Titanic Post

Soccer isn’t very popular in the United States, but then nothing European is popular here. We don’t like foreigners, or dark skinned people, and anything to do with sex. Foreigners are often dark skinned and don’t adhere to proper sexual suppression. We don’t like the French because they didn’t join our war in Iraq. We don’t like the Germans for the same reason, although they have over 2000 troops in Afghanistan helping us protect the heroin trade.

I think that we Americans have a deeply disturbing fear of anything foreign. It may be genetic like our inability to understand the metric system or the inability of some foreigners to fully appreciate our true greatness. Another problem is that we don’t know where all these countries are and that makes us uneasy. In the qualification games for the World Cup we protested having to play two countries at the same time when we where scheduled to play Trinidad and Tobega.

Soccer has always been associated with immigrants and Europeans and enjoyed here mostly by yuppie liberals and small kids. Soccer is global and bilateral and thought to be a front organization for a “one world government.” Our American sports, football, baseball, and basketball, are unilateral just like our invasion of Iraq.

Conservatives more than liberals are suspicious of soccer, preferring NASCAR type events that have more opportunity to advertise and engage the oil and auto industries. Jack Kemp, a former gridiron player and the Republican candidate for the vice-presidency in 1996, opposed a 1986 plan for the US to host the World Cup. “I think it is important for all those young out there, who some day hope to play real football, where you throw it and kick it and run with it and put it in your hands, a distinction should be made that football is democratic, capitalism, whereas soccer is a European socialist sport,” he said. No one listened and the games were held here in 1994.

Soccer, a game actually played among the world’s nations, is often said to be is a metaphor for international war, (Honduras and El Salvador did go to war over a soccer game in 1969.) Here in the US, war functions as a metaphor for international sport. In South America the Brazilian national team at play is a metaphor for dance.

Long past time for a ride, and Tuesday was a good day for it. Little wind and plenty of sunshine. Just as I don’t know where this post is going, I didn’t know where the ride was taking me. At nine in the morning, the heat suggested I should ride up into the mountains. All the dirt roads and trails in the forest were closed because of severe fire danger and I was on the V-Strom, which prefers asphalt over dirt. Everything was good. Reaching Cloudcroft, NM at just under 9000 ft. (ca. 2700m)elevation, it was chilly enough to add a liner to my jacket to keep warm. (more…)

I am thinking about the walls of Jericho, the fortifications of Troy, the Maginot Line, the Berlin Wall and that monument to stupidity they’re erecting along the West Bank. None of these walls brought lasting security to their builders and eventually they all fell.

I’ve heard several times now politicians saying how “good fences make good neighbors.” Not only is that phrase showing a prison warden mentality, but it is a misrepresentation of Robert Frost’s words in the poem “Mending Walls.” The phrase “good fences make good neighbors,” is not by the narrator of the poem, but the narrator’s dumb-ass neighbor.

American Indians have it right when they say that humans have the right to walk anywhere they want on the face of this earth. As one who lives on the border, I don’t want a wall between “us” and “them!” Remember— fences work both ways and they will also cause resentment and distrust. Remember, too, the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness phrase? Does this apply to everybody or just to the pale skinned, male, wealthy citizen who emigrated here earlier?

The problem is not economic refugees coming across our border. The problem is the political coruption of Congress taking money and favors from corperate lobbyists. They are the ones who created the push and the pull to cross our borders in the form of NAFTA, CAFTA, and policies of the WTO, the IMF, and the World Bank. And, I might add, they support the corrupt regimes south of the border.

Walls meant to confine free people fall as do the regimes that build them.

Immigration is real in southern New Mexico. Living only 90 miles from the Mexican border, there is nothing academic about it: they are here. Traditionally, people come and go between Old and New Mexico. There are ties between Mexican Mexicans and Mexican Americans going back for centuries and to them the border is no barrier. What’s more, Mexicans were here before we “Anglos” even thought about gettin’ here, but that’s beside the point. Mexican citizens come here to enjoy the cool of the mountains in the summer time. They visit our Space Museum and our zoo. Some come to visit relatives and others come to work on the ranches and farms. Others work construction jobs such as brick laying, roofing, and cement finishing. This is not only because they work for less, but also because there is a shortage of skilled workers here since the demise of trade schools and public schools’ insistance on academic preparation

Yet illegal immigration is a problem and we have to deal with it. (more…)

On April Fools Day, I received an email warning all US citizens that the Citgo gasoline company was solely owned by the Venezuelan government and that the socialist dictator of Venezuela vows to bring down the US government for its imperialist aggression. The email further stated that the president of Venezuela, Hugo Chaves, has close alliances with Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, singer/activist Harry Belafonte, and as a photo suggested, with the anti-war activist, Cindy Sheehan. At first reading I thought it was a prank, but the real intent of the email was to make readers aware that by buying gasoline from Citgo, they would be financing the overthrow of the American government. “Why should U.S. citizens who love freedom be financing a dictator who has vowed to take down our government?”

There are several things wrong with this depiction. First, the charge that Chavez is a dictator is not entirely true.  Chavez is a heavy-handed ruler and does wield more power than I would be comfortable with, but he is not a dictator in the classic sense.  Venezuela is a federal republic with a democratically elected president and a national unicameral assembly. There are at least seven political parties including a very vocal opposition.   That he is heavy-handed can happen in any democracy with a weak balance of power.  Compare Venezuela’s heavy-handedness with the work of our current president, non-existant opposition in Congress, and a compliant press, happy to reprint press releases from the administration and Pentagon, without question.  (more…)

What good is free speech, if you don’t use it? I am referring to the Danish cartoons that have caused so much violence among fundamentalist Muslims, but I also refer to the American government’s policy of mis-information and our press with their incessant tongue-clucking fear of offending somebody (mostly their advertisers) by showing the cartoons so we would know what the matter is.

The cartoons were requested by an editor to test whether or not Danish cartoonists were self-censoring; some were, but twelve cartoonists submitted work equating Islam with terror and suppression of women. One of the interesting results of the uproar that followed, is the insinuation by some that being provoked justifies a violent reaction. That could lead to thinking that free speech causes violence and would be a great pretext to suppress free speech. Another, more concrete result has been the long term self-censorship by our mainstream media.

It is the fundamentalism part of the equation, the rigid belief that ones own belief is the only true and everlasting belief that leads to violence when that belief is challenged or ridiculed. It also leads to censorship, political correctness, and the absurd fear of offending some group by anxious non-fundamentalists. It is, of course, quite alright that government treats this group like pieces of inferior shit or is even delighted to bomb them into blobs of bloody protoplasm–just don’t offend anybody.

Our government, however, is acting very sensibly in their policy of mis-information. Because, if we actually knew what they were up to, we just might vote the bastards out of their jobs. if we don’t begin to use what’s left of our free speech, we will eventually lose it!