If corporatists had their way, this would happen every day

The Solidarity Center condemns the brutal execution-style murder of Marco Tulio Ramirez Portela, Secretary of Culture and Sports of the Guatemalan Banana Workers Union of Izabal, SITRABI. Ramirez, brother of SITRABI General Secretary Noé Antonio Ramirez Portela, was gunned down by masked assailants at 5:45 a.m. on Sunday, September 23, while leaving his home for work on a banana plantation.

Ramirez's murder is the most recent in a series of threats and attacks against SITRABI and its leaders. In 1999, the union was the object of a devastating attack by armed individuals. In November 2006, attackers stoned and then shot at a SITRABI-owned vehicle driven by an elected union officer. In late July of this year, Army officers conducted a threatening interrogation of union leaders at SITRABI's headquarters in Morales. The assassination of Ramirez came just three days after SITRABI learned that military officers had been disciplined by the Ministry of Defense in response to SITRABI complaints about the unlawful entry.

SITRABI considers the military’s recent acts of intimidation to be retaliation for the union’s significant role in worker rights training and support for workers on banana plantations in the Izabal and Southern Coast regions. This education project, which brings much-needed information to otherwise isolated banana plantation workers, is supported by the Solidarity Center.

"The Solidarity Center joins the global labor movement in calling on the Guatemalan government to investigate Marco Tulio Ramirez Portela's murder and bring those responsible to justice," said Solidarity Center Executive Director Ellie Larson. "The systematic attacks on SITRABI constitute backsliding on worker rights enforcement in Guatemala. No worker should lose his life for exercising a fundamental right to participate in a union. Together we must break down the wall of impunity and rebuild respect for worker and human rights."

Money. It's all about the money. Big piles of it. Expensive cars. Massive houses that could be mistaken for palaces. Corporations don't care what type of government is in power as long as they're making money. In countries like Guatemala, the government uses the military to protect corporate interests.

To those who call themselves capitalists, labor unions are the root of all evil. Most of the world regards union membership as a human right. Capitalists have tried to destroy them, and they've done a good job of it.

For the first time in three decades, General Motors workers have gone on strike. Good for them. Corporations have dominated the scene for too long now - it's time to swing the pendulum back to the people. It ain't called democracy for nothing!
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The revolution will not be televised

An Austrian friend of mine came to visit the US a couple of weeks ago and made a stop in DC before flying back home. I tried to show him as much of DC as possible without wearing ourselves into the ground, and aside from the first night when we attended a Washington Nationals baseball game, at the end of every day came the pub.

The first place we went to was Cleveland Park Bar and Grill. Though cooler temperatures had settled in, it was still warm enough to sit on the rooftop there. Except we couldn't. They closed it because temperatures were in the sixties. Now explain to me how a people who sit in freezing, wasteful airconditioning all day long couldn't handle the fresh sixty degree air? The older I get, the less I understand this country known as the United States of America.

Instead of enjoying the view of a lively street, we had to sit inside a swirl of televised stuffiness, a box of waving colors flying out from every space on its sides. Where there were no televisions on the walls, there were mirrors like those in my photo, so there was no way one could avoid the glaring football games tackling the eyes of the bar's patrons. It is natural when one sees movement in his peripheral line of sight that he turns to see what that movement is. Makes it pretty tough to have a normal conversation when eyes instinctively dart from side to side while trying to drink in a den of sportive kinetics.

On the next night we went to a couple of places, one a nicer restaurant, and even it had a television at its bar. My friend noticed this trend immediately and thought it an oddity. I do, too. Why is it that we can't go anyplace without being bombarded by television?

I look forward to a break from this televised excess in Bulgaria. My real point of writing about this, however, was not to complain about it but rather to have an excuse for posting the photo somewhere. I just like it!

Dupont farmers market tomatoes

Don't hesitate, just go for the ball

I learned a lot back when I was a goalkeeper for my school's soccer team. It wasn't so much the soccer as the soccer metaphors for life. The difference between a good goalkeeper and a bad one is hesitation. A good goalkeeper never hesitates - instinct guides him to the ball.

In the beginning of the planning process for my trip, I never hesitated. I decided to go, told my landlord I was leaving, told my boss I was leaving, told my mom, and bought my plane ticket. Now, though, I feel myself hesitating about one thing: packing.

I spent Thursday evening trying to pack. I say trying because I'm having a tough time making decisions. How do I pack for three months of cooler weather in just a big backpack and bike panniers? At first I had thought to put all of the cold weather stuff in the panniers, which I could then leave packed until the end of the trip. Then I thought, hmm, the panniers probably are easier to access than the big backpack in terms of ease of finding things. As it was getting later into the night, I just took everything I had decided to pack, threw it on the floor, and went to bed.

I decided three pairs of pants - jeans, khakis, and corduroys (green) - would be enough, in addition to the pair of black track pants I'm bringing for bike trips. I thought five long-sleeved shirts were good - two turtlenecks (blue and ribbed gray), one thinner sweater (red), a comfy yellow shirt, and my Cincinnati Reds shirt, which is a mock turtleneck and is made of a fabric designed for athletics - ideal for biking. Then, three warm sweaters - two fleece (one white and the other black and red) and one a wool polyester blend (green with a gray and blue stripe). No, it's definitely not a lot of clothing, but if for some reason I need more, I'll just pick them up at a local store.

But back to my hesitation. I'm typing this at 11am on Saturday morning, the only full day I have left here in DC. Tomorrow I will be attending the last Washington Nationals baseball game ever played at RFK Memorial Stadium (they are getting a new stadium next year, and that's a good thing), so the middle of my day will be broken up by baseball. There's a ton more to do, but my mind is scattered in a million different directions right now, which is why I am on the computer rather than actually doing the things I need to do.

Idiotique

This may be his dumbest gaffe yet:

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Nelson Mandela is still very much alive despite an embarrassing gaffe by U.S. President George W. Bush, who alluded to the former South African leader's death in an attempt to explain sectarian violence in Iraq.

"It's out there. All we can do is reassure people, especially South Africans, that President Mandela is alive," Achmat Dangor, chief executive officer of the Nelson Mandela Foundation, said as Bush's comments received worldwide coverage.

In a speech defending his administration's Iraq policy, Bush said former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's brutality had made it impossible for a unifying leader to emerge and stop the sectarian violence that has engulfed the Middle Eastern nation.

"I heard somebody say, Where's Mandela?' Well, Mandela's dead because Saddam Hussein killed all the Mandelas," Bush, who has a reputation for verbal faux pas, said in a press conference in Washington on Thursday.

Jailed for 27 years for fighting white minority rule, Mandela became South Africa's first black president in 1994. He won a Nobel Peace Prize for preaching racial harmony and guiding the nation peacefully into the post-apartheid era.

References to his death -- Mandela is now 89 and increasingly frail -- are seen as insensitive in South Africa.

It's the economy, stupid

Checking currency conversion rates today, I noticed that the Canadian dollar is 99 cents to the US dollar. Oh, bad sign, I thought. That the Canadian dollar is nearly equal to that of the King of Dollars is something I know hasn't happened in my lifetime. Reading the New York Times today, I came across an article about the euro reaching an all-time high against the dollar.

Well, crap.

I hate to bring up the materialism stuff again, but our excessive consumption is starting to catch up with us here. People are in debt up to their eyeballs; some are drowning. The Fed was forced to cut interest rates that further weakened an already sick dollar, and the result will have a direct effect on my trip. I guess that's minimicroeconomics, eh?

I've developed a system of looking at economics using the Almighty Pint as a sort of global currency. It works like this. If I earn $40,000 USD a year in Washington, DC, that can buy me 200,000 pints of a quality beer (although I've noticed prices beginning to creep up to $5.50 or even $6). However, using today's exchange rate, my $40,000 will only buy 141,993 pints at 5 euro, which is the price of a pint in many Western European cities. While that may mean a healthier liver, it also means I can purchase far less during my trip, the lev being linked to the euro and all.

But more important than the effects on my trip is the fact that the dollar continues to weaken. At what point does this become a concern for us Americans? What the heck is going on here? The gold ain't shiny when there's no light to show us the end of the tunnel.



Dollar problems aside, Bulgarian bank notes are pretty.

What I've learned and what I need to learn

The clock is ticking, and they've already posted my job for someone else to take - kind of weird considering I'm the only one who's ever had that job. I was the third one in our department, back when the Middle East division was tiny. It has since exploded into ten, and that doesn't count all of our field staff in Egypt, Jordan, and Iraq.

It's always weird when you leave a place. Even if you're miserable, it's tough to say goodbye. It just means another chapter of your life has closed, and that can only mean you're getting older.

I should be looking forward to new and exciting things, and well, I am, but I also know that I will miss DC. Even though I'll be returning again within the next few years, unless, of course, I go to New York or by some miracle can sustain myself over the long term in Europe, I still find a little despair in my heart at the thought of leaving. I really don't know why - I can't say I've actually had a great time here. I mean, sure, there have been a few good moments, but not enough to look back on and say, wow, I miss those days. Mostly it's been a constant struggle to just pay the rent, what with the high cost of living and low salaries they pay in the NGO world.

But that's not the point of writing. I am trying to look forward to the immediate future, the next three months at least, and trying to prepare myself for another world. All of the time I spent in Western Europe will be vastly different from the Eastern part of it, the part that lived through Ottoman and Soviet rule, the part where people don't live in excess and make do with what they have. It's going to be foreign to me, not like France or Germany or Ireland. I welcome it. I welcome the drastic change, the adventure, and the freedom.

I asked briefly - more like I wondered aloud - if there was a need for bicycle repair in the country, and the response was no, the people are self-reliant and don't have the disposable income for such things. It may come as a shock for me at first. The excess is what I have been wanting to escape, even as much as the drab confines of a fluorescent office. Even though I try not to live in excess, I have found myself getting lazier as I grow older and sometimes purchasing for convenience rather than necessity. For instance, I took a cab home a few days ago rather than riding the bus because I didn't want to wait the extra half hour - it was $12 I should have saved for my trip. Believe me, I'm not a spoiled brat, but I sure do have a lot compared to others in the world.

So I'm going to go out into the real world, the one less affected by Western materialism than what I am used to, the one in which more people than not reside, and live among people who are self-reliant. Maybe they can teach me something, because I sure have a lot to learn. I feel that it's a bit hypocritical, though, because I am able to just take off and go, whereas so many Bulgarians can't even afford to put brakes on their bikes.

Dr. Pepper and Oreos

I received my BA in Political Science from Miami University. No, not Miami, Florida. Oxford, Ohio. Miami was a university before Florida was a state!

I chose Miami for its excellent study abroad program - one of the top five in the country. It's funny how it all came about. During my senior year of high school, a Miami recruiter came to visit the school, and I went to hear what he had to say just to get out of Physics class. Then, I took a college visitation day to go down to Oxford just to get a day off school. My tour guide that day - I think her name was Leann - couldn't stop talking about how she was going to study abroad at Miami's campus in Luxembourg the next semester. I wanted to do that, wanted to see the world, as I had been rather desperate to get away throughout my high school years. I knew there was something outside the cornfields of Ohio and I needed to know what it was.

We went to school in a 13th century castle. Seriously. Among other medieval aristocrats, Duke of Burgundy Charles the Bold spent some time there, and they've named a few of the classrooms after him, thinking it cute to call him by his English, French, and - if memory serves me correctly - German names.

I was only supposed to go for one semester during my junior year. I chose to go the first semester for the simple reason that I wouldn't be turning 21 until January, so I had a whole extra semester of being able to buy beer. Ok, so that was just a minor reason! Really I wanted to go as soon as possible.

December came too quickly that year, and I just couldn't go back to Oxford and small town college life when I had the World around me, when I was learning much more than I ever could in a classroom in a secluded part of Ohio, America. I stayed a second semester.

One of the things I noticed was the progression of adjustment one makes when going abroad for an extended period of time. I flew into Dublin before the start of the school year because it just so happened that U2 was playing in Dublin the week before I was to arrive in Luxembourg. Now, you have to understand how much I love U2 to understand how incredible it was that this worked out. (Another incredible thing that happened regarding U2 was when they came to Philly for the Vertigo tour. Allow me to digress for a minute. See you have to understand the two things I love more than anything are U2 and Cincinnati Reds baseball. And well, it just so happened that the weekend U2 came to Philly was the same weekend - the ONLY weekend - the Reds were in town to play the Phillies that season. All of Philly's sports facilities are located in one complex. The concert was in the arena next to the baseball stadium. So as I walked through the parking lot, I heard U2 coming from cars and saw Reds baseball caps all over, my own heaven. I went to see the Reds play the next day.)

Wandering the streets of Dublin these days wouldn't be much different than wandering the streets of an American city to me, but back then, it felt like a foreign world. The differences stood out like a red dot on a black and white page. I had been to another country only one other time in my life - Sydney, Australia to play in an international softball tournament - but I had been 17 years old and leashed by chaperons. There I was in Dublin, alone and free to do whatever pleased me, but I felt like I didn't know what was going on around me. U2 was my crutch, something familiar in this foreign land (strange how they were home), and were those two shows incredible!

I grew frustrated by the end of the week. Boy was I pissed when I couldn't figure out how to call home to say I had arrived. Now that I think about it, I can't figure out why I couldn't figure it out. But hey, I was 20 years old and knew nothing about anything. (I am now 30 years old and know nothing about anything.) Now, I don't want to make myself sound stupid - I managed just fine, but it just seemed like everything was so tough. A lot of it had to do with my lack of city experience.

I did manage to get myself to Luxembourg. I bought a Ryan Air ticket into Brussels and planned on taking a train to Luxembourg. Well, it's funny, but "Brussels" meant Charleroi, which is 30 or 40 miles south of Brussels and off the main train route from Brussels to Luxembourg. There was no direct train to Luxembourg, and I knew absolutely nothing about Belgium. I knew nothing about how to read train schedules, either, for that matter. Fortunately, a nice Belgian guy slightly older than me could tell I didn't know where the heck I was and directed me to Namur, where I would be able to change trains and head on down to Luxembourg.

I guess the first stage of adjustment is just figuring out how to get around, learning how to communicate with others when you don't have a firm grasp of their language (or sometimes, even when you do - I can tell you that I had the toughest time understanding what the heck Dubliners were saying to me), and learning how to do as the Romans do.

Next comes being overwhelmed with the differences. I think I experienced this stage for about three or four weeks. It came with a bout of home sickness. After that, I noticed the similarities. Then, I settled in and began to feel like I lived there rather than like I was just visiting. By the time the second semester rolled around, life in Europe was normal to me, and when I had to go home, life in America seemed foreign.

Still, there's a part of home that is always with you and that you'll never get rid of. There are some things that are difficult to find in foreign lands, even in this age of globalization. I do not drink Dr. Pepper or eat Oreo Cookies. Yet on the few occasions I did come across them in Luxembourg, I bought them and enjoyed them. These common processed and probably cancer-causing products were a taste of home.

I traveled much of Western Europe that year and went back to Ireland a few more times. Fell in love with the place, so much so that in 2000, I went there to live for awhile.

Now I am going to the Balkans, a new place, a new culture, a new way of life. I am a seasoned traveler and citydweller at this point in my life, so I imagine I won't have too many problems getting around in Bulgaria. Still, I know I will have to go through the progression of adjustment. I'll have to figure out the train system, bus system, figure out the language, adapt to cultural differences. I'll notice things that seem foreign to me, then I'll notice things that are similar, and then, hopefully, I'll begin to feel like I live there.

Thanks, 51% of America, for screwing up

Three months of life on the back of a bike

Ahh, good old exercise - makes you feel so good. I ride my bike to work, at least I have for most of the summer. It takes 20 minutes, mostly downhill on the way there. I used to ride the bus, but it just became unbearable. Stopping at every corner - literally - the bus ride is 45 minutes long and full of nerve-grating noise and uncomfortable idiocy. They could cut ten minutes off the route by eliminating half of the stops. Just think about it, how much time is lost when they have to slow down, pull over, then wait for traffic to clear so they can pull out again? Sure, you'd be at a stop a little longer with more people getting on fewer stops, but you're waiting far less time to pull out in traffic.

Then there's the crackheads, crazies, and freaks who ride the bus. I couldn't stand that any longer. I suppose one of the final straws was a guy who freaked out because the bus driver wouldn't open the back door due to a law that prevented him from doing so. A car had parked in the bus stop area and the bus couldn't pull over to the side of the road; therefore, he was not allowed to open the back door for passengers. Metro bus drivers hit 22 people last year, killing five of them, and this smart bus driver didn't want to risk his job and possibly his freedom by breaking a law for an irate passenger. Instead of just walking his lazy ass up to the front of the bus and getting off, the freak threw a fit. It was mofo this, mofo that, and finally, "I wish I had my gun right now cuz I'd kill you. I'd go crazy on you mofos." He then went on to say something about how he was trying to get to the hospital to see a family member and nobody gives a shit. Well, if you're trying to get to the hospital, instead of wasting time by throwing a fit, USE THE FRONT DOOR, YOU IDIOT.

So anyway, I started riding my bike to work. Two weeks ago I mysteriously began to feel tired during my rides, and soon it became difficult. Perhaps I was sick or something, but I had to take a break from riding, which meant the bus. I got on my bike for the first time in nearly two weeks yesterday morning. Man, could I tell it had been awhile. I guess I hadn't realized what great shape I had been in. I woke up this morning and my body felt like it had been hit by a truck. Or a bus would be more appropriate in this city, I guess.

I'm bringing my bike to Bulgaria. Yes, I love to walk, love to wander the streets of the past, present, and future, and I will do plenty of that. But riding a bike (and being in the shape to do so!) gives a person the freedom to cover distances much more quickly without all of the hassle of a car, what with the parking and the parking and the parking and all. What I'd really like to do is spend some time biking from small town to small town and seeing the countryside. It'd give me a chance to see things most people don't see, to meet people otherwise forgotten by unconcerned tourists, and to experience grassroots Bulgaria, whatever that means. I'd have to do this first, while the weather is still decent, before settling into Veliko Tarnovo, which has begun to sound quite magical to me.

Transporting three months' worth of living on a bicycle is going to be a challenge. I have a set of panniers I bought back in June when I first conceived the notion of going on a bike ride across Western Europe. I had planned on taking a circular journey, first starting from Frankfurt, riding up the Rhine and down the Mosel into Luxembourg, spending a few days there, then heading on over to Paris and down to Tours, up to Flanders, where I'd spend a week (I looooove Flanders), up through Holland and across Northern Germany to Berlin, then down to Prague to visit a friend, then to Salzburg to visit a friend, then back to Frankfurt to go home. Yeah, it sounds like a lot, but it was only three months' time, and that was with week-long breaks several places. I certainly got into shape to do it.

But once again, I digress, as I frequently do. I could digress about digression right here, but I won't. Suffice it to say that I will digress more often than not. I was talking about riding in Bulgaria. No, packing for riding in Bulgaria. Or riding in Europe. Yeah, I gotta stuff three months' worth of life onto my bike. The panniers I bought are rather small - I filled one side with one fleece, one pair of thick long underwear, two thin sweaters, and a turtleneck. The other side I will fill with toiletries. I'm also going to load up my travel backpack and strap it to the top of the rack I have on my bike. It's a pretty big bag - I used it on a two month trip through Europe in 1999 during a graduate program I took on the European Union. As business attire was required during the program, I had to stuff it with a couple of suits.

As I think about it now, I wonder if I should just purchase some clothing there. I don't have much money, as I said before, but if I look at it in a Bulgarian context, where the average monthly wage is $272, I have a whole year's salary, and that's after I purchase the plane ticket. Wow, that's some perspective.

I found an incredibly cheap ticket to Budapest and was thinking about flying there and riding my bike down the Danube as far down as I can go before crossing into Bulgaria, but that would have taken three weeks, about two of them being through countries only a decade removed from war, so I'm not sure how well-developed their roads and bike paths along the Danube are. Not being a member of the EU, I imagine Serbia hasn't exactly spent its money constructing bike paths - I am sure there are more important things to build - rebuild - like oh, say schools and homes and the basic infrastructure. This is me using logic to make plans.

The reason I don't want to fly into Sofia is because I am going to be visiting some friends at the end of the trip and don't want to have to back track to Sofia to go home. This, of course seems stupid, because I'm going to have to buy train tickets there and back, and if I bought tix to Sofia, I'd have to buy train tickets there and back, too, but hey, at the end of a trip you want shorter travel distances, right? I'd rather go one way and not come back than go all the way to Prague and Salzburg then go all the way there and back. And yeah, they have to be train tickets. I hate flying and love trains. In the end, the combo of plane and train tix will probably cost the same no matter where I fly in, but again, hey, it's my life, right? ;)

I'd love to spend a week on the road, but from where to where? My indecisiveness is delaying the purchase of my plane ticket. I have to act now! AAAAAHHHHHHHH!

9/11 fatigue

I was directed to a baseball blog through an Adsense click. I was attracted to it by its title, Born Into It, because I wanted to read a Red Sox blog by someone who had been born a Sox fan rather than one from that new crowd of Sox "fans" who bought their caps in 2004. The latter type are starting to become the most annoying thing about baseball. They show up in every town, know nothing about baseball but pretend to know everything, and get trashed at every game.

Anyway, my morning was changed by this blog because of a post about 9/11. I don't know why I read it, but I did, and I couldn't help but respond to this comment:

I read an article today about something called “9/11 fatigue,” about how the general public is getting “tired” of being reminded about what happened six years ago, and the commemorations of that day are getting “excessive, even annoying.”

I don’t know any people who really feel that way (although I read the occasional letter to the editor from someone so totally clueless echoing those sentiments), but if there was ever any widespread thinking along those lines, those people either need their heads examined, or a refresher course on exactly what happened on September 11, 2001.

Here is what I wrote:

Count me as one who has "9/11 fatigue."

Now, you can get all irate and call me a traitor or whatever name you choose to call me without even hearing what I have to say, as so many blind patriots do, or you can read the rest of this comment and try to understand it, which may help you understand why 9/11 fatigue exists.

It isn't that people are wanting to forget, as you claim. It's the fact that the day has been cheapened with faux sentiment, with the sale of gaudy 9/11 merchandise and people making a profit off it, with cheesy graphics and music on news broadcasts, and with excessive talking about it like it was the worst thing in the world to ever happen.

Newsflash: it isn't. World history has been tortured with far worse massacres. Just for modern examples, try the Holocaust. Try Rwanda. Try Sudan. 1.5 million died in the Armenian genocide. Pol Pot killed 2 million. 200,000 people died in Bosnia. So yeah, 9/11 was a terrible tragedy, but some of us "clueless" folks have the ability to put it into perspective.

Then there's the fact that more troops have died in this "War on Terror" than the number of people on 9/11. We are about to hit the 4000 mark, and you know what? That figure only counts the troops who have died IN Iraq or Afghanistan, not those who are transported back to Germany or the US and die there. And that's just the troops, not the Iraqi civilians, whose death toll has reached 12-15,000 by the lowest estimates.

People are tired of how this president used 9/11 as an excuse to go to war in Iraq and then botched the entire operation so we are less secure today than we were the day people decided to fly planes into buildings. Because of Iraq, London, Madrid, Istanbul, and Bali have all suffered terrible terrorist attacks - add another 500 people to the death toll on that.

Afghanistan, what used to be the base for Wahab terrorism, was paid lipservice while Bush took the opportunity to go into Iraq. His neocon buddies had written a white paper on invading Iraq a few years before he took office, so everyone knew they were going to go in. 9/11 afforded them a convenient excuse. So we go into Afghanistan, which was the right course of action, and instead of securing the country and ridding it of the Taliban, we chose to spend our resources chasing Saddam, and Afghanistan is currently a warzone again, with the Taliban retaking much of the country. But you never hear that in the mainstream media, do you?

There's the fact that we squandered all of the goodwill the globe had for us after it happened. The French paper "Le Monde" published the headline "Nous sommes tous des americaine" (We are all Americans) on September 12. On that day, the Arabs were with us, too, except for that tiny contingent of Palestinians in a tiny square that Fox News broadcast so it looked like all of the Arab world was celebrating. I tell you what - I was in a classroom learning Arabic for the U.S. Army on that day, and we had to watch the coverage on Aljazeera because we couldn't get stations in English. There was no celebrating on that station, only the same solemn sentiments that were shared across the globe. America used to be a country that was admired. Six years later, we are the most hated country in the world.

And then there's the thing where so many of the "Never forget" crowd can't be bothered to try to understand why this happened to us. They like to boil it down to the ignorant "they are full of hate" and "they are evil" excuses and dismiss any philosophical underpinnings. However, the basic ideology which led a rogue group of extremists to fly planes into buildings dates back to the 1920s. A guy by the name of Sayyed Qutb, who is attributed to the founding of Wahabism (the extreme rightwing form of Sunni Islam,), had some interesting things to say about Western excess after having lived in New York for awhile. In "The America I Have Seen," a personal account of his experiences in United States, Qutb expresses his admiration for the great economic and scientific achievements of America, yet he is deeply dismayed that such prosperity could exist in a society that remained "abysmally primitive in the world of the senses, feelings, and behavior." It wasn't until the oppression of the Muslim Brotherhood by Nasser that violence entered into the picture, and that was to fight back against government oppression. You have to go back to this philosophy before you can go forward in addressing the problem.

And you also have to realize that there's a huge difference between Sunni and Shia extremism. Or was, until U.S. policy made them one in the same. You can't fight both of them in the same way - the two want completely different things. But the Bush administration has made a mess of the world by blurring the line and thinking bombs are the solution to everything.

So no, we don't forget. And we don't dismiss the tragic loss of lives on that day. But we sure are tired of having it rammed down our throats with no movement towards trying to fix the problem at its roots so we never have to face another tragedy like this. Perhaps if you rid the commemorations of their excess, perhaps if the never forgetters would push the government to make better policy on this day instead of standing around at the site praying to a God who isn't going to make the problem go away, perhaps if the never forgetters would show a real interest in ending the problem once and for all, people wouldn't be tired of it. Doing something real to honor the fallen instead of putting a show would cure 9/11 fatigue. Change the world, don't stand around waiting for it to change on its own.

I apologize for writing this on a baseball blog, but you wrote the post on a baseball blog. I mean you no ill will in writing this, so I hope you did not take it that way, but I object to being called "clueless" and told that I need to "get my head examined" by someone who doesn't appear to understand the nature of the problem.

And please keep the Yankees down.


My comment is "awaiting moderation" on that site. I'm sure it won't be published, as the neverforgetters tend to censor opposing opinions and dissent, but we'll see.
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Me whining about stuff

With good reason, all I can thinking about is the trip. I am trying to keep the anxiety down but it's tough when I know I only have two weeks left in DC. How the heck am I going to get all of this stuff to Ohio to store while I'm gone? I have a Chevy Cavalier with a sizable but not that sizable trunk. Like I said before, I will be getting rid of a lot of it, but there are some sentimental things I can't part with.

Why Ohio? Well, that is where my parents live, where I grew up. I'm willing to bet that if you gave a blank map of the world to every resident of Ohio, 98% wouldn't be able to figure out where Bulgaria is. Not much of America could, I'm sure. I wonder how much of the rest of the world could? We Americans are often called stupid - but I imagine that most of India, China, and Africa, to name a few places, wouldn't know where Bulgaria is.

Sounds exactly like the place I want to go, a little isolated but in the world enough to matter. I suppose it's the appropriate place for me to go, being the first country one enters when leaving the Muslim world. I've always been stuck between the two worlds, or at least I have since 2000, the last year I set foot on European soil and the first year I began working in the Middle East field, albeit by force.

See, I didn't know what I wanted to do when I graduated university. (I still don't, so little has changed since then!) I had spent a lot of time in Europe and had studied the European Union back then, but I was about three decades too late, for no job could be had by a recent graduate in the European field. I was a substitute teacher for a bit while I tried to decide what to do next. I needed to delay the decision, so I looked at entering one of two organizations - the Peace Corps or the Army. I know, I know, it sounds contradictory, but you have to remember this was during the last Clinton years when the Army's stated mission was to act as a global peacekeeping force. Who knew the whole world was about to explode? I weighed my options and chose the War Corps based on the benefits - a $20K signing bonus, which would pay off my student loans, $50K for grad school, the chance to get paid to learn another language (I wanted to learn Russian so I could read Dostoevsky in his native tongue), and a chance to travel (pretty sure the recruiter told me I could be stationed in Germany, pretty sure he was lying.)

Well, that didn't work out too well. I tested too high for Russian, was put into Arabic, finished the course, and got out of there without the money. It had nothing very little to do with the war and everything to do with how badly soldiers are treated. But the language skills gave me something that not a lot of people have in this country, and I got a job in the Middle East field, just picking up and moving to DC. I've been here four and a half years, and now I find myself picking up and moving again.

All I can say is this better give me the inspiration to finish the novel I have been working on for two years. It is in its fourth or fifth revision phase. I just have to get that one out of the way - it's my ticket to pursuing what I really want to do - write. Believe me, I understand how tough it is to make a living by writing. I have two things going for me, however. 1. I am uninterested in material possessions, and as long as I can pay the rent, eat, and have beer and baseball money, I can be happy. 2. When I'm not bogged down by the drear of office life, I can be a prolific writer. Problem is, I just don't have the time to do it and do it well when all of my time and energy is spent on quotidien office ritual. I have a pretty disorganized mind and it takes me a really long time to put even the simplest essays together with a quality that makes me comfortable. You can see it in my blog posts, how I post too soon and some things aren't coherent. That is why I need more time in the day, more time in the week, in life.

And another thing - boredom kills creativity.

There just doesn't seem to be a place in the capitalist world for creative people unless it's in advertising. I feel bad enough posting the AdSense links on my blogs. I could never sell my soul to the Lust for Profit industry. And so I'll keep running, trying to find a place in this world for me, a person who doesn't want to waste life away in an office or who doesn't care about money when that's all the rest of the world seems to think about.

Vorsprung durch technik

Wow. Every day I live in wonder and amazement at things and thoughts and ideas around me. Sometimes for no reason it hits me, this thing we call life, la vie, живот. I look down at my bare arms, my skin still shining bronze with the glory of summer sunshine, skin that covers a mess of blood, tissue, and bone. I think of the electricity running the brain, operating the mess, and concentrate to hear the faint pounding of blood in my ears, a heartbeat, a pulse, a reminder that I am alive, sucking in oxygen, something I haven't felt for quite awhile in the fortress of my boredom.

My ears return to the joyous sound of Zooropa, which has just come on the media player scramble of my work laptop. I have no compass. I have no map. I have no reasons, no reasons to get back. No particular place names. No particular song. I've been hiding. What am I hiding from? Don't worry baby, it'll be alright. Uncertainty can be our guiding light. Get your head out of the mud, baby. I'm gonna dream of the world I want to live in, dream out loud.

Europe has undergone a surgical transformation in the fifteen years since that album came out. The nineties were full of uncertainty, but beneath all of the anxiety about what was going to happen was a genuine sense of hope for the future, that the fall of the Berlin Wall was the beginning of the end of global conflict, that democracy and freedom had finally triumphed over tyranny.

How naive we were.

Fifteen years later, the whole world is a mess at the hands of the United States government. Even if those planes hadn't taken down the towers, the Naked Emperor would have found a way to start a war in Iraq. September 11th was just a convenient excuse to go in earlier than expected.

But it's more than just the Global War on Extremists Who Use Terrorism as a Tactic Because They Hate Us for Our Freedom. It's the technology explosion that has made our lives schizophrenic and in search for spirituality. It's human rights violator China getting the Olympic Games. It's corporate greed run amok, marketing everywhere our beauty-seeking eyes look, billboards on mountaintops, movie ads on bases, the artificialness of our food, genetic engineering, and the mindnumbing violence of everything around us.

However, much good has come of it, too. People actually know Africa is a continent now, thanks to intensive lobbying efforts of some people with hearts. We can communicate with our friends on the other side of the globe - instantly. And many of those countries who suffered under the Soviet Union are finally starting to see some progress in moving past decades of tyranny, poverty, and stagnant livelihoods. Bulgaria is one of them.

And so I will go there seeking a respite from the indentured servitude of office work, seeking the soul of life I seem to have lost in quotidien ritual, seeking the good, seeking the future, trying to make sense of a world in chaos from somewhere other than the place from where the mess was made.

Packing, moving, possessions, materialism

I changed my desktop picture to one of Veliko Tarnovo. My apologies if it is one of yours, as I took it from Google Images. (Given that there isn't enough of interest here to have any readers, the "you" is probably just some sort of cyberghost. Once I have my plane ticket in hand, I'll be actively doing the reader search. For now, I'm just getting my thoughts about Bulgaria flowing.) It's beautiful, isn't it? I imagine it is no matter what season. Although I'm glad I'm going during the low tourist season, I still can't help but feel like I'm going to miss out on all that green, like the essence of the life of the city hangs on those verdant summer boughs. I'm sure the leaves change color and are beautiful and all, but I know they are nothing like what we have here in the States. I remember my host family in Luxembourg talking about how Europeans vacationed in America in October to see the "Indian Summer." While the trees are gorgeous, they still make me sad in that they signal the end of summer. They're like the grand finale of a fireworks show, you know?

Going over at this time of year is pretty tough in terms of packing. Although my plans right now are to leave before Christmas, if the opportunity arises for me to stay, I will. It's a pain to pack all of those thick sweaters and coats and hats and gloves and scarves and boots, especially when you don't know if you will need them or not. I remember when I lived in Luxembourg, I ended up leaving behind the clothes I wore because I was sick of the same thing, so I guess I should bring things that are worn and almost ready to be thrown away. I don't mind wearing the same clothes over and over again - I do it here, too. I don't have many clothes in comparison to the average American, but my god do I still have a ton in comparison to many parts of the world. I have a lot of t-shirts. I suppose I wouldn't have much of anything if I didn't have those t-shirts, which I've collected from various places, concerts, and sporting events. I have this weird thing where I don't actually wear them except on rare occasions, so they never wear out. Well, that part of me is done. While I still won't give them away, at least I am wearing them now.

And shoes! My god do I have a lot of shoes, and many are redundant. Take my three pairs of Nike hiking boots, for example. Who needs three pairs of hiking boots? Apparently, I thought I did. Fortunately, I've finally worn one pair out, though I am still hesitant about throwing them away on account of their comfort. My feet getting wet after stepping in puddles should be enough to make me part with them, but noooo, they are still in my closet. And my indoor soccer shoes from high school, the ones I bought after overcharging my indoor soccer team in its team fees so I could purchase them? Falling apart but still in the closet. When I bought new running shoes because the old ones had worn out and my knees were starting to ache, did I bother throwing those old ones out? No. Why? Because they didn't LOOK worn out and I could still wear them around town. Except I don't wear running shoes around town.

Boy, when I get home tonight, I really need to put these things in a trash bag and get rid of them before I change my mind. It's tough letting go of your material life, isn't it? Our whole society is structured on the excessive consumption of needless things. I was looking around my room last night wondering what I could get rid of, and I'm having a tough time putting anything into the garbage pile. Most of what I own are books and baseball memorabilia. The baseball stuff has to stay - it is going in my sports baseball bar in Cincinnati when I finally get the capital to open it. Who knows when that will be? The books are tough to depart with, and I really don't know why. It's like I need something around to remind people that I have a brain or something. Very few of them have any sentimental value, so I really have no reason to hang onto most of them. I hate the concept of buying books while our libraries rot away. People buy books, read them once, then put them on a shelf, never again opening them. Some people even buy them and never read them. I have a couple of those.

I keep going over my belongings in my mind, saying "No! I can't get rid of that!" Problem is I'm a sentimental person. I can't get rid of gifts people give me, and I have a tough time getting rid of anything my mother gives me, so I hang onto it all. I thought I did a great job in the spring of getting rid of a lot of unnecessary stuff, but there's soooo much more to get rid of. Why are we like this? Why do we feel the need to have so much junk that the storage rental industry makes billions of dollars a year just so people have more space to store stuff they don't need? Why is the world revolving around cheap plastic junk?

Only three more days until I can buy my plane ticket. That's not a material possession - it's a spiritual necessity.

An apartment in Sofia

колело

Well, my landlord found a new roommate, so I have to go now! Not that I thought I wouldn't go, but I have this tendency to get excited about things for a bit of time and then lose enthusiasm and waver in my decisions. I guess it's more doubting than a lack of enthusiasm.

Case in point: my bicycles. In May I took my bicycle apart. It was a piece of rust-covered junk. I used to ride to work, and once after work some of us went to the Russia House for happy hour, so I locked my bike up at Dupont Circle Metro station overnight. Next day I was too lazy to go over and get it. I actually left it there a few days and when I returned, there was no seat or seat post and the back tire had been slashed. So I left it in my backyard rather than getting a new seat, left it there for a whole winter, shoved it into a basement when I moved and left it there until riding the bus to work became unbearable. I decided to fix it up myself, so I got on Craig's List to look for parts. I ended up buying a cheap bike for $46. It needed a couple of easy repairs, so I made them and rode the thing once. Then, I found a nice classic Trek for $75 and sold the other for $85.

Thinking this would be a good way to make some extra cash, I posted an ad on CL saying I wanted to learn how to fix bicycles and if anyone had any they wanted to donate to me, I'd be grateful. I got four free bikes out of the deal, bikes that were in pretty good condition. One was missing a wheel - I bought one at a community bike sale and sold the bike for $225. I tuned up another and sold it for $125. A third I sold for $65 - it had a weird gear shift system I was too lazy to figure out at the time. When I was on vacation this summer, I bought a road bike to ride during that week for $25, brought it back to DC, and sold it for $125.

In all of my enthusiasm for fixing up bikes, I bought a bunch of bike tools. I also bought five frames with some parts for $50, including a classic Roadmaster 3 speed that I'd really love to fix. I painted up three frames, including one to look like an Irish flag (it isn't finished yet). I also started riding my Trek to work. But then something happened.

I grew tired. Not of the bikes - I mean I was physically tired. I found it difficult to get to work and found myself needing to sleep a lot. Then I managed to back my bike, my beautiful blue Trek, into a telephone pole when it was on my trunk rack and I messed up the fork, bent up the wheel, and have been borrowing my roommate's wheel for several weeks. I'm not sure if it was depression or what, but both the fatigue and the wreck affected my bike enthusiasm. Now I have a basement full of bikes ready for my hands, but I haven't touched them in nearly a month. And this makes me sad. My landlord even cleared a space in the basement and I've set up a nice workshop.

I plan on going down there today after I do my studying - first Bulgarian, then Arabic, then French, plus some more reading on Eastern European history, and I'm also in the middle of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, a library book that was due about a month ago - but I need to drum up some motivation. As with anything in my life, dollar signs do not motivate me. But, for this trip, I am going to need the $600-$700 those bikes should bring me. So, Bulgaria will be my motivation. I am envisioning the Balkan Mountains, tasting wonderful meals, and hearing the sounds of a Slavic language rising to my ears.

Hmm...perhaps I could earn a little dough in Bulgaria with an informal bicycle repair business?

Classic!

Start building the debtors prisons

I'm not sure why people are surprised at the job loss in August. Anyone who lives in reality rather than with their face glued to a calculator can see what the economy is like in this country - one only needs to open his eyes and his ears rather than just his loud mouth. The GOPs have done a wonderful job in convincing their groupthink yesmen followers that everything is peachy keen, while actual people who live and breathe have been slowly descending into economic problems.

While people get further and further into debt, I foresee some real problems approaching us. Credit and lending companies who lent irresponsibly for the sake of a quick profit with no thought for the future are going to be lobbying the government to punish those who default on loans and are going to aggressively pursue actions against individuals who are unable to pay. We already saw some of this aggressive behavior with the revision of the bankruptcy law, the results of which have proven those who get into such debt are not running around charging things with no intention of paying them back.

Our society is told by these corporations to buy, buy, buy because it is good for the economy (translation: good for the corporation corporate executives), and look at what it is leading to. People are buying more than they can chew at the hands of marketing. Sure, you can blabber on all you want about personal responsibility, but a whole nation practices these spending habits, and it only takes one instance of bad luck to turn your life into a fiscal nightmare.

Republican economics is a world where real people do not exist. It is a world based on theories rather than facts, a world where a corporation has more rights than an individual, a world where "frivolous" lawsuits are filed against corporations by individuals who have been wronged but where corporations like Starbucks can sue individuals named Sam Buck who name their small cafes in Oregon towns "Sam Buck's" and win with "justice being served." I find it interesting that the Chinese word for population can be literally translated into something to do with mouths (I can't quite remember the whole thing, but you get the point.) This is also the Republican translation of the word, because all they see are mouths to feed, not the souls behind them.

So expect credit companies to come after people in the next few years in ways conceived only in nightmares. We can only hope that a Democrat who can see the people from the bones will be in charge and that this Democrat Congress can strengthen its majority, because with the economy tanking, we're going to need some people with souls to help us get through it.

Добър ден!

Today I spent most of the day learning the basics of Bulgarian. I learned how to say hello, count to ten, wrote the names of some colors up on my white board, and forgot a lot of words. I even listened to a news clip about Pavorati, only understanding the words for music and concert. Oh well.

I already gave my landlord my notice, so I have to be out of there by the end of the month. I can't wait to give my notice to my boss, but he's on travel for the next week, so it'll have to wait until he comes back. But I've worried all day about the exorbitant amount of money I spent yesterday at the concert. I am really pretty pissed at myself. I mean, it was a whole month's rent in Bulgaria, or at least half a month.

I've done all of this today instead of work. I just. Can't. Bear. It. Anymore!

България

Is it scary going to a country you've never been to before, unsure of your finances, unable to read the language or even guess because it uses a different alphabet? It is. I feel pretty anxious and had some trouble sleeping last night, which, of course, meant I had some trouble waking up this morning. Ahh, just the thought of being on my own schedule, allowed to wake up when I want, and not to suffer through the monotony of sitting in an office...it's enough to convert the anxiety into excitement, though it still makes my stomach flip!

I was listening to some Bulgarian internet pop radio stations yesterday and kind of laughed. I've always gotten a kick out of Eastern European pop, as it sounds like it's 20 years behind the times. Now, I'm not saying Western pop is good - it's not. It's just that we've learned that formula didn't work, while they continue to produce it! Ha, ha.

Anyway, I think I'll be ok with the language. I mean, I am proficient in Arabic, so I'm used to languages with funny letters! I'll be able to get around in Bulgaria, especially since they speak a European language and I'll be able to understand the roots of many words. Once I get used to the alphabet and quit having to look up the sounds of the letters, I'll be alright. I have already been able to decipher some words through transliteration: манастир is monastery; Контакти is contact; телефон is telephone; град is city; История is history. Shoot, I've never studied Russian, but knowing English and French will help me out in deciphering Bulgarian. That would scare most Americans. The language, to me, is of no concern. I look forward to learning it.

Really, with all of this anxiety, I shouldn't be drinking a latte at two in the afternoon. Oh, and I shouldn't have spent the three bucks on it, either. That's a whole meal in Bulgaria. I'm going to be out late this evening anyway - I'm seeing The National play at the 9:30 Club tonight and tomorrow night. These are probably going to be the last shows I see there in quite awhile. I noticed The National are playing in Croatia in November. Tomorrow will be the fourth time I've seen them this year - I probably shouldn't make the effort to see them a fifth time. The only band I've ever seen more than that is U2 (ten times) and that is in a span of a decade!

Man, it's been so long since I had to actively search for blog readers that I forget how to do it. I wonder how long it will be before someone reads my rambling.

I'm going to Bulgaria

I'm sick of office life and sick of just trying to scrape by because the cost of living is outrageous in DC. I've been working at the same organization for four years and I am bored. I miss Europe. I'm going to Bulgaria.

Why Bulgaria? Because it became a member of the EU this year, and it won't be too long before it goes the way of Ireland - a prosperous, over-priced haven for corporatists and tourists. Ok, maybe that's an exaggeration, but you get the point. It's the last place in Europe that an adventurer can go to get away from the hoards of obnoxious American college students, in my opinion. I know absolutely nothing about it. Oh, and there's that whole "Why the heck are you going to Bulgaria factor?" that will come out of the mouths of everyone I know. Ha, ha! What a weirdo!

I'm aiming for staying for a month in Veliko Tarnovo, an old imperial city dating back to the times when Bulgaria mattered. Then I plan on staying for a couple of weeks at one of the many monasteries in the region - seclusion and all. I need to rediscover my soul, or something like that. After that I'm going to try to spend some time visiting friends in Ukraine, Czech Republic, Austria, and Luxembourg. Who knows what will come of the trip?

How can I afford it? The truth is, I can't, really. I will have a few thousand dollars to cover airfare, train tickets, accommodation, and food for three months. Fortunately, the cost of living in Bulgaria means you can actually afford to live there. That, and I'm not planning on doing much spending on "worldly things," as I am going there to do some reflection and try to figure out just where I am going with my life. Then I'll return from my vacation refreshed, focused, and ready to start another four year period of office life!

I can't believe I am just going to up and leave, but I am. I just wish I had the dough to get the plane ticket right now so I would not be able to change my mind. I'm not going to! I have to get away from this office!!!!!!!