The ability to see a movie for $1 in this day and age (and in a mostly-intact 1936 Art Deco single-screen theatre) compensated for the bus ride across the Columbia. Given the somewhat hostile customer service, I'm not sure if I'll be back. I'm not sure if it was due to a "what are those freaks doing on our side of the river" attitude or if they get that pissy with everyone who is carrying a backpack. ("It might have a bomb inside." -- Oh, please! As if a second-run movie house in a city most people haven't even heard about is going to be a terrorist target. As if I couldn't have a small loaded pistol in my pants pocket, or my friend couldn't have a bunch of dynamite under his baggy shirt. As if the lath-and-plaster wall between my backpack and the auditorium would be any sort of an effective blast shield.)
Needless to say, no theatre I've patronized on this side of the river (or in Seattle, or in the Bay Area, or in Santa Cruz) has ever cared one iota about patrons carrying backpacks into the auditorium. Maybe the inevitable Iraq-occupation blowback attack will have theatre owners requiring strip-searches of "randomly" selected customers.
As such, both pieces are right on the mark, though comparing Rudolph to bin Laden is a little extreme -- bin Laden's kill count is far higher. That said, Rudolph is definitely a terrorist -- his bombings were planned and calculated to kill and maim, and they did. The contrast between the likes of Rudolph and protesters who block bridges and freeways underscores the absurdity of labeling every illegal act "terrorism": there's no way that inconveniencing people (or, for that matter, smashing a few windows) can be any way comparable killing and maiming people. Such abuse of words robs us of any meaningful term to address and condemn real terrorism with.
But the conclusion begs a point:
Whoever holds such activism up as an example of a noble cause has a world view that is chilling in its resemblance to the mind-set that motivated the attacks in New York and Washington, D.C. Savaging innocent people for a cause is terrorism, whether the target is the World Trade Center or an Alabama abortion clinic.Cough, cough. Innocent people in Iraq and Afghanistan, cough, cough. Of course, my comparison here is a little extreme -- the kill count of the US government is much higher than bin Laden's.Terrorism is grotesque and awful, no matter what the cause.
On a completely different matter, the weather here in Portland has been absolutely miserable for the past several days, with highs in the 90s. June is supposed to be a spring month in this part of the world, for chrissakes! Thankfully, it's supposed to end with an invasion of marine air tonight.
First, there's the deceiving title: "Biggest U.S. military assault since war targets Saddam loyalists". How do they know the targets are "Saddam loyalists"? Probably some of them are, especially the ranks of the old Fedayeen Saddam, who have nothing to lose and everything to win by fighting to the end. But all of them? You mean to tell me that some sort of magical fairy dust has been sprinkled over Iraq that has extinguished the nationalist desire to see one's nation liberated from foreign occupation? No, it can't possibly be that one of the oldest and strongest political motivators is at work here. Obviously, they're all just "Saddam loyalists". Shut up and believe what you're told.
Then there's (unconfirmed, so disclaimers apply) reports that 70 of those killed in the assault were non-Iraqis. The conclusion: "If confirmed, it would be the first indication since the war's end that non-Iraqi volunteers were still in the country." Still? Perhaps. Or maybe some of them came in during or after the US occupation. Nah, that couldn't be. Anti-US feelings in the Middle East are nothing but an unconfirmed rumor, as is any general Arab resentment about Western domination of their lands. It's all lingering dupes that came to fight on Saddam's side. Trust us.
As to tactics, we have:
Hundreds of U.S. troops moved in hard and fast through the area, centered on the town of Duluiyah 30 miles north of Baghdad. With helicopters whirring overhead and tanks offering cover, they kicked down doors and pulled out residents, looking for snipers who had harassed them for weeks from the shelter of thick woods.Well, that's sure a way to win their hearts and minds. Come in like a Gestapo raid and kick down the doors of every home in the village, dragging people out of their homes and roughing them up (even the small children) just because they might be aiding the resistance."During the day, the people are calm and friendly, but at night they've been ambushing us," said Geary.
The aggressive raids angered people in Duluiyah, who complained of needlessly heavy-handed tactics by the Americans. A man complained his 6-year-old son was handcuffed, and a family claimed that a man died of a heart attack because U.S. forces refused to let them give him his medicine.
And then there's:
As part of the effort to root out militants, the American civilian administrator of Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, on Thursday banned gatherings, pronouncements or publications that incite disorder or violence against the U.S.-led occupation forces, or the return of the Baath Party.Gotta love the "incite disorder" part. Nice and vague, let's 'em ban just about anything. Can't think of one political demo I've been to that hasn't created some sort of "disorder", if only the disorder of disrupting the normal flow of vehicular traffic on the streets.
And it's all in the name of "liberating" Iraq. Don't you dare forget that. And no pesky questions about how the current American definition of "liberating" foreign nations so closely parallels the one Stalin applied in "liberating" eastern Europe.
After the rocket attack on Thursday, US troops ordered all the men out of the houses opposite and spent three hours searching them. Yesterday Khamis Jassin, 35, who lives in one of the buildings with his extended family, showed locks that had been cut open, door handles broken off and cupboard doors smashed open.From a Guardian article that, unlike the US domestic media article quoted above, refrains from parroting the party line that the opposition is nothing but a bunch of diehard Saddam fans.
Law-enforcement options are to conduct sweeps of homeless camps and try to enforce some constitutionally questionable ordinances banning camping and sitting on the sidewalk. These options are not ideal, but even the flawed choices available are better than letting gangs of street people rule one another by savage intimidation, brute force -- and murder.Yeah, right. As if we're not already in a period trending dangerously towards authoritarianism as it is.
Perhaps we should be asking questions like: Why didn't anyone rat on Nelson to the cops about his threatening demeanor and his plotting to commit murder? Of course, the answer to that is obvious: street people already get so much shit from the cops that they want to have as little as possible to do with them.
The Oregonian's "solution" will of course just give street people even more reason to hate and fear the cops. But promoting safety among street people really isn't their goal: like most of the ruling class and their toadies, they want the coercive apparatus of the State to shield them from having the inevitable consequences of the system they espouse and defend being shoved in their faces on a daily basis.
All that matters is to make the homeless feel unwelcome enough so they go away and become some other city's problem. Whether or not that makes the homeless more or less safe, and whether or not the post-pogrom homeless will have access to the services they do in Portland (you know, ones that give them a chance to climb out of their situation), is not really relevant. The mutilated corpses will be showing up in somebody else's city. Problem solved.
I'm 60 years old and I have nothing to do with all this. Even Saddam never did a thing like this to us. We got rid of one problem and now we're having a bigger one.Full story here.
As if it's any sort of surprise. Really, now, what other lesson would you expect nations to learn after the examples of Iraq (no nukes, attacked), North Korea (nukes, gets the velvet-glove treatment), and Pakistan (nukes, gets to be an ally)?
Can you say "our very own West Bank, complete with our very own Intifatah"? Good, I knew you could.
Can't resist emphasizing a quote from that Jane's article I just linked to above:
On 25 March, the US army began allowing the use of lethal force on any Iraqi in civilian dress seen observing US positions with a mobile phone [...].One wonders just what "observing" entails. This sounds suspiciously like license to take shots at any mobile-phone user within eyeshot. After all, if you can observe him, he can observe you.
Almost rode the way I've always gone on the bus or in a rented car: down Barbur Blvd. then out the Beaverton-Hillsdale Highway. Then I decided to look at the street map just for the heck of it and noticed a much more direct route involving Vista Ave., Patton Road, and Scholls Ferry Road. Well, more direct if you ignore the fact that it goes over a range of hills about a thousand feet high. But it's a new route to explore and I could stand some exercise.
It had been showering lightly all afternoon, and sure enough, after I had gone only a few blocks I felt a few drops starting to fall. Glad I was on my "rain bike" (complete with fenders) and had a set of rain gear in my pack.
The first leg of the trip was up, up, up. I've ridden it all in the course of exploring my immediate area. (One of my standard exercise rides is to go to the top of Council Crest and back, just under a thousand vertical feet of climbing.) The rain continued, and seemed to intensify the higher I got, but I was working up enough sweat that it didn't bother me. In fact, it felt nice to have the cool drops fall on my face and arms.
Off from Vista onto Patton. Still climbing, though not as much, then climbing, climbing, climbing again with a vengeance. Been past that gas station before, nice that the road levels out a little here. Wait! I know that summit off to the left -- that's Council Crest. This is no "level spot", I'm at the top of the ridge!
The weather gives me a lesson in orographic lift and prevailing winds -- it's raining harder on the west slope. No matter, I'm so sweaty from all that climbing that the rain and cool wind feel refreshing as I zoom zippity-zing down Patton, taking care not to slip on the wet pavement at the many sharp curves. Soon the rain stops and the pavement dries.
Wow! Scholls Ferry Road already! Still going down, down, down. Zip, zing, zoom. I keep pace with the cars on Scholls Ferry, which is mostly posted at 30 or 35 mph. Despite being thoroughly dampened by rain and perspiration a few miles ago, soon I'm dry. I'm at Beaverton-Hillsdale Highway and a few blocks from the repair center in a matter of minutes. It was all so anticlimactic and fast once I got to the summit. Scarcely longer than a ride to Council Crest and back.
That last part of the B-H highway was pretty unpleasant. On my way back I work out a route through a suburban residential neighborhood that lets me substitute quiet streets for strip-mall hell. The streets not being on a grid, it's a complex route and I have to stop to check the map several times. A rain shower threatens to drench me, then stops just short of the "getting serious" point. A few more drops fall as I zip down into a little valley then struggle up the steep slope on the other side. There's no flat land around me any more, in fact -- I'm back in the West Hills.
I soon reach the dreaded intersection with Scholls Ferry Road. Dreaded because Scholls Ferry is damned busy, and as I'm now going uphill there's going to be no keeping pace with traffic. A nice surprise is waiting for me -- I planned my interception of Scholls Ferry so well that in a manner of minutes I see the traffic light at Patton ahead of me.
From now on, it's up, up, up with a vengeance. To remind me that the laws of atmospheric physics have not been repealed, the rain resumes, this time a little further down the road than when I last left it. Moreover, my legs are tired from the trip out, so it's slow going.
Oftentimes when making a long hard climb, I'll slip into sort of a trance state, repeating a phrase mantra-like repeatedly. I don't try, it just happens. This time the mantra is "Hold your head up", from the chorus of the Eurythmics song "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of These)", which happened to be playing at the camera repair shop when I entered.
Time stops. Rain falls. "Hold your head up." The smell of my body mingles with the smells of wet pavement and the rainy forest. "Hold your head up." Why do people waste money on deodorants to mask something that's natural and wasn't considered "bad" until the corporate propagandists made us believe it so? For that matter, why do people insist that getting wet in the rain is "bad" and they "need" to spend huge sums of money caring and feeding for those iron cages they drive around. I bet most of the people passing me actually think I envy them in their cars. Absurd!
How much longer till the top? Don't think like that. Breathe. Pedal. "Hold your head up." Savor the contradiction of being both soaked on a cool rainy afternoon and warm and comfortable. There is no moment but now. Life's about experiences, not about living to other's preconceptions. There's nothing "wrong" with the weather today, or this long climb. It just is. "Hold your head up." People in India consider clouds and rain to be the sign of happiness and sunny dry weather the sign of misfortune. What's wrong is when you convince yourself there's something wrong, and trying to deny the environment you live in.
Is that the top of the roof of the gas station (the one that's on top) ahead? It has to be -- there's the familiar fir-covered shape of Council Crest with its radio towers on one end! I wonder how cold I'll get going downhill now that I'm soaked. Maybe I should put rain gear and that extra dry shirt on. No, I'll wait. Savor cooling off.
The rain slackens, then stops. The pavement is dry, and soon so am I. I don't feel really cold at all. Down, down, down, through the upscale homes of the Portland Heights. I'm home before I know it.
And bathed in that wonderful glow I often feel after a good workout. All the breathing I've done has incorporated into my body a big chunk of the atmosphere; I feel renewed by absorbing so much of the outside into me. I'd never have felt that if I had taken the bus. I'd hardly feel it at all if I was the typical sedentary "successful" middle-class American, relying on his car for practically all local travel, and only walking to and from that car. It's a wonderful sense of peace and renewal.
"Where were you riding?", my downstairs neighbor asks as I pass her in the lobby. "Oh, out to Beaverton and back." "That's a long ways! Didn't you get rained on?" I smile.
Oh well. I'll just announce that I'm back and leave it at that.
I'd say that yes, many activists were confrontational. And that's perfectly appropriate. Shouldn't one confront that which is evil, menacing, and immoral? (And before the whining about violence starts: there's a difference between violence and confrontation. Not all confrontations are violent.)
And there wasn't much (if any) violence, anyhow. A little property damage, but no matter how the lords of Newspeak try to proclaim it so, vandalism ain't a violent crime. And as I said in the wake of the big anti-WTO protests in Seattle, I'd rather have a big demonstration with some broken windows than no demonstration or a puny ineffectual one.
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