Should the Government have Secrets?

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It is very naive to think that governments should have no secrets. Here is an example: You negotiate the exchange of one of several American soldiers who are prisoner in a foreign country, and of course you want them back. The foreign country says: "OK, we will give this one back to you on the condition that you never say in public that we tortured him." It is horrible and unpleasant, but what are you going to do? Publish this in the media? What about not only this prisoner, but the other ones?

It is not an unrealistic example. One time, when Franco was still dictator of Spain, the Spanish government promised not to execute a political prisoner on the condition that his lawyers did not publicize the fact that he had been tortured. The lawyers were indignant because it is a disgusting deal and they went to the Press. The prisoner was garroted. What good did that do? It is easy to defend your principles with the life of somebody else.

The best example we know of secret deals happened during the Cuban crisis in 1962. We escaped narrowly a third world war thanks to a deal between the USA and the USSR about the withdrawal of US missiles from Italy and Turkey. If you think that you could have done better, go into politics or work for the State Department: don't blow what your Government does by publishing it to have your name on Facebook. 

If you dislike what your Government does, vote for the other guy next time. Half of the country does not like what the Government does, then it is the turn of the other half to be unhappy about it. We call this democracy, we have no need for traitors.

What the USA did wrong during the Cold War was very public and accepted by everybody at the time, such as favoring fascists over democrats as foreign allies. Maybe we should protest the crimes we know before we protest the conspiracy we don't.

Viva Walmart! Down with Duke!

I love Walmart. Sure enough, for its prices, but also because of the jobs it produces. You should have seen the opening week of the last Walmart here in Savannah: every employee was smiling. Many of the new employees had been looking for a job for a long time. I liked these smiles: I knew what they meant. I also liked the fact that Walmart carried the products of a nearby Alabama delicatessen. Their products were not sold here in summer because that small producer could not afford to buy refrigerated trucks. Now they got the strength of Walmart behind them. Good for them.
What I am less fond of is Walmart CEO Mike Duke. He kept the mentality of his mentors.
During the Cold War, bribery was a way of life, the cost of doing business abroad. I still remember how Queen Juliana of the Netherlands was led to abdicate after her husband accepted a million-dollar-bribe from the Lockheed Corporation. The minds were starting to change, not only in the US, but in many countries, realizing that paying bribes abroad was counter-productive. For Pete's sake, even the Russians signed the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention! Lobbying to water down our anti-bribery legislation is a sign of old age, and I'm polite about this (see details in the Washington Post).
The same Mike Duke, I heard, refused to follow the politics of McDonald who fights the terrible conditions met by pregnant pigs. There is no need to torture pigs, and the fight serves McDonald image. Burger King has similar pledges. See, the end of the Cold War: no bribery, cage free: signs of progress. Wake up, Walmart! Don't linger in past ideologies!

Nowadays, you need not only to sell cheap, you need an image. The image of Duke-Walmart is terrible.
Time for fresh air.

Hypocrisy is tiresome

 Image from: http://www.thedogrescuers.com/statistics--facts.html

If nobody was using any contraceptive method, all women, Christian or not,  would have 14 children. So all these scenes and posturing against contraception, that is pure political garbage.
Thanks to the same guys, we already have one  million abused and neglected children in this country every year that God made: to pressure people who do not want children to have kids (you will love them when they are born) is not working. Worse: it is criminal. Some people are not meant to have children (like some people are not meant to have dogs and cats). We may not like it, but it is a fact. It is also their right. 

The Harlot of Babylon

Image from Wikipedia

Governor Perry has invited his evangelical friends from Texas, Kansas and Yonder to an evangelical day of prayer that we badly need.
As it happens, the evangelical view is there to divide, not to unite Americans. They call Oprah "the Harlot of Babylon" and from what I read in the New York Mag the statue of Liberty is "demonic "
We suffer through this under the magic subtitle "freedom of expression."
Well, the good side of insults is that they are flexible. If I was inclined to pick on this, I would choose Jerry Springer as the Harlot of Babylon: to each its own; the sex of the harlot has not been determined.
And we can reverse this too, we could call Governor Perry "demonic" and the Statue of Liberty would become the Harlot of Babylon. It is more poetic this way.
 I cannot remember that any candidate prayed in public for political gain when I was young. When I was young, prayer was different.

Did you know Churchill was a Saint?

Image from the dailymail.co.uk and a paper from Beth Hale, 15th June 2010

I confess, I confess, I smiled when I found a site called WinstonChurchill.org this morning, very intent at proving that Winston did not smoke, did not drink, did not stutter, and that his father did not die from syphillis. I bet that next, they are going to prove that Churchill did not try to eliminate the civilian population of Mannheim. The members of that venerable institution are sure much younger than me, because it is not at all how I remember Churchill. 

We all admired Churchill. I got my first glass of champagne the day our street became "avenue Winston Churchill": my father decided that we had to celebrate. But we had no need of changing his image, we liked our heroes with flaws.
It is all about image nowadays, which is probably why the famous cigar was airbrushed from the picture in front of the Winston Churchill's Britain At War Experience  museum in London. Well, go ahead! I have seen already poor Presidents Kennedy and Reagan sanctified, do it with Winston too!
There is no flesh left on our heroes, that is why American children are not interested in history.
I never smoked, but this makes me feel like going out and buying a cigar. Romeo y Julieta was Churchill's favorite.

Laughable biography

I found this ridiculous site www.nndb.com where you can find a who is who of the history of the world.
All authors are defined in  terms like this:
Marcel Proust
Born: 10-Jul-1871
Birthplace: Auteuil, France
Died: 18-Nov-1922
Location of death: Paris, France
Cause of death: Pneumonia
Remains: Buried, Cimetière du Père Lachaise, Paris, France
Gender: Male
Religion: Roman Catholic
Race or Ethnicity: White
Sexual orientation: Gay
Occupation: Author
Nationality: France
Executive summary: In Search of Lost Time

So Proust was white and gay? 
What kind of donkey conceived these biographies? You can verify the sexual orientation of Voltaire and Diderot and Jean-Paul Sartre  (all described as white and straight). Aristotle was a white straight guy (you wish) and his student Alexander the great a white bisexual. There is no indication of a sexual orientation for the saints, I wonder why. I verified Augustine (you know, the saint who was such an inspiring sinner?) No mention of his sexual orientation. HA! 
Alexandre Dumas was "multiracial" (indeed his grandmother was a slave) and his son was "white". On and On: it is the pattern.
The whole setting is offensive and profoundly disgusting to me.

The greatest political mystery

No, it is not whether Sarah Palin will run, though a lot of journalists try to get us excited about it, like they tried with good ol' Trump who made them all look ridiculous, especially Anderson Cooper. Cooper said he was keeping Trump honest. And who is keeping Cooper honest, Donld Trump?
Trump got millions of dollars of free publicity out of his stunt, and it is just what he wanted: it does not matter to him what we think of him.
The greatest mystery to me is this. How come the same politicians, left and right, who appear so obnoxious, even odious on the floor,  appear to be competent, able and responsible in their respective committees?
Just spend 2 hours on C-Span and you will see that it is true. They are good people, left and right, in committees, and then they go posturing and insulting our intelligence in their general assembly.
What is going on?

Oprah: see you soon

I very seldom saw Oprah, because I am usually working when the show comes on. I was under the impression that she is a decent kind of person, it is not that frequent for TV personalities. So yesterday I did watch her last show.
She is a decent person. Moreover, I realized that we never see sincerity on TV (I am not criticizing the lack of it: we don't see sincerity because it is all about entertainment). She was all sincere yesterday. I am going to miss it.
Sincerity, just like that, it was very nice.

Lent in the Great South

Two ladies came to my door to invite me to celebrate Jesus' death. I was shocked and I told them it was not for me. I would celebrate a resurrection, but there is no way I'll celebrate anybody's death.
One lady looked at me sternly and said: "The Bible says Jesus died for our sins."
I answered: "You want to celebrate that?"
YES THEY DO.
You would think that they are a little be ashamed that somebody died for them, or worried that they may not be worth it, or try to be better persons to avoid Christ some suffering. But no, mainstream theology, specially in the South, says that the sacrifice of Christ is sufficient, you do not need to do anything, just accept it, and that is what they do. "Thank you Lord, I repent and I am washed of all sins ..."
Early theologians did not talk to the sophisticated narcissistic crowds we deal with today.
As a result, we got in Georgia a staggering number of people "in the system, " meaning in jail or in prison, or on parole. It is hard to find neighbors who never got to jail around here.

And in the USA, the best country in the world, there is close to one million kids abused or neglected every year.
A.D. of course.

How to be a genius

I started a small web site using wordpress and got the structure of it, then I got short of time and let it for a few weeks. There is no text yet, but nobody will look at it right? So it does not matter, I will finish it when I get the time.
Well, as of yesterday, I had about one thousand comments about it. About 90 percent of the people who comment congratulate me on how interesting my site is (how come? It is empty), say how much it made them think(???), thank me for my good tips and even say that I am a genius(who would not appreciate that!) About ten percent come with a slight criticism, in hope that I will click on their site and verify who dares to criticize me.
Of course you can add to that a few comments in Russian and a few ads for Viagra.
But I think that, overall, a thousand comments about NOTHING is quite a success.

The misery of Charlie Sheen

I have no interest in Charlie Sheen at all, I have never seen him play (sorry, Charlie) and I do not want to. But I resent the way he is treated by his friends in general and ABC in particular. It is obvious that Sheen is suffering some sort of manic episode: it is therefore easy to get interviews from a man who hardly knows what he says.
Suppose he has a physical problem instead of a head problem, say leper, this is the equivalent of telling him: "Show your fingers, Charlie, the public wants to know if they will fall off."
Good for ratings? Maybe, but what about basic standards of ethics?

The View had this morning a friend of Charlie explaining that Charlie has withdrawal problems: the friend is an hypocrite, he was the first to interview him!
They used to have interviews of Nick Nolte when he was at the peak of his glory and at the peak of his bad days. Now nobody cares how he lives or die.
This is not a decent way of treating human beings.

A History of Sex

Image from MaryCassatt.org
Mary Cassatt did not get married, which does not tell you anything about her.

The ways we are having sex do not change with time, but the ways we interpret it vary with time and place. For instance, the President of France, Francois Mitterand, wanted to be buried in presence of his wife and his mistress, and it is how the two women presided the official ceremony in 1996 (you can find a picture of it here) I heard of Presidents of the USA who had a double life, but I doubt very much that a scene like this would be appreciated by the American voters: different places, different point of views.

Similar differences can be observed in the past. A history of sex should be mandatory for US historians, because they fail to understand the simplest cultural factors of the past. I was listening yesterday to professor Brands re-telling to a fascinated audience that Eleanor Roosevelt warned her daughter, on the eve of her marriage, that sex was an ordeal to be borne.
What does it mean? That Mrs. Roosevelt did not like sex? That she was a lesbian? That her husband was a prick? I am not sure. The one thing I know for certain is that four or five great aunts and old cousins of mine, all born in the 1880s like Mrs. Roosevelt, told me the exact same thing when I got married. Women born in the 1880s in the bourgeoisie all had a Victorian education (Queen Victoria died in 1901.)
Good women were not supposed to like sex, only bad women enjoyed it; good women only suffered through it. So, men got married to a bourgoise who had children and they had mistresses for the fun of it. This not only explains La Belle Epoque and the can-can dancers with open drawers (unlike the abundant lace you see in the movies), but a lot of the early 20th century architecture. Paris is full of bachelors' pads of the period, with just one large front room, a small bath and a kitchen relegated at the end of a long hallway, so the servants could respect your privacy.
I do not mean that married women of the early 1900s did not enjoy sex, just that they were not supposed or expected to: the culture was so pervasive all over the Western world that several of the old women I knew were convinced that female cats were always raped (only the male cat enjoyed sex!)

Image from cat-lovers-gifts-guide.com

So what is the meaning of what Mrs Roosevelt told her daughter? It means that she was born in the 1880s.
Similarly, all the discussions about lesbians in the 19th-early 20th century have to be taken with caution. A woman who writes to another woman nowadays that she wants to sleep in her arms is probably a lesbian. One century ago, the same letter does not mean a thing: maybe yes (I am longing for you), maybe no (like: sister, I wish we were peacefully together).What people write reflects their culture and their personality, you cannot infer who they are from what they write out of both contexts.
Above all: why would you care about other people's sex life?


Useful reading: Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender in Victorian America (Galaxy Books) by Carroll Smith-Rosenberg
Florence Nightingale: The Making of an Icon by Mark Bostridge

Terrorism and Tacit Consent

Some years ago, I was convinced that my neighbor was a drug dealer, because I saw dealers going in and out of her apartment all day long. I was wrong: she would never deal because she was a very Christian person, but she sheltered the dealers. It was a totally new concept to me. Why did she do it? Because, she said, they were kids with no hope of getting a job. These dealers were hard to eradicate: they had been on our street for decades, but when that neighbor moved away, the dealers on the corner of my street moved too. It convinced me that dealing is the kind of crime that most often comes with a support group.

It reminded me of another Christian I had met in Ireland. He would never commit an act of terrorism, but he would always hide a terrorist. The idea of calling the police seemed to him equivalent to a betrayal.

Similarly, I knew of a very pacifist Palestinian who would never commit an act of terrorism himself, but he understood and would have protected terrorists. Why? He understood what they were fighting for, agreed with the ends if not with the means. And of course he was constantly subjected to propaganda. For instance he told me that the proof that "the Jews own America" is that the star of David is on the US dollar; I guess he meant the 13 stars from the 13 first states.

I do not understand tacit consent: to me, it is like shooting yourself in the foot; but it is a force that we ignore too often.

On Tiger Woods

Quite a few people made money out of trashing Tiger Woods, with excuses ranging from "the public needs to be informed" to "If I do not do it, somebody else will."
Well, tabloid guys, you should follow Tiger's example: quit that job and become better persons.

Two cents on health care

As soon as people hear my foreign accent, they ask me about health care in Europe. Is it true that you can wait a whole year for an operation? Is it true that public health care is horrible?
No, it is not true.
All these rumors come from people paid by insurance companies or by extreme right people who have so much political passion that they have become anti-Americans (look at the way they applauded when we did not get the Olympic games!)
I lived 30 years in France and one year in various British Isles and many years in Belgium. The most I ever waited for an operation was about 6 weeks. And then I was treated competently. The most I paid for an operation was about 300 dollars.
Is medicine in Europe perfect? Of course not. For instance, if you are a fifty years old woman, it is hard to find a doctor who would not answer your complaints with: "it must be menopause, do not worry about it"
When I was fifty and in trouble is the only time I really wished I had an interesting prostate. But I am sure it does not happen here, in the paradise of private medicine.

The romantic governor Sanford

I was wrong: the lovestruck Governor came back in the news.
I was not impressed when he refused the help of the federal government for his state: the first part of it was fine, honest post-Bush Republican worry about the national debt. The second part: how he was going to deal with South Carolina's problems was totally absent. So, I thought he was not presidential material: either he was unprepared, or he lacked the drive to keep himself informed on unemployment and to take a positive action.
Shortly after that, he disappeared into a lovenest, which is, in my opinion, a problem between his wife and himself, not between the electors and the press.
The only problem I have is that he cannot stop talking. It is hard enough to have your husband saying that another woman is your soul mate, but to say that you are trying to fall back in love with your wife is adding insult to injury.
You think it would stop there. It does not. My guess is that Governor Sanford keeps talking because it is the only way he is still in touch with the woman he loves. So now we are told that he has a book deal? Chucks, it is only on fiscal conservatism, and it fell through. What about how he sacrificed his true love for his constituents?
I am sure his wife would like the book. He is adding a book deal to insult to injury ? To be called a "magnificent Christian woman", under the circumstances, would not cut it for me, I would feel that it means I am sowehow a good person, not a very attractive one.

Many a wife is left wondering how come she never saw that her husband was a prick.

Abortion, abortion!

1. This society is in denial: the fact is that a lot of people do not want to have children and do not like children. The women in these couples get pregnant anyways. It is awful, but it is a fact of life. You prevent abortion, the kid will suffer. Proof? (a) Despite the wonderful efforts and pressures from the anti-abortionists groups, there is a million of neglected and abused children in this country every year. If God prefers one million long-suffering victims to abortion, it is a bizarre God. (b) Every day three children are killed, a good proportion by their own parents.(c) Being pregnant is a major cause of the murder of women committed by their partner.

2. I do not understand why one would kill a doctor to defend life. The reasoning is flaky. Why not start with killing all the guys who abandon their pregnant girlfriend, and all the people who practice incest, and all the guys guilty of rape (about 200,000 a year). Then maybe the anti-abortionists could consider killing all the parents who do not pay child support. I bet we would have less abortions then.

3 The whole debate rakes of hypocrisy: we call pro-choice people who quite often think that they have no choice, and pro-life people who often do not care about the life of children, as long as they are born.

Just in case you wonder about me, I was at the opposite of the problem: found it hard to get pregnant. I would be a happy octoplet mom nowadays, if I had had the hormones for it, the money for it, and the partner for it. But I fell short on these three conditions.

Miss USA's deep thoughts

Miss California is entitled to her own opinion. If you wait for her advice on any ethical problem, you deserve the opinion you get.

Torture useful?

All these gallons on water, and we do not know where is Osama Ben Laden.

Torture up close

People like me, born with WWII, have a different view of torture:it was in conversations so much that it was one of the first words you learned. I remember hearing of a man tortured by the Germans who was forced to count the whipping. It frightened me: I did not know very well how to count then, I must have been four years old. Then came Nurenberg: the American legal team said that torture was forbidden and that you were responsible for your own acts, even if your boss told you to torture somebody. The most awesome was that they did teach that to their own soldiers. Such was the American doctrine. This is why they hanged the main nazis and it is why I wanted to become an American.
In the following decades, most European countries did use torture, usually far away or just far enough from the mainland, in the colonies fighting for their independance (Algeria, Northern Ireland etc.)
When I worked with new colleagues or a new boss, the first question that came to my mind was would they betray me if there was a war? Would they betray you if you were a Jew? Most of them would, you learn to live with that. It is even worse with boyfriends. For anybody else, if a guy betrays you, he is just sleeping around; for me, he might send you to a gas chamber.
It is what happens to the mind of little girls in wartimes. I kept thinking: I want to die in America, where they do not torture anyone.
And finally my dream came true. Good thing I did not die last year.