindh, Hadhrat Muhammad Tahir Bakhshi Naqshbandi addressing the huge gathering in Allahabad Shareef, Kandiyaro Nowshero Feroz Sindh, Pakistan, sufism islam pakistan dhikr rememberance of ALLAH and His beloved Prophet Muhammad sallalahoalleyheywasalam. Ahl e Sunnah wal Jammat. HAQ Mahboob Sajjan Saeen

Sami Yusuf Live in Sana'a, Yemen

2006-12-01T00:39:00.000+01:00

Earlier this evening I telephoned my Palestinian pal in Yemen because he had sent me a message that the Sami Yusuf concert there earlier today live in Sana'a had made him very happy. Mohammed wasn't actually planning to go even though he and our world traveling Pakistani pal Umer turned me on to Sami Yusuf's album Al Mu'allim. Al Mu'allim was instrumental so to speak in lighting my way toward Islam. I missed the Sami Yusuf concert a few weeks ago in Utrecht because I hadn't heard about it until the night before the concert and because the day after the concert I had a big Dutch exam to contend with. When I happened to smurf (I don't surf I smurf around) online onto info about Sami Yusuf performing in Yemen I telephoned Mohammed immediately to tell him. He e-mailed back a few days later saying he didn't think he would be able to go because he couldn't find where to actually buy the tickets. The media there announced the concert but failed to say where or what time. But Yemen is cute this way, it is all part of the charm that is old Yemen. It seems just before the show Mohammed heard about the location by word of mouth and later found a man in a car before the performance hall selling the tickets for 5000 Riyals which in Yemen - lets just say - that buys alot of Qat! He wasn't even sure if the man in the car was a ticket scalper or if that was indeed a Yemeni style ticket office on wheels.

The Sami Yusuf album Al Mu'allim I first heard sometime around Ramadan 2003 on Moroccan radio in Brussels. I first heard those songs before I even knew they were new music for the Muslim masses. Moroccan radio in Brussels is a trip and I've been listening to it since I moved here more than typical Belgian radio which is incidently quite good. Check out Studio Brussel online or when you are in town if you don't believe me! By the next Ramadan my pal Umer had me listening to the Al Mu'allim CD and by the following Christmas I was running around Southeastern Pakistan having been named after the Sami Yusuf song Ya Mustafa. These days I pretty much answer to Mustafa which is truely a great name that I will never live up to.

By Summer of 2005 I was running around Sana'a answering to the name Mustafa after having formally converted to Islam at the Center for the Foreigners Call in June in time for my 40th birthday. I made the Shahadah with a very kind and wise Yemeni man with a beard the likes of which I had only seen on CNN. And yes I was actually in Yemen studying the Arabic language, Tajweed (Qur'anic recitation that is like the purest form of poetry that has to be experienced to be believed) - I was also learning how to make Salah and wudu five times a day at the beautiful old Masjids with some very enthusiatic Yemeni, Syrian and Palestinian Brothers. Contrary to some of my paranoid Western white friends who do not like to travel I was not learning how to dismantle or reassemble a Kalashnikov and for the most part tried to steer clear of the Suq in Sana'a famous for selling such arms. Neither was I involved in any Soft Cell groups or "training camp", camp. Honestly where does the terror for the masses inducing media come up with these ideas? But yeah I am still American and we Constitutionally believe in one's right to bear arms wether we are for or against them as a matter of principle. American's should love visiting Yemen as it's full of guns and knives brandished about proudly like a new Mercedeez in the West.

Back to Sami Yusuf live in concert in Yemen. His more recent album My Ummah when it came out in '05 Mohammed e-mailed me from Yemen to tell me to go get a copy for myself. So I found a old little Moroccan Islamic bookshop and found the album and bought it. Mohammed though far away via internet is now never very far from hand. Mohammed who has lived the life of a typical Palestinian refugee brought up abroad and confined to a life played out as a landless foreigner in the Arabian penninsula -without any internationally recognized papers with which to travel - Mohammed found the Sami Yusuf concert to be - I don't know it's about this point when I think about what Mohammed has and has not seen in life - that a happy evening enjoying a music concert is so hard to come buy - that just knowing he had a fun night out at a Sami Yusuf concert makes me happy in a way which tears come to my eyes.

So if you are reading this and work for or know or are indeed Sami Yusuf - then I want to hear from you! Thank you Sami Yusuf for going to Yemen for Mohammed and his brothers to enjoy something of modern Muslim culture as they are living out their lives though in Islamic lands in cultures not quite their own. For what it is worth Sami Yusuf your songs and music including your work with Mesut Kurtis on the CD Salawat have helped light my lifes path in such a way to make Islam for a Westerner like me possible to not just find but make possible in my own personal life.

Mohammed did say at one point Sami Yusuf lost his eye glasses on stage and that either they were damaged or swallowed up by the audience all of which worried Mohammed. On the phone Mohammed kept saying "Mustafa Sami Yusuf looks just like you! OK he has dark hair and dark eyes but he look like you!" Which of course was flattering to hear and somehow I guess to Mohammed my caucasian looks have some common denominator I suppose with an handsome Azeri fellow - Mohammed was like "Mustafa he look like you before you had the beard" - Mohammed is a sweet fellow who said he really had to fight the urge to jump up and retrieve the fallen eyeglasses at the stage edge. Mohammed's brother got to shake Sami's hand and in this world you can't ever under estimate the power of a handshake or any human contact like that.

So this evening Mohammed and I chatted long distance from Brussels to Sana'a about Sami Yusuf - We were wondering if while in town there in Sana'a if Sami Yusuf got to travel around the majestic old city of Sana'a which if you have never been there let me tell you is like traveling back in time to the world of Old Testament Bible stories.

More and more it is looking like a well deserved and optimistic New Day In Old Sana'a.

After English Before Bed

2006-11-30T16:40:00.000+01:00

You know how it goes, just before you fall asleep you have an idea that gets between you and the dreamland calling you into sleep. I had just one epigrammatic thought last night and so thinking it would diminish its power, so I could fall off to sleep, I scribbled it down. Last night it didn't go that way though. Upon writing that very thought down the idea I set to paper set off a synaptic chain reaction of thoughts in my tired brain so that sleep eluded me until dawn. Here is that thought:

After English, Arabic is perhaps the most dangerous and powerful of languages.

The thoughts that followed that gem of an idea were more sinister and all too true and kept me awake like old Christmas time Scrooge waiting his night-time unwelcome spirited visitors.

If the English language sparked off the crusades and set the world on its disasterous course of history toward this present modernity regarding the rise of "foreign policy" as a tool to control other peoples resources - arbitrarily carving up other lands and other cultures with the blood of bystanders caught in the way of the history of the unfolding of Western greed. Then perhaps despite all attempts at vilifying the Arabic cultures, languages and religion - perhaps Arabic still stands as the antidote to the highly infectuous disease the English language has on the human mind.

Of course the Majestic Arabic language of old is an infection on the human mind too but perhaps it is a healthier infection. It only takes listening to a native Arabic speaker talk at length in another language to get a glimpse at the power of reasoning that the Arabic language has. Arabic require the capacity for a long attention span by both the speaker and the listener which is why the BBC and other Western media conglomerates can't cope with an Arabic speaker as interview subjects. This is why I for one am eagarly anticipating the coming new media giant of Al Jazeera broadcast around the world in English.

English as a language has devolved itself by its consummerist tendencies into short breaths of useless soundsbytes to control other human beings. Arabic by its linguistic nature requires the capacity for extended lengthy thought and reasoning. No other language has the power to change the structure of human mental reasoning than the Arabic and English languages. Of course Shakespeare proved the superiority and potential of the English language but capitalism and greed reduced English to a marketing tool.

Therefore Arabic remains the antidote of our Anglophone consummerist syndrome. Classical Arabic is still very much kept alive by Islam and the Muslims and the modern adaptation of Standard Arabic still retains Arabic's lengthy thought analysis process that is more capable of reasoning and finding solutions to the problems of the world brought about by Western and Anglophone syndromes.

The greatest gift the Arabic language has given the rest of world trapped in the consummerism and exportation of the West is that in even only attempting to learn a small part of the Arabic language one learns the capacity of ones own mind. At first when I began to study to Arabic I was humiliated by how quickly I would forget one new phonetic sound, character or word. I learned very quickly that to learn Arabic was going to be a humiliating process at understanding the limits of my own mental capacity. At the same time Arabic taught me a new mental structure with which to reason and think and build a better mind. For Arabic is a whole different way of thinking and using ones brain. Any artist can use Arabic as a tool to open ones mind and to begin to see the world differently. Thus for artist who are blocked Arabic is a wonderful remedy to a mental condition. It is for this reason that I maintain that perhaps Arabic might hold the antidote to the present global downward spiral into corporate greed and exploitation of other lands resources for which wars are made for profit. It is time the West began to learn how to listen in the ways that Arab are known for thinking, reasoning and lastly speaking. If nothing else this could become a step towards peace for the wars that the Anglophone of the incorporated Western world has set upon the Arabic speaking peoples of Iraq and Palestine.

Amoebic Swarms of Black Birds over old Brussels Urban Landscapes

2006-11-15T18:45:00.000+01:00

From the old Brussels styled wooden window that lets out onto a blue stone and rod iron balcony, over a pre-automotive era medieval aged road, over the stone street – through the single paned old and distorted glass – above the terra cotta orange rooftops of the buildings attached to this house and the ones across the street – I can see just a narrow strip of sky. Just as the white light of sundown sets in swallowing up the blue sky of the day from the angle of the sun in decline this time of year at this latitude - From my place in a 21st century Villette I stood and watched black birds that seem to swim in the sky in that amoebic swarm together that only occurs this time of year. I think Vincent Van Gogh painted this bird swarm phenomenon in some long time famous painting of his. These swarms are mesmerizing. Before all those birds went out of view behind the street roof line, the whole swarm expanded and then flew close together as if the amoebae shape collectively decided to collapse in on itself into a dark black singular object. I wish I were outside the city in the damp flat fields of western Flanders in some small old farm house at a table with a window drinking tea watching this autumnal phenomenon. It felt like the closest one can get to observing Allah Almighty God from here in Flanders - I swear - it’s somehow true. That’s all we get as humans for seeing God in this lifetime if we take the chance to witness nature’s subtleties. Nothing more in this life time for us bad souls than these kinds of glimpses in nature as visual evidence of the Divine to long for. But if you think this way you find the Almighty in the blue of the sky - or the swift dark clouds we have here. You can find something of Allah even in the brisk autumn air. Or in the shudder of an urban growing mature tree as the wind takes its red and yellowed leaves. It is then that I don't feel alone - and then that I stop wanting. Meanwhile I just wish I were outside with the big sky on flat land with far away horizons. I want to be with dogs in fields and pastures free from walls and fences in a land where the cars and trucks have stopped because somehow capitalism collapsed and the oil became irrelevant and we could all take the time to watch Nature die from our greedy industrializations.

Take Two a re-edit of a previous post

2006-11-15T16:39:00.000+01:00

I have to make a confession for this blog record of my crazy over caffeinated rantiness - I seriously and I mean I seriously considered voting straight Republican for the elections this week - Which after the elections in 2000 I swore I would never and I mean never ever vote conservative again (Not that I did then either – I reluctantly voted for free speech rights inhibiting Gore). Every election is always about voting for the lesser of two Evils and this time around that was easier than in the past. Not that I am in the habit of voting conservative but I have I confess done so once or twice in the past before I knew better. In theory I am a tried and true Republican conservative - it is just that since - I don't know - maybe since Lincoln was shot - there hasn't been an actual Republican in Washington, D.C. to vote for and certainly never in my lifetime (except for maybe Gore Vidal and the Clintons). Although my ballot gets sent in from overseas and therefore probably gets lost much less not even counted as if it matters - which after the 2000 elections I don't much believe in the whole voting process in the states and can you honestly say - do you? Can't we like get NASA who in their day was able to land things on the moon to now accurately collect, collate if necessary and so gather our nations vote from within the US and from those of us happy and unhappy ex-pats - military and non-military types - from abroad?

Why are there not sophisticated like machines with GPS systems tagged to voter identification that can ensure safe, fair and accurate voting data via satellite? Maybe Google Earth could have all the Americans go outside and stand looking up holding their vote choices on a placard – and thus with facial recognition technology via satellite so our votes can get accurately counted while the census is being conducted.

I believe in 2000 Al Gore won a victory and that the familia Bush duped the nation and ignored international warnings about the imminent events that would take place on what would become what we now know as 9/11. Events that unlike anything imaginable, strangely (or perhaps even suspiciously), meshed nicely with the likes of Wolfowitz and Rumps-velds opportunistic sinister vision of control and fake purpose for the Americans a la text book applications of Leo Straussian philosophy.

I will say when I saw junior Bush talking post election this week on some Euro-News TV bit that the Bush guy sure looked relieved for someone who just learned the nation spoke against him and his kind in no uncertain terms. Even via radio this relief was audible in Bush's voice. Bush can - for the next two years without a guilty conscience - if he indeed has the capacity for that - now spend his time on some luxury private, chemically treated, green lawn golf course in as hot as it is flat Texas. Perhaps Bush's relief comes from having to stop being his father's puppet in the Oval Office. Or perhaps these sham-Republican types wanted to lose the election so that the Democrats can be kept busy from doing what they were voted in office to do and thus expend all their efforts (and popularity) cleaning up the consequences of the Bush Regimes merciless exploits abroad and extraordinary domestic neglect back home. (Remember when Ms. Katrina paid our nation a visit down there in New Orleans par example? Seen any new levee’s built? Heard of a reconstruction program to rejuvenate a living grand old predominately African American city)...

I don't believe Bush II should have been in office at least between 2000 and 2004 and without 9/11 his regime wouldn't have made it to now in 2006. This is why I wanted to vote straight Republican. I believe all these henchmen should be in office to clean up the mess they made and to face the consequences publicly for what we will see come back to haunt us from their irresponsibilies in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Getting Iraq convinced (ordered) to execute Saddam Hussein in time for Christmas is just the very gift these so called Republicans - The Bush's and their henchmen - have on offer as a Pandora’s Box of a present for the Democrats who have usurped the Bush regime’s position. It is not a bad idea to consider that the US reinstate Saddam in Iraq - pull out from there and let the people of Iraq do as they will with their land, society and resources. Certainly Saddam was much better at running Iraq than the Americans and perhaps even it might be said that less lives were lost or exploited in Iraq under Saddam.

Certainly Saddam was for the Americans who put him there better as the devil we knew than the devil we didn't know - known as the Anarchy that is in Iraq now. The scariest attribute about being an American in these times is how with every misinformed vote we cast, for every election we miss, or any blank vote in our ballet we don't fill in - that because we are a "Democracy" that suppose-ably rides on our backs as citizens - we are morally held accountable to our higher power for the choices we make. The consequences of whatever we fill in for our vote selections invariably have consequences we don't see much less can get accurate information on in other peoples lives. Lives sitting in US prisons (from dubious wars on drugs and terror) or lives trapped in the foreign places our nation invades in our names. To think this all might have been by tricky vote rigging over time through strategically placed members of the Bush Royal Family - in a nation that has forgotten a banking crisis with the Bush boys name all over it... Well, I wanted to vote for these guys so they can be in power to reap what they have sown when the cows of consequences come home from Iraq from the blood for oil harvest there. But I could not accept that by my casting even one vote in these Bush regimes direction because I would be held morally responsible for perpetuating their godless tactics and lack of human compassion.

Much to my regret the only choices I had, had been for a few Independents and a lot of Democrats both of whom I know nothing about: Democrats who are Democrats without a cause that don't hinge on a reaction to Bush policies. For the Democrats are without vision or beliefs and just another politician like Gore with careers to protect. Or Independents who are good for nothing at this point in the state of the states democratic process than throwing your third party vote away and giving it to the conservative minority on a silver platter.

I don't want to be American because I don't want to participate in this corrupt process and have the blood of the decisions heartless greedy tyrants in economic power make in other lands oblivious to their own strip malled and freeway'd, parkinglotted, suburbanified, razor wire protected, human resourced like oil commodities into retail slave labor - once great and majestic land in America. Neither do I want to be counted among these new Bush era Americans who were once, in previous generations, kind and genuine and excessively generous people before they became the malcontents about their neighbors (the Mexicans) in typically tribal and selfish European ways. Oh say can you see by the freeway lights of capitalism that so proudly stand over where you shop, drive, park, eat, work and sleep....

A Magic Carpet Ride Back For A New Day In Old Yemen

2006-11-09T17:34:00.000+01:00

This text was written with personal gratitude after having seen a remarkable film screened at the Festival du Film du Monde Arabe de Bruxelles here in Villette.

A New Day In Old Sanaa
A very short review
Director: Bader Ben-Hirsi. 2005 Feature length film, In Arabic and English with English subtitles (and some amusing Yemeni dialect thrown in for those in the know)

A magical movie about the only world heritage site that is a complete and functioning city. I was in Yemen in 2005 in the area of Sana'a the film was made in. Indeed Sana'a is exactly as it is seen in this film! A secret treasure for a fearless traveler! If you are interested in the places in the world the media ignores (or has an agenda against) then this movie is for you! A New Day in Old Sanaa will give you a glimpse not just into a nearly forgotten way of life still very much thriving in Yemen but the film also shows the very hidden (especially to males) world of women in Yemen. A uniquely Arabic story line reveals in this movie something Hollywood or even Bollywood can't grasp - the dignity of unknown places and a forgotten way of life seamlessly merged and existing with modernity. This is not a travel film but the film will take you on a magic carpet ride to an actual place that not many travelers find! A literal and thriving Shangri-la from the Lost Horizons of Arabia! See this movie and see if you aren't ready to find your own passage to Sana'a!

And how - "mahow" lol

The Devil You Know and the Lesser of the Two Evils

2006-11-09T15:57:00.000+01:00

Ever Asked Yourself Why You Don't Want That Burrito You Just Ate Wrapped Up By Mexican Slave Labor?

2006-11-07T01:15:00.000+01:00

That guy Michael Jones is a real American - unfortunately so is Ted Haggard the preacher man.
Today I unfortunately saw Bush and co were on TV Euro News in one of those bandstand like TV choreographed performance sketches and everyone looked so tweaked and pleased with themselves on who knows what drug - probably performance enhancing Aspartame and they all looked cardboard and paper doll like - including the carefully placed characatures of specific white middle American voters in the background... I was thinking well don't they all look as foreign to me as one of Kim Jong IL in North Korea better productions at political based public performance art state propaganda for which in that genre of course Adolf (better known as Hitler) was the best at especially for those Nuremberg Rallies Leni Reifenstahl so flawlessly documented. I mean Bush and co campaigning on the backs of dead American boys and the countless Iraqi people as if they weren't human beings but gamers tokens - it all looked as pathetic and boring as those Midwestern strip mall neon Jesus evangelism churches behind all that acreage of tarmac parkinglots.
This Ted Haggard sex scandal is like not really scandalous or a surprise - the real scandal is all those people dying in Iraq from economically deprived American family livelihoods... Or the scandal of how many Iraqi's are dead, dying or permanently maimed by our clumsy regime who should not be there nor should have ever gone there back then even under Bush I. Or the scandal of Israel yet again trouncing on Palestine while the news is not news about that at all but about Israels flimsy blame shifting excuses for its atrocious and ineffective military might. It's a sex scandal with only quasi religious overtones not the actual news of the world that is the scandle and it's only a scandal don't forget in the states. It is not a scandal about cleaning up cluster bombs from Lebanon in population centers for which cluster bombs aren't even supposed to have been used in the first place. Forgotten cluster bombs still in Lebanon in urban areas that are now land mines in hiding that the Israelis refuse to even help assist in cleaning up. Little landmines waiting for little children. And the scandal isn't that Israel gets away with all this but the scandal is an evangelical hustler hiring sodomist who hates faggots who incites Americans to become yet another religious state while deporting Mexicans - and to build Israeli styled walls along the US's southern border... My whole theory about that is that Israel needed someone to put up a bigger wall (than theirs) and since China's great wall is so irrelevant now given that China itself is everywhere... Or that the Iron Curtain has been pulled back and the Berlin wall pulled down all while Israel is building its own pogrom fortifications in concrete on the squalid remains of someone elses territory - I mean the scandal is a for paid aging hustler by a consenting adult evangelical who made his fortune lying to 30 million innocent consumers souls... Whether its marketing Coca-Cola or McBurgers and Pizza or JESUS and Elvis it all based in lies. My theory is Israel needed someone to make them look good. So they funded bad mouthed US politicians to get Americans to despise their southern neighbor and Mexican immigrants residing in the US - so these Zionist types could manipulate this new found North American scapegoat distraction fueled by American automotive road rage discontent into hate and discontent towards Mexico and Mexicans and thus get the US to get into the wall building business (built for certain by unscrupulous Jewish American mafia money - paid for by US taxpayers who back when I lived in the states had zero problem with Mexicans, cheap labor and exploitation of migrants) - the same suburban white types who would happily talk Spanish to that greasy sweaty under paid Mexican retail slave laborer wrapping up a beef burrito with those ridiculous plastic bags on their hands at the local tex-mex fry McFry pit... and now when I hear lefty educated types going on about "those Mexicans" sounding like desperate housewifery and spineless husband accomplises.... ("ever since they moved in and painted that house next door in creme de menthe green my houses real estate value just plummeted") I mean this is the scandal in the states - scapegoating Mexicans and building a wall in the insularity bubble of the US and that other economic apartheid bubble over there in post democracy Israel in the remains of Palestine in an age when the rest of the world for once doesn't want walls and is in the habit of removing them. I mean everything now flies over walls anyways so whats the point? So much for North American Free Trade when there is an Israeli styled wall between the Gulf of Mexico and the fucking Pacific Ocean being built up and fortified in concrete and ammunition - like what's next land mines along the US border with Mexico and Canada? Perhaps in the Bering Sea or throughout the English Channel?
Ever asked yourself why you don't want that Tex-Mex burrito you just ate wrapped up by Mexican slave labor but rather by Somalian hard labor? Ever asked yourself why you want the person wrapping up your food to wear hand condoms while not paying them enough to buy soap for their own family? Do you have a beef burrito digesting right now in your stomach? Ever wonder what kind of caged life did that beef in your belly that will soon be killing the organ muscle of your heart - ever wonder what that caged up career life you live is for - and who is going to eat you when you are all used up and defenseless?
What is this Planet and where do I get off - we are the architects and dreamers of our own children and grand childrens cozy little fortified home in Hell and this is Planet Earth. Meanwhile that al Gore film plays on and the Americans fail yet again at realizing what they lost in the last six, soon to be eight years, in cleaning up the overweight mess they made of that great big parkinglot in North America.

Majestic Light, Interior Lives

2006-09-15T11:16:00.000+02:00

The Image pictured du jour was taken last week from my room. A small back room useful for retreating away from the perpetual city noise of Villette (Or roommates, TV and internet). My very own Masjid - I also sleep here. Pictured is the Majestic Qur'an which on one sunny day light hit the wall just above the opening Surah - Al Fatiha. The sunlight passing through the old windows gives the impression of light moving above the Qur'an. Seeing this beautiful coincidence I grabbed the camera and am now posting it here. The Qur'an sits in front of a Pakistani tribal hand made woolen prayer rug that depicts the Qibla - the white wall of the room a plaster reminder of the Kaaba.

Forbidden Faces

2006-08-23T00:12:00.000+02:00

Recovering masculinity might be a better title for this blogette du jour but I feel like something forbidden, faces some form of enlightenment. Ambiguity has its privileges. Pictured here is Mustafa the artist formerly known as Matthew. Give this bro' time for the surname. Rest assured he is working on a new one for that too.

Here in Villette in the summer it seems my beard is the subject of alot of passerby tourists camera snapping. I don't much mind having my photo taken by a stranger, though I'd rather not... What gripes me is when someone two or three meters away yielding a camera takes my photo without even bothering to talk to me regardless of trying to do so in their own mother-tongue. A person hiding behind a camera who cannot engage their subject by acknowledging the common humanity is behaving cold and inhuman - it is more than being rude. What right does a photographer have in using a camera as a substitute for some inter-human communication? A camera can be a great tool for a conversational opener but to snap a photo and run away is akin to stealing. Like back in old Ohio those Amish ways of believing a camera or photograph steals one soul - well this bro thinks there might just be some truth in that idea.

Then all those insecurity cameras - electric eyes littered about the city these days... Or CIA/Europol types disguised as tourists taking photos for gathering the facial recognition data for the Orwellian databases of the near future. How much soul do I lose in a day? To say nothing of being voluntarily photographed for family and friends. But perhaps tourists should not have the right to photograph the natives even when in a modern European city. I can't go anywhere around my neighborhood without being caught on at least one camera in any direction I go from my home. The thing is all those cameras overhead lining streets will not do anything for me if I fall victim to a pick pocket or "random" street bashing. Those cameras are only to protect multi-national corporate and insurance interests - not you or me or the terrified masses of this present disappointing modernity. And to think all those corporate multi-nationals won't hire bearded men...

I am seriously considering carrying with me at all times an Arabic headscarf. Not just to use as sun screen when neccessary or if it raining like it tends to do in Bru-town - but carrying a headscarf for some facial privacy in this day and age of digital camera technologies impolitely brandished about. It is getting to the point around town here with all the cameras that I'd rather wrap up my face like some scary Mujahideen warrior type just for a little on the street privacy. Not because I am a terrorist because I don't believe in such nonesense. Though me running around with a headscarf covering my face and my barbarosa hanging out might be a rather terrorising image for some! But I'm sure some tourist will be taking a photo too. There are two famous kinds of headscarves - the white and black Palestinian variety or the Saudi red and white style. There are though many other color combinations of this handy throughout the ages and centuries practical headscarf for men. I have some in brown and black, gray and dark red, blue and red - with fringe and tassles and without. Fringe for when I am feeling like the lunatic fringe that I am. These colored headscarves for men come with less political overtones and are generally worn in the same form of wrapping as any Saudi, Palestinian, Tuareg (the blue men of the Sahara) or any other desert man's headscarf.

There was a time - not so long ago - maybe 15 or 20 years ago in rural parts of Morocco or as it's better known as al Maghreb - The far flung West of Arabia when men were forbidden to shave their beards. Now men everywhere are forbidden to not shave their beards. Why do times change and shift and is it better? And yet men from Orthodox religions can work and keep their beards. But if you lean towards looking like something scruffy from the mountains of Afghanistan forget it you terrorist.

Meanwhile I hear when tranversing London streets one is not allowed to wear a typically American hooded sweatshirt (with the hood up I assume) as this interferes with facial recognition of street security electronic surveillance. But what about traditional Moroccan hooded thobes? The American or Moroccan hood is handy in the climates of this part of Europe. It's either intermittant rain or wind and occassionally you might want to cover up with out fussing with carrying a hat or umbrella. Umbrellas are useless anyway on the crowded urban European streets of today. At some point we are all going to have to stand up to our fear mongering, terrorism peddling as mass tactical control "democratically elected" governments shamelessly in cahoots with the Anglophone worlds aim. But how?

Meanwhile all those cameras about and I keep having this nagging feeling I'm losing my soul - and losing my masculinity to the femine form of the beardless Man today - what could possibly be next since Freedom left the building ages ago if she were ever here. Whatever happened to my right to my body? Why do we humans tell each other, legislate and legalize what one can and cannot do with the natural God-given form of their body...

Lately I have been recovering my lost sense masculinity with a beard. (Lost since I don't know when - it doesn't really feel like I ever possessed my own masculinity since even some other man's name and business was on all my underwear and clothes - Yes this is a Fight Club the book and movie refernce but true to my own experience growing up all the same). If Muslim women are choosing to wear a hijab or some other piece of fabric if not entirely concealing their western wardrobe then perhaps more Muslim Brothers might consider choosing to wear their beards au naturale along with those fashionable Adidas brand pull on and pull over sports clothes. This just might in effect be a handy self equalizing form of Islamic Feminism put in action by some forward thinking Muslim Bro's looking rather anachronistic like the one pictured here. Certainly it has been my experience by wearing a beard in this day as an unexpected form of masculinization. The beard and becoming 40 years old have given me a sense of manhood I never possessed. Yet there isn't a day that goes by where someone I know, or don't know, Muslim or not, has not expressed blatant negative opinions on my God given facial hair. Plus it seems a beard is public property and people around you wether you know them or not seem to feel they have the right to tell you what to do with your whiskers. It seems that Gillette brand capitalistic corporate-o-cratic emasculating razor is never far from away. My beard, my balls - keep off!

Not that I recognize myself in street window reflections these days when I am trodding the streets of this here Bru-town. Especially as pictured here in the way cool Shukr brand clothes I received as a gift for my recent 41st birthday. I actually remember when growing ones hair, remaining unwashed and wearing clothes with holes was an act of rebellion and determination... Now a few decades later it's growing ones beard and wearing dignified clothes and keeping clean that are rebellious social acts. It's a 180 degree shift. Choosing to be modest is out of the question. Then the word modest just seems an insufficient if not altogether hygenic or feminine word in the language English limitations to describe choosing to cover up for life in a multi-cultural urban context. Covering up to protect ones self and to protect others. Keeping covered to respect ones self and to respect the people we share the streets with. It is all about personal choice, expression and tolerance.

So for those of you out there (CIA, friend or foe or all of the above) who for whatever reason you have who wanted to know what I look like here behind the Experiencing Belgium desk in Bru-town well now you know if you didn't already...

Ya, Mustafa.

Kitchen Condition

2006-07-31T15:55:00.000+02:00

Meanwhile Lebanon is on my mind… I kicked out our resident quarrelsome Jew (American) on an impulse after watching on Al Jazeera covering the barrage against Christians and Muslims in Southern Lebanon. Not so many weeks ago our “live in” squatter needed temporary accommodation like Anne Frank from a relationship/domestic situation that went sour. When this fellow moved in with so much baggage (literally and figuratively) that I felt like I could identify with a Palestinian in 1948... Now the Anne Frank guy isn’t talking to me even though that other housemate here is probably more fed up with him than me: So much for helping my fellow Americans in need here in Villette. Yesterday was Brussels march to support the atrocity in Lebanon – it was funny seeing how all the young Muslim guys and girls were killing two birds with one stone – showing their support for what is happening to Lebanon mercilessly by the Israeli Corporate machinations and, two, using the public gathering as a boy/girl meeting place – this provided a happier lighter edge to a harrowing reality not so far from European privileges. Technically we here in Europe can drive to the carnage in Lebanon because our roads connected up with theirs before the Israeli’s bombed them to pieces. For this reason alone Europeans should be a bit more decisive about what Israel is doing to Lebanon.

I’ve been having terrible asthma and hay fever and am a mess from that. My guess it’s from a strange mixture of summer pollen blowing across Flanders and urban diesel auto exhaust from all the Dutchlings driving through Belgium in their caravans/(RV’s) to Southern Europe. Add to that mixture industrial and agricultural pollution plus all the greasy exhaust from summer fritkots – (fry stands): One such fritkot of which is temporarily parked like an unwanted recreational vehicle (RV/caravan) and doing daily and nightly business on the square at the end of the street - its arrival there coincidentally or not arrived with my asthma and allergy problems du jour.

Just to get me out of the house sometimes I have serious thoughts about going to Lebanon to fight the Israelis (and die there)… My Google news alerts sent me a link to a South East Asian organization actively soliciting online recruits to go help in Lebanon. I don’t think I would actually go though because I don’t even like to eat meat and therefore I don’t want to hurt anyone including even an Israeli from their unjustified inhumane warmongering. It would though be nice having a purpose in life for a change. I do though seriously want to go to Damascus and see the old city soon – before it gets bombed to hell and back from the Americans in Iraq in the East and from the Israelis in the South after they have taken the whole of Lebanon. And all of this before the myth of the next cease-fire is put on Israel by the UN. If this isn’t another false start at the Mother of all Battles then Syria will be invaded by Israeli missiles next. My guess is Israel has always wanted to extend their unholy land from Cypress in the Mediterranean Sea in the West, to Saudi Arabia (and the Sinai Peninsula) in the South – Across Iran to Afghanistan and Uzbekistan in the East, to the city of Baku in the North… I believe this is Israel’s collective dream of an Israeli run neo-Orientalist Empire. Why they aren’t content with Southern California and Jew York City I don’t know (oh yeah and Miami)… Given that they have all those places in North America I don’t get why they even need that tiny little bit of land in Palestine and Lebanon. The funny thing is I am wondering where Bin Laden is now that the world really needs him. My God who is the more criminal terrorist? Bush junior and his warmongering administration in Iraq – or the current vegetative Sharon and his henchmen with their incarceration and controls of Palestinians and Lebanese? Compared to these guys who are the bigger criminals? Like I said where is Bin Laden now that the world needs him?

Funny though what the Talmud actually says about the New State of Israel. But even religious Israelis have selective ideas about their sacred religious texts. I do admire anyone whose has a religious lifestyle in pursuit of the divine that goes against the consumerist human resource lifestyle standards imposed on the world’s human population. And I especially have a fondness for men who wear their beards au natural, including anachronistic Hasidim like the ones who recently at a New York City gathering for Lebanon were carrying placards reminding the world about what the Talmud actually says regarding a modern Israeli state: Let alone one who perpetuates terrorism on Lebanon and the always forgotten Palestinians. Qana and Gaza are the evidence that Israel is after all like the US is now, first and foremost a terrorist state organization, unlike Hamas or Hezbollah.

Ok back to my life here - I listen to the radio in my kitchen condition. My kitchen condition is my euphemism for my persistent battle with the dark dog of depression. Often times to alleviate my tormented brain fevers I make a hot cup of cheap Assam tea or spicy Pakistani chai and talk of conspiracy theories with my friends to explain the inexplicable lies in the news today. I know I take my paranoid conspiracy game humor too far or too seriously but very little these days makes me laugh. Perhaps that’s why I like Arab drag – it makes me happy to wear Islamist (men’s) clothing. Baggy crotch trousers and thobes or modest summer fashions like at Shukr online offer – precisely made in tailoring standards not seen in Europe in ages – now being made in Syria with exacting quality of fine tailoring. Some people wear women’s lingerie to get their kicks (men or women) I prefer Kalashnikovs as a fashion accessory. I know the paranoid conspiracies are a silly game but really when I observe the disparities in the news from CNN, BBC and EuroNews when compared to what I watch on Al Jazeera, Al Arabia. Al Maghrebia or the Arab News Network – then one does see what lies the media is capable of manufacturing. I really believe there is a Zionist conspiracy or at least overt sympathies in the Western media news and the Arab news network alternatives are exposing that better than Noam Chomsky can in any book of his which let’s face it don’t much get read anymore by the masses (if they ever did). Not that the Arab news networks don’t have their own agenda but it is nice to observe news freed from Zionist sympathies. Thank you Al Jazeera!

I still believe in Byzantium before 1453 of the Common Era – despite my thrills for the Modern Arabia of the future and the inter-galactic new Las Vegas of Dubai and the Arabesque of the past as still can be experienced in Sana’a, Yemen of today at least in the old city there. Certainly the rest of the world could learn from places like what remains of Byzantium of today in Bulgaria where multi-religious communities live in harmony and peace and have done so for centuries. Certainly Lebanon and Syria are ethnically and religiously more multi-cultural than Israel and its pure Jewish state will ever allow itself to be. We in the rest of the world have to live with other religions and cultures heaped by modern immigration needs into our respective worlds. Why should Israel even think it is a Democracy when it is a racially and religiously hierarchical pure state that Hitler looking down on us from the Star Vega would be jealous of? Funny even to realize or consider that in this day and age Saudi Arabia is better at being a multi-ethnic/religious culture than Israel. Meanwhile the UN and everyone else in the so called West – quietly gives Israel all the permission they need to behave like state sanctioned international terrorists.

And then there is Congo-leeza Rice talking to the world in media bits… Looking like she can’t be bothered by all these leviathan Levant problems when there is much more important oil to grab in Iraq and Iran. For someone reported as a foremost mind in the politics of the current Bush II administration/regime she sure does sound like an idiotic high school principal when addressing the needs of the Lebanese for a mandatory ceasefire to be levied against the terrorists of Israel. Congo-leeza Rice and her desperate housewife formal wear wardrobe and meanwhile the Congo is carrying out Democratic elections in the former Belgian colony. It’s scary to consider that the Congo of all places might actually be carrying out Democracy more legitimately (and efficiently) than the US elections in 2000 and 2004 - for which Congo-leeza Rice owes her current employment to. Does anyone really think those elections in Florida and Ohio weren’t rigged to put the Bushlings in office so that Israel could wage its wars on its neighbors in Gaza and Lebanon with the US shamelessly backing it. The very wars that Bush and co. condones which Clinton would not. It wouldn’t surprise me if like that high-colonic Powell, Congo-leeza Rice doesn’t wash off brown skin dye after work after removing her 1950’s Afro-American church lady’s wig. Under those brown tinted contact lenses I suspect blue eyes of an Aryan Master Race greedily peer out. My guess is Congo-leeza Rice is George Walker Bush’s illegitimate sister whom he has incestuous White House Oval Office relations with. My lawd the Bush II ratings are so low that Georgie-boy might just benefit from a blue dress and cigar styled White House sex scandal a la Kenneth Star. White house sex scandals aside what the world needs right now is Bill Clinton to go and tell Israel to back off (in his trade mark polite and articulate style) if it doesn’t want to be air-lifted like a 21st century version of the 1950’s Yemeni style Magic Carpet Ride to present day Southern Californian freeway culture to prevent another world war.

Meanwhile my home life is terrible. No fighting – but I now understand Janis Joplin when she sings about “take a little piece of my heart why don’t you – you know you’ve got it if it makes you feel good”. I imagine my estranged partner sitting around like Hannibal Lexter - whatever spelling – cannibalistically chewing on pieces of the muscle tissue of my heart like it were bubble gum while mindlessly watching outdated American TV programming on Flemish-Belgian TV networks.

What the rest of the world must come to grips with, and face the consequence of implication, that merits our global understanding is that the United States Military Industrial Complex and the Israelis are two Terrorist states. No matter how much finger pointing the US or Israel does in calling Hezbollah, Hamas, the Taliban, or Al Qaeda – terrorist organizations – The United States and Israel are Terrorist Organizations unlike anything the world has ever seen. Clinton was a nicer face – a more articulate spokesman for - but never-the-less part of a corporate capitalistic based self legitimizing terrorist network. And anyone around the world caught in the beast of Capitalism’s grip by being a consumer/human resource – is very much a link in the chain and an integral part of State Sanctioned terrorism. Just ask Lebanon for every human being in Lebanon understands this more than anyone else except the Palestinians in Gaza or any decade’s old forgotten refugee camp in the burnt out remains of a land called Palestine.

Disproportional Doesn't Even Begin to Describe the Carnage in Lebanon

2006-07-25T00:19:00.000+02:00

To the American's who want to genuinely offer help and relief to the people of Lebanon: It's quite simple really, if Condoleeza Rice wants to do anything for Lebanon in representing the Americans on her visit to Beirut today then she should assure Lebanon that she will not permit the US to supply the Israeli military with any forms of special weaponry of war that the Israel government might have purchased from the US in the past (or received gratis).

The United States need send no other relief supplies to Lebanon except this promise - No more weapons of war for the Israelis supplied from the Americans.

Let other friendlier more admirable nations of the world send blood and medicine supplies as well as food, water and sanitation relief to Lebanon.

Do I need to add as well - no half hearted Haliburton contracts for the friends of Bush to rebuild Lebanon for whenever Israel stops trying to expand into Lebanon.

Last I heard the levies of New Orleans still needed rebuilding along with some of the basic infrastructure for that old forgotten American city/dirty little domestic secret of the Bush II era.

Until the US stops giving military financial aid and the machines of war to the Israeli government then the rest of the world cannot expect Iran to do likewise (for what it's worth I am not convinced Iran is even doing the things the Anglophone media - CNN or BBC - are accusing them of anyway).

Lebanon was a European class country. Beirut was a European class city. Certainly the European Union and in particular France of all places should be rushing to the rescue and relief for the people of Lebanon.

Is anyone rushing to rescue let alone help defend Lebanon?

There hasn't been a decade since the founding of the Israeli government that Israel didn't want to claim Lebanese terrorities and homes in their history of aggression with their neighbors.

It just doesn't work anymore to call ones neighbors and enemies terrorists. Most people of the world aren't buying the fear and terrorism game - for we all see it as state sanctioned scapegoat for acts of war without justifiable reason.

If we in the states could persuade Condoleezza Rice and the Bush II regime that their job is to represent the US properly and thus to behave ethically and in humanitarian ways - if we could just promise that American made hardware of war will not be used against the people and state of Lebanon then I think we American's could at least not be ashamed of ourselves regarding the humiliation, suffering and fall of Lebanon. ...To say nothing of the war on Lebanon by Israeli state sanctioned terrorism.

How many Lebanese equal one Israeli? The racial statistics today seem to be 100 Lebanese human beings equal one Israeli consumer.

The death and destruction by an offshore earthquake near Indonesia - perhaps an act of God is one thing - unavoidable.

The death and destruction of Lebanon by a neighboring government and people was absolutely unneccessary.

If the Israelis are so afraid of Iran and neighboring militant organizations (no more or less guilty than the Israeli or American government/military) then perhaps the Israelis should stop perpetuating crimes against Palestinians trapped in zones of control and cultural and racial extermination.

Perhaps if the Israelis had a better conscience regarding their own brothers and cousins and people of a different faith then they wouldn't have to wage paranoid wars and desperately feel so acutely the need for more land.

Lebanon is the land under a beautiful red and white flag with a green cypress tree on a planet suffering from decades of devastating deforestation - a nation like Lebanon revering a symbol of ecological health like a growing tree deserves better from the rest of us around the world standing by quietly watching Lebanon fall to her knees.

Story from Villette's Klein Kasteeltje/Petit Chateau

2006-07-18T14:09:00.000+02:00

Today we here at the Experiencing Belgium desk have a different kind of blogette posting. Nearby on the canal down the street is an asylum center known as the Klein Kasteeltje/Petit Chateau a nice local name for a "camp" housed in a building that resembles a small castle. It is common modern day poor house for people caught in Belgium without papers and especially without that paper in the form of euro notes/dollar bills. Though not held under lock and key it is a dubious sort of arrangement for those whose lives end up there seeking shelter for a painful life transition. If only the Belgian newspapers would print the many stories such as this life story then perhaps the Belgians of Belgian origin would understand who the unfamiliar strangers they now share these old streets with. The following is one such story of a fellow from Nigeria staying at the klein Kasteeltje center here in Villette who asked me to type out his life story on why he came to stay in Belgium.

The reason why I wrote my story is because the endless empty time I am spending in the “Petit Chateau” doing nothing, helplessly bored for hours that stretch the day into endless proportions. My mind keeps spinning around in my brain. So as not to sink into madness I decided to concentrate on what had been life before… The time I was happy… unaware of what was happing in the country, unaware of evil in some peoples mind.

My name is Dovenn Ekeanyanwu I am from Nigeria. We were a family of three brothers and one sister. Awaking from our happiness was quite a shock. The eldest brother of my father, my uncle, Sylvanus, works as a government official and is therefore rather powerful. My uncle Obet, also brother of my father died leaving everything he had to his son my cousin Thomson. Uncle Sylvanus took advantage of his position and power in the government to steal the land documents of uncle Obet leaving my cousin Thomson without anything. My cousin requested the documents in vain as uncle Sylvanus refused. So one day Thomson forced his way into my uncle Sylvanus’ house and… God knows how and why… killed my aunt. At that time I was in Oweri, in my state, when the police popped up and arrested me and my mother accusing us of being accomplices of Thomson’s murder. We were tortured with knives and beatings. I myself had wounds all over my body. But the worse is that I could hear mother crying over in the other jail cell – oh! We Suffered! …mother died. My cousin Thomson was caught. Fortunately with the help of friends I had the opportunity to escape. My uncle insisted that I should be executed like my cousin without trial of course. He hired and bribed the police again to get me. Also my brothers had to go on the run. I still don’t know where they are.

The police got me, they tortured and beat me. But, God be the glory! Some other prisoners and I were driven through the bush were we would be executed secretly. They told us to run and so we did. Most of us were shot. Fortunately I managed to escape running helplessly through the bush. I turned to the nearby town of ABA were I fell down completely exhausted. A man, who I will call “the good Samaritan” so as not to reveal his real name, found me and hid me in his house. When he learned my story he decided that in order to escape from my powerful uncle, the best for me was to leave the country. He managed to take me on a flight to Belgium. There at the airport in Zaventem, he gave me 10 euros to go to an asylum center and he left me.

In those cold and gray October days I felt completely lost, having no clothes and nothing to eat. I strolled for about three days sleeping in the streets. Then somebody directed me to the “Petit Chateau”. There they provided me with a room, a bed, some medications and clothes. They actually saved me from the streets. Later I was asked for an interview with the “Commissariat General” and went there with a lawyer to whom I had been introduced. They asked me about how I arrived in Belgium and why I decided to leave my country. To me that interview seemed like hell. I felt like the interrogation started all over again. I was but nerves and panic. Besides I had not recovered yet from the shock. Like for an exam at school I would have loved to do well… But I was just able to utter a very nervous and disordered story of my past four months. I am afraid they did not get a good image of me. In such an interview one is always afraid that this first and so important declaration is not clear enough and sounds unbelievable. But it is the truth! Roughly said and with clumsiness of a frightened and nervous mind.

Things like what happened to me might sound exaggerated when one lives in Europe but they are happening so very often in Nigeria. Later I went to the Palais de Justice and was introduced to another lawyer. In fact a young lady who took over my case - I am thankful for her for her care and courage - Having many other souls like me to defend you can imagine the world and implications she must face. Actually my life and also that of the other poor souls she defends are depending on her.

It has been two months now and in the meantime I try my best to integrate into the Belgian society. It’s hard without a family but I made a lot of friends. Belgians are rather warm open and warm hearted. Some I know were even nice enough to write a letter of recommendation.

I do sincerely hope with all my heart that Belgium will give me another opportunity to start life. That I will never have to go back and face death in my native country. I unfortunately did not get a positive answer the first time. But I am doing my best. Some friends are helping me with French and Dutch and I might have the opportunity to follow classes in this language center of the “Petit Chateau” in September and any other craft-work classes I would gladly follow.

I warmly thank the Belgian Government for helping me this far.

Praying for the Night Thief

2006-07-04T19:31:00.000+02:00

It’s hot in Villette. Officially even it’s a heat wave. Around the house here it must be 35 to 38 degrees. Honestly, I like this weather and only wish the idea of Global Warming would hurry up and make this kind of weather normal and longer lasting just to get the damp out of the old bricks of Bru-town. Meanwhile, Werchter, that strange Belgian version of Woodstock that is phenomenally popular here has ended for this year. Kind of like an Anglophone pop version of the Nuremberg Rallies with 21st century pagan overtones for the Euro masses – minus the racial issues and the national socialists (for the most part) but certainly it’s all totally capitalistic. I find it weird to be honest. I’d rather watch excerpts of it on the news just to remind myself why I don’t like such crowds.

You wouldn’t believe how much fun I had last evening watching Al Jazeera in Arabic. Al Jazeera - with that incredible logo that CNN is secretly jealous of - was featuring a documentary on Hamas and the military part of that organization which was really compelling and kinda like the end scenes of Bruce la Bruce’s film Raspberry Reich. Although I know some Arabic I didn’t know enough to follow the storyline of the program. But watching Al Jazeera without knowing Arabic is way more interesting than that boring CNN – after all Al Jazeera - like Mecca Cola is to Coca-cola, is perhaps a ghost subsidiary with the same economic aims. Because I am such a fan of Al Jazeera I secretly want to learn fluent Arabic so I can get a job as a Western Anglophone Journalist who can proudly say I work for Al Jazeera – this would be useful at parties and I think the pay would be pretty good too. Plus for the first time in my life I would be gainfully employed and the irony of that would be personally delightful. The thing is when you watch Al Jazeera without knowing much Arabic the effect is like watching that inane EuroNews (broadcast in seven languages while remaining overtly Franco-centric) program called No Comment. No Comment is the only thing worthwhile EuroNews does. A few minutes without a propagandistic voice over of something playing out in real time caught on video for a few minutes. Like, why isn’t there a No Comment channel? So this evening I watched my version of the No Comment channel – Watching Al Jazeera without knowing much Arabic. The thing is the documentary of the military part of Hamas (and not the admirable Democratic social services part of Hamas which no one in the West is interested in which was the real reason the Palestinians voted them into office) has little more than self made weaponry and alot of stones to throw like David hurled toward almighty Goliath. Incidently all those Palestinian boys you see in the media throwing stones at Israeli soldiers carrying all those machine guns, well, those Palestinian boys are the new Davids and heroes of the story over there in the unholy land of today. No matter how distressing the news of the day tries to be nothing cheers me up more when watching CNN than to see Palestinian youngsters hurling stones at Israels incorporated military might. They are really good at throwing - too bad they don't have any baseball fields to play on like their Israeli brothers have. But I digress. The Hamas documentary was unintentionally hot plus the documentary talking head was kinda swishy – it was sooo like Fight Club in Arabia. The forces were all very homemade compared to the slick American or Israelis (is there a difference?). Actually I was thinking it would be interesting to document these impoverished Palestinian forces compared to well funded Israeli forces – and then why not do like the shocker of that unforgettable Apartheid era documentary that simply showed a black South African family home spliced up in scenes of a white family home. Like do the same with the Israeli and Palestinian various home lives including the decades old refugee (concentration) camps. But the Hamas military was so DIY (do it yourself) like - In French they have a good word for it but I don’t know how to spell it - cheapo-tage. Which means something like makeshift – Jerry rigged. Etc. At the same time I find it really distressing when there is a guy with a Qur’an in the right hand and a machine gun in the left but I do like those turbans covering the face. I am just not so certain that a machine gun and Qur’an go hand in hand. Maybe those Jihadi warrior boys should spend a little less time oiling their big machine guns and instead spend more time reading up on the Majestic Qur'an that they like so much to brandish about. The thing is I would though love to go train like in that documentary (because I could use the exercise and the camaraderie of it) or perhaps just so I could enjoy the ambiance of Arab masculinity and humor in the communal showers afterwards. The documentary I think was, if you know the Arabic language, a real shocker but when you don’t know the language it is all rather funny because honestly I don’t know what the Israeli’s are so worried about. I just find it curious when Democratic movements elect leaders that other more powerful nations don’t approve of: Then you see what a lie Democracy in the West is today.

The night before last night I watched Paradise Now on a DVD region one disc on my computer which I can do by not switching the computers region player more than three times (which is a tedious task as the prompts in my computer for this are in Dutch and I am never certain what choice I am clicking on). Could technology facilitate greed any more tediously? Anyway it was too hot to do anything else than to watch TV. But I couldn’t get the subtitles to play – who knows why – probably Hollywood Zionist Conspiracies at work on a technological level in my computer… But watching Paradise Now in Arabic without subtitles gave me the opportunity to enjoy the cinematography and actually watch the movie and see how much Arabic I actually know. So I am even more annoyed with the Oscars months later after their big night: It wasn’t just Brokeback Mountain but now Paradise Now not getting the attention it deserved that is pissing me off. Why can’t some bright shining star worth following like Susan Sarandon start an intelligent and humorous alternative to the Oscars? But what I find curious is that it’s July and I am still pissed off at the Oscars.

Meanwhile my right foot is rotting off. I have this massive plantar wart. I am actually beginning to wonder if one can die from a plantar wart. Leprosy and gangrene perhaps already are setting in. I mean Rimbaud died of something like foot cancer didn’t he? I should photograph it for an almanac of strange medical conditions because it’s so scary looking. I think I am a cash cow for my doctor. I go in two or three times a month for this and pay money (23 euros) even though I am mostly reimbursed by the insurance (God bless Belgium and their belief and commitment to social security because lack of health care for a nation is the real definition of terrorism). So every time I go to get my foot treated my doctor gets paid by me and the insurance. I think there are more sophisticated treatments that don’t drag on over years. I am actually ashamed of what my foot looks like. There are cracks and crevices around the warts so that it looks like a dual mini moon crater on the ball of my right foot. They are compound warts in a mosaic pattern of different little fuckers otherwise known as plantar warts forming two big separate life form entities. I haven’t named them yet but they seem to answer to “you little fuckers”. I pulled the dead skin off to expose the growths so that hopefully the air will help them heal – so now it looks like an old push button light switch. Remember those? Kinda brassy – one button white Bakelite the other black. Speaking of Bakelite how many people out there know that Bakelite was the original high quality durable plastic invented by a Belgian by the surname Baekeland? I used to think Bakelite was like literally plastic baked lightly that gave Bakelite plastic its antique charm and value… Those nice old, now antique, push button lights, in case you have forgotten, when you pushed one the other one popped out… Well my foot is just like that except the lights don’t go on or off when I push it – but the sensation of pain does go off like you wouldn’t believe – it can best be described as broken glass stuck in my foot sole. For this - Sometimes I despise my doctor. I suppose I will miss this critter (the wart not the doctor) when it’s gone. I spend too much time obsessed by it because it hurts like hell half the time. At the moment I bike everywhere because I can hardly walk. I could use a walker or a cane or perhaps soon a wheel chair but I am too vain so I bicycle. Bicycling in Brussels is life threatening just like the condition of my foot. Why risk your life climbing Pakistan's K-2 - our planet's second highest mountain and much less touristy alternative for an adventure and the rush of defying certain death when you can instead bicycle in Brussels? Brussels whose urban fabric evolved prior to the great American Auto Age was inflicted on the rest of the world and consequently many streets were not built to accommodate the automotive beast of the Apocalypse. Or how about the curse of all the space hogging parked cars that go with it - to say nothing of the noises or the smells and stress of perpetual life threatening forms of transportation. Then idiot drivers who refuse to share the roads with the bicyclists and it’s only a matter of time until something nasty happens. Then when you add oversized SUVeez (suburban assault vehicles) that were designed to transverse parts of Africa without proper roads to these little streets and the suburban bourgeoisie driving them and you begin to think having unprotected sex with as many partners as is humanly possible is considerably safer in this day and age than riding your bicycle in Bru-town.

The other day to cheer my father up with some humor I thought to send my dad this funny rewrite of the 23rd Psalm which was a witty commentary on the Bush II regime in a nutshell, well die hard patriot WWII Vet Pa Kettle in old Ohio did not like the 23 Qualms about Bush II which if you write us and ask at the Experiencing Belgium desk we will try to send it on to you. In fact my dad is such a CNN/Bush II sucker who sees an Arab Islamist under every rock in Ohio that I refuse to go home and visit him (my dad not the guys under the Ohio rocks) because even his e-mails piss me off. Better that we have our weekly edgy and disagreeable phone conversations and skip trying to spend a fortnight or two* together in his little plastic ticky tack house. We really are polar opposites and I am sorry, he is my dad, and he loves his country and his President more than his family, so fuck him he can rot in Ohio with everyone else contentedly stuck there. He can hang out with his like minded friends and family members. And don’t give me grief about this. My lawd during the American Civil War – The War of Northern Aggression – families were divided like this so why should now be any different? I don’t want to hang out with my Bush II loving swing voter sucker for the Bin Laden trap fear of terror though adorable Dad – who at his age has nothing to fear but the imminent arrival of the Grim Reaper of old age – the original terrorist. I can’t bite my tongue when I am around my dad and be polite and respectful because I would have to bite my tongue completely off. Honestly it is better that I face up to not seeing dear old dad in this life again. Given what we know about each others points of views it’s sad and I blame the Reagan/Bush/I/II Regime Administrations for terrorizing my family with their stupid greedy fear tactics. Just tell me why the states gets off pretending to be like Israel and afraid of everything… as if on some subconscious level the Americans know there is actually something like Karma/God's Judgment for what we all enable the US to do by way of our votes and taxed dollars (to say nothing of our petrol addiction). Fear is a consequence of America’s wretched Foreign Policy – And the Bush Regime plays that fear and spins and baits it even more for their own profit. Just listen to junior Bush every time he gets played in the media the first ten words out of that slack lipless mouth will be about the threat to Ahmerka and that never ending war on terror... Would someone please teach that Bush guy how to pronounce accurately the name of the nation he leads. Otherwise we might have to start changing the future spelling of the United States of America to something more in line with the history of the Castilian lisp in Espanole – you know like having to pronounce Ibiza as ebeetha because of some sweet pea leader who wore tights and had a bit of hair on the tip of his tongue for some reason which we won't go into here. And how is it that Bush guy has all the Republican politicians under him trained to be parrots of threat and terror too. That and that American foreign policy subconscious neurosis of a forgetful stupor is because I think deep down Americans know something is wrong and they are unwilling to consider the fact they might all be wrong. First of all they can’t walk anywhere because despite all the sidewalks and wheelchair ramps the sidewalks around their neighborhoods don’t go anywhere for you have to drive everywhere.

Those Americans just don’t grasp foreign policy because they have so many debts to pay and so little vacation time to think about anything their country is doing abroad. Although how anyone can stomach the likes of the heinous Guantanamo Bay being perpetrated by a land which embraces the paramount idea of Lady Liberty (as if she were a trademark logo stolen for Hollywood cinematic entertainments) is beyond me. Guantanamo today being ignored by the Americans - its all too much like Auschwitz being tolerated by ordinary Germans way back when. And then all Bush II can do is blame the “liberal” NEW YORK TIMES for chrissakes (see ** point below) Bush you can do better than that even without a telepromter can’t you? If you think the NYTimes is liberal try reading some blogettes on line like this one would you. The Bush II guy fails at everything he does for the nation and all he can do is blame the New York Times (for doing their job which is a lot more than one can say about Bush holiday maker junior and his administrations regime which props up his lazy idiotic illiterate ass) – If Bush would have some balls and just say my Daddy made me do it (which would be the first honest thing he said in office) or probably more accurately my mommie Babs with that pearl necklace made daddy make me do it then maybe we can forgive the W for being an imbecile result of a the first dysfunctional family in office and chuck him and his WASPy family out of office. Would someone please organize the Million Machine Gun March on Washington DC to take back the country? Compared to Bush junior, President Castro looks down right likeable and dignified – a nice bearded father figure and as durable as father time too. Why do I care about the states? Remind me. I like the weather in North America and the south west landscape and sky are unbelievable but more and more I just see a land of spoiled adult children and over weight people frothing like a bitch dog in heat from the relentless sexual male sexless advertising – fat lost souls in SUVs who do not know the first thing about the rest of the world. With a citizenry duped into being a consumer human resource by a ministry of propaganda, lies and misinformation that uses sex to sell everything unimaginable and unnecessary – while at the same time representing men as without external sexual organs. Consumers addicted to compulsive forms of sex for release from this capitalistic matrix at a time when sex still comes with life and death consequences… I don’t know it’s just so fucked up. Hyper sexualized children and pre-teens running around with over sexualized consumed middle aged mid and large sized Americans shopping the ailes of Wal-mart shed buildings – living their lives out of big cars and big parking lots and big houses with Big TVs and big sofas… and small minds…

Sometimes I just can’t shake having seen the movie the Matrix (which is probably why that filmed spawned two stupid sequels because perhaps the original Matrix movie was just too dangerous a concept to turn loose) – everything about my former home life in Ohio back in the states is so synthetic and devoid of meaning and purpose. A synthetic electronic environment designed to distract an economically farmed out humanity from faceless corporation conglomerate from the reality of the obligation of other peoples suffering. At some point capitalism must surely collapse in on itself and we all know that collapse is long over due and the longer over due it is the bigger the collapse will be. And don't think the Bushies aren't poised to cash in on the great fall.

And all I can think about is some parts of the Book of Revelations (from the Bible in case you have forgotten about that piece of propaganda and history) where the return of Christ** will be like a thief in the night. I always liked this poetic analogy even as a kid – I can’t put my finger on why those few words can cause goose bumps but it does feel like it's very close - we will all see what that prophecy meant – little by little – night after night – a whole community gets ripped off by the thief in the night. If it happens it won’t happen all at once like Rapture Christians are taught to believe. Perhaps like the state of the states, little by little as if there were a thief in the night, freedom and liberty were stolen by the oil and energy corporations in charge and it won’t be anything like what they told us in church. Or who knows I could be wrong. But I wish something Biblical, Qur’anic, Revelatory, like from all the Prophets of Old Testament would happen because this world is too much to bear. Rampant materialism to numb our conscience from the terrible things man does to each other just to maintain a life of luxury and selfishness.

The Dali Lama was totally right when he said all of today’s suffering can be traced back to another person’s greed – why don’t we ever learn and start stopping our incessant wanting for material unneccessities in life? Why don’t we want the things that matter – to give those in need from our excess so as to alleviate if not stop suffering?

Well if you are still reading this then please just get up and get out of Ohio or Iowa or Oklahoma or anywhere and stop thinking you can’t have a life elsewhere outside of the US Matrix. It’s time for the Great American Diaspora to hit the rest of the world. A mass exodus of consciousness… We all die – that is a given but we all don’t have to die in a state of being like Ohio or the shopping malled of a once great and admirable land and nation. I’m not exactly happy in Belgium and I often times have doubts about living in Brussels at that but I sure am ever thankful to be here than in the states and certainly I am happy as all hell to be out of Ohio. Poor, poor Ohio – Ohio and the conservative lying election rigging Taft Republicans politicians who made the dreary brain drained mess that is present day Ohio – well I don’t feel sorry for them all anymores. You get what you deserve. At this point the only admirable thing Ohio can do is turn itself over to the descendants of the Indigenous tribes that once knew the hills and valleys and woodlands and plains and prairies and wet lands and water ways of Ohio like the back of their hands. Perhaps they can return the delicate ecology of Ohio back to what it was before the industrial agriculture and suburbanization of freeway culture took over and polluted everything with an unforgivable fascist form of shopping mall Capitalism. Who knows maybe then the forgotten swarms of the swans of Ohio will return. That way all those reintroduced Trumpeter swans, the largest of the swans and native to Ohio (like me), will return to shit on all those SUVeez just after they pull out of the automatic car washes.

“Independence Day”… the American’s might not know it but on a subconscious level they want their ideas of freedom and liberty returned to them. The rest of the world meanwhile just wants independence from the Americans and their greedy corporations of post Marshall Plan Western accomplices. It's time for a new Independence Day perhaps the Democrats could hire Bin Laden as an outside consultant if he weren't already working for the Military Industrial Complex wittingly or unwittingly. I dunno maybe its time on this fourth of July to think about a bearded turbanned Paul bin Revere proudly carrying a Kalashikov and a gilded Qur'an while driving a tank over the White House Rose Garden flower bushes... Now that image is way more American than we American's feel comfortable enough to admit.

*By the way two fortnights would make a month you stupid MTV addict – just remember what Gudrun from Raspberry Reich said about MTV's Madonna – in two words – Counter Revolutionary!

** Muslims consider Jesus Christ not the son of God but a Prophet and are obliged at this point to offer peace and blessing to his name – Funny how for most cultural Christians the name of their lord and God is a common swear word. Muslims like the Christians believe Christ will return – let’s hope so for there seems no other way out of our self made planetary mess of human “civilization”.

Rough Rant: Tapestry of a Day, Caught in the Streams of Unconsciousness

2006-06-21T02:25:00.000+02:00

Strange day, strange ways.
I got a hair cut earlier today. Was lost in the machinations of mind and conscious/conscience here is what I was able to salvage from that inner torment...
...Thought about Oklahoma in the spring a few years back while transverse-ing a portion of discarded Route 66… How strangely beautiful rural Oklahoma could (surprisingly) be. The dust and wild flowers in bloom alongside the forgotten road. Appalled at the monstrosity of drive though automotive Middle American Protestant materialistic neon Neo-Christendom of the suburban sprawling Oklahoma… This while waiting in line at the bicycle repair shop on my street – a bike shop in a automotively strangled European motor-city. Strange country of a homeland back home that discards its own physical history… I remembered I was shocked to learn about the fate of Route 66 years ago, years later, after Route 66 was made defunct (quietly in 1985). It was like we were duped as Americans by the likes of Reagan and co when this roadway was quietly dismissed. I still know the lyrics of Route 66 and still want to drive its fragmentary and forgotten remains again. From Chicago to L.A. As I write this I am watching a show on a religious sub channel of a Holland’s TV network of a strange documentary of sorts of Franciscus. San Francisco, Saint Francis of Assisi - choose your language. Thought about in that bike shop line/que how that now that the Great American Experiment in Democracy is finally dead it's just like with the awareness of Route 66 being sidelined and “decommissioned” to a nearby parallel (I-40) route on a different scale of a different reality without soul or history… Sometimes even the street signs here make me think to much. Like those old original Dutch language, the forgotten Flemish names on street signs here in Brussels exist though not much noticed on the now blue and white signs beneath the old French names. Democracy in the states was quietly sidelined to something else. But no one knows it yet except those who done the sidelining. Walked around today in forgotten corners of old Flemish bi-lingual neighborhoods that have not just gone Francophone over the long generations of time but are now completely Arabic speaking though no one will admit this... Which is probably just as well because in time they will also probably be speaking Romanian, Bulgarian and Polish and who knows what else… if you wait long enough anything can happen. Sat in a barber shop window today looking through Arabic writing on the glass – inside an imported blue and white tile tiled walls as TV Maroc played Sufi music from a beautiful mosque in Fez… watching through that Arabic framed Brussels window a new blue stone, blauwesteen, pierre blue sidewalk under foot at a passing social symphony that could have been anywhere in Brooklyn – except here it's Arab, Berber, Tuareg, Algerian, Moroccan, Black African, European, Belgian, Flemish, Francophone, Eastern European and all the costumes that go with it. Looked at forgotten pieces of vanishing old Bru-town – Old roofs and windows that though in disrepair look much more soulful than the ones modernized and sanitized by new building materials. Saw men of all ages sitting around in jallalybas and slip on shoes – those long shirt-like dressing gowns that I like so much to wear but never wear out of the house. I thought about how much more I would appreciate living in Oklahoma than Ohio if I ever went back to life in the Matrix of the states while knowing full well I will never go back because back there doesn’t exist now. Thought about Okies and more modern forms of that phenomenon in European ways (or the new Mexican “Okies” in the north of North America and the refried beans of wrath) and the prejudices that go with Okies anywhere – thought about California and its lies of self-supremacy… I thought about how many times in a TV show or Hollywood movie I see the Star of David referenced in form as if it were a calling card of sorts – the filming lenses capturing and recording light and refracting it into a six pointed star burst that in one program on TV I counted 33 times. Or how many times the structures in the set in the back ground reference this star of six points… Hollywood movie stars… Why is it six not seven or eight degrees of separation between ones self and any one else on the planet from President to “terrorist” and all the human links of six degrees in between. That mirage like star of six points that if the Israelis weren’t so bent on being so inhuman in their wiping out of the Palestinians life, culture, land, homes, trees and water…. (and yet the keys to those Palestinian homes remain if the land and the houses don't). Well, I wouldn’t get so sick of seeing the Star of David which now makes me think of soaring sky high concrete seclusion in cantonments of containment and self contentment. I don't think of King David or Solomon stories anymore with that six pointed star. I don't think those unique kings would approve of today. From that berbers barber shop window I thought about Michael Moore saying if the states would give the Palestinians the same amount of military financial aid (something like 3 billion annually) that is “given” to the Israeli’s – how this would cure the Israelis of their complaints about Palestinian suicide bombers – it certainly would if nothing else stop the suicide bombings and thus stop the justifications for the walls and the bureaucracy to control Palestinians. I could be more pro-Israeli if I weren’t from one of those post World War II generations in North America that had nine in ten boys circumcised for “medical reasons” upon birth. Which like the Canadian, with German fascinations, filmmaker of the remarkable Raspberry Reich movie, called Bruce la Bruce, who in some of his unique online essays writes about how these systematic circumcisions were hypothesized to either be for medical experiments on fresh human baby boy tissue while conveniently later hiding Jewish American boys in the society at large or at least in gym class locker room showers. Like perhaps if my cock would have been left un-mutilated then perhaps I could now easier stomach Israeli’s formula of needing suicide bombers to land grab without conscious/conscience. But since I am one of those nine out of ten circumcised genitally mutilated for (racial?) “hygienic” reasons - just to spite the game of conspiracy I’m siding with all my Muslim Arab circumcised Brothers rather than the Israelis. Can anyone in their right mind imagine if the fate of Shoshone “Indians”, or the Sioux, or Cheyenne or Apache was occurring now in the 21st century (and don't think it isn't!) so that land and homes could be stolen and paved over for the like of strip malls, expressways, parkinglots, for ticky tack housing with red roofs, fast food frying pits for low wagers and low cost food stuffs, for cinemas, for gas stations to fuel the war in Iraq. Iraqi, Iroquois, Bruxelios… Like, imagine if Israel out of its lack of modern identity started naming suburbs and strip malls with Palestinian names. Like how in the US and especially Ohio all the great names of boring places are names derived from more interesting if not annihilated indigenous north American cultures, tribes, civilizations, people and basically land, homes, religion and way of life. Names like Cuyahoga or Olentangy, Mohican "ville", Muskingum, Tuscarawas – what do these names have to do with the Ohio Territories of today much less the US of A? We Americans stole lands and names and claimed them all for our own, meanwhile the skeletons and ashes of the people of these names lay forgotten with their histories in the ground beneath our feet… Change Brussel to Bruxelles to Brussels… Just like the strange Twilight Zoned state of New Israel - Sharon’s Zone. How do you feel born on the side of the wall into privilege while others are presently born on the other side of a wall into a life defined by incarceration and control? How does one’s subconscious process the guilt and shame of the human suffering that enables the economic ecosphere of totalitarian capitalism and greed thrive? When in the states Apache tomahawks (not the missiles of today) scalped the settlers of our nostalgically remembered and revered good old Pioneers it wasn’t called a terrorist attack: I’d like to think we knew what was going on and could admit that we as people were stealing someone else's land – at least it would be honest. But it’s strange in the cantonments of capitalism you can choose to believe what you want and gleefully ignore the cost of the luxury with the currency of other peoples suffering unseen on the other side of a wall. But what right do I have to speak of such things. I’ve never been to Ramallah or Tel Aviv…but why does my spell check program recognize Tel Aviv and not Ramallah? Yeh, there is absolutely no conspiracy going on I know – wink, wink. It’s not just the circumcision conspiracy thing that has me feeling cranky over Israeli’s and their Israel… it's just that as an American funding the Israeli walled in behind concrete reality I just feel - well – taken for granted and that perhaps there is not a little ungratefulness going on. Like recently my pal here gave me a region one DVD (thus no English subtitles) of Yossi and Jagger which I can watch in Hebrew with Dutch or French subtitles even though I can read Dutch ok I can’t read it fast enough to keep up with the subtitles… I’ll watch it because the Israeli Military muscles are always rather hot as any Arab will confess. It’s that whole man in a uniform thing. But on the jacket of the DVD it says in English “This isn’t some American movie” which is annoying. Like, Hollywood and all its stars isn’t good enough for Israel. Well we all know Hollywood movies are so diluted now that bankers and lawyers make movies because they love money and not good cinema. All those test market audiences determining the saleability of a movie has killed Hollywood which is a given but to have even the Israelis bashing Hollywood is a bit rich. So it is time as Michael Moore says to give the Palestinians 3 billion US dollars annually in military funding which they will probably surprise the world with by turning around and investing that money in some much needed hospitals, maternity wards, schools, parks, recreation centers, housing, childcare centers, airports, olive trees, city centers, library’s, probably a few churches, mosques and gasp synagogues, whose being naïve here, now? Perhaps a few park benches and golf carts for the elderly at all those tedious security check points designed to strangle bit by bit the life out of the Palestinians who had zero control over where on the planet they were born. It is high time that the Israeli’s remember who their brothers and sisters are and stop whining about suicide bombers. War is war even if we aren't allowed to think it much less say it and one side has weapons and the other has only despair. God knows when the Palestinians have something to live for or fight with the suicide bombings will stop. Until then can any of us in the Matrix of the West whether in Israel or the US or elsewhere sleep in good conscience unless we are in a prison cell at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba? Given that recent beach killing of Palestinians or the hanging suicide pack in Guantanamo Bay – regardless of the technicalities of what happened and if in either case respectively it was perpetrated by Israeli’s or American’s or not – if all the worlds Muslims (and there are quite a few) believe otherwise, perhaps it is time to stop vilifying religions and cultures and work on some PR for the West. I for one don’t think any Muslim in Guantanamo Bay who probably didn’t even deserve to be there in the first place would have killed themselves without being forced into such a noose. So can’t we as Americans who support through no choice of our own the Almighty Military Industrial Complex behind the Guantanamo Bay atrocity of its very existence in a “democracy” – like – can’t we just admit we hung those guys or at least drove them to it and supplied them the means. This could be a start at PR. Maybe we could also admit all those nasty beheadings in Iraq weren’t the result of religious extremists but perhaps the result of US secret military police trying to defame and destabilize a land we shamelessly/obviously want the oil rights to. Let’s admit as American’s that the Israeli’s wall building and cultural annihilating policies are our very own American ideas of forced and coerced “democracy”. Let’s stop calling the kettle black and then try to make friends with the parts of the world we demonize. Let’s admit that we have no intention of exporting democracy in exchange for oil. We don’t want Iraq to be democratic we just want their oil. Let’s admit that we are trying to divide Iraq along Iraq’s many cultural and religious lines and most obviously between Shia and Sunni Muslims: Divide and conquer and take the oil profits. Kill as many people as possible - American, Iraqi or other to confuse the world. Make Halliburton and the Bush family as wealthy as possible while spilling the most amount of blood. Take the focus off Israel’s land grabbing and replace it with lost American young men and women’s lives in Iraq. This is the architecture of Hell and we condone it every time we fill up our gas tank and drive our car. Don't think either for a moment that the US Governement has any plans of pulling out of Iraq, ever. In one form another they will be there - just ask President Castro to explain it.
Meanwhile in EU-rope we are being encouraged by the media to unplug our electricity. Those little lights on all your appliances that stay on while the appliance is not in use are causing global warming… None of those many sodium lamps that are scattered around Europe and Britain every three meters alongside every road - to bathe the world in an intense orange glow and the electric power plants that keep them lit - are contributing to global warming just like all those little lights on the appliances in my home. Get a grip we are not all stupid people. When Belgium shows some sign in delighting in de-lite-ing Belgium – the brightest spot on the planet – then I’ll be convinced to unplug my personal life. I for one do not believe in the orange glow that is nighttime on this part of the planet makes my life any safer on the streets at night. Do you know that at night here it is often brighter than on a rainy day? It is true – with the dark night sky vilified like an Arab or a Muslim (or both) no wonder I have insomnia. No wonder I have insomnia when I lay in bed and want to sleep and I can’t stop thinking about men and women caught like flies in a spiders web just for being born a landless Palestinian. I will only be able to sleep properly in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Perhaps there I can learn some classical Arabic, ketch up on reading the Qur’an, wear some nice white clothes, learn to pray five times a day with some remarkable Brothers while learning about certain masculine pastimes from the naughty Midwestern American soldier boys working there when the lights are off – but of course we are told the lights are never turned off there in Guantanamo Bay Prison... What is this place called planet earth? What do we do to each other when we are connected from Presidents and Prime Ministers to retail laborers to freedom fighters? Why do the rich vilify the poor and scapegoat the poor for the failures of the rich. I don’t want to be among the rich on this planet – Like Saint Francis of Assisi, I don’t want the blood and suffering of the poor perpetuated by the rich on my hands that is the prerequisite for cantonment life in seclusions of luxury and privilege from those we in the west trample on over there out of sight unacknowledged on the other side of the walls we build…
…transmission end…

In Defense of Iran

2006-06-03T00:22:00.000+02:00

I don’t know about you but it sure does seem strange in this day and age to insist that an autonomous nation like Iran be coerced by international pressure to willingly dumb itself down. Whatever happened to science and the pursuit of knowledge? Knowledge is a dangerous thing. With knowledge crimes against humanity can be made or exposed. Last I heard Iran, like Iraq was an independent nation painstakingly wrought from greedy Anglophone manipulations from a previous colonialist era. That nasty age the Anglophone world of today has pretty much forgotten and out of that forgetful haze a lot of Imperialistic attitudes still remain unwittingly to this day. I cannot say I am a fan of Iran’s present form of government but then I don’t care for what the US is up to these days either. The people of Iran ultimately are the power in Iran not the few bearded men at the top of the few chain there. The people of Iran – like the American’s are not taking to the streets in bloody protests over who has the power. When the people of Iran are ready they will decide for themselves if their governance is repressive – is it up to we in the West even to say it is repressive?

Any nation in the pursuit of knowledge, science and excellence is going to explore nuclear options and all the other curiosities in Pandora's Box. Perhaps in so doing Iran will uncover the next form of safe energy to rescue our collapsing ecosphere on this planet. Or perhaps Iran will uncover a way to make nuclear waste benign. My guess is the real reason everyone in the self called “free world” is up in arms about Iran having Nukes is only a manifestation of latent Imperialism. We should be worried when we in the free world are waging a war only for corporate interests on Iran’s doorstep.

I do not believe there is such a thing as Al Qaeda. This sounds strange I know. But it is an urban myth opportunistically invented to control the masses with fear. Well this member of the masses prefers opium to fear when it comes to being controlled. Maybe there is such a thing as Al Qaeda or a network of it - I don’t care but I choose to believe there is no such thing. In either case I believe Washington more than anyone created Al Qaeda, now that I believe. Al Qaeda fits nicely into Washington's tactical global plans. Probably Al Qaeda is a wholly owned subsidiary of the CIA. Certainly Washington profits off of this concept of Al Qaeda like the Vatican profits off the notion of the Devil and guilt.

Maybe there is a Devil but it is not Iran. Iran is in the pursuit of knowledge and power – literally and figuratively. Can the rest of the world really bully a nation into willful self ignorance? Especially when one considers what is going on in the land between Syria and Iran? Or when one considers what has transpired in the last few decades over land between Iran and Pakistan.

Perhaps Iran is really only interested in exposing some Western contradictions – Nukes these days are like a microphone. It is no secret that Iran is using the Nuke issue to harness media attention to the fact that Israel with its appalling record of human rights and land grabbing from Palestinians is in fact one of the largest Nuke holders in the region. Should a recently self appointed nation have the right to steal land in increments from its own brotherhood while imprisoning its own people and neighbors for their crime of being born with the wrong social-religious genetic makeup? Would anyone in their right mind allow Israel to develop their own Nukes at this point in history?

For what it is worth I believe the history of the remarkable Persians – the present day Iranians – is one of an intelligent well educated society with a grand ornate land, history and culture. Probably the Iranians are better educated on the whole than the Americans or the rest of the Anglophone world for that matter or at least those who claim English as their first language. So what is the problem with Iran like many other nations having a few Nukes to get the rest of the world to listen to their concerns? Iran obviously has something to say. They probably want the world to know that they will not let the US and it’s “allies” march in and turn it into present day Iraqi/Halliburton junk yard. It isn’t unreasonable to think it might just take the threat of Nukes to get the US to listen. It is about time someone on the planet had the balls to say maybe Israel should not have access to their own nuclear arsenal until Israel can improve its human rights violations with its non Jewish citizenry and neighbors. Or at least until it stops building walls of concrete on other peoples property… It might just take a nation like Iran arming itself to the teeth with Nukes to explain to Israel and the world that Israel must stop making it a crime for a soul to born Palestinian on the other side of the wall. The time has come for Israel to renounce its preoccupation with building the Hebrew Master Race.

If we in the West do not like Iran’s religious forms of self governance then we should remind ourselves that the US helped to achieve this problem by undermining Democracy in Iran in 1953. The assassination of Mussadagh was a violation (and first and foremost a crime in and of itself) of Iran’s Democratic movement. This criminal assassination was unjustifiably for the corporate interests of the west with Iran’s resources. How can Condoleezza “I have an oil tanker named after me and I’m smart” Rice talk of bringing (inflicting) Democracy on this part of the post colonial world given the track record of the US who clearly has no interest whatsoever in genuine Democracy for which the 2000 US elections are evidence of to say nothing of our post World War II foreign policies.

I say leave Iran alone. In Defense of Iran – Iran has every right to pursue life, liberty and freedom as they see fit. They have the right to pursue their religious interests and build their nation as they want. Their natural resources are theirs alone and no one else’s. Their resources are not for England or for the Family Bush. They are entitled to a voice on the world’s political stage and their opinion of the nations in their neighborhood are valid. With decades of shamelessness in Afghanistan on the one side – The US meddling in Iraq on the other side – and no one in the west listening to Iran, who can blame them for putting their smart minded scientists to good use. If we in the west don’t like it, tough. We must stop telling Iran what it can and cannot do and we must start listening to Iran even if we don’t like their justified at present cranky manner of speaking. The rest of the world is long over due in listening to Iran’s concerns.

Post Script: On a lighter note Iran must be an unbelievable travel destination for the non-terrorist type of tourist. I don't know about you but I'd love to go road-tripping across the majestic landscape of Iran.

Minimum Wage Hell, Ohio

2006-04-25T23:57:00.000+02:00

Earlier this month I received a letter from MoveOn dot Org's Ben Brandzel asking if I would help get a minimum wage raise on the Ohio Ballot. Before becoming an ex-pat living in the Capital of Nowhere, otherwise known as Brussels, I was a minimum wage retail laborer in Central Ohio. Due to my past life on Ohio being my last US address I still retain voting privileges there - not that Ohio like Florida isn't prone to Republican based vote rigging... But that's another blogette for another soggy day. Today I am ranting about being asked by those MoveOn do gooders to sign a petition to raise minimum wage in the sorry state of Ohio to, get this (US dollars) 6.85! I am sorry but I refuse to sign my name to such a preposterous and insulting petition! Minimum wage retail laborers are human beings and citizens and residents of the United States of America - they deserve much better for their work and I cannot sign my name to such a preposterous petition. Ohio, last I heard, was a state in the worlds foremost economic powerhouse - therefore minimum wage should reflect this - in Ohio you need at the absolute minimum 9 US dollars an hour to pay rent, feed yourself, and keep mobile in a state without even rudimentary attempts at public transport or health care to say nothing of education. If you expect the working poor to insure their automotives, health and homes themselves they are going to need 15 US dollars an hour.

If ACORN the minimum wage advocate henchmen and women want to come up with a bold petition that I would be proud to affix my name to I will sign that - but a US dollar 6.85 minimum wage is an insult to the decent people working a shit job.

Here is my answer to the ACORN petition. By the way what the fuck kind of name is ACORN - I mean squirrels working for acorns make more of a justifable and dignified living than minimum wage labor in Ohio.

Here is how I signed MoveOn's/ACORN's minimum wage petition…

Listen - I am so far left of center I am an Anarchist at heart but I refuse to sign a petition to raise minimum wage to a measly $6.85... Is this for real? Is this 6.85$ a joke? My God you can make better wages in Pakistan and Yemen teaching English without certification! When the petition is for a slightly more reasonable $9 - $15 dollars an hour I will proudly sign your petition! This is a statewide and national disgrace - 6.85$ an hour - that isn't even realistically above the poverty line!

Matthew J. Crouch former central Ohio minimum wager - Worthington Public High School Graduate - and disgruntled OSU graduate now happy ex-pat contrarian in Belgium.

Gving Thanks for Belgium and the Belgians

2006-03-20T18:55:00.000+01:00

It’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.

I Do Not Know if it is Even Legal to Think This Way Much Less to Self Publish Such Thoughts

2006-03-16T01:01:00.000+01:00

Today or rather this morning – very early morning Central European Time – sometime after midnight in the cold and damp of Brussels we here at the Experiencing Belgium desk – actually just me – US ex-pat Matt – was catching up on some e-mail. Again one of those extra polite letters from MoveOn dot org… I wish there were some political organization with a bit more gusto or rather balls, big hairy low hanger bull balls, sending me strict e-mails of a Hells Angels variety on how to end the global tyranny of my homeland. Perhaps I should reconstruct the office of Experiencing Belgium to Hang_the_Corporate-O-cracy_at_Dawn dot com. I could send out e-mails warning about the blood bath soon to spill out of the White House and Capitol Hill famous front steps. The red blood of economic and greedy politicians staining those white marble steps bright red. I could write flaming words to encourage Americans to assert your right to bear arms and grab a Kalashnikov and head to DC for the 300 Million Machine Gun march to take back our country from the Military Industrial Complex and the men and women running it. Instead I have to settle for MoveOn dot org’s church lady like palliatives and sign another useless petition. John Hancock would be embarrassed by this process as am I. On the menu at MoveOn dot org today a polite word that in this context is woefully insufficient – censure. Censure – HA! Such a slap on the wrist nothing more… Here is my textual form of a big letter signature to please our dead nation builders - this text is my JOHN HANCOCK on the Bush II expulsion. The following is about wire tapping and censuring George Bush (oh yeah I forgot that annoying obligatory W).

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…

Only in that Infamous Guantanamo Bay Prison Will I Be Able to Sleep

2006-03-14T17:09:00.000+01:00

Experiencing 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

2006-03-14T15:17:00.000+01:00

March 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.

OsKarZ with Kalashnikov fantasies

2006-03-06T15:55:00.000+01:00

Last 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"

In a Land with Capital Punishment The Old Oak Tree Has Other Virtues

2006-02-15T22:28:00.000+01:00

The Experiencing Belgium blogette of the day is about another annoying Move On dot Org e-mail posting urging me to contact my Ohio Senator Mike Deswine's (Yeah I know Dewine, "oink oink" I mean "wink wink"). Personally I find Move On's do gooder calls to actions sickeningly saccharine but better that than nothing. So with that in mind: To Move On dot Org in response to your helpful e-mail asking me to contact my representative -the Dewine office answered my transatlantic call and I explained very briefly the Move On dot Org issue as I understand it. Unfortunately I was not as articulate over the phone as I am capable of being here in writing. The Deswine office was courteous and simultaneously unconcerned if not altogether condescending - I felt like I was just being humored, in the end, so to speak. Personally though I would only understand politics at present if the Bush/Cheney administration were all hung at dawn by their necks from the old oak tree - you know the one - with all those yellow ribbons on it - for brazenly turning American foreign policy into crimes against humanity.
If Move On would like a good lesson in Democracy in action, ironically, we could begin by taking a closer look at the Hamas social and community service efforts in Palestine which paid off in the votes that we in the West aren't happy with and are apparantly not going to tolerate. We must admit this fact about Palestine rather we like it or not and we therefore we have no right with all our calls for Democracy to deny Palestine the funding they are entitled to. Like it or not we Americans cannot at this time call Hamas a terrorist organization for that would be like the pot calling the kettle black for we have similar foreign policies. Anyway given this unlikely comparison which government has more blood on their hands to account for? Sadly We the People must come to understand that the great American experiment in Democracy failed decades ago so let's begin to admit this to ourselves. We must start by holding our leaders accountable with their very lives - we are a nation that endorses capital punishment along with bearing arms if neccessary so this would be consistant with our constitution (rather brutal but it will get the politicians attention since we are supposed to be a Democracy and not an Imperialist Corporate-ocracy/economic dictatorship). After all it would only be fair to our dead American soldiers and the people of Iraq and elsewhere caught in harms way from the American's brutal Iron Heel of greed. I cannot say the Bush Administration or my Deswine Ohio representative understand the human degree of consequence their frivolous and corporate greed sponsored decision making is all about. Neither am I convinced the Democrats and the good folks at Move On dot Org grasp the seriousness of the consequences of our beloved Imperial America. We the People of the United States are guilty of the various atrocities our Nation carries out around the world - We the People do not want blood on our hands that is not even of our choosing in exchange for corporate profit for a few cowboy Oligarch and their naughty wives. Shame on us.

Moving On Without MoveOn

2006-01-28T00:05:00.000+01:00

Today in my inbox with nearly 500 unread e-mails in my Microsoft Outlook e-mail program I received a mild plea from the folks at MoveOn dot Org asking me to call my Ohio Senator Mike DeWine who I affectionately like to refer to as Mike DeSwine asking him not to endorse the Alito Judiciary nomination. If I called my Senator, MoveOn asked me to give them a reply with the message I left. Oh this just almost feels like Democracy in action don't it? Gives me goose bumps even! However, reality being what it is an all, I made a transatlantic call from my desk here at the Experiencing Belgium Head Quarters and found my do nothing Senator Mike De Swine ineffective at even receiving voice mail - such is Democracy Ohio style! So this was my reply to the MoveOn query. Personally I don't think MoveOn is an actual political action organization I think they are just a facade to a Gallup like brand of a poll of the American pulse - with that in mind here is the pulse as heard from we here at Experiencing Belgium dot commie.

To MoveOn: The DeWine voice mail "box" was full. Typical Ohio politicians for you! If I would have gotten through I would have told the Senator to relax his stance on Alito and lead Ohio away from the Taft family's tyrranical and dictatorial hold on my home state - As usual though this is all too typical of an Economic Dictatorship that tries to export "Democracy" with Imperialistic methods. Don't forget that Democracy is something to strive for but it is naturally unachievable. Certainly DeWine would not have understood any of this - Nor would anyone in Washington or probably the well meaning folks at MoveOn. Once upon a time in Ohio being a contrarian was considered a virtue… Don't even get me started on James, Kent State Killer, Rhodes and his memorial skyrise in downtown Columbus built shamelessly in his lifetime!Sincerely, cranky, ex-pat Matt Crouch, writing to you from La Villette, Belgium.

The Tea Drinkers Liberation Front

2005-09-08T12:52:00.000+02:00

The Conspiracy against Tea and the Tea Drinkers Liberation Front
In the States not since the Boston Tea Party has there been a decent cup of tea
A tribute to Malachi McCormick’s timeless book A Decent Cup of Tea

Have you ever wondered how it is that at every café with a fast food styled drive through no less which can be found on all those streets that look the same across all the states how difficult it is to find a simple cup of tea? There are endless electronic apparatus and appliances for grinding and brewing all sorts of different coffees but you know as well as I do what is in store for a member of the tea drinking resistance! Within all those places that euro “want to be” types call cafés and no longer coffeehouses, are so many different cups of coffee and coffees of the day to choose from… There in those little shops of coffee horrors are the ranges of coffee beans waiting to be hatched into the perfect cup of coffee from earthy brown roasts to dark oily roasts. There are special foreign made complicated machines and mugs and frilly unnecessities like frothed and steamed milk, or cream, whipped or not, skimmed or not and all with an insiders lingo to order all these like some brazen form or retail pretentious performance art. There are flavored coffees and such sizes and names and prices; from a shot of one or two (does it come with a needle and an elastic strap?) of Italianate espresso to a bowl of French styled café au lait which when an American orders this it sounds like a Spanish Bullfighters call “ole” rather than something to do with milk from the French language!

The best coffee memory from back home for everyone old enough to remember these pieces of vanishing America who can do so without the help of the movies is the old American diner. Those inexpensive coffeehouse cafés of automatic Bunn brand coffee dished out with free refills and a smile has unwillingly gone by the wayside relegated to a certain collective mythology as even the most working class American buys their Cup-O-Joe on board a television sci-fi Battlestar Galactica from a dubious Starbuck of sorts. You remember Bunn coffee diner style now only a David Lynch Twin Peaks memory – the dark brown plastic handle on the plastic pot direct from the burner for regular coffee and the orange handled pot for decaf or so you hoped if your clinically white polyester wrapped beehive-ed hairdo-ed waitress was nice. Remember the heavy white crockery mug with sturdy handle? Who remembers the big usually red metal and chromed coffee grinder with a dial to select the coarseness? A decent albeit American version of a cup of tea could be had, something from a Lipton brand bag and an actual sturdy tea cup and saucer – not great but not bad when on the road. From that last bit of southern diner gentility gone with the 20th century and Route 66 to an American Biggie in a Styrofoam or waxed paper cup and plastic lid as if it were soda pop of about a half liter in size from a gas station with gourmet coffee and a drive through alongside donuts and policemen and all available in decaf alternatives. It isn’t right when that big coffee to go cup then fits appropriately in a big SUV’s built in beverage holder… Dorothy something isn’t right in the Matrix program.

Have you ever wondered why though if you fancy a decent cup of tea that you get a blank looking face from the café counter attendant – a look suggesting “we haven’t had that spirit here since 1969” (like the Eagles once lamented about other things and please bring me my wife)… And if after that strange hesitation when you think the waiter is going to break into a song, like in that surreal pause after dialogue before a song is sung in a Hollywood musical… They vanish to re-emerge with their tail between their legs with a coffee mug of brackish warm water and at most a selection of paper bagged teas. If it’s a “want to be” upscale place you might even be lucky enough for a Twinings bag, if not it’s Lipton. If it’s a bag of Tazo or say the Republic of Tea etc. and on and on to disappointing etc. then it’s most likely from the hip left leaning establishments left over from late nineteen nineties. The new retail domestic bag brand called Revolution Tea in a spiffy match box is more about the bag and the packaging but lacking the balls for any real impressive idea of revolt. If its bag tea next to a white porcelain pot of hot water it’s probably in a restaurant with cloth napkins and you’ll be paying with plastic. If you are lucky there is a slice of lemon, honey, sugar and milk or at the least any one but certainly not all of those. By the time the server has brought you your hot water for your tea the water is no longer warm enough to steep (for they couldn’t even bother to put the tea bag in the cup or pot before the hot water was released onto the oldest stale bag of left over lip-torn tea).

Forget it if you go out with coffee drinkers to a café and order bag tea. The server will extract from his coffee machinery first your hot water into a mug for your tea then take fifteen or twenty minutes to make your “friends” coffees. When the tray of hot drinks arrives and you get a chance to hurriedly dunk your bag the hot water is not hot at all! No surprise there – it wasn’t an accident. It was one more tired example of the Conspiracy against tea drinkers by the coffee drinking majority.

How many times have you gone out for a cup of tea and just wanted to run behind the café counter and with a well rehearsed Edward Norton and Brad Pitt styled Fight Club punch knock out your prissy coffee queen server with that fastidiously coiffed so it looks like it hasn’t been washed in a week hairstyle and make your own goddamned cup of tea the way it should be? I literally have to restrain myself from this temptation every time I go out and want a cup of tea. Tea is about the moment and what better way than to celebrate the moment at a coffee conspiring retail establishment than to take back our right to a decent cup of tea with a little blood and loose teeth? Maybe in jail behind bars you can find a tea comrade of a police offer to find sympathy and comfort with if only for a moment. Anything is better than tea at a retail chain establishment or worse one of those mega media stores disguised as a bookstore with art and a café that looks like the set to a morning TV talk show.

Ask yourself how many times have you accepted your fate as an ex-pat foreigner of a tea drinker in your native coffee drinking country and dunked your bag into the cooling water. How many times have you wondered about the coffee stains at the bottom inside of the mug and were content to stir things around with a stainless steel greasy spoon. Meanwhile your companions sit smugly pleased with vertical art sculptures of coffee confections unlike anything you can begin to think of how you would actually get all that mountain of dairy passed your lips with all that foam pomp and circumstance.

That elusive cup of tea that even the British can no longer remember how to make properly is like the Empire of either Anglophone land astride the almighty Atlantic sadly gone. For the water is now tap and thus chlorinated and fluoridated to such a degree that the cup of tea now smells like a baked public swimming pool. You don’t even want to know about the cryptosporidium content from that polluted tap! That coffee mug of hot water sitting before you, waiting for you to dunk your bag into, that looks and smells like it was ladled from some forgotten health spa Jacuzzi. With all the machinations for coffee is there no way in hell to get filtered fresh aerated and de-ionized water disease free for tea, piping hot, laid on to fresh whole tea leaves? Which will God forbid then need strained by a strainer? With all the teas from around the world can we not have a choice in tea leaves without paying a small fortune as coffee lovers get to choose their beans? Is there a conspiracy against those of us who prefer tea leaves to tea dust granules in paper bags or arty coffee by the liter? Of course any coffee preferring individual would say not whilst any tea lover would disagree; there is a conspiracy against the tea drinker and as always it comes down to politics and the relentless soul stealing march of capitalism.

If you ask me the conspiracy against tea drinkers started with the unforgettable Boston Tea Party which is now sadly as a historical tidbit of propaganda (did it actually ever really happen?) relegated to the likes of elementary school education books which don’t ever get much read in this day and age of mis-education. And let’s face it most elementary age kids aren’t imbibing yet in too much tea or coffee when there are Coca-cola profits to be made with hot lunches. Of course any tea drinker would support the idea behind the Boston Tea Party. Some colonialist corporation like Merry Old England taxing everything including the precious tea without any sort of representation is just too typical of even US politics (domestic and foreign policies) today. Tea is supposed to be cheap not taxed to high hell along with everything else. Hmmm sounds just like the Bush administration of today doesn’t it? and again it’s another George! Replace Merry Old England with Globalization and Multi-National Corporations each with more revenue than a good sized European country and its time for another tea party on the scale of an Alaskan Exxon Valdez.

So where does one go with such a big conspiracy against tea in this day an age? Well there is always the Taliban I suppose. They probably make a really good cup of generous and hospitable tea over an open fire served up with sympathy for the traveler over there in the mountains of Afghanistan. Despite the American occupation of Iraq you can probably even as an American get a good cup of tea there in Baghdad city during one of the many post Saddam power outages and water shortages. Certainly tea drinkers are treated like terrorists when it comes to getting serviced in the West. Arabia is the last civilized place where you can get dependable tea: Whether sweet mint Moroccan green tea with a hint of orange blossom aroma or Al Shay spiced with Cardamom in Arabia. To the sweetest most delightful cup of various Pakistani styled chai indeed the last stand of a dependable cup of tea might be from the self sufficient citadel of Islam known as Pakistan. Dependable cups of tea are symptomatic of a strong healthy Nation and undependable cups of tea for the people are signs of the failed states in the nations of the West. Think about that! It is so true! I mean when I ask for tea back home in old Ohio you would think I was seven feet tall with a long ante bellum beard and wearing a long white shirt and a small white hand crocheted skull cap. Maybe I should carry as a fashion accoutrement a Kalashnikov slung over my shoulder to get the cup of tea I so desire.

As any decent cup of tea maker knows that the only good cups of tea in the West come from someone’s humble home from within the lonesome kitchens of tea fanatics: Consigned to solitary cups of tea while cafes are loaded down with overly social Screaming Mimi coffee fiends. In the occasional kitchen of a tea fanatic revolutionary you will find no bags for individual cups of tea. Certainly no deplorable Celestial Seasonings with those arty cardboard boxes! There will be a sturdy well used pot and some proper cups maybe a few cracks or chips to compliment the crackpot character of a today’s last stand of the tea drinkers! All of these unintended effects allow the tea to achieve easily the desired temperature for taking the tea in dignity and camaraderie.

Just to show that we tea drinkers are not unreasonable towards our coffee loving friends despite our being denied tea and not being cranky we observe a lot of what is still good about the art of coffee. It too is a lost art:

Whatever became of New Orleans Café du Monde adjacent to Jackson Square did Katrina wipe this landmark away or had all those fast food coffee cafes replaced her first I wonder? It’s been years since I was lost and in love with that old great dame of New Orleans. Back then in the early nineteen nineties you could still find beignets and café au lait anytime of the day or night and as I was in New Orleans during one of the colder winters in an apartment with no heat, Café du Monde was a reliable place to go get warm with a smile and a friendly chat. There wasn’t going to be a decent cup of tea from their kitchen but as any tea soldier knows sometimes its better to settle for coffee than be disappointed by improperly made tea. From there to the 24 hour bars which were warm and back to avoid the cold. A decent cup of tea was hard to come by but I didn’t complain. Tea drinkers know if you complain about the lack of tea available you will become as bitter in spirit as unsweetened coffee.

If you are bored and want to amuse yourself at a café watch your server make a special cup of deluxe coffee for someone sitting nearby. Watch the retail clerk performance by first grinding the beans and setting up the coffee making apparatus. Watch your servers bar tender like showman ship from the flick of the wrists to the pushing of buttons and even how they use their use their hips in such ways to generate this coffee extravaganza. Watch how intently they steam the milk under all that hot water pressure. The affected pretenses involved in making the cup of coffee a work of art. And how this whole process starts with this incomprehensible language of one up man ship to say I know more about this coffee fashion than you! Compare that to the process involved with ordering tea… You mean you don’t want a bottle or can of “iced” tea…? Then the blank stare: Hot tea? “…We haven’t had that spirit here….” You know the routine (since like 1869). The servers posture deflates, they skulk off to the drudgery of the kitchen dragging their heels – first to go take their much needed cigarette break after such a culture shock confrontation. No game of pretension to play to see who is best – clerk or customer. No question like which kind of leaf would you like even though the list for coffees is long… If only the server would ask what kind of tea you want steeped so they can start the process with the heat… and the right temperature for the proper tea leaf as not all tea leaves were created equal when it comes to steeping temperatures but that is just way to much to ask. Then when your tea is brought to you it is not presented like a frothy coffee creation it is sort of absent mindedly dropped off by the server without eye contact while they are busy pre-occupied with their more important coffee games.

It’s just too much to bear. In fact the best cup of tea that is way beyond decent is when you have turned your back on the strip malls of civilization and have gone camping on a weekend experiment like out to a modern version of Thoreau’s Walden. Then with hot stones around the fire used to warm your cups and tea pot you precariously boil spring water to pour over just the right amount of tea leaves in the pot. Even there on the ground by the fire you can make the best cup of tea no amount of money can buy. It’s a rare sort of American version (albeit diluted somewhat) of a tea drinker’s genuine Japanese tea ceremony. In the solitude of nature with only trees as a quiet companion away from civilization you can find the necessary frame of mind to make a perfect pot of tea. In the city you can only hope at best for a Malachi McCormick styled decent cup of tea from your own or your comrade’s kitchen. But away in a natures retreat with time to think and meditate on every important step in making tea you will yield tea the way it was intended. You will thank your higher power that this process will never be retailed and mass marketed across continents around the world. To find a perfect or at the least a decent cup of tea you must first venture into yourself and find that calm spring of tranquility and start from there. From all this albeit New Agery is where tea making begins which is why it’s a process that can be shared but not purchased – This is what every tea drinker knows is the result of the Conspiracy – and why when we sit with that cup of coffee we don’t want - we understand why the perfect cup of tea has no price – it is forever a gift of nature and a form of charity from civilized souls despite their worldly means – evidence perhaps of some Divine compassion.

NO WAY! Barbara Bush did not just say that!

2005-09-08T12:18:00.000+02:00

How is it that according to journalist Holly Martins a former first lady can go down on media record as having accussed (while chuckling to herself about) those left behind in the New Orleans Superdome "as being welfare layabouts on the make" as Martins so eleoquently puts it. When the culprit is the Bush spawning Barbara no one is surprised. Why wasn't such a comment kept behind closed doors but brazenly made intentionally for others to hear? Perhaps Barbara Bush can go live in that Houston refugee stadium for awhile in the human squalor there with real Americans to see why her attitude on the less fortunate is nothing but racial and hateful. Barbara Bush like the whole of the Bush Junior Administration should have been living in the New Orleans Superdome those nights that the rest of the nation turned their backs and let a once grand old city get its less fortunate washed out to sea. I wish like Michael Moore said to George Bush Jr awhile back from the Hollywood Oscars "Shame on you" that we could say "shame on you Barbara Bush for saying such things". In reality we have only our selves to blame for allowing 25 years of governmental downsizing of which the failed Katrina aftermath is just the tip of the iceberg. All we can say to the henchmen and their wives like Barbara Bush is "shame on us" for having voted for such selfish idiots.

A Long Ode to the New Orleans Mayor Mr. Tell It Like It Is Nagin

2005-09-06T12:57:00.000+02:00

I sing a song here of a long Ode if you will to the Mr. Ray naggin’ Nagin the Mayor of Old Orleans the newest Atlantis. However, this story begins in the suburbs of a nation marooned behind TV sets and huge TV meals whose leisure time is spent sitting in expressway traffic babysat by dubious radio voices….

You know as well as anyone the consequences of bad breeding and suburban isolation with too much weird health and wealth and happiness religious influences from the self proclaimed Angels of the right wing as much as I do. Certainly my life as much as anyone else in North America has been victimized by this dark side of the American Dream so I am inclined to write out my frustration with living with that difficult legacy so as not to go completely crazy. I confess, I am jealous of anyone who can write in modern American English scathing words against the insulated politicians of today like Mike Davis and his essay ‘The Sidelining of Blacks” can write. At least I read (red) his old essay which wasn’t exactly the easiest thing for me to do or find online either! Yes I am ashamed to confess that… but I read (reed) and try to read (reed) and even surprise myself by what I have read (red). I wish I were the kind of writer who could make such a difference as this heroic writer Mike Davis but then not so many people read (reed) today anyway. You know everyone is stuck in traffic these days so they have to be read (red) to by the likes of scary conservative agenda for profit talk show personalities – In much the same way that Cuban cigar rollers get read (commie red) great literary works to while they work making the worlds best cigars by hand. Like Americans get read (red) to by populist media personalities so no one gets to read (reed) all that great alternative news information that is actually available around the world via the internet. You can’t exactly read (reed) a great book while driving or riding in a car. Try finding audio books that aren’t hacked up in abridgements – the likes of which you can be certain our boy George junior spent his summer vacation “reading” by being electronically read (red) to by seriously abridged audio books. Do you really think he or his wife at least read (red) every one of those 1,500 pages of summer reading he set out to on his own do you? What with the likes of the ghosts of American soldiers who died in Iraq scratching at the door like the poet Poe’s big black subconscious crow? While Cindy Sheehan camped outside the gates of the vacation ranch with the ghost of Casey and others like him do you think that president read any of those books himself?

After reading online today and hearing the news from the BBC World Service about the new Supreme Court nomination by Bush junior I feel sincerely suicidal. It doesn’t seem enough anymore to just apply for a passport to somewhere else to get away from the states. Personally I am looking into a Belgian, Pakistani or Yemeni passport as a ticket out of the ongoing Bush nightmare. This whole Katrina disaster and the failed government’s contribution to the suffering of good people have left me really down right sick and depressed. There isn’t a news report on the Gulf (the other one in North America not “the Gulf “ over there by Iraq) that doesn’t hurt to see regarding the suffering and humiliation the people in the South are having to pay for the sins of the Bush administration with their lives and homes. Plus that whole added sideline in the news that when someone is looting they are young and black but if they are dying of dehydration and exposure they are old and white. I mean you see there is now not so long a distance anymore from South Africa of the recent past to the USA of today.

I mean I thought I was through with my addiction to Americana but I forgot about the irresistible charm and enchantments of New Orleans. The idea of this grand old Dame of an American city really being gone submerged just under the surface of the water is heartbreaking. Even under water the drowned corpse of an aged urban Ophelia has a haunting beauty and elegance few cities in North America can hope to be as beautiful as while still alive and thriving. New Orleans is past tense as in good Old Orleans as she most certainly is has just had the effect on me as if Bush jr himself (and not Katrina the Hurricane) had somehow reached in and ripped my heart out, squeezed it and then thrown it away. To have to see Clinton standing with the two Bushlings on TV is equally upsetting. I am sorry but I always thought Clinton was really conservative when it came to political ideologies (not that he had a choice) but it was the best we could hope for at the time. I just think there is a divide worth defending in the states and Clinton was wrong to be seen with those two GOP father and son monsters. Better Clinton align himself with the Heroic tell it like it is New Orleans Mayor named Ray Nagin and the good and humble home building Jimmy Carter than the profiteering off global suffering Bushlings – that was wrong and unforgivable of Clinton and cannot be defended as above politics. Nothing is not political when it comes to a Bush, period - end of sentence - as Mother, God rest her soul, would say! Clinton the last heroic American President was clearly wrong in this gesture to be seen with the devils incarnate Bush Jr and Sr. Everything is again wrong! Wrong! Wrong!

And where the fuck is that new Nazi boy Hitler’s Youth Pope? New Orleans is the heart of Catholic American mythology…. Is there not even a statement from the Vatican on behalf of all those New Orleans Catholic parishes under the curse of God for having been meddling in Voodoo? Where is anyone – where is Anne Rice? Her recent New York Times article titled Do You Know What It Means Lose A City Like New Orleans was hardly a fitting obituary to her grand home town but I guess it was all she could get the papers to publish: Better that insufficient New York Times obituary than nothing for which we are all thankful to read. But I doubt her and her son Christopher stayed behind and camped out with provisions in their fab Garden District home – sadly I wish they would have done so because I want someone else to admire as much as I have the heroic New Orleans, “tell it like it is fearlessly to the powers that be”, Mayor! Where are all those white Southern Baptist preachers who would go on secret sin weekends in New Orleans to get barebacked by some rough trade Black Stud fresh out of Lil’ Kim’s toaster? Where are the capacities to start up a new Berlin airlift – it only takes some ploughs brought in by heavy military planes to clear out a make shift runway and set up all that. Why is the pathetic post Katrina rescue operation so bent on busing out blacks to a dubious concentration camp in Texas of all places? Keep in mind Texas is the capital punishment capital of the world so we should all be worrying about what the final solution is for the poor black southern refugee question.

Is the solidity and security of the states that much of an illusory layer that can be blown away by a storm that has been predicted as long as anyone in America can remember? Is the strength of the states that much of an illusion that like the often repeated TV news image of rescuing one family from the roof of their inundated home by helicopter while the old shingles which survived Katrina were blown off the neighbors house by a rescue chopper? Bush ain’t gonna pay for a new roof for that guys chopper de shingled roof that is for sure! Mark my word as those shingles were blown away one by one we will see what we take for granted in America being blown away…. New Orleans was just one shingle, the WTC buildings a few others, what are the next big unimaginable pillars of our country to be swept away as if it were loose paper like roof shingles? Anything now is possible and imaginable when it comes to the destruction of the American dream and illusion of permanence thanks to the Bushlings.

Jesssus, whenever I hear Bush talk, everything and I mean everything, he is scripted to say, an unable to read even after five years of teleprompting, can be seen through – his lying is as obvious as is his personal for Halliburton profit agenda… You can bet he and his henchman and Condi with all her new Imelda Marcos shoes will rebuild the redneck Riviera and the Old Orleans in such a way to fit their financial interest above the needs of we the people. They might as well just call it Las Halliburton and be done with it – that would at least be the first honest thing this son of a Bush bitch administration have done. I want to turn on the radio tomorrow and hear a sobbing Condi begging for forgiveness for her treachery to the poor African Americans now homeless by going back herself to the stores she was shopping at and returning in humiliation all her shoe shopping exploits from the day Katrina paid a visit to the states! We want to see the real Americans caught in New Orleans that day to see Ms Rice returning her shoes as the nation in one collective effort hurls the shame she deserves for this stupid shopping expedition while the nation she is sworn to serve and protect suffered.

It is only all too obvious the Bushlings agenda on the necessary further evacuation of New Orleans… It can then be made to be like Iraq with only embedded “journalists” so that no one can contradict this administrations lies. And they aren’t even good at lying anymore nor are they convincing. My god retail laborers working on this past “labor day” can get fired for any reason in today’s conservative economics but any slacker at FEMA has an unimaginable job security that even the Bush Jr administration would be jealous of. (Yeah, I’m from Ohio we like to end our sentences with a preposition, thank you).

Really this is just heart breaking… New Orleans was the only desirable place in the US because she was the most Un-American place left in the states. Where is God? Why didn’t the storm sweep away this nasty administration and all their judges in the Supreme Court? Let us all pray each in our own way for a catastrophic Act of God to go directly to Washington, DC’s Capitol Hill to usher in instant Karma for this administration’s sins (to name but a few) of lying, greed, and neglect.

I am not good at praying but I ask Allah Almighty God to get a clue and use his power to cut through all the Bushlings insulated layers of wealth and security to first bring shame to these men and women and then hasten their death. This is my prayer at the moment! Why? Why? Why is it always the poor and the black who seem to suffer the most on this planet from a seemingly predetermined divine act when guys like Bush cruelly profit off of their loss? This is why I feel suicidal. It is not hard to fathom why suicide bombers do what they do. Take someone who is so down about “man’s inhumanity to man” and then you can easily seduce them into thinking they can make a difference with a bomb. This is the sad consequence we are making in the world we are at present so blindly determined to shape with our foreign policies. Why is it Nine – Eleven which I still haven’t recovered from didn’t see Capitol Hill taken down? Why haven’t we seen Air Force One and all its decoys taken down? Why is it on that Nine Eleven morning Atlanta’s CNN siren like mouthpiece of propaganda was not taken down….? Why is it when the Pentagon was hit we the people thought like new radicals, well, you get what you give? Why is it always the good if not poor people who are turned into powerless pawns by the world’s cold hearted people – whether Un-Islamic Islamist extremists or Democratists (yeah new word get used to it) like the Bush familia?

Why after all this occupation are we still calling Iraq full of “insurgents”? Is the dictionary definition (as if God almighty wrote the Oxford English Dictionary himself and sent its many volumes down to humanity) of an “insurgent” those who rise up against those in power. But those in power in Iraq are foreign occupiers. People caught in lands with unjust occupiers need a new word coined for those who rise up to liberate themselves from foreign tyranny. Just like the US is occupied at present by the Bush dynasty, their henchmen and accomplices in the administration and around the nation and world: We the people of the United States must rise up like Iraqi insurgents and take back our country from the humiliation of the failed Bush jr administration. If we the people of the United States don’t get rid of these Bushlings then Bin Laden and co might go down in history as decent Arabian men who tried to liberate the good American underdogs from a 21st century styled King Leopold the Second over lording his private colony the massive Congo of a previous long forgotten age.

I don’t understand it I’m raking my brain to understand and I just don’t. As much as I hope for a new country to emerge out of all of this right winged crap I know it won’t happen but what I do think can happen and fear happening is, that the strength and the security of the states is an illusion and it’s the likes of the Bushlings who will more than any other threat on the planet wipe away the country we have known to be home. And if it does get wiped away you know all those Bushlings will run off to some historical safe haven in Argentina to go live with Eva and Adolph and their descendents in the don’t cry for me Madonna’s Argentina of a South American high security Israeli settlement compound commune.

Well the one optimistic side to all this craziness is that I end up looking a helluva lot less crazy headed than I used to in these crazy days in the West! I force feed myself anything to make me laugh – graphic novels, cartoons, on-line jokes, anything, talking back to the TV and radio has helped considerably. More and more whenever I see and hear Bush jr I laugh and point the finger. He might do everything like a cheap modern version on an Edna Ferber character from the book GIANT big but he fucks up even bigger. Ho, Ho, Ho, Merry Christmas! If his fuck ups weren’t spelling Anarchy for his own nation – causing death and suffering for real human citizens – it would be a funny sort of history. I mean the President cannot get his face and what he says at any time in public to co-ordinate. He cannot read a teleprompter worth shit. God it’s time like these that as much as I might have disagreed with Clinton who is still a Hero in my mind that I miss Clinton doing what a leader should do: No matter what the crisis of the nation or his personal life scandal, Clinton could stand before his people and assert his calming presence even over the electronic services to help the people he served. This Clinton caliber character is the president we need now to clean up Katrina and clean up the selfishness of the American Military ego in Iraq. We need a new President now (I hereby nominate the heroic Ray Nagin!) and we need a new Foreign Policy even more as we need someone better suited to the job than an Imelda Marcos shoe collecting type. Get a new hair style Condi after you return your bloody Dorothy slippers! And we don’t need a new cross eyed conservative judge on the Supreme Court to infiltrate our bedrooms at this point in the Apocalypse of the Empire. If you are going to dismantle our nation then at least let us fuck legally in the peace and privacy of own home behind closed doors!

What we always thought could not happen to the states is happening but the states is now shockingly doing it to itself for no one else is! We elected the cause of our own problems not once but twice (thanks and fuck you too Ohio!) and now that we know it we can’t terminate his lease on that infamous residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue anymore than we can end the carnage of present day Iraq. Sad but true we the people of all colors can’t bear to be the nickled and dimed Americans to bale out the Bushes stupid lily white asses any more. Nor as Gore and Kerry or Clinton for that matter have proved can the Democrats – when no one in the unforgivable and unforgettable 2000 elections - stood up for the “we the little colored folks” of the nation. It was always “their” nation anyway, we knew this through and through and in our bones – this is not our Nation, not our president, not our governors, not our banking scandal, not our Enron scandal, not our war, not our oil, definitely not our foreign policy. We will not bale out the Bush’s at our minimum wage tax payer expense for Katrina. We will not provide corporate welfare for the energy giants when we have no welfare for ourselves. Bush owes the nation and payday for we the people has finally arrived after too many decades. We can send the space shuttle up toward the moon and aim for Mars but we can’t get off our addiction to fossil fuels. Neither can we end under employment! Priorities, sister America, priorities – priorities, brother America, priorities – your actions speak louder than your blank eyed president. The blank eyes, the blank face, the smug, smirking, sneering lipless lips, and what his voice says are unrelated and unconnected to his face and it’s all a dead give away of a liar who does not even understand why he is lying let alone what he is suppose to be saying and how!

The Nation that we always knew was not an illusion of our making anyway - it was a white dream for a white people and what was left over was for the white mans guilty conscience to give to the poor white persons and then what little was left over from that was for the blacks and all the other colors of the rainbow. (This is the “trickle down theory” of Bush senior). This new awareness is the psychic tidal wave of an aftershock that Katrina laid bare across the land from sea to oil slicked shining sea – a flood of destruction that didn’t have to take make New Orleans an idea in the past tense now regrettably lost as Old Orleans. If there is a god this path of destruction that will be called an act of God will hopefully wash away the “White” House (an appalling name in this day an age of racial multi-culturalism) while taking Capitol Hill down with it and all the corporations and banks that keep the Beast alive so that the nation can be handed back to all the Americans equally for once.

If we can learn this from Biloxi and New Orleans and that whole other Gulf region the size of half of France under water and all those people who didn’t have to die because of 25 years of Governmental negligence and downsizing – if we can get our country back from this then perhaps we can say farewell to all the dead good people and a grand old city with dignity and hold our heads up high even though we are mourning our losses for the rest of the world to see. The rest of the world still wants to see a proud Lady Liberty as a beacon of true and not corporate liberty and not a beacon of Bush like economic Imperialism. Let’s face it until the Bush administration packs their bags and is forced to leave the United States if not the planet then we might as well dismantle Lady Liberty and put her pieces in storage so we can stop lying to the rest of the world and ourselves.

The collective psychic black crow of Poe of our once great nation is sighing in unison gasps nevermore, nevermore.

Humpty Dumpty the President had a Great Fall

2005-09-02T11:11:00.000+02:00

Humpty Dumpty the president had a great fall and all of his daddy's horses and all of his daddy's men couldn't put the nation back together again

While less fortunate brothers and sisters were struggling to hang on

If only for another day holding on to babies and grandparents

Holding on for dear life to their beloveds

Unable to bury their dead

Meanwhile the smartest woman from this nation’s administration was out buying shoes with the likes of Imelda Marcos.

Those people of the great old South smuggling food so their families can survive and getting shot by their “government” for looting

In a great old dame of a now submerged city

Reduced to Anarchy by what the insurance corporations will call an act of God

Even though it was years of political downsizing more than a hurricane named Katrina

This latest lost Atlantis (because all the while)

The military's industrial corporate death machines scour the great land of Iraq

Justifying their wrongdoing in the name of Freedom and Democracy and because of something called Terror

While good mothers want to know why their children are dead

Up and down the rivers of the Tigris and the Euphrates the Americans go in search of the last drops of oil which only blood can buy

And like Nine-Eleven this administration says they never saw this coming

Never saw Katrina march towards land

Like they never saw the planes fly off course

As if they never saw the inevitable bankruptcy of an unnecessary war

Because the poor are expendable while the rich are not

And why are their no modern day Biloxi and New Orleans styled Berlin Air Lifts to help the poor trapped in a nations sinking Atlantis

Why only cheap buses for the poor when there more than enough planes for the rich?

Planes that could bring in provisions and take out those who didn’t have cars

Cars that would cost less than Condi’s new shoes

How many new big SUV’s left New Orleans with enough unused seats and space in the back?

That a whole black family could have been fit albeit uncomfortably into safety

While citizens wait in the water for their vacationing leaders to come back to work

And yet the Mayor of New Orleans was the only leader in America telling it like it is

It is always the poor and the oppressed who suffer the consequences for the morals of the privileged

To see this we have only to look into the TV faces of men and women and children

Faces from Biloxi and New Orleans and elsewhere caught in the distresses of the greed of the rich

Humpty Dumpty the president had a great fall

And all of his daddy's horses and all of his daddy's men

Couldn’t put the nation back together again

Humpty Dumpty the president had a great fall

Not that Humpty Dumpty the president cared

For he lives beneath a world insulated with layers of security and entitlement blankets

Humpty Dumpty the president had a great fall

And all of his daddy’s horses and all of his daddy’s men

Wouldn’t put the nation back together again…

Humpty Dumpty the president had a great fall in the autumn early autumn of ’05

The American Insurgency Amassing in Texas and Typically Cynical European Disregard

2005-08-18T12:11:00.000+02:00

Here at the Experiencing Belgium desk from where I wearily keep my eye on the few pieces of this crazy planet I know I’ve been observing how much Camp Casey and Cindy Sheehan’s stand against the perpetually vacationing Junior Bush regime has been in the news. Thanks to my Google news alert service I can follow this unique piece of American history as it is reported back home. The odd thing is none of this has made it onto the European news networks I follow. If it has then I have somehow by only the odd chance missed it but really if it has been in the news then it hasn’t been very much or I would have seen or heard it. Meanwhile true to its global agenda the BBC world service radio has been on non-stop full reports about the Gaza “pull-out” shamelessly covering the story with blatant non-Palestinian sympathies – I want to hear about the Palestinians side of these stories we are hearing daily. It's time we hear the Palestinian stories that aren’t making it into the media. Lets face it those settlers have a pretty sweet deal and perhaps if they hadn’t taken all those literal and figurative pot shots at pedestrians in Gaza with their guns then most likely they would have been welcome to stay and be a part of the neighborhood. As it seems they were bad neighbors but we never hear about that side of the story at least from the Beeb. I mean I am in Belgium and I’m not a Belgian but then I didn’t kick out some previous generation of Belgians from their family homes to make room for myself. But the sport shooting from the settlements in Gaza is the kind of story you won’t hear served up on the Beeb. Yeah well perhaps this isn’t headline news but perhaps it should be – it is after all another one of the state of Israel’s growing list of dirty little secrets.

This transmission, however, is not about the suffering of Palestine, we are gathered here today to examine why Cindy Sheehan is not in the news in Belgium or in general anywhere for that matter in Europe… Neither is it news yet at the BBC, so far as I can tell the Beeb hasn’t been covering Camp Casey. The new little woman who started that great big war of resistance – like a modern day Harriet Beecher Stowe – and there is no insinuation here that junior Bush is akin to Lincoln by way of referencing what that real Republican Lincoln had to say about Ms. Stowe way back when. I mean Bush and his henchman are a very different kind of Republican than Lincoln -Republican’s in name only for these new Republicans go to war for oil rights and enslave good American people at Wal-Mart where the less fortunate eat, shop and work in one vicious circle of modern day capitalistic slavery tread mill without benefits.

The reason Cindy Sheehan and Camp Casey are not news in Europe at least at this point is either because the sophisticated and highly educated journalists over here are just clueless or this whole idea that there are actually a handful of American’s who oppose the Bush regime and their egotistical and unjustified war are not conforming to European ideas of what the average American is all about. It is easier to demonize a nation by thinking that the few hundred million Americans are all the same and are of one mind and all totally in favor of the Bushies pet war. Perhaps Camp Casey will make it in the news here when there are enough Americans there to constitute protesting the Bush administration in quantifiable masses of angry stone throwing Americans. Perhaps something by way of sheer human numbers in attendance will get the attention the next time Mr. and Mrs. Bush junior drive by obliviously half asleep while drinking cocktails from the back of a limousine en route back and forth to their fake dude ranch vacation. It’s looking like another episode of the Muppet show from Crawford country again. I can hear that Muppet show jingle already in the back of my head but what are those two cranky men in the balcony saying about all this I wonder? Well you can be damned sure they aren’t saying anything nice about the first family and their wicked and heartless administration. I mean my God the Muppet show wasn’t even as choreographed as this vacationing president!

Perhaps some Belgian journalists stationed in the states will get out of their stupor of American capitalism and park their friggin SUV’s and start doing some real journalistic work with decent middle Americans taking a stand. Perhaps if the one or two Belgian journalists in the states turn off their air conditioning and their TV which is most certainly turned into to the likes of the deplorable Fox network then maybe they can resume their critical analysis of life in the US. Maybe some European journalists will venture down with some camping gear to Crawford, fucking hot as hell this time of year, Texas and do some real work in the trenches of the American uprising against the tyrannical Bush regime. Obviously the Europeans got suckered in hook, line and sinker by the game of privilege and class entitlement that the Bush Administration uses to play with journalists. Anyway just think if you’re a European journalist on a long term assignment in say Washington you have a pretty sweet deal – why go risking a comfortable job in a comfortable place? Why stop hob knobbing with foreign diplomats at champagne dinners – I mean why risk all that to be a good journalist following one’s heart and conscience? Why risk your career by getting your hands dirty in the Texan dust, sweat and heat by camping out with the pilgrims there for that will in this day and age get you on the Bushies black list. You won’t get invited to the ball Cinderella for befriending the likes of a Mother who lost her sons or daughters to the Bushies death machine in Iraq. I say fuck that! If it is a journalists priority to stay on good terms with the Bush administration they might as well just get a job at fucking Fox. European journalists were once extraordinary and credible journalists who wouldn’t get suckered into the diplomats games of enticement and petty privilege. Journalists should be the cool rogue whistle blowers with truth from observation not off playing with people who subscribe in this day and age to petite bourgeois nineteenth century colonialist ideals such as diplomatic immunity. Will the bright journalistic minds from Europe stationed in the states please get off the golden golf course of luxury and get back to work with the real Americans? There is a rebellious left leaning side of American insurgents in the states not being reported on over here from the other side of the North Atlantic.

Mr. and Mrs. BBC and Other Metaphors of the Britisher Abroad

2005-08-11T17:33:00.000+02:00

After becoming rather pissed off at the poor selection of TV programming on offer with the miserable Brussels city cable services I decided to take my television programming into my own hands. I only subscribe to cable here so I can watch TV Brussel the only worthwhile and completely compelling station (even if it is mostly in the Dutch language) in the whole of Bru-town! Last night I inserted a DVD into all that baffling technology that is accumulating under the so New York SONY TV that is precariously perched atop another cheap bit of home furnishings from icky Ikea. Maybe it’s all those wires, and dust monsters, old video cassettes behind cobwebs and broken VCRs packed under more recent components along side the clutter of DVD and CD jewel cases – there in all that chaos I inserted Berlin: Symphony of a Great City on disc. This silent documentary featuring daily life and machinations of 192o’s Berlin shocked me by how modern and civilized the past once was. Here is a delightful peek into a world that has since all but vanished; a city and society so ahead of its time that we here in today’s world despite all the sophisticated new compact technology still looks like we are socially devolving since the heavy machinations of 1920’s post WWI Berlin. Watching this all but forgotten silent film is like having a ticket to ride a time machine from the safety and comfort of home to see how futuristic the past was. I learned one valuable lesson from this film about today’s commuter trains – just by observing how things worked in the past we can see why our trains of today can’t seem to run effectively which might actually just be simply the result of the doors on the train being so few and far between. In the trains of the early twentieth-century there were rows of doors one after the other adjacent to each other. Compare that to say the TGV/Thallys where there is a door about every half football field’s length. Perhaps in this simple bit of design is the answer to today’s inefficient rail services. Maybe a few decades back some bright mind thought “well if we eliminate all those doors and hinges and latches we can save money to buy a few automatic doors” thus enabling the passengers to hoard up as uncivilized creatures at the doors just so that one or two people at a time can squeeze through to exit and enter. Perhaps therein is the source of all the delays and dysfunctions which leads to extra cost and more excuse to eliminate public transportation.

Aside from these observations on great urban histories I’m afraid I have to lead this essay once again down that forgotten and all but grown over prickly path of liberty, freedom of speech, press (self publishing) and thought once again. I mean someone has to think and speak since everyone else is droning along watching Big Brother Bush take more freedom and power due to public fear of terrorism while our protecting governments export and extort freedom and democracy to other far away places. Perhaps if we relinquish all our civil liberties to Bush and Blair and Co then perhaps places like Iran and Iraq will be the freest places on earth. Why our governments are more concerned with places where they have no voting populace to serve I don’t know… (well, we do know actually, money and power lay in the Middle East at the moment!)

Today’s exercise in freedoms of thought, speech and press will be in the thrill of attacking the completely unbiased and thoroughly all seeing and knowing entity that is simultaneously everywhere and nowhere at the same time: The entity that rings inside all of our heads even if we don’t want it to – The British Broadcasting Corporation. Two voices stand out to me as best representing the true face of this mythological proportioned media goddess. Sadly though it is not a kind hearted, intelligent or talented Redgrave….

Whenever I heard the shrill voice of Elizabeth Blunt or the lets put on airs with our evening dinner jacket while reading the news in that sham Priest of a voice… What is this reader of the evening news on the BBC’s World Service name? Roy London or Rob Maude and does it matter? You know the one – that affected condescending accent that is the British voice of propaganda. That Elizabeth Blunt voice sounding much like the fairy Godmother’s voice from the Wizard of Oz all high pitched with a slight quiver dripping with shameless snobbery – except in this stretched analogy - I daresay calling this Elizabeth a fairy Godmother is a bit disgraceful to the fairy Godmother from MGM Wizard of Oz. As soon as I hear either of those two that’s about when I reach for the radio knob and turn to Studio Brussel (Flemish/Vlaams radio for Brussels city) as fast as possible. What is it about these two BBC staffers whose presence in my home bothers me to my core? Why does the Elizabeth Blunt voice sound like it were being radioed across time from the like of somewhere between the end of silent film and 1930’s cinema? That voice of condescension that rings through every syllable she enunciates from wherever on the planet she is cursing with her slanted commentary. What is it about the make believe childish world her cohorts mystery male voice inhabits. What are the mythologies of these fictional British voices? Who is this anachronistic radio personality speaking as if he were delivering an Anglican Church sermon circa 1955 while sounding more like a train conductor from the steamy past on Britain’s faulty rail service of today? How can you take “news” seriously from these two faceless voices oozing the sound of some “putting on airs” British fantasy of itself to market or dare I say thrust upon listeners desperately looking for the truth between the lines of the limited global news selections? These two voices seem more like manufactured props to a special program from the Ministry of Lies and Misinformation than anything from credible journalism. Are we expected to believe that these two voices even exist outside the infamous Bush House or anywhere in England for that matter? And if these voices belong to actual people then do they really talk this way in their own kitchens? Do they even eat? Why exactly have these two colonialist voices broadcast abroad not been turned out to pasture back during the years whilst Are You Being Served still ran on the television before syndication? These two voices seem to fancy themselves as rather high class sort who now that I think about it are best seen as bumbling Mr. Peacock and hot flashing Ms. Slocum. How are these two voices relevant to the audiences around the world today or even a few decades ago? Perhaps they are intended to represent something of the good old grandfather and grandmother of the colonialist masters to those of us listeners from the used up, now decayed and forgotten pieces of the old Empire. Perhaps these two voices serve to sugar coat into a forgotten saccharine history aftertaste the crimes against humanity the colonialists they represent in fact incurred and left as a hateful legacy to today’s world.

Just re-imagine if you will from the MGM movie the Wizard of Oz that strange Wizard at the end of the movie broadcasting his face and voice from behind a curtain onto a larger than life screen. Replace that bumbling Wizard with Junior Bush and his nasty administration and the microphone and video in his hand is all this worlds Broadcast media without a conscience or an ability to stand up to this sham wizard with their own bright journalists minds. Maybe like the Wizard departing OZ in an out of control Hot Air Balloon our fake Wizard Mr. Bush and co. (including their naughty rowdy daughters) will depart planet Earth lost on all the hot air of contention they have stirred up by their greed around the world.

Maybe if Elizabeth Blunt would start sounding a bit more gracious and concerned with all the little Dorothy’s (before Dorothy became the decadent drugged and suicidal alcoholic we affectionately remember singing along with her orgiastic gay fans as Judy Garland)… those good Dorothy’s not from the Midwest but from the Middle East trapped in the residual politics of the Colonialists Empire on the wane – for the young in Palestine, Iraq, all the way to Iran, Pakistan, India, Yemen and the list goes on and on. Perhaps if Elizabeth were a little less blunt to the human condition she slants in favor of a mythological world view of Britannia that went with Victoria ages ago then maybe she could redeem herself as the fairy Godmother: “…Who killed my sister the Witch of the East?” Oh where is coffee promoting Margaret Hamilton of old in this day and age of current Media tragedies?

Perhaps while talking back to the BBC like this it’s a good idea to analyze some typical BBC lingo…

“At the end of the day” – this is probably the most over used British expression used for making unlikely transitions. “At the end of the day” is an expression without meaning – at the end of the day – what? You go home from work. You are tired? You get blown up on the Tube? The sun goes down again on the Empire? At the end of the day is an expression that means nothing but tired and over used and absolutely pointless! Count how many times in one period of listening to or watching the BBC you hear it.

“The Beeb”, The affectionate nickname for the British Broadcasting Corporation probably inadvertently coined by the author E.M. Forster with his book a Room with a View for the father figure chaplain character from that novel. Mr. Bebe was his name.

“Actually”, another typically overused word in place of a basic conjunction, think of it actually as a pretentious conjunction. Pretentious is the keyword.

“I’ve never seen anything like it”. Here is a winner of a phrase to hear in a news program or any program for that matter. I mean if you want to sound as stupid as an American talking head then use this phrase as often as possible. If you really want to say it like an American try saying this phrase while eating a hot potato: "I ain't never seen anything like it before in mah life and if I did I don't know where I saw it!"

Terrorist, Terrorism, Al Qaeda, Bin Laden, Networks, Links, Insurgents, Terrorist Cells these are all words only used to instill FEAR into the listening and watching matches. These words have nothing to do with journalism neither do these words have any meaning for they are just tools of the trade in a media purveying Fear for profit.

Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Yemen, Syria, Saudi Arabia or anything Muslim and Islamic otherwise known as the ENEMIES of the Queen - if you are a British and hale from any of these countries you might as well pack your bags now as you will soon be deported after the next bout of Fear sweeps the realm. Note that news from those parts of the world are deemed unnecessary at the BBC unless it further proves their global agenda on how to think: See the Axis and Evil and its growing list of Satellites.

“Big Brother” not the cheap unreality TV shows. Not the Big Brothers watching you but you are watching Big Brother – oh brother - despite purveying the Orwellian masterpiece as “fictional literature” the Big Brother Corporation seems to follow this author’s work as a prophecy it must fulfill.

“Suicide Bomber”, another over used and misunderstood phrase in the whole of the BBC language – When you hear these two words used ask: “why is this sort of phrase never analyzed?” It’s a label word to promote misunderstanding and most importantly Fear.

“Paedophilia” (Pedophilia is an American thing but as it doesn’t sell well over there it is less common) this is another subject that the BBC is weirdly self righteously obsessed by even though it is used precisely as a titillation technique to ensure an audience doesn’t change the channel.

Iraq – generally the most important news item of the day and yet increasingly it falls to the end of the report.

“Counterpart” – when discussing the meeting of two nation’s leaders the one favored by the BBC is mentioned while the one less favored is slanted with this term.

NASA and the American Space Shuttle – this bit of manufactured news is saved for the first headline and generally spat out of the broadcast siren daily. Knowing what song NASA uses to annoy its crew out of bed is generally not headline news. Neither is this popular scientific news – sports news perhaps – like the crash and burn of a race car competition it’s the possibility of death and destruction that is used to captivate the audience. Currently NASA and the Space Shuttle Program has been Hijacked by Bush Juniors administration to further his ego as the President for Mars – perhaps that is why he needs to claim all of Iraq’s oil so he can relocate the whole of his administration there since no one really wants him on this planet. I say let the Bushlings be like the Windsors of Mars with their dynasty of inbred incompetence – better the Red planet than here on blue planet Earth!

Dangerous implications in today’s BBC news reporting methods – how many Iraqi civilians equal one American soldier? How many Palestinians equal one Israeli? How many Americans equal one Israeli? How many Muslims equal one Westerner? How many people in the third world get denied healthcare for every one person in the West who has healthcare? Why do the American’s get to vote for the one man and administration who will intimately affect the rest of the world when the rest of the world will not? Why is it most American’s can’t even be bothered to cast their one vote?

“Illegal Downloading of Music” - this subject is relentlessly harped upon by the BBC not because it is news but because the BBC is otherwise known as the Boy Band Corporation and they have huge financial profits in the music industry to protect. Never mind that the real news angle on this subject is what to do when a new technology appears out of nowhere and renders obsolete in just one day a whole industry which has persistently refused to evolve?

“Blogging” - this volatile and dangerous subject will ultimately become illegal as soon as the powers that be can figure out a way to blame Terror on it. Once an international news event creates a link between freedom of speech and the (self published) press then Blogging will become a thing of the past. The fact of the matter is the governments and corporations who control the world want to make even thinking for ones self and expressing ones thoughts illegal.

“Humor” – the BBC believes it has cornered the market on humor as the British form of the English language is the soul definition of humor. Humor’s home according to the BBC is London and humor exists nowhere else. The Belgians are not humorous according to the BBC and neither are the Australians and certainly not the Canadians. American humor falls flat on British ears as often does British humor on American ears. However, Lollywood is proving that Pakistan and in particular Lahore might be the seat of world humor and creativity with the English language. Certainly Euro News from Brussels (not Bruxelles), Belgium is running a close second to Lahore. Never mind that British humor died with the end of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, the rise Thatcher and all those espresso and cappuccino electronic gadgetries we now have to prepare coffee while a dependable cup of tea went to the bag in a forgotten mug of brackish tap water. Go figure why Euro News which is an English language alternative to the Beeb for the Continental Masses is obsessed by using only the French language spelling for Brussels. The strange thing is though the whole of the Euro News channel is in the English language every mention of Brussels, Belgium in textual form is with the French spelling Bruxelles. This is an overt Franco-centric calling card that completely disregards history and the Flemish minority remaining in their city which is spelled Brussel (without the‘s’ at the end) to perpetuate the myth that Bronte’s la Villette is a monolingual French speaking city and not a multi-lingual capital city – Capital of the Dutch speaking (Flemish) part of Belgium in the remnants of Flanders/(Vlaanderen) - Brussels also the Capital city for the European Union. Get used to it Bru-town is a complicated place whether you spell it Brussel, Bruxelles, Brussels, Bruselas, and even then it is in Belgie, Belgique, Belgien, Belgium, Belgica etc. So goes Brussels and Belgium so goes the Union of Europeans. Meanwhile Angleterre hovers around Europe on that damp little island trying to make up its mind if it wants to be part of the American Union or the Union of Europeans and sitting on its fence (or in this case chunnel) of indecision while condescendingly telling the Europeans how to run things it can’t even commit to.

“Masked Gunmen” – in Beeb lingo this means those dark looking Arab Muslims who wants to kill and terrorise you into submission… This in no way implies that a masked gunman could be brought to you by some special branch of espionage by way of your government the CIA/Zionists who propagate their political aims on a certain regional political issue. Whenever you see a masked gunman then you must assume that there is a fifty percent possibility this is an Israeli or a nice waspy Midwestern boy under that mask conveniently masquerading as an Arab. Whenever you see hostages being held in a near death situation on video with masked gunman behind them always think CIA first. Where do they get all these video tapes anyway? It might not be true but unless you want to be part of a medieval witch hunt mentality society then you must not loose the ability to reason even if an image is frightening. I mean for Chrissakes Halloween isn’t illegal yet.

Beards – in BBC television imagery if someone has a beard then most certainly they are linked to terrorist activities. They are not good Orthodox Christians or Jews nor are they any longer part of the now nostalgic Hippie movement… They do not pray five times a day, neither do they read the Qur’an throughout the day and neither do they have a large family to provide for. They most undoubtedly spend their days putting together bombs and going to international meetings probably held in Texas to plan the next media target on the menu du jour. If you are in security services then anyone with a beard is a suspect.

Fear of an Islamic Planet – though this idea is never vocalized or even made mention of – this is the real fear behind the fear of terrorism. It isn’t that there might be a bomb in that bag next to you on the train or in the lobby of the bank you go to or in the clutch purse of some fab chick at a disco – there is no fear in the masses about these things because there are places everywhere for this sort of explosive. We just all hope it isn’t us and that it happens somewhere else to someone else even if it is in our home town after all it is something new to watch on TV and talk about for weeks on end. The real fear motivating us to relinquish our rights to the war on Terror is that in the back of our minds even though we don’t realize it we fear the possibility that in the future our planet might be completely Islamic and then what? We don’t know so we are afraid – and this is the fear that is capitalized on for changing our world in the west into Orwell’s warning with his book 1984.

Perhaps it is time to rethink our strategy in the west on that abstract concept we loosely refer to as Terrorism or as those warmongering Americans call it the War on Terror. Nowadays anyone can just about take a plane somewhere yet few of us flyers really face terror when boarding a plane. Statistically flying is much safer than driving but if you are one of the unlucky ones trapped on an ill fated flight and plummet in a burning fireball to death – well we don’t make planes illegal because certain wealthier people profit off of air travel which is after all essentially statically the safest mode of transportation. Around the planet everyday the same amount of people who died in New York City on the morning of September 11, 2001 die in traffic related accidents and yet we do not make the automobile illegal even though the automobile has single handedly unmade Western civilization in less than ten decades. Again there are almighty profits to be made by the wealthy few henchmen holding this planet hostage. Perhaps we need to realize that anger and crude technologies used to kill senselessly are the result not of Islam or the Muslims but perhaps a human side effect to the combination of new technologies and the relentless march of capitalism. I’m sorry but if Timothy McVey took down the Demurer building today in Oklahoma City would he be an unwitting member of the Al Qaeda Network? Is the Al Qaeda Network by definition a psychic network perhaps oblivious to each other on the planet? Perhaps we need to stop writing off as "terrorism" the tragic events of some deranged people who like to hurt and kill the innocent people who make up the masses who get caught in cruel traps of violence. It is time to stop using the tactics of killers to conveniently justify removing social issues like Liberty and Freedom which are not convenient to the Corporatist agenda for controlling society.

Maybe we have to start thinking with the communal power of the collective Mass again. There are six billion of us on planet earth – minus a few Corporate henchmen and their families – minus a few deranged unrelated by differing twisted ideological social psychopaths who can’t reach the untouchable Corporate henchmen they are angry at – I mean maybe we should look at this like flying a plane. I know when I get on a plane I might not get off alive but I do it anyways. Just like if I go out on the street I might not come home alive – just like sex has always been something that can kill you – I may even die in my own home by some unfortunate chain of events. I drive and yet I know especially in Belgium cars are lethal! Statistically though I am less likely to get trapped in a terrorist death plot somewhere on the planet and nowhere is immune than I am statistically likely to die on a airplane (or for that matter from an airplane falling out of the sky on to my home). So, let us the people think as our planet’s majority of billions of good people and get smart about what is going on. The hateful people need the corporate henchman (the untouchable oligarchs around the world) just as much as the Oligarchs need the unconnected deranged killers who are invisible in the masses. These two have a game going on that you just don’t want to be caught in the middle of. These deeds the media calls Terrorism are done to get the attention of the untouchable Oligarchs who could give a fuck and won’t listen unless there is some money to me made off of this new dynamic. Or in today’s world if the Oligarchs can use the disgruntled to unmake Governmental protections that stand in their way of getting even more power over the Masses. So if we are going to go to war on terror then let’s be sure we understand these complexities! The Oligarchs and the bomb throwers and hostage takers are one and the same – they are at the moment fighting each other while taking it out on us the members of the mass majority of peaceful good people on the planet.

Question: What is the bigger crime in American History – Hijackers flying planes into the World Trade Center or Bush stealing the election in Florida in 2000 – which event led to more American deaths and casualties at home or abroad?

There was a time when I remember growing up that I was geeky enough to actually want to write the BBC a letter to tell them about how their World Service Radio saved my life and my mind’s ability to reason with their extraordinary global views. Indeed the course of my life changed by way of my making the effort to listen to and be entertained by what little of the BBC made its way to the wasteland of central Ohio. Now my life has gone beyond the confines of the Midwest of both the states and middle earth England. Certainly the BBC more than the Ohio State University taught me to be critical of the world around me. I believe it is my right and obligation to criticize the structures of the world we live in. If we live in a free society then this critical analysis will only serve to strengthen the foundations of human life worth believing in. Critical analysis does not tear down an already weak structure – perhaps it bolsters or corrects it. The difficult effort to think critically is an obligation and a duty as well as an integral attribute to a sophisticated civilization. George Walker Bush and his inhuman administration and his counterpart Tony Blair and co have been seduced by their own popularity into believing they know what is best when in fact these are the two most dangerous men alive at this point in history – dangerous for our society and dangerous for decent people the world over. We the people of this planet’s masses must not stop utilizing the idealistic tools (freedom of thought, speech and press) of our various worlds to drive these men and women from their insulated privileged positions of ignorance and power. More than Iran utilizing nuclear power these two administrations are a threat that must be brought back down to face the judgment of the people and not the corporatist aims of a wealthy few.

Manipulation for the Masses

2005-08-05T12:03:00.000+02:00

It seems I listen to a lot of the BBC World Service Radio perhaps too much but I have noticed a big shift in the mentality of its reports and analysis for the worse. Lately there has not been much by way of reports and certainly no analysis – it has been all “power of suggestion” used to tell the masses what to think… it’s getting infected by the unstoppable CNN effect. Mass manipulation as it were or shall we say Manipulation for the Masses? Not so long ago there was a big shake up at the BBC offices and one man was sacked while others were reported to have protested, I suppose this current ambiance of stupidity is the result of that loss. There was a time back when I was stuck in Ohio as a kid during the Thatcher years when I would stay up late just to listen to the BBC World Report on NPR (National Public Radio) local radio broadcast after midnight so no one in America’s interior would know what was really happening in the rest of the world. It was such a shock in those days to listen to the voice of Britain to hear about the rest of the world in unheard of terms. Back then none of the American news services would report or analyze like that. Well there won’t be any young coming of age and awareness to the rest of the world from Middle American with the help of the BBC’s World Service radio now for that can’t happen with the new CNN version of the BBC. Another success of the Bush I, Bush II (administration et al), Blair, Berlusconi, Murdock regime the planet is held under.

One such BBC example was yesterday in yet another tired report about the London bomb the only news about that was how exhausted and over worked and trying the hardest they can those good old London police are (sorry for the Yoda talk but I just saw Star Wars III). Excuse me but when did anyone ever have sympathy for a police officer? Talk about Power of Suggestion as a tactic for manipulating the masses. Tell the commuters not to mind one more infringement on their precious liberty because of terrorists. Don’t mind that there aren’t enough trains, tracks, to say nothing of seats or effective timetables in this day and age of the automobile! Just feel sorry for that over worked heroic policeman searching your bag. There are so many bags to search you know. Whatever happened to the days when on BBC TV (which has always been a bit more sensational than the stark Radio World Report) when on the YOUNG ONES the five star (on his forehead no less) punkish Adrian Edmonson character Vyvyan was like in every breath making fun of British Police and their ineptitude. Perhaps the London tube bombing was just more evidence of commuter frustration as Britain has never been able to, since Thatcher, get any of their trains to run on time or in any proper order. Privatization has its consequences. It's just much easier to Wag the Dog (re-watch the movie on DVD!) with reports about the CIA invention called “Al Qaeda” – it is pure mythology. I for one think there is no such thing as Al Qaeda “Networks”, “Links” or “Strongholds” or for that matter “Insurgencies in Iraq”. My lawd if the Americans were for corporatist energy reasons occupying Britain the BBC World Service Radio would not be referring to angry crowds of rock throwing Britishers as Insurgents. It is a bit rich when the nation that once carved up the part of the world it now demonizes as the Middle East with its own broadcasting corporation instead of trying to heal the region today.

When will a media report ever report on what it must be like to be on the other end of the occupation of Iraq? I mean “we are not all stupid people” (to quote Edina from Absolutely Fabulous regarding her humorous idea of a “stupidity tax”) and the BBC’s World Service was the last refuge in the Anglophone media for anyone who was slightly capable of thinking for themselves. As Eds said when she was in court ranting ““I know you know” - it is no accident that education in the Anglophone world has nose dived considerably since the Viet Nam war years for even that was certainly a planned tactical maneuver for manipulating the masses. First get the masses dumbed down then you can tell them what to think and believe. (Plus taxes really are in this day and age only for the stupid masses). It just takes patience and time. Look at this history of the careers of the henchmen now working for the father and son tag team of the Bush I and II administrations and see how far back they have had their fingers in the pot of the American government – these are the henchmen (including those patsy’s the high colonic Powell and that nasty bleeding rectal condyloma Rice – woo hoo freedom of speech – use it or loose it - was never so thrilling than to write like this!) who made this new world order of Ignorance. Don’t even get me started on Humpsvelds rump! These are the criminal horsemen of the apocalypse of ignorance and Blair is that whining accomplice of that George Michael poodle scratching at the door to be let out or worse caught on your pants leg hopping up and down... Just like Thatcher returned Britain back to the real Victorian Values of poor to non existent Health care, back to “work houses” now serving up greasy fast food for the poor, back to only education for an elite, while single-handedly undoing the Victorian made idea of transportation so has the Administration of America by the Bush family and their corporatitst henchman brought about a North American Dark Age that will take generations to recover from even if education was restored with the next left leaning enlightened administration.

What if history was a lie brought to you by the successful men of Capitalism? Perhaps everything is, as Moby’s unforgettable CD was titled, wrong? What if Bin Laden and his magnificent beard were a creation brought to you by the special branch wing of the CIA? What if Saddam Hussein was a Reagan invention? What if Iraq had not one drop of oil? Why is George Bush senior so closely linked to the CIA? How is it that the puppet of a president George Bush junior has a grandfather so closely linked to corporate investments with Nazi Germany? How is it that the First Lady of America killed someone while driving an automobile and has (passively) earned the titled First “Lady”? Why do the American’s want a family such as this running a land with such pervasive control around the world? What kind of world has been made for the masses and why? Why are the few people with such control on planet earth so afraid when we the masses are not? But the real question is why there is no one protesting to say nothing of mass protest? Speaking of Hitler there was a time when that Mr. Hitler spoke of the Queen of England being the most dangerous woman in Europe. It seems almost quaint now that tidbit of Euro-gossip from history. Applied to today’s reality of the multi-national corporate version of the Ministry of lies and Propagation to manipulate the masses perhaps the BBC is the new most dangerous entity and electronic Queen Bee in today’s Europe. This is all the new Music for the Masses otherwise known as manufacturing fear and totally unlike anything produced by that de groovy electronic band called Depeche Mode.

For all of this good for me cathartic ranting I do know that whenever I travel and I must use the services of my American Embassy – every visit reminds me that as an American citizen I am a nobody because I am not representing a corporations financial interests when I arrive at my country’s doorstep abroad in need of a basic tax payers service. I do know that whenever I cross borders into the Anglophone world that the passage is being squeezed tighter and more uncomfortable not because of any real threat of terrorists abroad but because of lies and misinformation brought about by that Siren of a propagandists mouthpiece known as broadcast media. Perhaps selfish political aims at controlling the masses are creating sinister figures like Bin Laden and the Al Qaeda Network to blame new technological inconveniences which will be applied to the very people who make up the masses. Perhaps it is this very incessant telling of lies to the listening and watching public disguised as news that is creating tomorrow’s ghosts and demons. Rest assured those very merchants of fear are already manufacturing what we the masses will need to buy to protect ourselves from the very consequences of the very fear they sold us in the first place. These henchmen of the apocalypse and their families have secured their dynastic place of comfort and luxury in history while resting on the backs of people like you and me who make up the small inconsequential pieces of what they refer to without a thought or care as the masses.

Samuel R. Delany's Beard

2005-05-15T12:16:00.000+02:00

It seemed like a curious enough thing to do when I noticed a few gray stubbles showing up in my beard to let my whiskers grow out just to see my natural beard long and full for once in my life. The thing is it is really strange what the impression having a bushy beard growing on my jaw makes for people who know me. I mean for once in my life I want to see what I look like with my beard so who gives if it is not the time of Lincoln and not in fashion? I have this bright copper red beard with a few strands of white hair on either side of my chin. The sides of the mustache are blondish and then here and there along my cheek are quite a few dark reddish copper patches of hair and the occasional darker brown strand. It doesn’t seem to be the curliest of beards which I wish it were but as the whiskers grow some are showing signs of curling though not tightly and others are most definitely straight. When I look in the mirror I see this nearly over sized pubic like bush hanging on my face which is probably what shocks people who know me into some strange priggish sort of judgment. Keep in mind in Dutch pubic hair is called Schaamhaar or shame hair or better yet hair of shame. I suppose I can understand when some people express shock by my not keeping my bush tucked away in my trousers but proudly displaying it on my face! The thing is it is my face, my beard, my whiskers and why have I been shaving them off ever since puberty when they started to grow anyway? On the other hand on the street people who don’t know me seem to have an obvious interest in it. Living among quite a few Moroccans and other Muslims I have this sense that they appreciate a fine beard. Certainly I get a lot of looks from the women in these communities and I sense a sort of camaraderie in the men with beards I pass on the street. The meddlesome Moroccan youths on the streets here which when in groups of three or more are really best avoided, rather than verbally insulting me as they generally would with contempt by spitting out words in French ranging from “Flamingant” or “Pede” now just sort of give me a passing look or nod which is rather nice for a change.

When I made a few Google searches on beards I came across a photograph of an author I enjoy – Samuel R. Delany who in one particular photo has a mammoth beard. Way beyond anything Lincoln-esque or Walt Whitman like. It was a beard that would even humble bin Laden’s remarkable beard. Now I must read another Delany book. I picked up recently on sale a book of his extended essays appropriately titled for this essay about beards called Long Views which I will read out of my fan like appreciation for him and his being such an esteemed member of the brotherhood of the beard.

Despite my rewarding work on attaining a beard I feel a bit depressed this spring which is not an easy thing to admit as I have had a long struggle with melancholia. I realized as an early teen that I had a milestone of depression slung around my neck weighing my life down. Over the years I have tried to deny it and pretend it wasn’t there. I have tried to fight it with pathetic attempts at thinking positively. Eventually this tendency toward depressiveness nose dived and I found myself critically depressed. It was then I realized this condition is not normal and eventually I got some professional help. Even after all that work and all those pharmaceuticals that milestone is still there – who put it there or why is beyond me but living with it as a chronic debilitating condition is all I can seem to do. Some days are better than others but more often than not I am withdrawn and cranky and long to be a normal person for once in my life. Sometimes I just want to escape (it). So much so that at the moment I feel like boarding a plane to the states just to change my skies since I can’t change my mind. But really that is just a reflexive thought as there are many other places elsewhere on this remarkable planet to visit and see. I’d even settle for tickets to the fab new movie Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy if it would open here! I do actually admit I need a bit of help in the professional sense of things. But who knows maybe hanging out alone in Mexique Nouveau or some such high altitude desert would be much more useful than throwing money away on a psycho-anal-ist. In addition to this “condition” I’ve had a sinus headache for over a week now – I’ve forgotten how long - maybe that is why I feel as such all this melancholia:

And that forgotten Infinite Sadness…
Sometimes I think the only medicine for this angst is the desert.
Mojave,
Death Valley.
Utah’s trickster landscapes.
New Mexico high altitudes and arid plateaus.
Arizona red soil under the bluest of sky.
Big clouds.
Little fluffy Orb like clouds.
Take me there.

Even the prairie in far eastern Colorado has a certain something to it. In all that space, under all that sky, beneath all that wind, there is a silence you can feel in your soul. A silence that doesn’t exist here and it is something perhaps that is the cure for what hurts in my soul. It’s a silence that demands to be heard, listened to and felt. In the isolation of the prairie lies the silence of long lost lives without a recorded story, without present listeners. I want to go there and remember the dead from those plains – those deserts. I want to breathe their dust. To remember I will join them in their anonymity. I want to learn to let go and dissolve into this collective oblivion.

Instead of going west in search of this dust of souls for healing, my life went east out of Ohio. Very far east and north across the almighty Atlantic. I first left the states for Europe in ’96 and begun an all too long time of going back and forth between here and there as obliged to by my Visa status. Before my paperwork became established which was a long and tedious process which is in some ways still ongoing thus making it hard to date my arrival to Belgium I date my permanent residency here to the summer of ’99. I always get asked when I actually moved to Belgium but really it is the most impossible question to answer because it was such a process without ever a sense of arrival. I now qualify for a Belgian passport which I would like but even that comes with a bureaucratic Kafka-esque heap of determination and pluck to overcome! I also want to keep my U.S. passport (which is shockingly all to easy in these times to actually loose!) in the hope that things there change back to what the states should be although increasingly I doubt that will ever occur in my lifetime. If I am honest with myself I don’t really think it will ever happen now that the states is in such a freefall of wanton decline.

Although I live in Brussels one of the few European cities with a thriving and affordable café culture like what must have been seen in Paris at the turn of the last century. Unlike Paris café culture today which is just too expensive for Bohemian “wanna” be types like me Brussels carries on this fine European tradition. The thing is I am not such a socializing type and neither do I imbibe in (too much) smoke or drink. Nor do I like smoky cafes so I do enjoy outdoor terraces. In theory I like café life – and you can really flop for hours in Brussels with a good book easily and cheaply without ever getting lonely. The thing is here in practice I don’t like the nicotine air and my only vice is tea and the cafes don’t make a decent cup of tea despite all their apparatus and selections for making coffee. I enjoy my tea vice from home. I am a solitary tea and chai fanatic you just don’t know!

I think my best remedy for my depressiveness is tea and quiet. In reality though I know the best remedy for this chronic ailment of my brain is exercise. I am an enthusiastic walker and urban bicyclist and despise nothing more than automotive based traffic. But like the airplane often times it is an unavoidable contradiction in my conscience. I am of the strictest of opinion that religious people should at least try to avoid the automobile because of its inherent destructiveness but religious people never think of this. What would Jesus drive? Well, he wouldn’t! He’d put those Sandals of his to good use. He would be that solitary scruffy looking bearded fellow along the roadside walking in the dust while all those oversized Middle American religious types obliviously drove by in their super sized SUVs with concealed weapons in the glove box.

Speaking of being super sized I am in addition to my beard getting a bit of paunch. This is not good! So I have to resume swimming which I have let slide over the winter as the pools in Brussels have all been closed at the same time for repair. Brussels has a lot of pools but when you ad up the amount of people who use those pools good ol’ Bru-town just doesn’t have enough pools. Fortunately there is a remarkable bicycling and handsome politician named Pascal Smet who is working very hard to get among many other things more city pools! (He’ll get my votes when I am allowed to vote here!) I’m a very good swimmer and especially with the butterfly stroke but it isn’t easy to find a good pool anywhere to keep my torso in shape. When the pools are crowded when you swim Butterfly like me you are a public nuisance. During open swimming hours lanes are filled with men and women doing their own variations of Breast Stroke with corrective lenses on and not wanting to get their hair wet. When I dive in and do about eight Butterfly strokes to the other end of the 25 meter pool not only am I swimming like a bullet I am getting peoples hair wet. Doing this as a bearded swimmer and the result is there are Belgians here convinced a real Samuel R. Delany Mad Man is on the loose in the pools.

To understand me and my weird Mad Man ideas you might have to look at where I come from. Ohio. I come from that strange state called Ohio: As in Neil Young’s “Four Dead in Ohio”. That May 4th killing anniversary from 1970 at Kent State recently went by unnoticed when then Ohio Governor James A. Rhodes used every means possible back then to eradicate Viet Nam war public opposition to American foreign policy. A skyline building now stands in the state of Ohio Capital memorializing Rhodes shamelessly built in his life time. Ohio is a state that is neither here nor there within the states. Ohioans are not protesting Republican fuel foreign policy wars anymore either. At one time in North American colonialization history Ohio was the rowdy far west. Jefferson (the President) wrote beautiful words about the Ohio wilderness and landscape but when I think of Ohio all I see are cars, and the parking lot tarmac that Chrissie Hynde sang of. When I think of Ohio I see strip malls, housing subdivisions like what RUSH the band once lamented during the early MTV years. Ohio of today more than any other state means extra-large people with rather stifling social views driving to and shopping at Wal-Mart. You just can’t see Jefferson’s Ohio affections these days for they have been paved over with cheap tarmac. After Jefferson and the western expansion of the U.S. government Ohio tried to become more civilized but always a bit cranky and self opinionated if not altogether contrary a virtue sadly lacking anymore. Nowadays when I hear talk of the Old West in nostalgic ways I smile because the state of New Mexico was a twentieth century invention founded in like 1912. So does that make Ohio the forgotten Old, Old West which is rather in the east of the U.S? The other thing about Ohio is it isn’t the north and neither is it the south.

My Mother, God rest her soul, used to say the south began in downtown Columbus back when it’s only skyline was the handsome and solitary Lincoln Leveque Tower. The South, according to Mom, started at the intersection of Broad and High streets: Where state route 40 (Broad St.) the old and forgotten National Road going east to west crossed state route 23 running north south otherwise known in town as High Street. If you were south of Broad you had entered the “South” and things were different from that point. The old dignified and solitary Columbus skyline changed with Reagan-omix into a corridor of concrete, steel and glass overshadowing the old Leveque to become a skyline that could be anywhere rather than somewhere like home. Where is Ohio anyway? My Belgian acquaintances always ask. My answer is always south of the most southern tip of Canada - yet it’s north of the infamous Mason-Dixie line from the American Civil War. There was a time when men and women caught in slavery would dream of making it across the Ohio River into Ohio to reach the safety of the Underground Railroad to freedom. So Ohio has a brilliant history of being rather cavalier like in fighting for ideals the Ohioans believed in and yet by the time of Ronald Reagan and the decline of the American Auto Industry Ohio had been seduced into mindless conservativism based in contemporary retail like religion of a placebo like variety called health, wealth and happiness at the expense of its soul and history. And yet within Ohio are anachronistic farmers of a near pre-industrialist faith. These religions with various sub-sects live to some degree without electric or automotives and live in very isolated and communal societies and to some extent I have often wanted to be part of such a community. Then there are the unseen and unaccounted for or unacknowledged by the powers that be in Ohio of groovy alternative do it yourself spiritual American types with very personal notions of what is actual freedom and democracy – and they are determined behind closed doors if nothing else. But that was Ohio when I was there, now after an absence of a few years it seems more bland, more banal, more like nowhere in particular just an automotive retail world with people trapped in its machinations unaware of anything or anywhere else.

The thing is I don’t ever remember fitting in anywhere so that makes me being an outsider in such a land as Belgium somewhat easy. I am through no choice of my own part of the international community of brother and sisterhood who must live under the guise of a Love that dare not speak its name. All of this adds up to me now here alone and somewhat aloof and most certainly out of place in Belgium. One cannot really assimilate into being a Belgian so if you come here from the outside you will always stay on the outside even though you might find a very comfortable place among and the Belgians. The food is good, the people nice (when they aren’t looking down their nose or being linguistically complicated) but the weather is depressingly cold and damp and windy most of the time. On the other hand the sky is always changing and affecting the light and sometimes overhead the most celestial and awe inspiring illuminated heavens pass overhead mostly unnoticed by the Belgians like a silent kaleidoscope of cloud and light and reflection. One of the more momentous skies you can observe here is after a rain fall when the sky is still low and broken up letting in sunlight which reflects off all the wet terra cotta roof tiles. The light seems to get caught between those roof tiles and the sky over head. When the light hits those wet roof tiles it picks up an orange hue to reflect back onto the low ceiling of clouds creating the most beautiful atmospheric illumination. I don’t think the Belgians much care for these old roof tiles – nor do they notice this play of light on their land. Like everyone else they sit proudly in new German made automobiles and dream of a detached house with attached garages and modern roofing. But when you look out the window and unexpectedly notice this play of light between Heaven and Earth here in Belgium – when you aren’t from here like me – you stop and just observe the fleeting moment feeling a strange and unexpected sense of awe. Everywhere I go and everywhere I look I see the handiwork of God. I tried to be an Atheist or at the least an Agnostic but if I am honest with myself I cannot be. Whether I liked it or not at the time I was raised in a very religious school and perhaps that has shaped my present day awareness with an appreciation and longing for the Divine. (Just not the kind of Political Religious Divine Retail they were teaching us children to believe in!) I wish I were more objectively scientific but if I am honest I am always looking for God and I always seem to find him so I just try to keep this to myself. I only tell you this here now because you want to know or you wouldn’t be reading this at this moment and perhaps you should know that. But please try and respect and accept it as part of me. As far as where I stand in the organized religious sense of things – I am not a fan of organized religion. I am something of a post Christian and pre Muslim with a hankering towards things of a Coleman Barks and his guide Bawa Muhaiyaddeen for a poetic Sufi nature. Yet I firmly believe you can find God anywhere most importantly in nature and within and certainly without any religion.

The thing is I feel I must add that when it comes to politics I am a secularist in the great old bearded Lincoln American sense of that definition: The exact definition of being a governmental Secularist in which Europe seems committed at present to upholding (thank God). What better way to unite religions and ethnic or social minorities than with a Liberal thinking and very well educated Secular Government to represent equally the needs of the great and the small collectives of people. I very much enjoy and defend the two Islamic Republics (Pakistan and Yemen) I have been to in the last year as I see that as essential in respecting their land, culture, society and religion. They are free to do as they please. But multi-ethnic and multi-religious societies seem to need a secular umbrella to shelter their varied and often times conflicting interests. My religious convictions are something very internal and very personal to myself and I see no need to force other people into having these convictions. The way I see it is either something you have or you don’t have – and sometimes even having religious conviction is something of an extra burden in life like a milestone around your neck.

Before I close this transmission allow me one indulgent rant: When will someone tell the Americans what the rest of the world has known for quite some time that the American Empire was on the wane as far back as their warmongering in Cambodia, Viet Nam and Korea? Will someone remind the Americans their Empire has been in a steep and steady decline for a long time now? Will someone just tell the Americans they have so very much to learn if they want to take a responsible and dignified place in today’s complex world? There is no room anymore on the playground of the planet for the overweight, ignorant, American bully.

Yemen and the Wizard of Oz

2005-04-09T16:45:00.000+02:00

Turned on the radio this morning to the BBC World Report and before my morning cup of Pakistani chai that I was making was finished steeping I was hearing news about the Americans warning regarding travel to Yemen being revived. It is really annoying when the U.S. Government has to make a statement such as this while shamelessly basing it on the abstraction of the makeshift concept of terror. So after my chai kicked in I went online and chatted with my pal Mohammed in Sana’a to ask him if there was anything new going on in Yemen to substantiate this revived travel warning. Of course Mohammed was saying that everything is the same in Yemen; nothing much ever changes in Yemen. For centuries Yemen has stayed the same and that is precisely the appeal of Yemen to travelers – you can find modern Arabia there in Sana’a alongside a millennium old cultural tradition still very much alive like it was in the time of the Prophet Abraham. If you want to visit the land of the Old Testament and not be bothered with Charlton Heston playing an unconvincing hairy Moses with a wig then opt for Yemen over Palestine – this is why Yemen is a viable travel destination!

So what is different today in the American government’s paranoid mind of fear regarding southwestern Arabia? – is there anything different or what sort of corporate screwing is the U.S. up to with Yemen regarding this travel advisory? Not that many American’s go there or work there and certainly Yemen is no more a hotbed of “terrorism” than the states itself so why this revived fear mongering travel advisory? Why is it the U.S. is asking its citizens to always blindly trust its governance when we aren’t convinced this administration has our best interests at heart or even on its agenda? Not that the U.S. ever provides answers to any substantial question on the part of its citizenry (just try and ask your nearest U.S. Embassy when you are abroad for even the least amount of information!) but still a good explanation for this travel advisory would be the minimum to ask for of the current administration in Washington. Perhaps something not explained away so easily by that simplistic talk of terrorism. It is such blame shifting rhetoric that we are now numb to it. We have all evolved beyond this idea of FEAR behind this word: Terror. Terrorism. Terrorist. War on Terror – like what the fuck kind of idea is a war on Terror? Does Yemen have another name called Terror as in The Yemeni Republic of Terror? I hardly think so - go there and see for yourself: Yemen is the most amazingly generous and hospitable place – a nation of kind hearted happy people who are surprisingly able to differentiate a single American from the foreign policies of the U.S. Government. This ability is a lesson the Americans could definitely learn from.

If Yemen conveniently changed its name from Yemen to TERROR then making war on it would be a bit more grammatically accurate at least for your tedious 8th grade English grammar teacher. Again it’s another fart of hot air from the Bush II administration: Nothing more than a lot of useless hot air at huge expense of the American taxpayers.

We are not afraid anymore Mr. Bush Junior! We the people will not be manipulated by your peddling fear and paranoia tactics to control us – we want to be a land of free and fearless people welcome around the world again. Anyway fear never really suits Americans or their image abroad that well. If the states knows something about Yemen that it isn’t letting on about regarding this then where were the travel advisories for people going to the states prior to September 2001 (or after). For that matter where were the travel advisories for New Yorkers going to work that day or for the rest of nation then to prepare themselves for the inevitable reap what your elected Corporate leaders foreign policy sowed to come back on you the uninformed yet well meaning consumer, pretend voting, taxpayer, citizen.

The thing is no one much feels the Bush II administration is making any American’s life safer at home or abroad with these fearful warnings because they have proven with Nine Eleven this administration can’t be bothered to protect the Nation itself. So why then this sudden meddling by the U.S. in the name of protecting its “citizen” consumers in another country far away and inconsequential to American interests? It is all a bit like the idle classroom student who busies himself with something arbitrary when the teacher passes by to make a face saving good impression.

Yemen unlike most places could use a few tourists not that anyone interested in that part of the world wants to see the place over run with tourists but there are still good Yemeni people who depend on an income by foreign travelers and why does the Bush II administration want to hurt them with this statement. Perhaps if more Americans went to Yemen they would see what Dorothy could see from behind the Wizards curtain that he wasn’t as fierce as he seemed from another vantage point. Perhaps that is the current beauty of traveling to Yemen - it is like going to Oz and from there you can see that Bush II administration “wizard” as the illusion it is – an illusion of terror, an illusion of protection and an illusion of war but most regrettably an illusion of governing a people. Such illusions are only used to mask unethical corporate manipulations of this criminal regime running itself out of Washington. So this is the real reason there are now travel advisories to Yemen – its just yet another tired example of the Bush II administration trying to save face when we all see clearly what they are up to: Not much but lining their own corporate pockets and unmaking America in the process.

So my advice is go to Yemen and find OZ Dorothy, take Toto and don’t worry about Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West is in Washington, DC as usual. Her face might change every four or eight years but it’s still her. We just all like her better when she is dressed like the fairy Godmother better known as Lady Liberty.

It is time again I go watch the MGM production of the Wizard of Oz on DVD before rereading the book WICKED by Gregory Maguire.

Travel Narrative: Khewra, Pakistan

2005-03-24T14:52:00.000+01:00

The name Khewra tempts me to title this travelogue as Kool Khewra or rather Khewl Khewra… playing with vague and abstract associations like this while breaking basic spelling rules of the language of the English is more amusing than I should admit – the thing is Khewra is way cool! When it comes to being a tourist if you are around Islamabad or Lahore then a day out to the salt mines should be in the cards. If you’re thinking how can the caverns for salt rock crystal mining be interesting? Well, they are and you’ll just have to go see for yourself! You have never been spelunking until you have done so in a salt rock crystal cave like on the scale of the mines at Khewra. Plus the road trip out there is through a unique solitary landscape worth it just for the drive but these mines as a destination point make a brilliant and literally cool (in temperature) focal point for a grand day out. This diversion is especially worth it if you need some fresh air after too much urban pollution.

It is hard to imagine a mini city concealed underground in a mined cave but that is exactly what you have with the mines at Khewra. Beneath the surface of a desert region there is most notably a beautiful Mosque/Masjid made of naturally colored salt rock blocks with electric lighting from within the blocks. The salt rock colors are naturally white, cream, pink or a reddish orange. When a light is placed within the salt rock the illumination casts a beautiful warm glow with these hues. The crystallized salt rock Masjid wasn’t being used when we were there and I actually wonder if even though Pakistan is an Islamic Republic, this unique place of prayer in the mine actually gets used these days. It seems it was once the place of prostration for the miners but now-a-days it looks like the prayers take place outside the mountain in a quaint small cottage at the mines railway entrance – indeed this Masjid was getting used when we entered the mines. Personally though it would have been more interesting to have seen the underground Masjid getting used as it is one of the more curious and inventive architectural Mosques of Pakistan. Aside from this small place of prayer there is also a post office and plans for expanding the existing health clinic. In addition to these places there is a café terrace like what you might find in Paris along a grand boulevard but here underground. The café area even has a floor in salt rock - again with the illumination within – the light in this room is especially interesting as it reflects off the natural salt crystal ceiling. The illuminated salt rock floor looks like any minute John Travolta in a white polyester suit is going to come running out with arms raised and hips thrusting to the sounds of a feverish Saturday night disco beat from a Lollywood film in the making! Imaginary and reminiscent discothèque’s aside the more appropriate health clinic is not yet functioning; however, when it does it will provide a healthy escape for patients with respiratory ailments. So if you have Asthma you’ll find this tour a healthy excursion. In time or as the Pakistani say, “InshAllah”, this underground village will be fully functioning with over night options (and who knows even a disco of sorts!) – when the mines reach this point the place will certainly be in the category of “not to be missed” until then it still is worthy of the effort it takes to reach the place and a personal highlight of my time in and around Lahore.

A strange and mystical side to the mine tours includes observing on a wall to one of the larger mined chambers the name of the Prophet Mohammed* revealed in the salt crystals grains in Arabic script far over head on a massive billboard scale. Certainly this will be of interest to Muslims and students of the Arabic language but the scale of the mined area and this peculiar writing on the wall as it were is a highlight worth mentioning here.

On the day we drove to the mines, using a borrowed car after exiting the main road between Lahore and Islamabad, we ended up with a flat tire… Fortunately for us or perhaps for the roadside garage nearby, we were able to get the tire repaired cheaply and efficiently as we waited. Then while our tire was getting fixed another car drove past this garage also getting its tire punctured. We began to wonder if this was an unusual way for the clever garage repairman to drum up business on a lonely road. We had a laugh over this idea but the fact of the matter is this small road is in a desert landscape sprinkled with small sharp edged rocks which eventually find their way along the road surface. If you go to Khewra in a car with old tires plan on checking to see if the spare tire is in good working order before departing. Even this inconvenient stop was interesting as the garage was located next to a farmer who showed us around his farm and invited us in for tea. We declined the tea as the tire repair wasn’t to take very long but here again is another example of the Invincible Generosity of the Pakistani People. If only the rest of the world was this friendly and gracious to the wayfarer.

* Muslims will reflect that at this point a “peace be upon Him” (etc.) be included here.

Travel Narrative: Pakistan's Cholistan Desert in the Punjab

2005-03-14T14:01:00.000+01:00

When Umer the Pakistaniguy my way cool travel pal and I departed from Karachi north toward Lahore via a stop over in Multan we made an excursion into the Cholistan Desert to see a near mythical fort which had figured in Umer’s mind since boyhood. Deserts remain a source of endless fascination for me so I couldn’t refuse this opportunity to check out another landscape that might mimic some place lunar or Martian. The day after arriving in Multan we headed south to find this faraway place by taking a series of shared taxis. I was still at this point feeling a bit out on a limb having left the relative sense of security that an urban center like Karachi affords. As the rural isolation outside Multan surrounded us I must confess my anxiety set in a little further for this is a region sadly lacking in tourists since the events nine eleven 2001. It would seem I was the only pale faced westerner to pass through there for quite sometime and my skin and hair color seemed to turn heads to face me. At first I took this to be aggressive but then I realized it was just healthy curiosity, indeed as the day went on people just wanted to know where I was from and what brought me this far from home.

As far as mentioning Dera Nawab Sahib and Ahmandpur I wish I were experienced enough at traveling to have grasped the scene there in any way that can be put to word here. Both places were rather rural village or town like in size and yet both were bustling with life and trade in ways that often times you don’t even see in burnt out American city centers. Certainly there was more fervent enterprise taking place in those little towns in the Punjab than what seemed possible for a place far off the economic grid of western styled capitalism. Like anywhere else that I saw in Pakistan this flurry of activity took place in the streets with cars, bicycles, auto-rickshaws, people, cows, horses, chicken and young children running loose in all directions. Maybe it is precisely this sort of anarchy and chaos that is the life blood and soul of corporate free humanity on planet earth!

When it comes to travel Umer has an unstoppable enthusiastic drive to go, go, go: The day before we had arrived late at night in Multan after spending fifteen hours on the northbound train from Karachi to Multan. First thing in the morning Umer is ready to take shared taxis a few hours south to check out the desert. So there I was being dragged to another mysterious destination after having arrived at another strange place without having had the time to even get acquainted with our Multani hosts or their intriguing city. But I wasn’t complaining. Umer’s travel drive is insatiable and he knows what he is doing and as far as life on the road I do not anyway this is his homeland!

Umer who likes nothing more than to drive a hard bargain and get a good deal found us a shared taxi driver to take us on a private round trip to Derawar Fort. Fortunately for us the driver who offered the best deal also offered us the best sense of humor and we had a lot of fun being a tourist with him! Indeed when we arrived he joined us on our exploration of the fort, Masjid and village so we then in turn after the day was over joined him for a cup of tea before we caught the late night train to back to Multan. Again here was another moment and example of what I call the Invincible Hospitality and Generosity of the Pakistani People: Our driver took us to a café he liked and we sat outside on wooden bed like furniture (it looks like a bed frame with out a mattress and has a peculiar name but you’ll see them everywhere in Pakistan when you are off the tourist track). We took our chai this way while sitting on our feet with our shoulders wrapped in blankets from the cool winter night air. The tea and hot desert were much needed after our day’s excursion and here our driver insisted on paying for our refreshment. This was the kind of driver you want to sincerely offer a healthy tip and for whom you don’t regret leaving every available rupee there is to offer!

Eventually we arrived earlier that day at the Derawar Fort after a strange journey in a series of shared taxis that took us through the village of Dera Nawab Sahib and Ahmadpur East. Adjacent to the Fort is the magnificent Sunehri Masjid/ (Golden Mosque) with its unusual Mirab niche with a window in it that opens onto a balcony from which the Fort can be seen. Any student of Architecture or anyone with an interest in the architecture of religious spaces will find the Sunehri Masjid a compelling monument to visit. Certainly the place is a unique mixture of Arabic and Punjab Islamic ornament and design which makes for rewarding observation. Fortunately in Pakistan the Islamic places of prayer are open to Muslim and non-Muslim alike and not only that you will be welcomed for your interest whether it is for religious, architectural or cultural reasons. If you’re going as tourist just be a bit respectful of the religious space and don’t be annoying with your camera, follow any obligations like removing your shoes and covering up if necessary. These places are still fully functioning religious centers for people with their own values and norms who depend on these institutions. That said though when I was there I was latched onto by a family in poverty and as this was my first visit in my life to a Masjid/Mosque I had been looking forward to this moment for a very long time. Unfortunately for me my first memory of this experience is a bit discolored by my having been perceived as a walking money machine. Umer deflected some of this family of beggars as best as he could but they were not going to be appeased. If we gave them some money then other people wanted some as well. Whenever I turned a corner someone was waiting for me pleading with open hand and tugging on my shirt. Despite their situation and condition of need they were fierce people of business and perhaps their behavior should have been confined to the exterior on this sacred site.

The village around the fort and Masjid is strangely compelling as well. Once it had a small thriving tourist market in place selling refreshments but that seemed mostly dried up. As the taxi we hired needed some repair work done before our return we had the opportunity to explore these alleyways. The village houses here were made in mud and were one floor with an open porch like front. Although it was hard to tell what these building were we had the feeling we weren’t in Pakistan but in some forgotten corner of Afghanistan. The fellows we met here though were friendly and we passed the time for our automotive repair wait in good company.

The Derawar Fort, however, still remains the highlight of our time in this desert as it looks like a massive sand castle. How and why it is situated in what appears to be the middle of nowhere is hard to ascertain. As this is not your normal tourist site there is not much information available regarding what was the strategic purpose in building such a massive defense like this so far out from anywhere. It does though seem to have always been a place of importance long before the 18th century form of the fort that still stands today. As the fort is a private place (perhaps a secure residence for a wealthy foreign fugitive?) it is not open to the public. Anyway the fort is still none the less quite fascinating from the exterior; it is just that the place left us feeling very curious about its interior and who actually calls those old walls home. We certainly hoped for an invitation in for tea but those massive doors didn’t open when we knocked. The strange thing is this place has a delicious mystery about it. You will leave with fantasies forming in your mind on your return journey about how it would be to call such a secure place home in such an exotic and private location. There is something about this fort and its community that will wedge a solid place in your mind and not let you forget about its curious mysteries.

Travel Narrative: Lahore

2005-03-09T16:54:00.000+01:00

How do you sum up a place like Lahore in a few words on a couple pages of a Microsoft Word program? You haven’t lived until you have been to Lahore as the travel book saying says so. Well, you can’t argue with that. After Karachi, the Cholistan desert and the mystical city of Multan, Lahore seemed down right European by comparison. Thus Lahore is probably the best place for a Westerner to begin to enter into the mysteries of the land that is Pakistan. Certainly the architectural remnants and urban planning from the old Colonial days explains why the city has that European edge to it. The trees, gardens and greenery along the wide boulevards of Lahore certainly separate it from more southern dry Pakistani regions. Lahore and Karachi are two different places and they cannot be compared but both are worth experiencing!

I picked up a book from one of the many Lahori bookshops titled “Lahore: Old and New” and this certainly is the best formula to start with when visiting there. Lahore really is two cities side by side; one old, one new and both must be experienced to be believed. Of course you could visit Lahore’s old city by the Badshahi Masjid (Mosque) and certainly spend the whole of your time in that beautiful quarter but then you would miss the complete cultural capital experience that includes the other side of this modern city of present day Pakistan. There is no excuse not to venture into the more modern areas to see how the other half of the Lahoris actually live – plus the food is better in this part of the city! With this singular city experience of urban Siamese twin duality - expect Lahore and its citizens to richly reward your travel efforts!

If you need western class amenities of a five star class, endless shopping and restaurant choices then there is the new city and if you are feeling more adventurous and want to travel back in time there is the old city. Both are challenging and both are richly rewarding to those who take the effort to touch, taste, see and feel this enigmatic city of the world. Taxi’s, buses, auto-rickshaw or horse driven tonga make traveling around Lahore inexpensive with any of these classes of transportation – be sure to try them all because each mode of transport will frame your adventure of the day quite uniquely!

One memory of Lahore that lingers in my mind was getting my shoes shined by men or boys wandering around the whole of that dual city with an old wooden box and makeshift tools of their trade. You’ll need your shoes shined often as well for there are many dusty areas alongside the streets and roads so any outing will cover your shoes in dirt. Fortunately shoe shiners are prevalent and quite cheap and they are enthusiastic for work so indulge them whenever you are in a situation where you are waiting. Whether you are waiting at a café or a petrol station, after a bus or taxi ride but better not before a bus ride as sometimes the shoe shine takes awhile if your shoes are really dirty. The shiners often times have a pair of sandals for you to wear as they will scurry off quickly with your shoes to work somewhere out of sight but don’t worry you’ll get your shoes back but you won’t recognize them because they were probably never so clean before! Whether you are resting in park or just need a break when walking around the unique streets of old Lahore you’ll always find a shoe shiner if they don’t find you first! No one in Pakistan really wants to annoy you they just want your shoes to be clean and only for a few rupees. After all this is a Muslim country with sincere attitudes towards cleanliness and keeping feet clean and these fellows want to work with dignity. And why not for you’ll have shoes to be proud of! Tip only when you feel the work done was worth it and don’t hesitate to wave a shoe shiner over if they don’t ask you first. You really have no excuse not to always have shining shoes in Lahore or the rest of Pakistan for that matter! Either use sign language or English but this is a good situation to practice your Urdu since you probably are itching to try out some of those phrases from the back of your guidebook. If nothing else the words “aachaa”, “gee”, “shukriya”, and “Allah hafiz” should get the job done pleasantly and with respect.

I departed Pakistan from the Lahore Airport but I should have started there. The Lahore Airport is the cleanest, most comfortable and well organized airport I have ever passed through. Everyone who I encountered from check point security guard to waiter to floor cleaner was happy, friendly, helpful and talkative. The airport though somewhat modest in design actually functions properly (a rarity these days) as an airport and since I find most airports tedious, confusing and exhausting the airport of Lahore was a brilliant exception in my experience of traveling. I would gladly trade life threatening soaring planks of concrete and glass high overhead for a port that functions on the human scale rather than for the architects and politicians ego’s that build them. I think this was the only airport I have been in that actually had a calming effect on me while I waited for a flight. It certainly is the only airport with café waiters who come to where you are waiting at each gate to offer tea and sell pastries which is a brilliant scheme that’s carried out professionally, discretely and respectfully without trying to extort the passenger with this pleasant convenience. So I had a cup of tea which was only bag tea that was much needed and all without having to fetch it myself. Again the waiter was beyond friendly and happy to do his job! If only Lahore could run all the world airports like this as the Americans globally hawk fried meat and potatoes of dubious origin along with ketchup, pickles, onions and gaseous sugar water with hardly a greasy smile!

Lahore actually has too many things to occupy someone passing through Pakistan so it is mandatory to plan well ahead of time what you can visit with your time there with thoughtful selection. That said Pakistan and certainly Lahore are places that happen to one passing through them. You cannot really go out and expect to make this and that happen so let Lahore work its own magic over you and show you what she will. This is a city that will seduce you into having a relationship with her, Lahore that old dame of a city, will expect you to make calls again and again if you want to grasp her luxuries of a human and not just material sense. From the Magnificence of places like the Badshahi Masjid and the adjacent Fort, to palatial Shalimar Gardens, from the not to be missed Lahore Museum of Art with the unforgettable starving Buddha sculpture alongside an exquisite collection of Islamic art, design and craft. There are endless hours to be spent perusing the many bookshelves that line the city shops and as English is so widely available throughout the whole of Pakistan you’ll find plenty to read. Then there are endless alleyways for shopping with convenient tea rooms for sugary milk chai and restaurants alongside typical Pakistani street vendor food. Not to be missed is ‘pan’ a delicacy of sweet spice served in large green leaf and eaten whole straightaway from the vendor’s fingers.

Everything you will do in Lahore will be packed with people but what is so remarkable about this city and land is just how pleasant everyone is. Pakistan is full of remarkable enthusiastic citizens that are exceptionally kind but the folks of Lahore are a bit more modern and detached in this regard when compared to the rest of the land. Certainly the coolest Lahori is beyond happy and welcoming when compared to a cool Northern European who borders on the cold. But when compared within what I experienced in my stay in south eastern Pakistan the Lahori were a bit more urban and aloof. That is not to say that the Lahori were unkind in anyway it is just as a pale faced westerner you will be welcomed with a polite detachment. You can rest assured on your visit that the Lahoris’ while still remaining true to the Pakistani way of being whole heartedly gracious and kind more so even in the ways that one can expect the Muslims the world over to be for Lahore is still very much a part of the truly remarkable Pakistan of today!

These words here are only scratching the surface of this multi-faceted city which is at once modern and beautifully tumble down. This is really a massive urban styled Shangri-la for Pakistan and it is among the friendliest and enchanting places of the world. I can’t help but agreeing with the travel books that you just haven’t lived until you’ve been to Lahore!

Al Fajr: Karachi

2005-03-08T19:28:00.000+01:00

When I departed Bru-town and my comfortable if not damp life in la Villette by train from the Brussel Zuid Station/Bruxelles Gare du Midi to travel by the TGV/Thallys to the Charles de Gaulle Aero port for a Gulf Air flight to Karachi via Abu Dhabi I wasn’t really aware of how long of day in time and distance I had gotten myself into. It just doesn’t make any sense that in this day and age that to go the distance from Brussels to Karachi in one day might well not be enough for the mind. Maybe to make such a shocking change in one day isn’t right. To understand arriving in a curious place like Karachi from a Western vantage point of a life like mine I should not have been in Brussels and Abu Dhabi on the very same day. Perhaps it is only by train or bus or ship (or horse or camel or foot) involving smaller increments of distance dispersed over quite a few number of days that the human mind and consciousness can really adequately travel. The point is when arriving into the unusual and thrilling world of Pakistan from the cold and gray of Belgium perhaps one needs to pierce the layers of the many dominions that fill the web of reality between these two very different lands. Maybe it is better to start out in Brussels and spend nights in other lands with other languages, customs, currency and peoples. Indeed this might be the best way to travel to build a better more peaceful planetary future. Until it becomes a viable option to travel overland easily and safely between here and there (wherever those places might be) we as people might not understand our planetary whole and our relationship to one another. It’s just a thought that shouldn’t be lost to our modern day arrogance in our shared capacities to shrink the planet while consequently making everyday life more hateful for increasingly disparate places. On the other hand the best airline I have yet flown was Gulf Air which is proving that carriers don’t have to be packing their customers onto flights without a token nod to the proportions that allow communal dignity in the air. Certainly the staff aboard the plane was the most respectful and courteous I have interacted with in the unfriendly skies of today’s post Ronald Reagan’s deregulated airlines.

But this is supposed to be about Karachi. I don’t travel by air very well and perhaps that is why I expend a great deal of time armchair traveling overland from Brussels with the help of Lonely Planet and Virtual Tourist dot com. Sometimes I think Brussels is the damp crotch of the western world: A virtual cosmic intersection that everyone at one time or another must pass through and experience whether they want to and like it or not. Perhaps Brussels is for the modern day traveler on the journey of life a certain stopover, otherwise known as Purgatory if you will. Brussels like Purgatory can be approached in two ways – you can either be mad or resent that you are here as often many are or you can just be here and then begin to look at what is here and see what is very often overlooked or seldom seen even by the Belgians themselves. Either way it is probably your own fault that you are here so you might as well make the best of Bru-town! You’ll probably find more than you’ll be comfortable in admitting to amuse yourself with! Certainly that continues to my experience here in Belgium.

After leaving Abu Dhabi the night flight passed over Al Ayn which looked like a multifaceted jewel lying on the desert floor far below. Al Ayn doesn’t transliterate in spelling very well from its actual Arabic spelling but it does make one wonder where the name Alan actually comes from. I must have fallen asleep for awhile at that point for the next window view was the nightlight sparkles of the crescent of Karachi city lights hugging the Arabian Sea. Normally everywhere I travel is covered with clouds which provide some sort of depth to air travel, however, when flying over Arabia where there weren’t clouds provided a different sensation to travel. Clouds are always slung low over Brussels which tend to shape the place. Often times the sky overhead here is like an opaque Tupperware brand lid on the bowl of a crater that the city of Brussels rests in. The lid is not very far above and you really don’t feel like when you fly into town here that you have arrived on descent without passing through that opaque layer of white. Consequently seeing Karachi tilt and bank from right to left as we approached was something new to see out the window – I’ve flown enough and should know this already but I always tend to fly between the same two cloudy places.

After landing in Karachi with Umer somewhere nearby on the flight the Karachi airport greeted us with warm spiced air in the very early hours of the morning. It’s an easy enough airport to arrive into certainly a better experience for me there than many more familiar airports which I won’t bother to name. After gathering our luggage and queuing for immigration standing in a crowded irritable hall of weary travelers and weary with the night airport staff – Umer in one line and me in another – in one of those places where a mass panic attack seemed on the verge of becoming a reality. Meanwhile I am the only pale faced Westerner in sight. It was then I realized no matter how irritable I am or the people around me we are all in this together and I might do my fellow standing passengers the graciousness of not falling into a sour mood of negativity. So applying some basic ideas of the here and the now: I am here in a miserably long line in a foreign place at an odd hour now jet lagging - standing in a crowded room teeming with impatient vibes… I am going to just ‘be’. So there I stood. Ignoring my feet and legs anyways they were sitting on a plane for a long time they might as well now stand until deep vein thrombosis set in even further. I won’t worry about being pushed forwards and now backwards and side to side to side by strangers. Neither am I going to wish I were somewhere else. I just accepted the line and the wait and strangely all of what was annoying about that became an illusion and washed away revealing the unfamiliar communal humanity of another place. Then it became my own turn to get my passport checked. I wasn’t sure how my passport would go over in this part of the world. Certainly my Visa raised an eyebrow and the person who studied my passport for quite sometime had an incomprehensible expression, a gruff facial movement of some sort which could have been a sneer or a bureaucratic attempt at a welcome. Then the fellow disappeared to speak to someone else with my passport. Time slowed down for me and simultaneously sped up for everyone else. It wasn’t déjà-vu or vertigo something altogether else and indefinable. Maybe it was just the realization that I had pierced a restraining layer that separates lives on planet earth.

And then it happened: Al Fajr arrived over Karachi. The broadcast occurred within the halls of the airport and the pre-dawn call to prayer began its scratchy electronic cry. The Pakistani immigration officer stamped my passport with a foreboding grimace that might have been a strict attempt at a smile or something different. The crowd and the exhaustion passed away for a moment and I felt like I had arrived on a journey that began with an idea to find a place within the realm of the call to prayers on this planet. I would never have expected this journey to start with Pakistan and in Karachi but it did and there and then in that airport before dawn I heard the first call to prayer without the help of a television or radio. Of course I wanted to hear this live from a minaret from a fellow with a booming voice without the help of electronic amplification but I had to start somewhere and what better place than with the invincible generosity of the Pakistani people from their citadel of Islam for a land!

This is how Karachi, Pakistan welcomed me alongside Umer. His cousin who’s marriage we were traveling to attend and Umer’s mother and auntie where waiting for us after we got our stamps and were released from immigration. The doors opened and the warm fragrant morning air of winter in Karachi unfolded around us. We piled in a small car loaded with us all and our luggage and made off to someplace strange for the night. Was that a palm tree already in sight for these sore Northern European eyes? Upon arriving in Umer’s family home in the outskirts of Karachi we were given sweet pastries that almost looked Belgian but tasted entirely different. Then we quickly went to bed in shared rooms to conclude a long day which had begun far away in Brussels. The apartment packed with people sleeping everywhere, on carpets on the floor or couches or appropriately in beds in only five or six rooms and not enough doors. That morning one of Umer’s cousins graciously greeted me in bed in our shared rooms with a cup of sweet milky tea (or was it coffee?) and toast… I later realized it was chai and this was how my first day in Islamic dominions came to be. Now as I write this I want nothing more than to return to that happy congenial place. The place that can only be summed up in the single, beautiful, dramatic and poetic word: Karachi.

Late Night Transmissions: La Villette to Dollville

2005-03-08T14:27:00.000+01:00

The following is an excerpt from an e-mail written on Saturday, March 3rd to my pal Bill back home in Dollville - from la Villette to Dollville: Trans Atlantic transmissions…. (Remember Joy Division’s fab album Transmission?) In the e-mail I went off ranting about Guiliana Sgrena the Italian hostage now globally famous (except in the states) who managed to escape the current carnage in Iraq by the American forces there even though Nicola Calipari tragically did not.

….Oh and I can’t believe the US in Iraq now firing on the Italian woman fleeing her captors. More evidence as if we needed any that the states has been in on all those extremist hostage situations in their pandering fear to the media. I could see her telling her get-away driver don’t fucking stop for the checkpoints – the Americans were in on my kidnapping – those masked Arabic looking gunmen all spoke with Midwestern accents! It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure the checkpoint soldiers were being ordered to shoot to kill to not let Sgrena escape or the Americans secret propaganda game of pandering FEAR to the world to justify its foreign policies might be thwarted by a pesky and meddlesome woman reporter. But she did escape! As if she will be safe in Berlusconi’s American war in Iraq supporting Italia. She should have come to Belgium or to Spain with its current Scandinavian sensibilities.

(Like the Chemical Brothers sing: “My finger is on the button”
Except in my case it’s this dirty gray once white QWERTY keyboard in an AZERTY land)
Your pal and fellow dissident alone,

Patriot Ex-pat anarchical,

Matt

PS: Dance, dance, dance, dance, dance, to the radio... hearing that song now on Studio Brussel feels like the rest of those lyrics weren’t written a couple decades ago but were written for this recent sad history.

Travel Narrative: Mystical Multan

2005-03-08T12:54:00.000+01:00

Last November I had the unique opportunity to attend a week long wedding in the Megalopolis that is present day Karachi, Pakistan. After that first week I was able to travel around a part of the Muslim world for my first experiences inside the world of Islam with my handsome friend and guide, Umer. Without our chance meeting last summer I would never have started my exploration into the Islamic world that I had been longing to make for many years with the magnificent land of Pakistan. I had just seen last autumn on the BBC television a program on the Himalaya by Michael Palin which started in the northwest of Pakistan. This program revealed a Pakistan of immense beauty and diversity nothing like what the media normally chooses to imply with this land. I had not realized the second highest mountain in the world is in the far north of Pakistan and that the rest of the land slowly yields to sea level making Pakistan a self sufficient land worthy of its identity as the Citadel of Islam. Then I was convinced to go when Umer proudly told me that Pakistan was the very first Islamic Republic, so why not start there? Plus, it was his homeland so he invited me to the wedding of one of his cousins and on a lark at the last minute I went.

The first stop on my travels with Umer took me through the United Arab Emirates airport in Abu Dhabi where we met before ending up in Yemen where we had to part ways – he to Africa and me back to Northern Europe where I was finally dropped, rudely, back into the West within a Parisian airport. I say rudely because after the enthusiasm of the Pakistani people, followed by the unforgettable kindness of the Southwestern Arabian world, it was in Paris where I was greeted with a cold damp slap in the face much like the weather there in late December. My return was met with such Western styled heartless culture shock where I had a miserable time after and an exhausting flight just trying to purchase a simple train ticket back home to Brussels on the high speed TGV/Thallys. The thing is I am a huge fan of train travel whether it’s the totally mod and sci-fi like TGV or the more cozy vintage wooden trains (with windows that actually open) of Pakistan. On board the train between Karachi and Multan hints of graciousness and social kindness with strangers who are fellow travelers linger in ways that cannot with air and water (which are too capitalistic in nature). To say nothing of automotive transport that is now-a-days based in pre-civilized mass selfishness to be of any real use for a humane future.

Before I forget anything more about my time in Multan let me tell you about the rather mystical experience I had in waking up one morning to all the Multani calls to prayers. Even though I had been in Karachi for nearly a week I was staying nowhere near a Masjid with a minaret (the more appropriate Arabic word for what we in the west call a Mosque) - there was one being built nearby but somehow I never managed to hear it during the night despite its frequent solitary calls to prayer. After a very long train ride from Karachi to Multan - was it really fifteen hours on a board like seat that became a sleeping plank? It is the old pilgrimage city of shrines known as Multan where the Muslim world of old made its first unforgettable introduction into my soul. We arrived late in this city’s station after dark and I sort of had a creepy feeling because so many people were out and about even at that hour. Of course I was stupid and had packed way to much luggage for this trip so getting my bags on the auto-rickshaw was difficult and annoyed Umer to say nothing about carting the bag anywhere across dirt and gravel roads. “Live long, travel light” that was the slogan on my box cutter from my days of being a grocery stock boy back in retail America; that slogan should have been my mantra for this trip. Well, I learned that lesson on those four weeks with that massive bag being like a millstone strung around my neck. Now there is an expression much like wearing concrete shoes that doesn’t get much use anymore!

I didn’t want to leave Karachi as I really enjoyed the time there and the guys I had met were really happy and vivacious with this certain lust for life in that huge metropolis by the Arabian Sea. As we had arrived after dark to a strange city in south central Pakistan, which was considerably cooler if not down right cold that night had me feeling homesick for the more urban and reckless comforts of Karachi. We were going to be staying with one of Umer’s uncles and we had incomplete directions so we drove around in a noisy, cold, covered, auto-rickshaw getting lost and getting nowhere nearer a bed for the night. Our typically good natured Pakistani driver with patience and humor got us eventually to Umer’s Uncle’s home. The auto-rickshaws in Karachi are open air and you feel more like you are on a mo-ped or motorcycle when tooling around the city there. As you go farther north into Pakistan these rickshaws become covered with tarp like material inserted with little windows so you feel less connected to the outside street scene. For the tourist though the more southern open air auto-rickshaws are more fun like a dangerous and rickety state fair ride even if the enclosed northern ones are embellished to the point of sometimes being opulent in their sheltering privacy.

We did arrive after I had a few bouts with fear and I confess paranoia – what was I doing in this part of the world at this time in history traveling and getting lost after dark in a strange city down unpaved roads and unfamiliar looking streets? This kind of fear would set in at times like this and if it had not been for Umer being there calm, cool and with his thoughts collected I would not have been able to enjoy Pakistan as I did then. We did eventually arrive at Umer’s uncle and auntie’s home where we were greeted with plates of hot food and endless steaming cups of chai. You haven’t eaten until you have had home cooked spicy Pakistani meals with sweet milky chai! It seems everyone in Pakistan knows English much more so than even back home in Belgium. So our hosts had lots of questions for us about our travels where we had been and where we were going and of course being family with Umer lots of family gossip regarding the wedding. Pakistani weddings take the better part of a week and are so happy and colorful that they will make any western wedding look like a funeral for the groom by comparison.

Round about four or five in the morning I awake to find myself in a strange room, in a strange house, in a strange city in a far away land – my heart pounding right out of my chest from a surge of adrenalin as I had been awaken in so many senses of the word by the pre dawn or Fajr call to prayer. There was, however, not one call but hundreds! The prayers overlapping as each call starts at its own time creating an uncanny sound that my western ears had never heard. I had heard the call from the minaret from the media back home via radio or television programming but nothing, and I mean nothing, sounded like what I heard that first morning in Multan! These calls awoke something else in my body deep within and my soul understood the message. Thus that morning in Multan a part of me long since dead came to life and I will never be the same! These words I grab onto here are not doing justice in explaining all this. It was a moment that will be with me for the rest of my life and I will always be grateful for Pakistan and especially the Mystical city of Multan, a city of shrines and pilgrimages and such history, for finding me there quite by chance. It is the invincible generosity of the people of Pakistan that gave me my soul back that morning. For Umer and his Auntie and Uncle in Multan and their help and hospitality toward the wayfaring Western stranger are why Islam and the Muslims are in reality happy, generous and kind people which I am ever grateful for.

I will always remember how I awoke with such fear at unfamiliar sounds, all those haunting calls from near and far! All those staggered calls of the same Arabic words, and so many, lasting much longer than I expected. I didn’t have a clock and didn’t know the time but there was no dawn light visible out the window and suddenly I became afraid that this was no ordinary announcement – it sounded as if the sky had broken open and that this was ethereal music radiating to earth from Heaven! Then I feared that something terrible had happened somewhere on the planet like the U.S. invading yet another land and this was a special call to awaken the faithful to prayers for peace. I tried to shake Umer awake but he was not going to wake up as the morning calls to prayers were nothing new to him and with our travel exhaustion he was quite capable of sleeping through it all. Eventually I calmed down and opened the window to better grasp the scale of the fantastic moment. It felt good to hear all these minarets broadcasting to the faithful piercing the nighttime with their praises to Allah and calling the Muslims into His presence. There I sat alone in a shared but dark room next to the open window experiencing nothing like what we have in the West thinking God is not dead while I was feeling more alive at that moment than at any other time or any other place previous.

It’s all about location and the house we happened to be staying in was geographically situated that it could easily receive all these calls from a pleasant distance while not being too far from the Minarets either. If our rooms had been located beneath a Minaret it would have been overkill. Or like in Karachi where our rooms were too far out in a new still being built suburb with no Masjid nearby where the mornings passed like in the West in silence. That night in Multan and the nights that followed - I will always remember with gratitude as the city of Multan gave me back something of myself lost to the West.

Gibril and Mika'il visit on a wintery Villette night

2005-02-24T13:41:00.000+01:00

Dream 3am February 24, 2005

A strange dream awakes me which leaves me at once frightened and unsettled while it also has a calming logic to its message.

I am changing out of painting work clothes in the café-space kitchen near the front window and though there is a curtain passers-by looking in can see me standing in my underwear. I notice two Arabic or Muslim men looking in. They appear a bit gruff or homeless and also very much like the Moroccan men of Brussels. They appear of no apparent age, neither old nor young. I tell them loudly through the window from where I am standing “un moment”. The look in their eyes gives me a sort of creepy feeling that I was being immodest changing clothes as I unintentionally was there by the door. I suddenly fear they are sinister or extreme religious guys.

Then the sound of a the tumblers in the lock moving even though there is no key in the door becomes very frightening as the men are able to control the lock without a key. I realize this is no ordinary encounter and see that I am no match for these kinds of supernatural fellows. The men enter and after I am properly dressed we sit at the table they on one side and me the other. One of the two – the lesser in stature that seems like an assistant to the older – grabs me but it’s not a grab like on the arm or anything natural – it is more psychic or supernatural. This grasp is more like a horrific vampire embrace. Seeing my situation I decide to just let go and try not to be afraid or fight. When I decide this a peace settles over me. The man says I will die today. Despite the peace a simultaneous fear sets in. A sort of tremendous fear starts from within that feels like I have been thrown into a bottomless pit.

Then we are sitting at the table as if nothing happened. I think of Bart and also think at least I traveled to some extraordinary places like Pakistan and Yemen. I feel guilty over having had such fear and as if the men were reading my mind they ask me why I submitted and surrendered to their intrusion and embrace? Their question was especially important to them regarding my response to when I was told I would die in their hands this day. Without waiting for my answer the older fellow said that my reaction was good. He then showed me something which turned out that even though we were in my kitchen we were also simultaneously on a big ship like an airplane. There was a woman (Tara herself/Mother Earth perhaps) piloting the plane and although I couldn’t see this woman her voice was broadcast like a captain’s voice and she asked the men if they wanted to see the nearby beautiful galactic nebulae. The fellows consented and a side of the kitchen/airplane opened up to reveal the universe outside and the beautiful galaxy we were passing by. Then we approached a cosmic metropolis of some sci-fi like image. (This is all so Astronomy Picture of the Day website meets Jody Foster in the film version of Carl Sagan’s book CONTACT but so what it’s only a dream right)… As I was seeing all this I thought how weird it must be to actually die in a plane crash if all this could happen on an airplane like this was happening in my kitchen. Then I awoke up a bit shocked and I determined to write this out today. If I am going to die today then nothing else much matters if it’s my last day and I figure at least I can leave something in the form of an essay. I made it a point to remember to tell Bart I Love him for the rest of time and the doggies too.

The strange thing is those two guys were rather likeable. I will never see homeless guys or Moroccan men in traditional clothes on the street here the same way again. They seem more like Angels or Gods civil servants from a strange sort of cosmic bureaucracy. The moral of this story is not to fight with the mind. When you know it is your time to go be ready by being willing to surrender. Holding on with the mind will only make a protracted torturous struggle. At the dreams conclusion the Men tell me that they came to test me and found that my soul was willing to let go which is good! They also said that my mind doesn’t want to let go and that my mind tries to hold on which is normal but that life is about learning to let go. Although I awoke feeling very much the fear in my mind from all this I began to think if we only knew what lay on the other side of death then living would be easier and much more honest.

What If

2005-01-25T15:02:00.000+01:00

What if?

What if The Netherlands invaded the United States?

What if The Netherlands invaded the United States to over throw a dictator and to restore a nation from a Theocratic Corporate-ocracy to a free Democracy? What if the Dutch forced the States electoral system from top to bottom to modernize and a trans national standardized voting system put into place. What if mandatory voting was made into law? What if in so invading the states under the premise of keeping Abortion legal and safe for all women the Dutch then made same sex domestic partners (whether gay or straight or something else) equal citizens with the same benefits of Marriage by way of a genderless state sanctioned commitment with all the rights as heterosexuals. What if these same liberal minded people came to re-introduce the idea of public schools for all people in the states whether they are legally a US citizen or not? What if the Dutch justified their goals under the auspices of fighting the tyranny of ignorance?

What if the tax system was overhauled so that money saved from the decommissioning of the Military, CIA and FBI was redirected to build up social security and healthcare for anyone with in the country? What if the money from the various previous failed wars on social issues (for example the war on drugs, terrorism, pornography etc.), was used to build domestic mass transit alternatives? What if the states prisons were shut down due to the unjust consequences of the fake war on drugs and a working rehabilitation system initiated instead. What though if Dutch service men and women were physically and sexually abusing American men and women and children caught in the detaining centers set up across the nation to ensure the peace of the land during this transition to Democracy?

What if the Dutch justified revamping National Education Policy by having Creationist theories taught at the elementary and secondary levels of school made unconstitutional? What if private schools were denied public funding and denied national academic recognition? What if due to the failures of the war on drugs that the current drug czar was expelled from the states and all drugs were legalized with a huge public education scheme like for tobacco put in place. What if marijuana became available from local State Cannabis and Recreational Pharmaceutical Outlet Stores and taxed properly thus making redundant the black market economy surrounding a natural plant?

What if massive building schemes were initiated across the land to beautiful the excesses of manmade architectural landscape so that strip malls and car parks were forced to be returned to nature as a woodland or wetland public park. What if loads of bicycles were imported from Holland and trans national bicycling paths put into place. What if new farm land and small old farms became protected national treasures from the threat of strip mall-ing and suburbanization tract housing schemes?

What if the invading Dutchmen used the new government to research and implement an alternative to petroleum based automotives. What if the new foreign interim Government Set up in Holland forbade the states from maintaining any alliances with foreign countries until it could better manage itself and those relations in responsible humanitarian ways? What if the Dutch and Spanish languages became viable alternatives to English in governmental affairs at the state and federal level? What if the Dutch invaders made prostitution legal and regulated and taxed it while ensuring public health and safety measures were put into place along with an education scheme? What if state governed brothels ensuring safe anonymous adult forms of leisurely pursuits were included as part of the definition of freedom and liberty.

What if the Dutch in reclaiming for their liberation efforts took back part of Manhattan and restored the long forgotten old streets beneath the former World Trade Center site and instead built more human sized buildings along with a public park monument to the memory of the people who died there and not to the buildings or architects or urban planners or politicians who opportunistically selfishly profiteered off of Nine Eleven?

What if the Dutch in all their hard working effort to restore Democracy and Liberty and Freedom to the Americans drained their own domestic economy back home in Holland causing much suffering and hardship for the Dutch citizens. What if in so helping the Americans the Netherlands began to deteriorate into a poorly educated excessively religious society with rampant under employment as various governmental structures decayed into useless bureaucracy. What if the Dutch began to protest and demand their Nation’s foreign policy started to focus on the needs of the Dutch and not on the Americans. What if the Dutch government stood to take over the American immense Corporate-ocracy wealth for a few of the Governments officials to get phenomenally wealthy from while paying for the foreign policy’s implementation by the taxing of the people of Holland?

What if the Dutch began to control the American borders and points of entry and stopped treating those passing across the border check points as criminals and terrorists but just let everyone in who pleased to enter the United States. What if the Dutch decided it was time for a new flag and resurrected the old forgotten flag of the Rattlesnake image with the text “Don’t Tread on Me” whilst updating it for the new American post Corporate-ocratic era? What if the government of the Netherlands decided every State in the revitalized new Union was issued a new flag to represent this new fledgling Democracy.

What if former members of the American Armed Forces were lured into jobs for domestic Policing of the new Union and to implement and ensure it ideals were met on the street? What if various local Militias from Ohio and West Virginia to Tennessee and Montana were trading in fire arms and making armed resistance to the new state of the States. What if these local insurgents were based in religious affiliations between Protestants and Catholics?

What if George Bush Junior and Senior and their respective white house administrations were put on trial in The Hague for war crimes and crimes against humanity? What if the Republican Party was banned and new parties were allowed to be formed.

What if the Americans left Iraq to manage its own affairs and oil reserves itself for better or worse. What if the Americans service men and women in Iraq were just brought home and we rebuilt our own nation.

Incredibly Stylish Kitchen Cabinets

2005-01-25T13:46:00.000+01:00

The following are subject headings or first lines from e-mails deemed junk mail by my Microsoft Outlook e-mail program. These were selections from nearly all of yesterday’s junk mail. I’m not certain what the point is here in collecting these lines and attempting to shape them into a haiku poetic like assemblage of an essay here. The thing is I obsessive follow all my mail - junk or not and after awhile of reading daily junk mail I find certain themes creepy. Sometimes it is the name listed as the sender which matches the names of friends or relatives long since departed – I have not included the names of the sender though as perhaps that is another association of ideas essay altogether. Other times the content of the junk mail has me wondering who takes the time to invent and send out information such as this. Clearly a few themes present themselves such as dubious pharmaceutical outlets purveying Vicodin, Viagra and Valium. Then there are the stock marketers, online bachelor degrees to name a few. And yet i still cannot explain why I am compelled to put this together here - maybe to document in a electronic archaelogical way thus preserving these irritations as the themes in junk e-mail shift over time. I honestly have no idea what this all means.

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RE: House was called, moreover
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Conclusions:

This has been an incredible waste of time. But then so has most of my life to date. I just have the unshakeable feeling that junk e-mail means something and yet it is just beyond my grasp as to what that is. Like when trying to recall something that is on the tip of the tongue – its name is meaningful and yet simultaneously forgotten. Perhaps these e-mails are nothing more than the arbitrary symptom of the relentless march of capitalisms excesses. I wonder though does anyone else feel compelled to waste their time like this?

Crying Wolf

2005-01-24T14:37:00.000+01:00

Crying wolf -A rant, as a form of speech, doesn't seek to accomplish or change anything; it exists to give release to the person articulating the rant.

My gut has been a problem since before the High Holidays one of the consequences of that is that I am beyond very cranky and that I have to fight with myself to be polite on even the most mundane social level. The gut problems affect my body’s serotonin level which leaves me depressed. So I am generally cranky and depressed and it’s winter at such high latitude. So again writing for me is a therapy space for frustrations beyond me. It’s no secret writing can be psychologically cathartic. It doesn’t reflect my objective experience only my twisted mind fuck of a subjective take on things that are bigger than me that go against the grains of my conscience like the politics back home.

As far as the left and right in the states (I have on more than one occasion had a laugh from listening to Rush Limbaugh – and in theory I support his work – in practice though I don’t really care what he says)… NPR and the voice of the left of center are colored to some degree to suit themselves as well. In the states though the left is still globally speaking to the far right of center so I wouldn’t say NPR and all that is pushing things really past the left of center. The Democrats are still after all a right winged party just left of the repuglicanz. Anyways I used to vote Republican but I never will again and in theory the old Republicans ideally were a great lot of nation builders. My hero’s Lincoln and Whitman were Republicans after all but they were entirely a different sort than Bush II and family. What I find unforgivably sad about the present day politix of the current administration is how much it is disillusioning vast populations and not just for Europeans or the Americas - from the people I met in Pakistan and Yemen this was also the case so now everyone is looking for something else to believe in when it comes to government, nation building and national identity – The Republicans might as well dismantle Lady Liberty and put her pieces in cold storage.

Anyhow my writing is my literal stab at exercising and maintaining my own personal freedom of speech. If you don’t use it you’ll loose it! Plus I like to have fun with self publishing. It is my time to go back into kindergarten and be allowed to use every bad word for a few minutes before going back into thinking and speaking properly. Doing this reveals my inner psycho self to me and keeps me informed of my depressive handicapped condition (which is admittedly in winter mode). So you should only be worrying when I am not writing or not writing anything worrisome!

Regarding the US’s catastrophic sins of selfishness compared to various EU sins: No matter that Holland or the EU or Belgium have their bad side they do especially in the Dutch speaking world they are really into fascist politix and shamelessly so. Whenever I have to drive into provincial Flanders at every turn on the side of buildings are billboards for the new extreme right party Vlaams Belang (think Flemish first) which is the reincarnation of the outlawed Vlaams Bloc (Deemed unconstitutional for it’s blatant racist platform). Keep in mind while we are on comparisons that outlawed Islamist political parties in Pakistan for example result in members who are still active ending up in jail. In Belgium though they just rename the party re-receive denied state funds and carry on with business as usual. Pakistan should be praised for a change in this comparison. As far as EU sins though compared to my Vader land of Amerika – the difference is the EU members aren’t off invading Afghanistan, Iraq or threatening to do so in Iran and Syria – neither are they holding people hostage as criminals in a Cuban based prison camp without so much as a trial. Neither does the EU have any one in office who got there originally by a miscarriage of election in breech of democratic processes current with the times we live in – Neither are they pandering fear as a way to make political gains and to rewrite constitutional guarantees and neither are they thank God a military superpower. So I do firmly believe that different rules apply to the states until there is a balance of power. As long as the states has this Military Industrial complex with Zionist influences acting out of order with democracy and globally acceptable norms then I feel the States can defend itself from my exercising my rights with my creative freedom of thought, speech and press.

For all the talk I hear (from people I know still in the states) about the other half of the nation that is against Bush II well they aren’t making the news over here with whatever they are doing. The half of the nation back home against a second Bush II administration term are not taking to the streets in peaceful or bloody protests – there is no revolution occurring so they are silently complicit to the Bush II second terms regime agenda.

Suggested viewing
Raspberry Reich by Bruce la Bruce!
Extremism is fashionable and pornographic again! Yee haw!

C’mon America do your country a favor and at least be equally as critical of your government as it is powerful and influential! This is what I am committed to doing with self publishing in this blogette. That is why my blog is as it is and not as I intended a fun comparison of life in Belgium with life back in old Ohio. I must though confess that when these kinds of repug- thugs (republican thugs) are in the oval office or as I like to say in the awful orifice! Well I find these times in a way more fun because then I feel I have permission to have an anarchical hatred of the USA/CIA/Industrialist Complexes – I mean I really feel inspired to explore my freedoms of thought, speech and press however impolite or offensive that maybe. And I like being cranky! It makes me smile and chuckle all on my own!

Despite being persistantly cranky I do literally count my blessings. My man and the dogs are at the top of the list. As is Belgium and our home here in Bru-town. I am also VERY thankful to be out of the states at this time. It's a funny twist of fate in that my partner and I wanted to stay in the states and it turned out to be in our best interest to make our home here after all. I am fast approaching two years away from our old home there in Ohio without a visit and I really don’t want to go back at all. In fact that is all a very conscious personal protest to things there. I only wish my father would visit me here or that we could visit each other in Canada and Mexico so I could remain true to my deepest conviction in this matter. If the states won’t let Bart live there with me then I want nothing to do with that country for that is not freedom. I don’t care what they call it marriage or same sex partnership the states has gone too far in my personal life too many times – just try going through puberty with sodomy laws in a Christian theocracy of a suburb! Until the states changes this samesex binational issue in our favor I will not go around speaking about my birthplace positively! After learning what I have about my fatherland from my life experience and its present vantage point outside of the states I will never see it the same again.

Being anti American as an American is the result of a truly free country and it makes it a great nation but more and more there are new constraints on expressing thoughts against the states. Anyway I will not ever happily pay taxes to a excessively motorized over militarized war mongering police state without national health care or decent educational systems politely without giving in my two cents worth of criticism! Critical analysis can make a better nation and people and this is what is lacking from the states these days! At this point in history there it is indeed a very patriotic thing to be vitriolic in expressing anti-American speech plus given what the states is doing these days that is easy, fun as well as good for the nation and world.

Cranky anarchist expat Matt

From My Own Outpost of Tyranny

2005-01-19T13:28:00.000+01:00

The days of America as Oscar Wilde’s “friendly giant” sharing his secret garden with children for a renewed lease on life are as much a nostalgic memory as is reading that old childrens story. Today it’s America the dimwitted Orc from J.R.R. Tolkiens Lord of the Rings books. What is such a disappointment is that America the blundering land of the oversized Orcs riding around the landscape in SUVs are not even caught under such a spell as interesting as Saurons. The character of Sauron for the land of the American Orcs isn’t just one way cool sinister dude of a bad guy in a long white beard with flowing white robes but a boring group of people who dress like health, wealth and happiness Christian bankers sporting cowboy boots on occasion: The disappointing Bush II second term administration.

Strange though to see recently on TV here the “last march of the Ents” on CNN International during the rerunning of the California flood disaster with scenes of huge swaths of forest greenery caught up in a mud slide in what has to be the most underrated video news clip of late. Ents if you aren't up on your Tolkien mythology are a rare species of walking and talking trees and in these days of parking lots, freeways and endless sub-urban sprawls, trees are as rare a Tolkien’s Ents. It’s hard when you live in or come from a parking lot strip mall of a state like Ohio to feel sorry for a garden of a state like California suffering from bad weather. It is rather amusing though how for Californians Ohio isn’t on their map because their map has one big foreign country in the middle of it called the Fly Over States before reaching the East coast of California - New York City capitol of East Kalifornia.

Where is Gore Vidal in the media these days? Even though I could easily pick up a book for some consoling word from him I feel a need for him in the media talking some sense to the masses along with Noam Chomsky. Even I am guilty of being a part of the collective United States of Amnesia. I would sincerely like to shake hands with Gore Vidal and peer into his eyes and have a few drinks with him – I’m not so certain I would like him but I would like to find that out for myself and anyway I like what he writes. The thing is I could probably use more of John Waters wit and epigrammatic observations to cheer me up. Funny how it is that John Waters is now a figure of compassion and defender of the working class which must be an unintentional by product of not loosing his sense of humor.

All day yesterday I spent Googling online to find an interview I once read about an actor researching a part where he was to play some character out west so he didn’t shower for two weeks and it was the first time when he would go for a piss and got his dick out that he could smell his own cock. For some reason I have the memory of having read that article rattling around in my head and yet I can’t remember what magazine or actor despite remembering all those details from when I read it. That article amused me because Hollywood (male) actors always seem to have no apparent sexual equipment unlike women actors or if they do like super sized cod pieces with room for the whole family’s collection of the jewels.

Did I ever tell you (keep in mind that for the most part the US TV programming that comes to Belgium is quite a few seasons behind the times so we here are still viewing West Wing episodes made by Aaron Sorkin and Thomas Schlamme). One of my most favorite characters on the west wing is cup cake craving Ainsley Hayes the republican woman played by Emily Procter – although I really like every West Wing character a lot and the actors who play them but hers really stands out in my mind. I like her southern accent and her virtues of the republican party that are such great theories but that are certainly not anything the Bush’s are involved in much less practice or that Ray-gun guy or Nixon for that matter were up to. Speaking of repugs…..

Condoleeeeeza Riceez used the term Outpost of Tyranny to describe the new satellites to the Axis of Evil. I wish if the states were going to be so BAD that they could do it with style and class instead of like an episode of the evil Beverly Hillbillies or an inbred Andy Griffith show. Hysterical words from Condoleeza Rice: “we will spread Freedom and Democracy though out the world” – which ends up sounding like a bull dozer of a threat to flatten the world rather than an actively elected choice by citizens of far away places. Well good thing then she is so completely high IQ-ed and educated, musically accomplished, African American and a woman to be the new mouth piece for US Ministry Propaganda, Lies and Misinformation.

Perhaps its time the Bush II second term administration just sort of drifted away like a lost helium balloon and carried on being the “Democratically Elected” (huge tongue in cheek) President of the Planet so that the Americans could get on with electing a leader, preferably a woman for change, (I hereby nominate Martha Stewart) to run the country at home. Preferably they could start rising up, up and away in their beautiful balloon, before the good people of the states are dragged into invading Iran under the auspices of Nuke control so that Israel can feel safe at night. Meanwhile no one much worries about North Korea but then it is so very far from these issues and not really harming anyone anyway. Isn’t it time the US got on with building a better landscape within the US? Isn’t it time the US began building an infrastructure that was concerned not with various wars but with building a nation from within again to tackle issues of education, health care, homelessness, unemployement, under employment and the care of the enviroment. Isn’t it time the US once again began trying to be a nation that could be a light and beacon for other nations to model themselves after. Isn’t it time to build a nation of citizens rather than automotive based consumers and trapped inmates? Maybe the Bush II second term administration can pack up their bags and just go manage their world view from some concrete compound in Israel and leave the Americans alone from being held hostage by extreme corporatist multi national security agendas: Security agendas based on subconscious fears arising from foreign policies lacking a basic awareness of the complexities of humanity.

Dream on Dude…..

Meanwhile I get daily mass emailing proffering Xanax, Vicodan, Valium and the like. Remember Quaaludes? Then amongst all that I get junk mail offering ways to get off pain killers. I used to get junk mail to increase my penis size - that worried me – what did they know that I didn’t? Then I got emails to get and maintain erections. Whenever I scan these junk mails I get instantly paranoid of the names of the sender and I begin to feel the power of suggestion and want drugs and then alternately worry that I’m becoming like the mother in the film Requiem for a Dream or that eventually that will be me. That movie broke my heart because the mother really reminded me of my mom except my mom was alive back then and on chemo-therapy. In between all that history of junk mail in my inbox were north African originated emails from desperate types who wanted to share millions of dollars due to inheritance banking schemes to protect the money at stake – I think those emails, including all the pharmacological resources were really phony CIA/Zionist originated emails for god only knows what reason. The junk emails I get about erection tablets made me curious in experimental ways. More and more though I just feel seriously mentally deranged and suicidal thoughts are presenting themselves to me during the day and at night even though I don’t really feel like doing myself in. It seems too messy and stressful and complicated for no real gain to bother with conniving fail safe techniques to turn the lights out for good. The thing is I do need some help with some of the worries on my mind but I can’t seem to communicate with anyone and it’s not just a consequence of the omni present language dysphoria of living here that I actually take comfort in. It’s just at the moment I feel a bit trapped not within languages but within my own inability to communicate beyond myself. Then all the news from the states just really breaks my heart and mind to hear. More and more I feel deranged and marginalized on planet earth and given the facts of this political planet perhaps that is healthy. Still I can help wonder what is in my gut and my mind that bothers me so... more and more I fear it is some sort of alien implant.

Sometimes to slap some sense into my self pitying tendencies l open the book Time Suspended by Jerman Asselberghs, Els Opsomer and Pieter Van Bogaert. I look at pages on Ramallah and I try to consider all the nameless shattered lives and fragmentary places of old Palestine. There is nothing I can do for their tragic story except think on them and thinking about their situation reminds me that I have so much more to be thankful for. (The thought of which makes me think that these unnamed Palestinians are even in this virtual writing way giving me something good and yet what am I doing for them?). I wonder why Hollywood hasn’t made some sort of documentary on life in present day Palestine. And if not obviously Hollywood then why hasn’t someone else somewhere else made a film about what is going on in Palestine from the Palestinians point of view. So I have this weird thankfulness for things way beyond my idea of control about where one is born and the consequences of location on birth. I can’t explain it but we all live with this consequence to some degree or another whether we choose to see it or not. Humor and not loosing or misplacing ones sense of humor is the key to surviving these weird days no matter where you are on Planet Earth. Maybe it’s time for the Selfish Giant to consider why spring hasn’t yet arrived there for the last four years.

From My own Outpost of Tyranny: Conclusions Now That the Great American Experiment in Democracy is over.