Dead at age 80. Cellist, conductor, champion of human rights. There are many things in the Times obituary that I did not know. I may have to fire up my turntable (yes, they still exist; and mine can even play 78s). In the meantime, this.



No, I never played cello like that. Few have.

Since I chanced upon her years ago, I have worried when River didn't post in a while. Her last was back in February. During the silences, I knew it could be a simple matter that, with a few hours of electricity per day, she and her family may have more immediate uses for it than to power her computer. Or it could be worse. Much worse. Anyone, other than The Big Shopper McCain and his ilk, knows what much worse can be.

Now this:

On a personal note, we've finally decided to leave. I guess I've known we would be leaving for a while now. We discussed it as a family dozens of times. At first, someone would suggest it tentatively because, it was just a preposterous idea- leaving ones home and extended family- leaving ones country- and to what? To where?

Since last summer, we had been discussing it more and more. It was only a matter of time before what began as a suggestion- a last case scenario- soon took on solidity and developed into a plan. For the last couple of months, it has only been a matter of logistics. Plane or car? Jordan or Syria? Will we all leave together as a family? Or will it be only my brother and I at first?

After Jordan or Syria- where then? Obviously, either of those countries is going to be a transit to something else. They are both overflowing with Iraqi refugees, and every single Iraqi living in either country is complaining of the fact that work is difficult to come by, and getting a residency is even more difficult. There is also the little problem of being turned back at the border. Thousands of Iraqis aren't being let into Syria or Jordan- and there are no definite criteria for entry, the decision is based on the whim of the border patrol guard checking your passport.

No spoilers. You must read the rest. Then, if you haven't read all of her archives from the beginning, do so. Chronologically. It is a remarkable chronicle.

I'm sad that she and her family felt it necessary to make such a decision, joining about two million others who have done the same. Rather selfishly, I'm also sad that we will not have her outside-the-Green-Zone, not-sound-bitten, very personal voice. A representative of those that Iraq badly needs, and is ever-more-quickly losing: educated, secular, middle class. Of a once-possible mixed family who lived in peace. Proud of that which was. (Yes, I know about Saddam's depredations; I knew about them two decades ago; but that's not the topic here.) A woman who has seen her sphere of possibilities shrink year by year, month by month, and even week by week. Sometimes angry and bitter (color me shocked). Sane, despite the best efforts of sanity's worst foes.

But I'm glad that she will live.

All my hopes….

... I'll meet you 'round the bend my friend, where hearts can heal and souls can mend…
— River

Just got finished watching Keith Olberman's evisceration of Rudy Giuliani. Excellent. I hope that a video will available somewhere soon. I'll be watching for it.

Non-New Yorkers may not know that as late* as 8:30 am on 9/11, people were counting down the weeks, days, and hours. Last night's "speech" in New Hampshire was a vivid reminder. Non-New Yorkers should take a long, lingering look at the naked Rudy. It's not a pretty sight.


*Fixed an error.

Damn.

David Halberstam, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and tireless author of books on topics as varied as America’s military failings in Vietnam, the deaths of firefighters at the World Trade Center and the high-pressure world of professional basketball, was killed yesterday in a car crash south of San Francisco. He was 73, and lived in Manhattan.

[…]

Tall, square-jawed and graced with an imposing voice so deep that it seemed to begin at his ankles, Mr. Halberstam came into his own as a journalist in the early 1960s covering the nascent American war in South Vietnam for The New York Times.

His reporting, along with that of several colleagues, left little doubt that a corrupt South Vietnamese government supported by the United States was no match for Communist guerrillas and their North Vietnamese allies. His dispatches infuriated American military commanders and policy makers in Washington, but they accurately reflected the realities on the ground.

[…]

“He was not antiwar,” Mr. [William] Prochnau said. “They were cold war children, just like me, brought up on hiding under the desk.” It was simply a case, he said, of American commanders lying to the press about what was happening in Vietnam. “They were shut out and they were lied to,” Mr. Prochnau said. And Mr. Halberstam “didn’t say, ‘You’re not telling me the truth.’ He said, ‘You’re lying.’ He didn’t mince words.”

Double damn. We need a whole bunch of that non-mincing-ness right now.

Uh, oh. The creationists aren't going to likethis one.

Apparently, a bomb went off in the Green Zone, killing two Iraqi legislators. Earlier, an explosion went off on a major bridge, throwing about 20 cars into the Tigris River.

But you can go shopping for rugs!

"I do not want--as I believe most Americans do not want--to sell out American interests, to simply withdraw, to raise the white flag of surrender. That would be unacceptable to us as a country and as a people. But I am concerned--as I believe most Americans are concerned--that the course we are following at the present time is deeply wrong. I am concerned--as I believe most Americans are concerned--that we are acting as if no other nations existed, against the judgment and desires of neutrals and our historic allies alike. I am concerned--as I believe most Americans are concerned--that our present course will not bring victory; will not bring peace; will not stop the bloodshed; and will not advance the interests of the United States or the cause of peace in the world. I am concerned that, at the end of it all, there will only be more Americans killed; more of our treasure spilled out; and because of the bitterness and hatred on every side of this war, more hundreds of thousands of [civilians] slaughtered; so they may say, as Tacitus said of Rome: "They made a desert, and called it peace." . . .

Answer: Robert F. Kennedy, 1968.

Quoted by his son, at Huffington Post. Go read — and cringe and cry. If George has his way, will we have another black wall in Washington? Probably.

Who was it who said, "Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it?" Answer: somebody George never heard of.

I got this from a friend, M. If you like maps, it's great.

Bob Barr, hardly one of my favorite people, is leaving the GOP and switching to the Libertarians. [Take the pass.] Why them?

Several-fold. One, that the Libertarian Party, among all of the parties out there, is the only one that is true to my core philosophy of working to minimize government power and maximize individual liberty. None of the other parties, and especially the Republican Party any longer, is at all committed to that philosophy. And secondly, my great concern, manifested especially since 9/11, is the assaults on our fundamental civil liberties by this administration. [That's] personified, for example, in the disregard for the rule of law as exhibited by the warrantless NSA [National Security Agency] electronic surveillance in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. More recently, [there were] documented abuses at the FBI in carrying out certain of the expanded powers granted in the Patriot Act, namely, national security letters. And in January of this year, the testimony by the attorney general that this administration does not believe that the fundamental right to a writ of habeas corpus is an important, fundamental, constitutional guarantee. So what we have is a party, the Republican Party, to which I was very proud to belong for many, many years, no longer being committed to a core conservative philosophy. The Libertarian Party is so committed, and I felt that at the time that it was necessary to make a change because of the seriousness of the assaults on our civil liberties.

Another organization he's joined, the American Freedom Agenda, is composed of suddenly concerned conservatives, including one ex-member of the Reagan administration. A reason I'm inclined to be wary is that any group that has Richard Viguerie as a member bears watching.

Still, the reasons he cites above I can't disagree with.

Though he still thinks his role in the Clinton impeachment farce was justified, he regrets his vote for the Patriot Act: "It's a vote that I would not cast now, knowing how the powers in the act have been abused, and [seeing] how vast not just the Patriot Act powers but other powers that the administration has simply taken for itself or that Congress has granted have increased dramatically the power of the federal government."

In other words, he didn't see this coming. A shame. Many of us did, and we were vilified for it.