The Pursuit of Happiness

A lot of friends and acquaintances have had the occasion to ask the perfectly reasonable question of why I wanted to give up a good home in a beautiful city on the Pacific -- where I have nice friends and associates, a decent job which pays well, health insurance and all the trappings of middle class American existence -- in favor of life on the road and an uncertain future.

(They usually don't use highly caffeinated run-on sentences like the foregoing, but you get the idea.)

Part of it is for the same reason that dogs lick themselves (because I can!!), but the overarching reason why is very personal, and has to do with the quest I have been on since I was self-aware enough to think of such things: I want to live a good life and be happy.

That quest has taken me in a lot of different philosophical directions and to a lot of destinations on the Earth. I think of it as kind of a winding path that has trended in the same general direction. There was a period where I thought the key to a good life was self-knowledge and spiritual discipline. I studied Zen under a renowned master and practiced about as diligently as an attention-deficient slacker could. Then, I spent a number of years of my life learning, so that I could earn a decent income - never as an end in itself, but what I saw as a necessary means to an end at a time when I was lurching from job to job in an island economy. Then I entered a period of my life where I sought meaning in being a good partner and supportive boyfriend: again, not as the be-all and end-all, but as an important step I felt I needed to take.

It seems to me that a good life is lived by giving your gifts fully in the service of some greater good. Some people find that good in family: I see that as a noble and appropriate purpose, though one that will not be mine, for biological reasons at least. Others find it in religion, or in a career. I have never been especially religious, though I would say that I am fairly intensely spiritual. And, as far as a career goes, it's hard for me to imagine that I could find lasting satisfaction in a job, at least as the Anglo-American economy is presently constituted. I find the world of work far too reductively focused on abstracts like profit and productivity... and in any regard, the things I think of as valuable (equality, justice etc.) are not really market commodities.

This journey, for me, will be a time to break out of my routine so that I can meditate deeply on what my true gifts are. In addition, I intend to leave myself open to inspiration as to how I can give those gifts in a way that will help create the kind of world I want to see... or, in any case, somewhat slow the slide into barbarism and brutality that I see happening day by day.

I'm trying really hard not to pre-judge the outcome, though it's not like I haven't thought long and hard about these issues. I have the gift of communication - this makes itself manifest in my ability to speak multiple languages and also to explain complicated technical issues to others in an effective way. I am widely-read and curious about the world, and history: I feel I have a pretty good understanding of this historic moment and the underlying trends -- and this understanding is not limited by either an America-centric or a Eurocentric perspective. And above all, I have a real desire for social justice and want to play some small part in creating a world that works for everybody.

It may be that I somehow find a job that pays me to harness my gifts in order to create social change on a massive scale. More likely, I will have to put the pieces together in a more ad-hoc way: a job that supports my values along with some sort of part-time occupation in organizing, speaking writing... who knows.

Jefferson declared the right not to happiness itself, but its pursuit. Aristotle held that a happy life could only be judged so after death; until then, as Solon admonished Croesus, a man could not be called happy, but merely fortunate.

I have been fortunate to have lived a life that has allowed me to learn a little about what brings lasting happiness. I am very fortunate to be in a position where I can actually act on some of the things I have learned.

"They hate us because of our freedoms"

This just in...

"Confessed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four alleged co-conspirators are to be arraigned at Guantanamo on Thursday before a military commission, ahead of a trial later this year. "

Aiiiight. That's probably a good idea. Rule of law, and all that...

"Even acquittal would probably leave the men in U.S. custody indefinitely. The government has determined them to be "enemy combatants" and serious threats to the United States and its allies."

Um. Yeah. OK.

περιπατητικός

I have made the transition - everything I own now fits in the back of a 2005 Volkswagen GTI. I was dreading it, but the feeling is one of surprisingly enjoyable lightness and freedom. This is probably what the Roma and Pavee feel - nothing tying you down, the road beckons... if I could fit a bed into the GTI, I might never get an apartment.

Gave notice for June 27, and I have every intention of being at the Grand Canyon the next day.

Watch this space...

moonlight sleeping on a midnight lake

Sunday, June 1 marks the beginning of Nomadness 2008, otherwise known as "me being homeless for an unknown period of time." The term "homeless" in English is really too broad - I much prefer the Italian senza tetto, "roofless." I'll have lots of places to stay, friends with couches, motels across America, etc. However, it may be quite some time before I have some fixed location to call "home." And I'm cool with that... for a while, anyway.

This weekend, D is taking off, and her friends (myself included) convinced her not to rent a U-Haul and drive it all the hell the way across the country with her car in tow in the days of $4+ gasoline. I think it's the best choice, but the fact that it's coming at the last minute means she's just dumping all her stuff - including things I left with her - on friends, on the VFW thrift store, and on the street. And it's not, in reality, any different to me if strangers get the $600 Serta Perfect Sleeper I bought in 2005 or if she does... but it sure feels different somehow. Anyway, another lesson in letting go, I guess.

Meanwhile, my best friend - the guy I'm counting on to be my travel buddy - has gone missing. It's not the first time... but I'm increasingly on edge.

Just how totally random is my life about to become?

smart

Smart: The Gas Can Blues
Uploaded by hourigan

"Always should be someone you really love..."

Indeed.



I think that there will be a day - not too far off - when anti-same-sex-marriage laws will be viewed in much the same way as anti-miscegenation laws are today.

For now, though, we'll have to endure the din of "marriage should be between a man and a woman!!" from now until at least November. What probably nobody will note is that it's men and women who are like the least interested in solemnifying their pair-bond with a trip to the altar...

When the match found his destiny

I was minding my own business
when suddenly, out of nowhere
you ran your fingers through my hair.

Whoosh!

And in an instant
my head filled with an impossible light
and I turned into smoke, and dust

Gone, gone away
vanished, into the blue sky
and joined with

everything

Three fiddy

A "500-year" storm devastates The Nation Formerly Known As Burma, killing tens - if not hundreds - of thousands.

Multi-year droughts in southern and eastern Australia - and the Southeastern U.S. - parch the land and put further upward pressure on the price of food.

The icecaps are melting, along with the permafrost... darkening the Earth and releasing the potent greenhouse gas methane into the atmosphere in the mother of all vicious cycles from hell.

I have been really wary of all the global warming hoopla, because it has a feeling of being sort of "flavor of the week" stuff - remember when recycling was cool? Then Al Gore put out a movie and everybody became climatologists. And as an old-school environmentalist, it worries me to see global warming push all other issues off the agenda, as the land and oceans get more and more toxic, species destruction reaches insane rates, and our air turns more and more into an unbreathable murk.

Worse - like some 50s horror movie monster - here's nuclear energy making a comeback: The Really Stupid Idea That Wouldn't Die. Using nuclear fission to boil water and create huge amounts of radioactive waste is now being trotted out as the answer to our global warming ills, as if replacing one long-term problem with another is any kind of solution.

There is, however, no question that the danger of global warming to human civilization is fast outstripping everything else. And since many of my friends are human people, it is something that is increasingly freaking me out. The U.S. has successfully foot-dragged for long enough that we are approaching - if not already past - the point of no return. And even if Saint Barry Obama wins the Presidency (something I am not at all sure of, especially if we go to war with Iran this summer), he will still be facing a very powerful let's-keep-doing-nothing lobby trying to stop the U.S. from taking any meaningful action until New York looks like Venice.

Bill McKibben wrote a pretty powerful piece that was published in many U.S. papers today, including the LA Times. In it, he describes Project 350, a campaign that he's starting to build public interest around the idea of lowering the level of CO2 in the atmosphere to 350 parts per million, a level that NASA climatologist James Hansen has determined is necessary to "preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on earth is adapted."

Now, I am one of the few who actually believes what global-warming-denier nut jobs say all environmentalists believe: that action to stop climate change is actually a secret plot to destroy capitalism. Because, fundamentally, the manic desire for growth, growth, growth at all costs is what brought the environment - and all of human society - to the brink of catastrophe. We are not going to get out of this with shiny hybrids and compact fluorescent bulbs. The relationship of people to how things are produced and how they are disposed of is going to have to undergo a complete shift if we're going to avoid a global collapse that will probably take industrial society with it. Carbon credits, or the promise of millions of jobs in the "green industry" is just not going to cut it.

So yeah, I'll go "single issue" on this. The goal is to put "350" out there as much as possible, in advance of the successor to the Kyoto Protocol to be signed in Copenhagen next year. I mean, it's not like I think my dinky blog and my beloved six subscribers can do a whole lot of world-changing on our own, but I like to feel I'm doing my small part.

And, like I said in my last post... I'm keeping my eyes open for my next Mission in Life, and who knows but that this might be a part of it?

unknowingness

I opened a book at random today, feeling directionless and unclear about what I should be focusing on. The book was The Way of the Superior Man by David Deida. I opened it to Chapter 12, "Be Willing to Change Everything in Your Life." The chapter begins:

A man must be prepared to give 100% to his purpose, fulfill his karma or dissolve it, and then let go of that specific form of living.

I have been feeling increasingly worn down lately with sort of playing the waiting game before my trip. It's like I feel my inward journey can't begin until the outward one does. What's been challenging to me is "keeping the decks clear" until the trip begins. I want to just be wide-as-the-ocean open to whatever presents itself as I travel.

Of course I'm daydreaming and fantasizing about living in particular places and having certain careers. There's no way for me not to do that, and I won't even try. But what is coming clear for me is that the trip has already begun. So I am opening my eagle eyes right now, and keeping them open.

Deida writes, later in that same chapter:

There is no way to rush this process... it is important to open yourself to a vision of what is next You stay open to a vision of your deeper purpose by not filling your time with distractions... consciously keep yourself open and available to receiving a vision of what is next. It will come.

I love it when a plan comes together

Yeah... some day I will learn patience. Throughout my life, a path has always presented itself, even if things aren't initially clear. I guess part of the cost of not doing things the "easy" or expected way is a certain amount of ambiguity in the way my life develops. You'd think I'd be used to that by now...

Anyway, towards the end of last week I spoke to my best friend from high school, whom I was planning to go visit after I left San Diego. I mentioned to him that I'd been toying around with the idea of road-tripping instead of flying and he said he'd like to fly out here and drive back with me. Suddenly, the whole dynamic shifted - instead of a long solo expensive drive across the country I was looking at an adventure with my best friend at a time in our lives when we need nothing so much as a good adventure.

So, at the end of June, we'll be leaving the West Coast and driving East, with a planned stop at the Grand Canyon but otherwise playing it pretty much by ear, going wherever the winds and Google Maps for Mobile lead us.

I'll be doing my level best to blog from the road using Jott on my phone, and hope to upload pictures at the odd wireless hotspot. This promises to be a weird experience, so if you want to follow along please feel free to click the "Subscribe to" link at the top to receive my new FeedBurner feed (h/t Christal) by email.

Now, in case you are wondering, I have no idea where I am going to end up. So there'll be, at least, some degree of suspense to the story!

Stay tuned...

Kapu

The Hawaiian concept of kapu is fundamental in the Polynesian system of thought, and it's not readily explicable to the foreigner. As a non-Polynesian, I am far from certain that I understand it with any depth, so let me start by saying that this is a personal reflection - if you want to understand kapu, start by asking a Polynesian. Humbly.

The word entered our language as "taboo," from Captain Cook's account of his time in Tonga:

Not one of them would sit down, or eat a bit of any thing.... On expressing my surprise at this, they were all taboo, as they said; which word has a very comprehensive meaning; but, in general, signifies that a thing is forbidden...

It's the "very comprehensive meaning" part that I'm concerned with here.

When I was in Hawai'i, I spent a couple years working at a charter school set up and run by Native Hawaiians. Their aim was to perpetuate Hawaiian cultural values into the modern day, so lessons in science, technology and English were interspersed with oli (chant), hula (dance) and native crafts, and every day began and ended with Hawaiian ritual.

In earnest whiteboy fashion I tried very hard to understand not just the form but the significance of Hawaiian ritual. Traditional Hawaiians have a very real, tangible connection to the gods and spirits. They are considered to be made manifest in plants, animals, the weather, and in the sea and sky. Spirits were often invoked to bring success to a fishing voyage, but also in a familial and intimate ways. One of the children at the school told me that her family considered themselves related to the shark 'aumakua (spirit), and that her grandmother used to wade out to feed the sharks in a nearby bay, without danger.

Kapu, as I understood it, meant to create a separate, sacralized space for things or events. In traditional culture, certain foods, for example, were kapu for certain people to eat or kapu at certain times - this is the meaning of kapu, in the sense of "taboo," that is most familiar to non-Polynesians. However, a deeper meaning of kapu can be seen in the general kapu that was placed upon all during the Makahiki or Hawaiian New Year. For about four months following the rise of Makali'i (the constellation Pleiades), there was a general time of rest and religious observance, during which war was forbidden and daily life was filled with celebrations and games (the tradition survives in a tourist-friendly fashion today as the Aloha Festivals).

During Makahiki time in 2001, the school where I worked decided to put all the students and teachers under kapu, enjoining certain behavior and encouraging a positive and supportive spirit (custom and respect prevents me from describing the kapu directly). A Hawaiian friend, whom I greatly respected, told me of receiving a similar kapu from a teacher of his, who passed away before lifting the kapu - thus, the friend told me, he lived his whole life under kapu.

Something about this appealed to me. At the end of Makahiki time, I asked if it would be allowable for me to not take part in the lifting of the kapu. This was discussed among the older teachers, who saw the request as rather odd, but none of them saw any problem with it. The friend who had given me the kapu told me, in essence, "just remember what you are getting yourself into."

Basically, ever since then, any tricky shit I try to get away with gets smacked down hard. I'm not that shady a guy in any regard, but I have to say I watch myself a lot more closely now than I may have done in the past. And I have found it to be true that, if I do anything somewhat out of the ordinary to help others, I seem to be showered with good fortune well out of proportion to anything I might have done to "earn" it.

As I've said, I'm not a Hawaiian. And I was raised to be kind to other people and avoid being a dick whenever and wherever possible. I truly believe that these are good values in and of themselves, not a way to avoid misfortune and get goodies in my life. At the same time, my life under kapu has really underscored the perennial teaching that everything you do comes back to you.

Big time.

the darkness spreads

This makes me sad and angry:

On Monday night, the area around Rome's city hall rang to chants of "Duce! Duce!", the term adopted by Italy's dictator, Benito Mussolini, equivalent to the German "Führer". Supporters of the new mayor gave the fascist Roman straight-arm salutes.

Maybe Italy hasn't changed that much since my grandfather fled in 1921. Or, just maybe, I let my hopes cloud my judgment.

And this country's one terror attack away from a wave of repression that would make even Umberto Bossi look like a wuss.

Poor, poor Italy. Poor America.

This my first test of...

This my first test of blogging from my cell phone. I may end up using this as I am traveling around after May, so I wanted to give it a shot. Hope it sounds good. listen

Powered by Jott

Requiem for a dream?

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross described seven stages of grief. I would say that I went through a grieving process the "death" of my Italy dream. I'm not sure if I'm ready to move on yet, but I definitely feel less like I'm at an Irish wake if you catch my meaning and I'm sure you do.

The seven (some list five) stages of grief go like this: Shock or Disbelief, Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Guilt, Depression, Acceptance and Hope.

1. Shock or Disbelief. When I opened the email from my aunt, my breath literally began to come in little pants, and my mouth went dry as my heart banged away in my chest. I don't think I've ever experienced a more palpably physical shock from just reading something.
   
2. Denial. I remember thinking it was like a mistranslation, or something a friend wrote for them in English. That was before I got the letter directly from my aunt, in all its Italianate melodramatic glory.
   
3. Anger. Denise got angry for me, as I recall, and then I got mad at her for rushing me through the Seven Stages when I had just settled into Denial...
   
4. Bargaining. I wrote perhaps the best off-the-cuff composition I've ever written in Italian. straight through from beginning to end without recourse to dictionary or conjugation lists. I gave it my all, though I held back from reminding her what our branch of the family did for their branch of the family after the war.
   
5. Guilt. I blamed myself, beyond what was reasonable, for the misunderstanding. I chalked it up to cultural differences, my own assholishness, anythibng other than a cranky old aunt who more than once had the ovaries to suggest we weren't really related.
   
6. Depression. And many bottles of wine.
   
7. Acceptance and Hope. Am I there yet? I don't really know. I still have pangs when I read Italian, and I'm still not comfortable writing more than a few words in the language. I blame Berlusconi for Totti's injury and my aunt for Berlusconi.
   

In short, I'm bitter at a whole nation of fifty million because of a disagreement with relatives. That is, pretty much, what passes for Acceptance in my family, and I'm OK with it. For now.

despair

Definitely one of the worst weeks of my adult life... and I've had some hum-fracking-dingers over the years. I had huge amounts of responsibility dumped on me at work, learned belatedly about an enormous crisis my best friend just passed through and a truly horrible, toxic, shocking letter from my Italian aunt basically disowning me and telling me never to speak to her or the family again... it's a wonder I didn't drink San Diego dry.

Fortunately I've grown out of drinking my way through problems, and I have to say I've never passed through a crisis without turning it into an opportunity of some sort. I always view my life as a story - probably something having to do with spending my childhood with my nose in one book after another - and I am sure there will turn out to have been a reason for all this angst.

Just don't know what it is yet...

The power of positive drinking

After a week of pure hell flying solo at work, I was ready to get out and burn off some steam last night. Actually, I got talked into it... I have been in shock since the tax bill came in and spending money causes me actual, physical pain lately. But DJ Mark Farina from San Francisco was spinning at a club very nearby, so I went for it. His set was surprisingly uninspiring, but it had been a while since I've stayed out late, so I am totally glad I did it. Thinking in euro helps too... €12.63 isn't a lot for a live set!

The inevitable (mild) hangover had me pensive today. I've been kind of resigned to the idea that I'm just going to have to work in Milano, even though I really don't want to. At a given point in my semi-dazed state today, a small still voice inside wopped me upside the head and screamed "Perchè?" Sure, it's true that most of the jobs are in the North, but I have no reason, other than pure defeatism, to assume that I'm not going to find good work in the capital of the Italian Republic and fourth-largest city in the European Union? That pays well. Near a metro station. With flexible hours and a sensible dress code.

Shoot the moon, right?

Strange matters

This is another one for the Six Degrees of Separation file. I was reading an (actually quite disturbing) article on the nytimes.com site, and noticed something in the "Most Popular" sidebar entitled Asking a Judge to Save the World, and Maybe a Whole Lot More. Being somewhat interested in the whole world-saving business (though less so in courts and judges), I clicked through.

The article concerns a scientific instrument called the Large Hadron Collider, operated by the Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire outside Geneva. The LHC, which is in the final stages of being cooled to within a few degrees of absolute zero, is the largest particle accelerator (or, if you will, "atom smasher") ever built. I did a research fellowship at Caltech in 2004 with Harvey Newman's group, working on ways of managing the massive amounts of data (terabit scale) pouring out of an instrument, called the Compact Muon Solenoid detector, to be installed at the LHC. Yeah yeah yeah I know, this is deeply geeky, but some incredible science work is about to be done in Europe that may change forever the way we perceive the universe.

However, there is a court challenge in America -- and isn't it always the Americans with their court challenges? ;-) -- that is attempting to stop the experiment from going forward. William L. Wagner, a colourful individual who, among other things, founded a "World Botanical Gardens" that blocked one of my favourite mountain biking trails near my old home in Hakalau, Hawai'i, is now trying to block this experiment as well.

Basically, Wagner (who was a nuclear safety engineer before he began soaking that Umauma hillside with glyphosate, though his doctorate is in biology) fears that the high energies produced by the LHC may cause "mini black holes" to be formed, or micromicroscopic bits of strange matter called strangelets. The danger of these little bits is presented as a sort of ice-nine scenario, where the strangelet creates a chain reaction that turns every nucleus of every atom of normal matter on earth into strange matter. Freaky stuff.

Fortunately, this has been extensively studied already, and given the difficulty of proving a negative, scientists believe the possibility of this happening to be very very minute. Wagner brought a similar lawsuit to stop the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider from being commissioned. He was unsuccessful, and astute readers may have noticed that the Earth did not turn into "a hot, large lump of strange matter" when the RHIC came online back in 2000.

Wagner's story gets more amusing the more you look into it. He has appeared on the tinfoil-hat radio show Coast to Coast to talk about some of his "scientific discoveries". And he and his wife were indicted last month by a grand jury on counts of identity theft and attempted theft relating to an alleged attempt to obtain $340,000 from the botanical garden he started on that chunk of sugarcane land in Hawai'i.

Wagner says that he and his wife were owed the money, since they worked for free at the gardens for years. But after the board fired them both, they then sued the company for back pay. But the company says the pair failed to notify the directors of the action, with Wagner instead serving the papers on his own wife as company treasurer - even though she no longer was. The board says that Wagner - hilariously - then appeared in court as a company officer. He was thus able to gain a default judgment in his own lawsuit's favour, all without the knowledge of the board.

He lost the suit, and his appeal was rejected just this month. I have many years of built-up dislike for the dude, but I must admit that, having read this, I'd like to meet this guy once. This is world-class chutzpah we're talkin' here... the guy would definitely be worth a laugh.

Anyway, I was struck by the confluence of my old neighbor and my old research project, as I'm preparing my life for another radical change. Maybe we're all going to turn into strangelets come August. All the more reason to live life to the fullest..

Roberto Saviano meets Donnie Brasco

I've talked before about my hero worship for Italian journalist Roberto Saviano, who risked his life to write about the Mafia, and is on the run forever as a result.

L'espresso published (in Italian) an interview conducted by Saviano with Joe Pistone. This ex-FBI agent is better known by the name under which he infiltrated the New York Mafia over a period of six years: Donnie Brasco. Immortalized in film by actor Johnny Depp, Pistone's infiltration led to 200 indictments and over 100 convictions of mobsters. Dude is, to put it briefly, also a hero of mine.

When my two heroes met, in the pages of L'espresso, I rushed to pay the ridiculously inflated price at the fancy newsstore in La Jolla where they sell foreign magazines. Because Saviano often uses unusual words, I had to read the article with my fat Rizzoli Larousse on my lap. At a given point, I realised it would be a perfect translation project. Little did I realise what an all-encompassing task it would become.

Several evenings of obsessive work later, My First Big Translation is complete, and submitted here humbly or your approval...

Saviano & Donnie Brasco
by Roberto Saviano

Break the relationship between clans and politicians. Destroy the appeal of the bosses. And fight the Italy-USA Mafia axis. This is the strategy by which the FBI has neutralized American mob families. It is explained by Joe Pistone, the secret agent immortalized by a great film. Interview with Joe Pistone alias Donnie Brasco

Better to meet where there are other people, we'll draw less attention... Joe Pistone is not very relaxed when he's in Italy, he looks at the faces around him, keeps a low tone of voice, is in a state of alarm, but he handles himself calmly. Nothing new in his life. I wait outside the restaurant. Joe does not see me. Joe Pistone is a sort of living icon, a walking agglomeration of legends, and I am quite worried. In anxiety to be before his talent. A tragic, complex talent.

What remains for me the mystery of Joe Pistone is his ability to blend, to transform, to believe in his own performance. Or rather: to divide his life into watertight compartments to the point of bringing out the worst of himself not as something external, but as a facet of his being. A few minutes pass, and I decide to go in. Joe is in a corner. Back to the wall. He is sitting at the table, eating olives and spitting the pits out into his hand. I was waiting outside the restaurant and he was inside a while. "It would have been better to wait sitting down in here, rather than standing outside - unless you want to be a target." With me is Stephen Pitrelli, who records everything and helps us translate. He is also worried about the meeting. But we pretend to be only interested in understanding better what Joe tells us. Stefano is dressed up. Me, like always. Pistone greets me and gives me a look: "It must be difficult for an Italian to dress as badly as you." Joe Pistone is Donnie Brasco, the character that became famous through the film by Mike Newell. In reality, for many years that name was a closely held secret. A name known only among affiliates of the Bonanno family, and especially by the FBI. And at the FBI, only a small group knew that Donnie Brasco was the name of the agent infiltrated for six long years in the most powerful Mafia family in New York.

Joe seems the opposite of Johnny Depp. There was, perhaps, more similarity between Al Pacino and Lefty, the mafioso who brought Donnie into the mob believing him to be a dealer in precious stones. But Joe is clear: "The film is a film, my life is my life." He starts to talk about it. "You know," says Joe, "in New York, the Mafia had great power in the construction sector and in the field of waste management; they virtually monopolized these two markets. They were able to do it through the control of transportation, of the trade unions and through the relationship with politicians. Now – after getting hit hard by the police – they just aren't there anymore, or they're not so strong. Now, everything has changed. The younger generation wants everything immediately. They do it with drugs, so they can make money fast, right? My generation, when I was infiltrated, there was drugs, of course, but they were controlled by the bosses. The rule was: no drugs in the neighborhood. Sell in Harlem, to the blacks. Or rich kids, New York pussies. But nothing in our neighborhood. To the younger generation it doesn't matter, because they want the money now, immediately. They are also using drugs - in the old days it would have been unthinkable for the boss of a Mafia family and his closest collaborators to be doing coke. For all these reasons, there is great friction between the old and new generations, a sort of generational conflict. The new gangs have lost control over the trade unions, because the younger generation doesn't have the experience and diplomatic capacity to bribe politicians like their fathers did. It would take them too long. They live in the moment. Young people have no political capacity. Once they lost the trade unions they also lost control of the trade of the country. Once they lost control of trucking, which moves the trade, it was no longer possible to control prices. "

The strange thing for Joe Pistone is the great power that Italian cartels continue to have in Italy and the world. All of the mafias of the world are inspired by the logic, action, and investment of the Italian model, although in New York for years now Italians have delegated to Albanians, Nigerians - and especially Russians - control of the territory. Joe asked me to bring an American copy of Gomorrah and he turns the book trying to hide the cover; yet another gesture of caution. And then he asks me: "they will not recognize the American cover in Italy, right?"

When he spoke before the United States Senate to report on his investigation, Pistone said that the more the Mafia became Americanized, the more distant it became from Mafia mentality. The more the United States entered their veins, less reliable they became. "You know, in the United States the Bonanno family at some point called in a lot of guys from Sicily, as a way of being more safe. Boss Carmine 'Lilo' Galante basically imported the Sicilian Mafia to the United States. He had the foresight to understand the direction the Italian-American young people were taking, that they were losing their 'culture.' By the third generation they were definitely moving away from their roots. So he brought the Sicilian Mafiosi, the guys that were more loyal, directly to America. He knew that the Sicilian Mafiosi could go around America and kill at will, because if they were arrested, no one would know who they were. And they were more reliable: no drugs, no extravagance. Discipline and honor."

Joe, in the six years in which he was infiltrated, saw the entire organization chart of the clan structure. "Over time Sicilians became very powerful, so much so that today inside the Bonanno family there are two factions, Sicilian and American, and they are at odds with each other. The Americans are jealous of the Sicilians imported by Bonanno, and Sicilians think the Americans are too soft. Because Americans don't kill policemen or politicians, while those in Sicily had no such scruples. Eventually the boss Galante was killed. This led the Americans to form a close alliance with the Sicilians, who were promised positions of power within the Bonanno family."

Every so often while I'm talking with him, I forget it's the star Donnie Brasco in front of me. We let the talk about organized crime go. I say, "Joe, you know that in my neck of the woods there is a myth on both sides of the fence. Among carabinieri but also people from the Camorra. Donnie Brasco is Donnie Brasco because he has balls. The rest counts for nothing in their logic." Joe smiles and comments: "Forget about it!", The famous phrase of all movie gangsters that's continually repeated and that all kids from my hometown use, imitating Al Pacino and Johnny Depp. He translates it as 'che te lo dico a fare'. The Porsche is a great car, 'Forget about it!', the Yankees have a lousy hitter, 'Forget about it!', Alicia Keys has the most beautiful ass in the world, 'Forget about it!' An expression that confirms. Confirms everything and the opposite of everything.

I ask if Joe, when he was infiltrated, ever received orders to kill. He repeats, ironically, "forget about it". On several occasions he was sent to kill people, but says they always managed to escape. "I have been assigned the 'contracts'. And I had to say yes: you can not refuse, otherwise you got killed. Let me just tell you this: If it had been a choice between me and a mafioso, it would have been him. I would have killed him. But it is a situation which I have never been in. One day I was with other Mafiosi at the club where we hung out. I got a phone call and the person on the phone tells me that the man who I had to kill was at a certain address . The other guy told me: 'Okay, let's go do this guy.' I understood that I couldn't get out, because if we had gone there and I didn't kill the guy, I would have been whacked myself. Then I realized that he had to die. But when were getting ready to go, another phone call came, and it said that that information was fake. So we didn't go. But I knew that I had to keep in mind what I was willing to do to save my life. "

To keep in mind who he was. This was the most difficult thing. To keep it only in his mind, not in his chest, in his stomach. Inside he had to be Donnie Brasco, not Joe Pistone. Away from his family for six years, six years where if you confess to yourself who you really are, you commit errors, mistakes, inaccuracies, and you make yourself scrupulous, moral. The opposite of what you should be. Six years where you have to make tape recordings, remember faces and moods, understand what is happening and what will happen. Joe tries to do it with faith. A belief in fate - like saying we all die sooner or later, when it is my turn I can't do anything about it, but before that moment arrives, I will do everything to live. "Once, a guy challenged me: 'If you don't convince us you're really a jewel thief you'll end up wrapped in a carpet'. I had to save myself with words, without showing any anxiety, just saying: 'You want to blow me away, just try it, I'm right here'.

On another occasion, a guy accused me of having stolen money the clan made from drugs. To determine if it was true, they held meetings. If you panic in a situation like that, you lend up 'taking a trip', that is they take you outside the city and give you a bullet in the neck. So rather than move away to avoid taking the trip, I stayed in the neighborhood, just outside the door where they were meeting. Waiting for them to finish, without the slightest fear. That's it. There's not much else to do." I can't understand how you can pretend to not be afraid. You can pretend to smile, pretend to be cheerful, pretend to be a Mafioso, but I still can not imagine how to pretend to not feel fear. Do you feel it and dismiss it? It's impossible to understand, there are mechanisms that you can only live, or rather that you can only survive. If you are lucky. I just say "I admire your ability to this having two separate lives. In my opinion it was what let you save your soul. "Joe looks at me with an air of melancholy and just responds, "Thanks."

We start to eat, and so the tone is lower. The tape recorder fills with the sounds of cutlery scraping dishes, with the clinking of glasses for silly toasts we make on disparate things, "to life", "fuck the Mafia," "to Italy," "to the South". The initial anxiety and tension diminishes, and we even speak the name Donnie Brasco aloud without Joe doing more than glancing around the restaurant to see the reactions. None. We continue to talk in a normal tone. "In my country", I say, "being part of the Mafia means having sex appeal, and having almost a groupie following." Joe Pistone confirms the universality of such things. "In America it's the same. When you are in the Mafia and you go into a restaurant, they give you the best seats. Even when I go into a clothes store. (translator's note - this part I couldn't figure out: Le donne, quando sei un boss, te la danno sul braccio...". Usa sempre un'espressione che non conoscevo, 'on the arm', qualcosa di simile a 'te la danno sull'unghia'. ???

I question whether after years living in a certain way, even if it's difficult, if you can miss that kind of life can mancarti, but Joe is categorical: "No, I have never missed it. For me it was just a job. I was lucky to grow up in a neighborhood where the Italian mafia was everywhere, I was familiar with them, and they never fascinated me. I didn't think they were anything special. " In the film, the rapport between Depp and Pacino is based on a kind of nostalgia. Brasco knows that will lose the affection of Lefty: that, perhaps, as soon as he discovers that Brasco is an agent, Lefty will kill him. But it wasn't like that, in reality. "When you make a movie, the hero has to show his feelings. If the hero tells the police: 'Do whatever you want with this bastard, kill him. It doesn't matter to me', then the scriptwriters change the scene because the public won't like it. They wanted to give the impression that I was sorry for the people who ended up in jail or dead: they didn't want to give the impression that my character was heartless. But maybe when I became Donnie Brasco I really was heartless ".

I was born and raised in an area where many people dear to me ended up entangled in the Camorra, and I have never been able to keep them out of my affections and emotions because they chose different paths than I did. You can't always force your heart not to love someone because they do something you despise and hate with your brain. I ask him how he didn't feel this natural rapport for someone born in the same place, and was able to denounce people he loved deep down. Joe, however, is clear in saying that he never investigated people who were forced to enter into relationships with the Mafia but who were not affiliated: "You understand that. When I worked for the FBI, I was asked if I had information about people in my neighborhood, people I knew growing up. I said no, because we had lived together. At the end of the day, it's the same in southern Italy as it is in New York."

In six years undercover, Joe Pistone was only able to see his three daughters, who lived in New Jersey while he worked in Manhattan, once every six months. A huge deprivation. "When I returned and believed that I was still a father, scoprivo that I was not any more. That I was used to being a man without a family and that my family was no longer accustomed to me. But I was determined to act in the name of a better society, for a better country, I knew that in the end, my daughters would benefit from what I did. It was the only possible way to look at things. And my family understood. " Pistone did arrest almost 150 people affiliated with the Bonanno clan on him and there was a $500,000 price on his head that was never removed, ready to be delivered to anyone whoever did the pleasure of the Italian-American Mafia of Manhattan and eliminated him. At trials, from behind bars, killers of the clan - his former friends - made the sign of a gun with their hands, the index finger pointing at him and making the sound of a shot. I find the courage to repeat that I do not understand how you can really overcome fear. When I was assigned escorts, the police colonel Gaetano Maruccia told me, quoting Roosevelt: "The only thing to fear is fear itself". It was a way to encourage me to continue my work, to do so calmly and not to fall into the trap of clans to wear a constant anxiety that drives you away from yourself. "I agree fully," says Joe: "I have never really been afraid. If you were, they could read it in your face. I was always on alert, I always knew that if I made a mistake I could die. Fear makes you make mistakes. "

Of course, I tell myself, but afterwards? After the work undercover is finished? How do you live peacefully? You can't continue for decades not to be afraid of fear, can you? "The Mafia, we have evidence, sent people to every corner of the United States to bump me off. In the end it wasn't different from when I was infiltrated because in my mind I was doing the same thing. That I was right. Since I was right, there was no reason to be afraid. Because I was one of the good. And I stopped to think: What is the worst that can happen to you? You could get killed? I didn't se that as such a bad thing. "

Joe is basically a simple man. At peace with himself. He has always kept in mind that it was a job, that he was in the right and that would have done everything possible to do his work. He never considered himself either a hero or an bad guy. But his family, what had to happen to his family, was not as easily passed from his conscience. "That was the hardest time for my life. When the price on my head has been extended to my family, and my family had to get new identities and move elsewhere. Yes, I felt guilty, because it is not a normal life. Not ever. When you meet new people you can not have any conversation about your past, who you were, what you did. It's hard for the family. This situation has put more constraints on them than on me. Even more, because I know how to take care of myself. " I ask whether he has tried to hold on to his memories. "The first thing I did was to tell someone the story of my experiences, so that if anything had happened to me, there would have been a person able to tell the story. There was an FBI agent that I told everything to. He was my friend. I was also a friend of Judge Falcone. "

Then, it's Joe who's asking me questions. He says that hard to imagine an anti-Mafia battle with any hope of winning in Italy. We both realize that the Mafia we have today is even more powerful than the one he knew at the time when he was Donnie Brasco, when the American clans had their hooks in politicians and controlled the drug traffic, and also trucking, and the waste management and construction industries, all the rackets that have continued to grow and strengthen here. The Italian bosses own companies, many local bosses have college degrees, their profiles are very high. He is almost overwhelmed by the bourgeois ferocity of Italian organized crime. "You know, Americans Mafiosi are gangsters - they are considered gangsters and see themselves as such: they start on the path as common criminals, and then climb the steps of the organization. Only in the classic films do you see them acting like businessmen. They feel outside of normal society, a caste apart. Here, on the other hand, I know that there are doctors and lawyers who are part of the Mob."

Joe tried to dismantle the Mafia myth in his reports when he was Donnie Brasco. "In America most of the Mafiosi don't build villas and palaces. Their vanity focuses on clothes, cars, women. It was not difficult to break down the illusion, they're not like the Italian bosses who make legends. Only Gotti has done that in the USA. " Coming from Joe, it's impressive. I wonder to what extent the Italian-American Mafia was attackable also because it never tried to make their reality match a cinematic image, while ours has followed Hollywood, not only by building villas identical to those in the movies, but especially those wanting to realize dreams of greatness and power. And there is riuscita. It's not possible while discussing this does not speak of 'The Sopranos', the show that seems to have changed the course of the history of television and the mafia in the United States and in half of Europe.

"In America the Mafia is known only in larger cities, such as Chicago and Detroit, because the mafia activities are concentrated in industrialized areas. In other areas of the United States - as in the South - the Mafia has no influence is not, because there's no industry. Therefore we can say that the reason for the great success we have is that the people were fascinated by something that often did not know, and the chance to see on television the other side of 'good' Mafia family, as violent and corrupt, that no transmission had ever seen. I like The Sopranos, but even some Italian-Americans got mad about it. In the United States there are organisations that are created to protect the image of Americans of Italian descent. It may seem paradoxical, but in the United States it is very common that when someone meest you and they find out that you're Italian, you hear comments like 'oh, you must be in the mafia'. I can't stand that. "

I tell him a story that involves him: "Once a Neapolitan boss said that Joe Pistone became Donnie Brasco to make fools of the Bonanno because he didn't have the face of a Mafioso, but of a real man. On the other hand, his friends said, to make fun of me, that there was no hope for me, with the face that I have." Joe laughs: "I think that it's ironic if the bosses feel that they need these excuses to justify it. I fooled him and that's it. There are no excuses."

I fooled him and that's it. Not in his face, but in other ways which I notice more and more as the evening goes on, that he relaxes and Joe Pistone continues to fill the glass. Joe knows how to size up the people in front of him: he weighs them with a glance, he sees you in detail, it almost seems he can tell when the last time you cut your nails or if you carry pictures of saints in your wallet. He looks at me, he asks me about the dogtags I wear around my neck: "A paratrooper, right?". Then he wants to know: "How come you wear those three rings?" I try to explain that it is an old custom where I come from, one that I follow more for tradition than for belief. Three as in Father, Son and Holy Ghost. "Beautiful", he tells me. Even Joe also likes to wear symbolic jewelry. He shows me the Claddagh Ring, an Irish symbol of friendship and love, a ring that he shares with his wife. It's always the details that show how much better reality is than imagination and how much greater than Johnny Depp is this now elderly gentleman, hale and hearty with his pot belly. Like this symbol of the Celtic faith, something that has nothing to do with Donnie Brasco and with all the imagery Italian-American, chosen to symbolise the link with the woman who has remained close to him throughout their lives, despite everything.

Joe Pistone gets up. We are finished. He gives me a big hug, wrapping his arms around my shoulders, and then pulls out a camera. Stefano switches off the recorder, wipes the sweat from his face, and he too embraces Joe. Then, he takes the camera from Joe and has us pose for a picture. Piston and I seem like a couple of drunk tourists. Or like an uncle who came from America to find his nephew. We don't care anymore who is looking at us, we stand up in the dining room of the restaurant and begin to take flash pictures, horrible snapshots, but good enough to capture a moment too important for us to worry about the beauty of the images. A strange feeling, amused, calm. Joe puts on his hat and coat, and leaves. We hug, again and he tells me, looking straight into my eyes: "Keep it up, here in Italy, there is so much to be done, we are at the beginning." We will continue. It's a promise, Donnie... a promise, Joe.

The triumph of Kultur

From Chris Floys, this classic response to a bedwetting blogger spewing the now standard complaint that "that 17 European populations such as Greece, Italy, France etc are beyond (I think he means 'below' -ed.) birth rate replacement levels."

Responding to the fear that Western culture will collapse under the weight of the outbreeding hordes of bown Muslims, Floyd writes:

Of course, the reality is that most of what we know of Greek and Roman culture (the lodestones of the flaccidists) was passed on only because it was saved by....a bunch of dirty Muslims. Otherwise, much of this legacy of human civilization would have been lost to the neglect -- and extremist frenzies -- of Christendom.

'Twixt Hither and Yon

I've been in a funny sort of drift lately, and it's occurred to me that it's because I'm neither here nor there, four months shy of my next big leap into the unknown. Everything has a sort of unfinished feel to it: I'm working on my health goals, my language skills, my financial situation... and everything's a work in progress. I'm neither surging with energy or dragging myself along.

Part of it is that I'm not really in the driver's seat, for once in my life. Atlanta is pretty much a D thing, and while I'm happy enough to get out of San Diego and try something new, it's not like I'm filled with passionate intensity at the idea of living in Georgia. And so much else seems in flux: will I get my dual citizenship, will the economy crash and burn, will John McInsane become president and bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb the world?

The phrase "calm before the storm" comes to mind.

It's sunny out.

the "automatic" Italian citizen

The Italian embassy has details on how to become a citizen "automatically:" if you are a descendent up to the second degree (i.e. a grandchild) of a former Italian citizen, you can obtain citizenship by living in Italy for three years.

This is perfect for me, as my grandfather renounced his Italian citizenship pretty much the moment he stepped off the boat. Now the only question is whether I do it straight (i.e. pick up and move to the boot for three years) or crooked (hang out at my cousin's for a few weeks until they send somebody around to check if I'm really living there).

Either way, perbacco, I'm becoming a citizen!

the joy of HDR

uccello pescatore
Inserito originariamente da paolaccio

This is my first excursion into the wonderful world of high dynamic range imaging, and this dude happened along to give me a subject...

I'm not blown away by the quality of the image, but you do get a little sense of the psychedelic colour of the ocean yesterday... all the rain water washing down made sort of a finger-painting effect on the water.

Damn, I can see myself wasting a lot of time with this new toy...

funktionslust

I just discovered this new word: funktionslust - German for “pleasure taken in what one does best.” Having spent so much of my life as a round peg trying to cram himself into square holes, it actually took some thought to figure out just what it is that I do best. Other than napping, for example, or taking long walks.

Having spent much of my spare time in the last year trying to read L'Espresso and struggling to follow Giorgia Todrani's manic raps on Radio2, it sort of belatedly came to mind that one can actually use one's language skills to make money. I've been resisting for some time the idea of changing careers, having put so much effort into getting a computer science degree even though I have no real interest in the field (other than the ability to earn a buck). To a large extent, it's a sunk cost fallacy, but so many years struggling to find a job have made me very resistant to leaving a field where I have literally never had to look for work.

Felicitously, though, translation holds out the very real promise of being able to pull together my various strengths - language, technology, writing - in a way that may be very marketable. I'm in the process of learning what I can about breaking into the field, and meanwhile have tried my hand at doing some Wikipedia translations for free.

A new adventure! Sometimes, it's just what I need.

Ama e fa' ciò che vuoi. - Sant'Agostino d'Ippona

Delusione amara

Well, the citizenship gambits all crashed and burned, so I'm left with my original plan A: living in Italy for three years, and applying at the end of the second (the old Art. 9, comma 1, lettera a del legge 5 febbraio 1992 n. 91 deal). I don't know why it knocked me back so much, I guess it is hard to imagine both of us being able to get over there and work as stranieri for three years. The idea of getting citizenship first seemed so much easier - D even joked that she might marry me now! But as always with me it seems, the right path is the hardest path. So be it.

Chilling around the apt today with a broken refrigerator, and still shaking off the effects of a rough Friday night. We keep asking ourselves why we do this to ourselves - we both seem to have such an appetite for self-destruction.

But the sun is out! Finally! Another beautiful California January day...

Home is where you wear your hat

We got back from Hawai'i on Friday morning. It was kind of a weird trip - for once I had a visceral feeling of what "neither here nor there" means. After thirty months, there's really nothing left of me there... though there are familiar people and places, nothing really resonated as "mine." So, it was nice to see a lot of people, though I spent the trip in kind of a fugue state. I do feel much more comfortable here in San Diego, though it's not exactly home in any sort of emotional sense. So here I am... at least not living out of a bag! I guess I really am a nomad by nature.

Today's big news is that I heard back from the vice consul that my Italian citizenship application has taken a big step forward: a letter was sent to the National Archives checking to see if my grandfather ever naturalised. If not, then he wasn't a citizen... therefore my dad had dual citizenship and so do I.

And then...



Me? Americano? A chi lo dici?!

more depredations of the Scary Dysfunctional Father in the Sky

The stupid... it burns:

They shook their fists at God and said, “We don’t care what God says, we will issue our legal brief to support gay marriage in San Diego!” Then Mayor Jerry Sanders mocked the Christian vote and signed off on this rebellious legal document to support same-sex marriage. And then the streets of La Jolla under the Mt. Soledad Cross began to cave in.

They shook their fists at God and said, “We don’t care what the Bible says, We want the California school children indoctrinated into homosexuality!” And then Governor Schwarzenegger signed into law the heinous SB777 which bans the use of “mom” and “dad” in the text books and promotes homosexuality to all school children in California.

And then the wildfires of Southern California engulfed the land like a raging judgment against the radicalized anti-christian California rebels.

Crazy frickin' me: I thought it was al Qaeda...

Pat Boone's "modern American fairy tale"

This just transcends satire:

Snow White and Prince Charming would have made a perfect couple, as their parents would have dreamed – but under prolonged exposure to the same hypnotic spell, the boy was seduced by each of the Dwarfs and taught in the mandatory sex education class that he'd been born "gay." When he learned he'd contracted AIDS, he overdosed on drugs that were easily obtained just outside the principal's office, on the schoolyard.

I got nothing. Really.

a gathering of assholes

What chaps my ass the most is how these types of people claim to support the troops, but make that support conditional on politics...

it must be hard to walk with balls that big

Roberto Saviano - one of the few people on this Earth I would consider a hero - gave a speech yesterday. A singularly unheroic act, until you consider the fact that he is under a death sentence from the camorra (the Neapolitan Mafia) for committing the unforgivable crime of writing about them. His book was a runaway bestseller in Italy and has just been translated into English. The Italian Ministry of Internal Affairs assigned him an armed guard and relocated him out of Naples for his safety.

Saviano gave a speech on the first day of school in Casal di Principe, the seat of power of the Casalesi clan of the camorra, near the city of Caserta, not far from the palaces of the old Bourbon kings. In attendance were all the students of the city, the President of the Chamber of Deputies (analogous to the American Speaker of the House, pretty much)... and Nicola Schiavone, the father of the Casalesi boss Francesco "Sandokan" Schiavone. "There's no such thing as the camorra," the old man yelled from the crowd, and tried to take the stage before being blocked by Carabinieri (national police) agents. Saviano finished the speech, speaking calmly: "These are words that injure: that they are not whispered secretly but shouted with great pride, on a day when the president of the Chamber, and the president of the Antimafia Commission is present. I believe that nothing is changed, unfortunately.”

This is a man who must run for his life for speaking the truth... whose family is in danger because he took a stand. In a place where the price of life is silent complicity, he spoke up.

That's why I call him a hero.

"supporting the troops," part XXVIII

PTSD? It's your own damn fault, says the government.

It's undeniable, though, that yellow-ribbon stickers (magnetic, so as not to mar the finish on the Escalade) are far cheaper than a cognitive-behavioral or EMDR treatment program and SSRI medication.

"because the government's established by the Lord, you know."

Homeland Security intends to use the opiate of the masses to keep us quiet during martial law...

any candidate you want, so long as they're right-wing

The Political Compass website is the online version of the "smallest political quiz"my Libertarian friends used to carry wherever they went so they could annoy people in any setting. Seriously, though, it's useful for people who consider themselves "independents"- for many of us (especially in blogo-cyber-space-land) we're already pretty sure we're close to one or the other extreme.

If you're curious, you can take a test that places you on a grid based on the degree to which you are "left" or "right" on the economic scale as well as how socially libertarian or authoritarian you are. I, of course, am way the hell out in -9.12, -8.51 la-la land with the moonbats. w00t!

The folks who put together the website have figured out where the 2008 Presidential candidates fit on the map:

Some fracking choice.

"They are laying the bricks one at a time for a police state."

Big Brother really is watching you...

But pay no attention to that. Look! Is that Lindsay Lohan?

welcome to cyberKabul!

Apparently (according to the New York Police Commissioner), the internet is the "new Afghanistan:"

"It is the de facto training ground. It's an area of concern."

The report found that the challenge for Western authorities was to identify, pre-empt and prevent home-grown threats, which was difficult because many of those who might undertake an attack often commit no crimes along the path to extremism.

The report identified the four stages to radicalization as pre-radicalization, self-identification, indoctrination, and jihadization, and said the Internet drove and enabled the process.

Well, I'd put myself at Stage Two, unless if by "indoctrination," the commish meant "reading." If so, I guess I'm almost ready for my "jihadization."

Since the unspoken Stage Five is "incarceration in Guantánamo," followed closely by Stage Six: "sodomization with a glow stick," I'm thinking of sticking to my paper diary...

well all right then

What this country needs, apparently is another 2,996 people to die in a terror attack.

That's enlightening.

today's chicken little link

The sky is going to fall in October. However, although I agree it is going to be tough in America, the shitstorm is bound to cross the Atlantic. In fact, it has begun doing so already.

The Al Gore-like graphic is here.

sic semper Donklephants

There are many corners of the cosidetto "progressive blogosphere" where the Democratic party's latest act of complicity in, and support for, the steady increase in government control of our lives is being met with utter bafflement and confusion.

This is not one of those aforementioned corners.

I still remember that this is the Democratic Party that "ended welfare as we know it," imposed NAFTA, promulgated "don't ask, don't tell," and, oh yeah, that's right, overwhelmingly gave George Bush the political cover he needed to invade a country that did nothing to harm us. And they'd do it again, too.

There will be much sound and fury in the blogoverse as to whether the Ds are just the same as the Rs, or merely "the lesser evil." It is easy to lose the forest for the trees from a US-centric point of view. One thing that helps me keep perspective is that the Democratic Party would be a centre-right bloc in any nation in Europe, with the Republicans somewhere out in Front National or Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs territory.

(And before anybody asks, I'd vote Dem to keep Rudy Giuliani or Mitt Romney or Jean-Marie Le fucking Pen from winning California's electoral votes, but not with any real passion.)

in memoriam

On August 2, 1980 at 10:25 in the morning, a bomb exploded in the second-class lounge of the Bologna train station. The explosion was very violent, causing the collapse of the entire structure over the station including the offices of the company Cigar and approximately 30 meters of the penthouse. The Ancona-Chiasso train, on the first track, was also heavily damaged. The fiery combustion of a mixture of TNT and T4 cut short the lives of people coming from 50 different cities, both Italian and foreign.

The final toll was 85 dead and 200 injured.

Il 2 agosto 1980, alle ore 10,25, una bomba esplose nella sala d'aspetto di seconda classe della stazione di Bologna. Lo scoppio fu violentissimo, provocò il crollo soccorsidelle strutture sovrastanti le sale d'aspetto di prima e seconda classe dove si trovavano gli uffici dell'azienda di ristorazione Cigar e di circa 30 metri di pensilina. L'esplosione investì anche il treno Ancona-Chiasso in sosta al primo binario. Il soffio arroventato prodotto da una miscela di tritolo e T4 tranciò i destini di persone provenienti da 50 città diverse italiane e straniere.

Il bilancio finale fu di 85 morti e 200 feriti.


The victims - Le vittime
ANTONELLA CECI anni 19
ANGELA MARINO anni 23
LEO LUCA MARINO anni 24
DOMENICA MARINO anni 26
ERRICA FRIGERIO IN DIOMEDE FRESA anni 57
VITO DIOMEDE FRESA anni 62
CESARE FRANCESCO DIOMEDE FRESA anni 14
ANNA MARIA BOSIO IN MAURI anni 28
CARLO MAURI anni 32
LUCA MAURI anni 6
ECKHARDT MADER anni 14
MARGRET ROHRS IN MADER anni 39
KAI MADER anni 8
SONIA BURRI anni 7
PATRIZIA MESSINEO anni 18
SILVANA SERRAVALLI IN BARBERA anni 34
MANUELA GALLON anni 11
NATALIA AGOSTINI IN GALLON anni 40
MARINA ANTONELLA TROLESE anni 16
ANNA MARIA SALVAGNINI IN TROLESE anni 51
ROBERTO DE MARCHI anni 21
ELISABETTA MANEA VED. DE MARCHI anni 60
ELEONORA GERACI IN VACCARO anni 46
VITTORIO VACCARO anni 24
VELIA CARLI IN LAURO anni 50
SALVATORE LAURO anni 57
PAOLO ZECCHI anni 23
VIVIANA BUGAMELLI IN ZECCHI anni 23
CATHERINE HELEN MITCHELL anni 22
JOHN ANDREW KOLPINSKI anni 22
ANGELA FRESU anni 3
MARIA FRESU anni 24
LOREDANA MOLINA IN SACRATI anni 44
ANGELICA TARSI anni 72
KATIA BERTASI anni 34
MIRELLA FORNASARI anni 36
EURIDIA BERGIANTI anni 49
NILLA NATALI anni 25
FRANCA DALL'OLIO anni 20
RITA VERDE anni 23
FLAVIA CASADEI anni 18
GIUSEPPE PATRUNO anni 18
ROSSELLA MARCEDDU anni 19
DAVIDE CAPRIOLI anni 20
VITO ALES anni 20
IWAO SEKIGUCHI anni 20
BRIGITTE DROUHARD anni 21
ROBERTO PROCELLI anni 21
MAURO ALGANON anni 22
MARIA ANGELA MARANGON anni 22
VERDIANA BIVONA anni 22
FRANCESCO GOMEZ MARTINEZ anni 23
MAURO DI VITTORIO anni 24
SERGIO SECCI anni 24
ROBERTO GAIOLA anni 25
ANGELO PRIORE anni 26
ONOFRIO ZAPPALA' anni 27
PIO CARMINE REMOLLINO anni 31
GAETANO RODA anni 31
ANTONINO DI PAOLA anni 32
MIRCO CASTELLARO anni 33
NAZZARENO BASSO anni 33
VINCENZO PETTENI anni 34
SALVATORE SEMINARA anni 34
CARLA GOZZI anni 36
UMBERTO LUGLI anni 38
FAUSTO VENTURI anni 38
ARGEO BONORA anni 42
FRANCESCO BETTI anni 44
MARIO SICA anni 44
PIER FRANCESCO LAURENTI anni 44
PAOLINO BIANCHI anni 50
VINCENZINA SALA IN ZANETTI anni 50
BERTA EBNER anni 50
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LINA FERRETTI IN MANNOCCI anni 53
ROMEO RUOZI anni 54
AMORVENO MARZAGALLI anni 54
ANTONIO FRANCESCO LASCALA anni 56
ROSINA BARBARO IN MONTANI anni 58
IRENE BRETON IN BOUDOUBAN anni 61
PIETRO GALASSI anni 66
LIDIA OLLA IN CARDILLO anni 67
MARIA IDRIA AVATI anni 80
ANTONIO MONTANARI anni 86

oh, you mean *that* illegal wiretapping program...

So Abu G revealed that there is yet another secret surveillance program that we know nothing about.

I wonder - just how many secret programs do they need? Why can't they just have the one? It seems like - um - once something is secret, then it's, you know, secret. Unless it's like fucking Spy vs. Spy up there in Washington.

I feel like we are all just going to wake up in Oceania one day.

Update: the always excellent Jane Hamsher has much, ever so much more, with a different literary allusion. Let me just take this opportunity to point out that, should the blogs this era survive the memory hole, FDL will almost certainly be the primary source for much of the research into the collapse of democracy in America....

state of insanity

Last night it took me an hour and forty-five minutes to get home, traveling a distance of about 35 miles from my office to my house.

In a midnight deal, my state Assembly voted to take a billion dollars from mass transit in order to balance the budget.

The mind reels.

with a whimper

Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs Avigdor Lieberman (Avigdor is, of course, Hebrew for "Joe") recently said, in public, that the US and EU had given Israel the green light to bomb Iran.

The response in the Western media was immediate, strong, and unequivocal... silence. A Google News search for "avigdor lieberman iran" turned up a whopping 39 articles, only 15 of which dealt with the revelation, and the only non-Israeli one being - I am not making this up - Wonkette.

So we are about to watch the Middle East burst into flames, and the only coverage here is in the ass-fucking blog.

Sweet.

King George

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures. He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within. He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the consent of our legislatures. He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation: For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us: For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States: For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world: For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent: For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury: For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences: For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies: For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments: For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people. He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

people who did NOT have their sentences commuted, vol 1

The first in an occasional-OK-maybe-one-time-only series:

Clarence Aaron

Clarence Aaron was a college student in 1992 when he introduced two dealers to each other. They paid him $1,500. Nine kilograms of cocaine were traded. A second deal didn't happen. Yet when the feds arrested the group, they charged Aaron with dealing 24 kilograms of crack cocaine, because one dealer was going to turn the cocaine into crack and the second deal had been set up. Aaron failed to cut a deal by pleading guilty and testifying against others. Aaron's sentence? Life without parole. That's right, Aaron wasn't in charge, he wasn't a professional dealer, he had been charged with a first-time nonviolent drug offense and he's serving the same sentence as the treasonous FBI-agent-turned-spy Robert Hanssen.

You might expect that sort of over-the-top sentence in the Middle Ages or some hellhole dictatorship that does not value human life. An enlightened nation, however, has no business locking up a kid and throwing away the key for life -- because he did something both criminal and stupid when he was, as Bush once described his early years, "young and irresponsible." I can't help but believe that if a white college kid had screwed up like this, unlike the African-American Aaron, he would have received a more fitting sentence.

Bush should commute Aaron's sentence this year, because it is the right thing to do. He also should work with the U.S. pardon attorney to release other prisoners serving sentences that far exceed their crimes. While in office, Bush has issued 97 pardons and two commutations. Two commutations are too few. Julie Stewart, the president of Families Against Mandatory Minimums, hears that the Bushies don't want to commute sentences that comply with guidelines, no matter how barbaric they are. "Why have a pardon attorney's office?" she asked rhetorically. "The Founding Fathers gave (the pardon) to the president for the very purpose of exercising it when the punishment doesn't fit the crime."

Read PBS Frontline's interview with Aaron.

Weldon Angelos

The Supreme Court this week declined to review the case of Weldon Angelos, leaving in place his obscene sentence of 55 years in prison for small-time marijuana and gun charges. The high court's move is no surprise; the justices have tended to uphold draconian sentences against constitutional challenge. But it confronts President Bush with a question he will have to address: Is there any sentence so unfair that he would exert himself to correct it?

So far, Mr. Bush hasn't found one. He has commuted only two sentences, both of inmates who were about to be released anyway. Mr. Angelos, by contrast, is a young man and a first-time offender who is now likely to spend the rest of his life in prison. His crime? He sold $350 in marijuana to a government informant three times -- and carried, but did not display, a gun on two of those occasions. Police found other guns and pot at his house.

The U.S. district judge who sentenced him in Utah, Paul G. Cassell, declared the mandatory sentence in this case "unjust, cruel, and even irrational."... And in an extraordinary act, he explicitly called on Mr. Bush to use his clemency powers to offer what he as a judge could not: justice. Judge Cassell recommended that Mr. Bush commute the sentence to 18 years, which he described as "the average sentence recommended by the jury that heard this case."

Mr. Bush put Judge Cassell on the bench.... His exceptional discomfort with this case -- and his passionate plea for presidential mercy -- ought to carry weight even with a president so disinclined to use the powers the Constitution gives him to remedy injustices.

Fuckwad.

"how bout 'fuck you,' how you like that"

The Dipshit Dauphin in 2004:

"If there's a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is," Bush told reporters at an impromptu news conference during a fund-raising stop in Chicago, Illinois. "If the person has violated law, that person will be taken care of."

Fucker.