Stony-Hearted

A suicide happens roughly once every 17 minutes somewhere in the United States. People who have never experienced it up close tend to focus on the pathos of the deceased. Your mother must have been in so much pain.

Which is true.

On the other hand, picking up a handgun powerful enough to send a bullet through the engine block of a car, putting the barrel into your mouth and pulling the trigger instantly ends all pain for the deceased while leaving one hell of a mess for survivors to work through for the rest of their lives.

In my case, I was laboring alone. No adult acknowledged the horror of what I’d seen in that bedroom. Not one—not my father, my parents’ friends, teachers, or clergy—approached me to talk about what had happened or about my mother. If I brought up the subject, which I did on occasion, especially in the days immediately following her death, people changed the topic.

I remember one time in particular, at my mother’s funeral, “I don’t know what’s the matter with me,” I said to one of her closest friends, a woman who had known me since I was six years old. “I can’t cry. I can’t feel anything. I feel like I’m completely stony-hearted.”

“Oh, dear, don’t worry,” she said. She patted my arm in a kindly fashion. “You’re not stony-hearted.” Then she turned away.

I stood there, heart pounding, willing her to turn back. But she didn’t. Finally, I turned away, too.

I was rewarded for going on as if nothing had happened. “She’s doing so well!” my father praised when I returned to school almost immediately after we put my mother in the ground. He left me alone a lot. I came home to the house where I’d found her almost every day in the eleventh and twelfth grades. I took over her chores, cooking, cleaning, shopping for food, and doing laundry. I even started making my father’s brown-bag lunches every day for work.

In the weeks, months, and years following, I was told in countless, indirect ways, that if I fell to pieces, no one would be there to put me back together.

So I quickly learned to stuff my feelings and, as a coping mechanism, I started stuffing food too. I became a secret binge-eater, consuming a half-gallon of ice-cream here, a quarter-pound of M&M’s there. Bologna sandwiches on white bread, french-fries, donuts, packages of cookies, the saltier, fatter, sweeter the foods, the more I wanted them. All was consumed in a sort of trance, alone, glued to the TV-screen or with my nose buried in a book. Dune, Stranger in a Strange Land, The Carpetbaggers, I preferred trashy, escapist novels.

On the one hand, the ritual was comforting. But after each binge, I struggled with overwhelming feelings of guilt, shame and self-loathing. Still, that was far better than facing the piercing feelings of horror, grief, betrayal, rage and loneliness.

A little more than a year after my mother’s death, I graduated from high school with absolutely no plans for the future. So, in response to an invitation, I up and moved to Omaha to live with my older cousin’s family—an impetuous decision, I soon came to regret.

My cousin, a lieutenant-colonel in the Air Force, was of the old school. The last thing he needed—or wanted—influencing his four young children was a depressed 18-year-old who’d lost her faith and had quit attending mass.

Beyond apostasy and binge-eating, I was keeping pretty much on the straight and narrow. No alcohol, no drugs, even though in the early 70’s, both were readily available. Unlike many of my peers, I hadn’t even had sex yet. In Omaha, I was maintaining nearly straight A’s in three college courses and holding down a part-time job at a hamburger joint, despite being so depressed I frequently called in sick rather than going to work.

My overeating and depression got under the skin of my cousin’s wife. One day I was puttering around on the second-floor while she and my aunt chatted downstairs in the kitchen. They didn’t know I was there, and when I overheard my name, I paused to listen.

“I don’t know what’s the matter with her! ” My cousin-in-law’s sharp tone froze me. “It’s been over a year since her mother’s death! Why can’t she just get over it?!”

I stood there, mortified. Before I could hear my aunt’s reply, I fled to my bedroom and closed the door. I withdrew even deeper inside myself, and as soon as the semester ended, I retreated to California and moved back in again with my dad.

Only one time did I break down following my mother’s death. I was home alone fixing dinner two weeks after her suicide. I opened the refrigerator and scanned its contents, my eyes alighting finally on a platter of cooked hamburgers on the bottom shelf, protected beneath a layer of taut, fogged Saran Wrap. Without thinking, I grabbed the platter and reheated a couple of patties.

Within an hour of eating them, I was kneeling on the cold linoleum of the bathroom floor bent over the toilet-bowl. The impact of what I’d done, of what had happened, had hit home. My mother made those hamburgers. The same mother I’d found, lifeless in a pool of blood in the room just down the dark hall outside the bathroom door.

She had bought the meat at the supermarket, shaped the patties with her hands, and fried the burgers standing over the stove in the kitchen where I’d brushed off her final kiss.

Never again would she shop or cook for me. Never again would I feel her hands on me, fixing my hair, adjusting my clothing, smoothing my forehead before kissing me goodnight. Never again would she do any of the big or little things a mother, even an emotionally messed up mother, does for her daughter.

The tears came then, as I heaved into the toilet. Not enough tears—not nearly enough—to express the magnitude of my feelings. Not enough, either, to begin to heal me. That would not happen until many years later.

All Over

My mother killed herself on a Friday evening, March 9, 1969, just as the sun was going down. Earlier that day, she and my brother drove north up the California coast to Santa Barbara and back. The two of them had a late lunch at one of her favorite greasy-spoons, then returned home.

I got home from school before them and was puttering around the house barefoot and completely lost in thought about a college boy, a friend of my brother's, who was turning 21 the next night. Smart, funny and eager to amount to something, John cut dashing figure in his yellow Porsche-356 convertible. He was a welcome change from the surfers, football players, and small-town heroes at my public high school. Thrown together as a result of our mothers’ friendship, we’d grown closer through our mutual passion for sailing small boats. By that Friday afternoon, I had developed a full-blown, high-school-girl crush on him, which I pursued single-mindedly.

When my mother walked in the backdoor and through the utility porch to the kitchen, where I stood beside the water-cooler, glass in hand, she paused to kiss me on the cheek. I brushed aside her kiss, impatient with the show of affection. I didn't know, you see. Couldn’t know. That it would be the last time I would see her alive.

How many times I’ve replayed that scene in my mind. She knew that she was kissing me goodbye. She was a suicide survivor herself, my grandfather shot himself with a hunting rifle in my grandmother’s kitchen just weeks after my mother married my father. Why did she do that to me, leave me with such a haunting final encounter?

I don’t remember how she reacted to my brush-off, so lost was I in daydreams. The last thing she said to me was, "I'm going to go take a shower, then lay down for a nap."

"Okay…." I said, then went back to thoughts of John.

"Hey, I’ll help you wash the car…whaddya say?" my brother snagged my attention. His love affair with cars was already several years old, and and could spend hours washing and detailing them. I was a lot less enthusiastic, but the prospect of water, a hose, sponges, and bubbles…it would kill some time.

So that’s how we came to be alongside the house washing the family VW Bug when my mother shot herself in her bedroom just yards away. We were drying the curvy, white fenders and shiny hood with ragged towels as the sun dropped below the horizon, when I thought I heard something. Having no idea what was happening, however, I ignored the sound and promptly forgot about it.

We finished and went back into the house. My brother flopped down on the couch and flipped on the TV while I went toward my bedroom to change clothes. At the last second, however, I veered off in the hallway and headed for the closed door of my mother’s and father’s bedroom. "I’ll just check in on her," I thought and cracked open the door.

I glanced in. So much did I expect to see her sleeping that I was in the act of closing the door again to proceed to my own room, when the thought intruded. "People don't sleep like that."

I opened the door again and stepped into the room. My mother was sprawled on the bed, her head toward the door, surrounded and partially obscured by throw pillows. The orientation, the unusual contortion of her body and the fact she was stark naked momentarily froze me. I knew something was wrong but shock was setting in, making me slow on the uptake. True to my emergency plan, though, I was determined to take charge and fix whatever was wrong.

So I stepped back into the hall, yelling to my brother in the living-room, "Something’s happened to mom!" and grabbing the phone. I dialed "O" for operator—this was before the advent of 911—and told the women who answered that we had an emergency and needed an ambulance. "I’m not sure what happened, but my mom’s hurt," I said, and gave her our address. She didn’t keep me on the line.

While I was on the phone, my brother peeked from the doorway into the room, then returned to the living-room where he collapsed in uncontrolled weeping. After I hung up, I re-entered my parents’ bedroom, determined to do whatever was necessary to keep my mother alive until the ambulance arrived.

No panic, not this time! Although my actions were pointless, there was nothing I could do to save my mother. She’d made certain of that, putting the barrel of my father’s .357 magnum into her mouth and pulling the trigger.

Unaware of the futility of my efforts, however, I moved several throw pillows away from her face and that’s when I saw that she had used them to muffle a gunshot. They were soaked with blood and the revolver lay near her hand. I realized there was nothing I could do, but I didn’t—couldn’t—admit to myself that she was dead.

I left the bedroom and began pacing—the hall, the living-room, the kitchen. I couldn’t sit down, couldn’t stop moving, couldn’t cry. It seemed like forever until I heard sirens, although it was probably only minutes. As they approached, our German-shepherd, "Soldier," loose in the backyard, began howling, creating an eerie duet of sirens and cries that sent chills up my spine.

The police arrived first, followed by the ambulance, then more police. Drawn by the commotion, a crowd began gathering in a semicircle in front of our house. I stood in the darkened dining-room, peering through the slit in the curtains and felt shame, then loathing toward the strangers and their morbid curiosity.

I turned from the window as a young EMT emerged from my mother’s bedroom and strode toward us down the hall. I remember his approach as if it happened in slow motion. I was thinking, "The professionals are here now. Miracle-workers. They’ll save her." I still hadn’t let in the horror of what I’d seen in the bedroom.

When someone is shot, especially with a weapon like the one my mother used, the bullet makes a relatively small entry wound and a very large exit wound. The result is quite different than what Westerns and war movies of the 1950’s and 60’s typically showed. In those, people drop dead from gunshots with no wounds at all. No trauma, no blood, no guts spattered all over the wall.

Whereas my mother had, in effect, blown the back of her head off, splashing bits of bone, brain and blood all over the pillows, the bed, the bedclothes. The bullet had lodged in the ceiling, making a hole that would remain for weeks until it was finally repaired. Weeks, during which I slept steps away, down the hall, sometimes alone in the dark because my father had already started dating and spending nights away.

The EMT strode his slow-motion way down the hall and stopped at the edge of the living room. He shook his head, his expression bleak. "It’s all over," he said.

I’ll never forget those words. All over. My brother’s weeping crescendoed. I stared at the EMT, feeling like I was floating inches off the floor, strangely disembodied. I felt cold—deadly cold—but no other emotions at all, beyond anger at the curious bystanders outside, and shame at the awful, ugly spectacle I was caught up in.

Later that night, I would also feel disappointment: I won’t get to go to John’s birthday party. Then remorse at my selfishness.

But in the living room, facing the EMT, I cut off all feelings and focused on my father. He was going to come home from work and find all this drama! The ambulance, the police, flashing lights and the crowd. "We’ve got to let my dad know," I said to the half-dozen police officers crowding the inside of my house.

Ever since he’d arrived, the sergeant in charge of the scene had been trying to calm me down. "Please," he’d say. "Why don’t you just sit down? For a minute?" His eyes beneath his cap were filled with concern.

But I couldn’t sit down. Sitting down might lead to crying, like my brother’s, which would signal acceptance on some level that all this was actually happening. That it was, indeed, all over.

I couldn’t admit that, yet.

The Men from Camarillo

In late January, the winter of my mother's suicide, the skies opened up over our sleepy seaside town of Ventura, California, and unleashed a torrential downpour. On biblical scales over the next forty days and forty nights, three storms --the first two warm, semi-tropical systems arising over Hawaii, the final a cold front from the Gulf of Alaska—delivered a two-three punch that left locals reeling and digging out from under tons of mud and debris.

Overall, the storms dumped a record-breaking 68 inches of rain on Matilija Canyon, the hardest hit section of the county's watershed. That's nearly six feet of water falling over roughly three five-day periods, separated by a scattering of semi-clear days between.

The normally arid scrub-and-sagebrush-dotted hillsides couldn't handle the deluge. Run-off flowed to creeks and rivers, which eroded and overflowed their banks, washing away houses, roadways and railroad tracks. Orchards and farmlands were flooded, bridges demolished, and entire hillsides transformed into rivers of mud. Thousands were forced to flee their homes and businesses and at least a dozen people drowned. Early estimates placed the county's financial damages at $60 million.

A pervasive sense of vulnerability and dread spread through a populace already off-balance from events on a national scale. The year was 1969. In the previous April and June, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy had been felled by assassins' bullets nine weeks apart, almost to the day. The war raged on in Vietnam, with escalating American casualties fueling a growing anti-war movement. In August of 1968, demonstrations exploded on the streets of Chicago, where they were met with a level of police violence never before unleashed against middle-class college students. Television cameras broadcast the shocking images to even small, out-of-the-way places like Ventura, where we sat hunched over our TV-dinners while we watched the cops with Billy clubs advance on young demonstrators.

Saturation bombing of North Vietnam and secret invasions of Laos and Cambodia were just beginning, still the war-juggernaut hungered for fresh blood. My brother, 22 at the time and just married, had dropped out of college the previous summer, and his draft notice was quick to follow. The week before he was to report for his physical, however, my mother cryptically reassured him, "Don't worry, honey. I'll take care of it."

None of us had a clue what she meant at the time. Although she was making no bones at all about voicing her intentions to kill herself, I naively believed the false adage, much in circulation at the time, that stated if somebody said he was going to kill himself, he never would. That sentiment comforted me, 17-years-old and preoccupied by teenaged concerns. I was lulled into a false sense of security. Especially that Friday morning in early March when my mother told my father and me, "If you don't take me to Camarillo, I'm going to kill myself. I swear it!"

Camarillo! That was the nearby state-run psychiatric hospital. I'd heard horror stories about what went on in those snake-pits, with helpless mental patients at the mercy of sadistic staff. No way I'd send my mother there. Besides, saying she was going to kill herself meant she wouldn't, right?

In denial, with most of my thoughts on a party the next evening at the house of a boy I had a crush on, I headed off to school that morning. My father called my brother, who took the day off from his job as a grave-digger—his last position before he dedicated himself to a lifetime of selling cars—and he came over to keep my mother company. No one, not one of us, thought to remove the .357 magnum handgun, which my father had purchased from an ex-cop friend, from its shelf in my parents’ closet. There it sat, with its fat, shiny, snub-nosed bullets rolling around loose, in a frayed cardboard box.

It wasn't raining that day. The third and final storm had slammed into the coast two weeks before, causing the Santa Clara River to burst a levee southeast of town and flood the newly-constructed Ventura Marina. The muddy surge snapped moorings and swept away some 540 boats—hundreds washed out the harbor mouth where huge waves forced them back onto the rocks of the twin breakwaters. Ten days before my mother's death, beach-dwellers woke up to the spectacle of dozens of yachts, masts broken, white hulls split-open, and cushions, charts, clothing, and other water-sodden possessions strewn helter-skelter along the shore. Amazingly, no one was hurt or killed.

The destruction, however, deeply disturbed my mom. Bedridden with a bad case of the flu, she didn’t rush down barefoot onto the chilly morning sand to witness the wreckage firsthand, like I did. Instead, she read about it in the Ventura County Star-Free Press, lingering over the sensational photo spread.

A native of the San Francisco Bay Area, my mother had, in her 56 years, forged a strong emotional attachment to the Pacific Ocean. Strolling its beaches, or gazing out on its constantly-changing surface, often lifted her out of what were becoming deeper episodes of depression. Now, the images of those yachts, broken to pieces and foundering, seemed to drag her down with them.

Never very emotionally stable, she was subject to strong mood swings. By turns playful and despondent, she was also jealous and possessive, quick to anger, and a heavy drinker. Slender, tall, with broad shoulders, large breasts and a regal bearing, Dottie—as her friends called her—was a beauty, with an expressive face dominated by high cheekbones and flashing green eyes. She and my handsome father made a striking pair as they entertained friends. Invariably, though, the parties ended with terrible, shouting matches, often started over a perceived flirtation on his part.

The weeks leading up to her suicide, however, saw a dramatic change in my mother, especially after she suffered anaphylactic shock after a penicillin shot. Unaware she was allergic, she had received the shot to treat fever, congestion, and a debilitating cough—lingering symptoms of the virulent Hong Kong flu that swept Ventura county that winter, eventually claiming nearly 34,000 lives nationwide.

I’d been laid low by it, too, around Christmas, spending ten days dozing feverishly in my sleeping bag on the couch in front of the TV and beside the twinkling Christmas tree. Then I gave it to my mom. The penicillin shot almost killed her. She collapsed on the floor of the medical clinic and was only saved by an adrenalin shot to jumpstart her heart.

Nonetheless, they sent her home straightaway, rather than keeping her for observation. She never was quite the same after that. Her depression worsened, disrupting her ability to go about any daily routine. She became afraid to leave the house, even to walk a block to the corner store to buy cigarettes. And she became consumed by paranoia, convinced my father and I were talking about her behind her back.

In one routine I found unnerving, she'd get up out of her sick-bed, trade her Hawaiian-print muumuu or worn bathrobe for one of her best outfits (including overcoat), and plop herself down in an armchair in the living-room, feet planted side-by-side and hands folded on the purse in her lap—a prim picture of decorum far different from her usual self.

If questioned, she'd respond that she was waiting for “them to come pick me up.”

“Waiting for who to come?” I'd ask.

“The men from Camarillo,” she'd say.

I'd try to talk her out of it, sometimes spending hours at the task—displaying a fierce, teenaged dedication—all the while convinced that committing her would be the worst possible thing we could do. “We didn’t call anyone to come!” I’d insist, over and over. Until eventually she seemed to believe me.

That is, until the next time I’d find her in the armchair.

Where was my father while all this was happening? He was fleeing the reality of his deteriorating marriage through long hours at work, emotional distancing and heavy drinking. Not an uncommon scenario in the late 1960’s.

In her final days, my mother remained mostly bedridden as she recovered from both the flu and her allergic reaction to penicillin. During this time, she suffered panic attacks in which she felt she couldn't breathe. One time, I was home alone with her when it happened and I completely went to pieces.

I was sure she was dying, I didn’t know what to do, so I raced around the house, from her bedroom to the kitchen to the living-room and back, in a whirl of ineffectual motion, while my mother slowly regained her composure—and her breath—on her own.

When it was over and I finally slowed down and reassured myself she was okay, I got so angry at myself. “She could have died!” I thought. “And if I’d been running around like a chicken with its head cut off, instead of giving her CPR or calling an ambulance, it would have been my fault.”

I vowed, “Next time—if there is a next time—I won't fail her!”

It was a promise that set me up for a fall.

The Good Old Days


My parents’ romance was star-crossed from the start and would have never happened but for World War II.

In late September, 1945, my father was granted a 10-day liberty from the Coast Guard, which he had joined as a 21-year-old seaman at the outset of the war. But now the war was over and every available train, bus, and airplane had been requisitioned to transport demobilized servicemen. After a frustrating three days in Sacramento trying to book a passage home to Boston, he decided on the spur-of-the-moment to hitchhike to Lake Tahoe, instead, and spend the rest of his liberty at the casinos.

It was a decision that changed his life. He and my mother met at the ski resort where she was working as a hostess. He bedded the pretty redhead and, like the good Irish-Catholic boy he was, married her in Reno before the liberty was over.

My mom seems to have regarded the whole thing as a bit of a lark—at first. A party-girl from the San Francisco Bay Area, she had been married once before to a handsome milkman with a heavy drinking problem. Their short marriage ended when he turned up dead under mysterious circumstances in a sketchy Oakland hotel. Her subsequent boyfriends tended more toward worldly-wise tough-guys, than an earnest, sexually-naive man like my father.

Dad told me that, on the bus-ride back from Tahoe to San Francisco, when he had voiced his intention to look up a Catholic priest and make their union "legit," my mother had stared at him in open-mouthed amazement. “You're really serious about this, aren't you?” she had finally asked.

Indeed he was.

The couple muddled through 23 years of mutual bewilderment that only increased after four miscarriages, the birth of my brother and me, and a move from the Bay Area to Southern California. As I remember it, they were never, either one of them, much inclined toward introspection. They partied hard, drank heavily, and fought bitterly. Early on, my mother seemed to have held the upper hand, throwing my dad's sexual inexperience in his face during arguments and threatening on occasion to, “Pick up the phone and have any number of guys come running over to pick me up!”

It’s a threat she never carried out. As time ran on, the power dynamic shifted. In the years leading up to her suicide, my father held the emotional advantage and he criticized and taunted my mother—and my sweet, somewhat effeminate brother—relentlessly. He coined demeaning nicknames. “Say, you going to sweep the garage, Broomy?” to my tidy brother. Or, “The Golden Goose is ascending her throne!” crowed gleefully when my mother tried to retreat behind the bathroom’s closed door.

Derisive laughter became my father’s weapon of choice, wielded at the slightest hint of vulnerability. Nothing was off limits. He mocked physical frailties, bodily functions, personality traits, appearances; he even resorted to ethnic slurs. “Hey, Isadore the Jew, how about a loan?” was a routine taunt to my thrifty brother. I grew up thinking “Jew the price down,” was an acceptable expression of speech, until one day in my late teens when a Jewish shopkeeper angrily set me straight.

Surviving my family was like an 18-year tiptoe through an unmarked minefield. I learned early on to tread softly and keep my head down. Dare to challenge my father’s bullying, and he would take the offensive. “What’s the matter, you got no sense of humor? Aw, come on, I was only joking!” he'd say. “Can't you take a joke?”

The effects of his emotional bullying were devastating. My brother’s self-esteem was ripped to shreds before it had a chance to develop.

As the youngest, I looked on the emotional carnage and knew I never wanted to be a target of my father’s bitter humor. So, to my everlasting shame, I joined forces with the enemy. I embraced the nicknames, laughed at the put-downs, and joined my chorus of criticism to my father’s. Picking here, finding fault there, we became a relentless tag-team. Looking back, I realize I acted out of self-preservation—understandable, under the circumstances. But I am still so sorry.

But why did my father do it? Perhaps the answer lies in his own childhood. Deprivation and conflict run as themes through the stories he tells of that time. His birth, in 1920 in Boston, surprised his then 49-year-old Irish-born mother. There were seven children already. And seven years difference in age between him and his next nearest sibling; 18 between him and the oldest. While he speaks glowingly of his mother—a saint, who fed a family of nine on a shoestring budget and never turned away a hungry beggar from their door—he says little beyond the barest of facts about his father.

Rather, the stories of his Depression-era youth revolve around Boston winters so cold, you could see your breath in the air of his unheated, garret bedroom; older brothers who drank too much, ran with the wrong crowd and brought only grief to the family; fistfights between roving bands of neighborhood kids. And no affection ever shown by his father to his mother, or to the children.

I know my mother was beaten by her father; it seems likely that my dad was by his, too. Else why did they treat us as they did? “Shut up, or I’ll give you something to cry about!” was a common threat. And one carried out, too.

My memory is hazy on the details, but as I recall it, my mother’s violence was typically spontaneous—a shout, a quick grab of the wrist and a slap or two or three, usually across the buttocks. My father’s, on the other hand, was delivered in a cooler state of mind. “Wait ‘til your dad gets home!” occasioned hours of dread on the part of my brother or me. When the punishment was finally administered, it was bent over my father’s knees, with the belt he used to hold up his pants applied to our bare flesh.

Even worse, though, were the few times my father went off at my brother in a rage. One time, I remember looking on in horror as he picked my brother up and threw him through the air and against the wall of the bedroom.

I’ve completely forgotten the cause of his fury, whether or not he had been drinking, even what happened afterwards. Did my brother cry? Was he knocked unconscious? Did my father apologize, show remorse?

I don’t know. All I remember is the image of my brother’s body hurtling through the air—skinny 12-year-old arms and legs flailing—and slamming into the wall.

No bones were broken. No doctor called or authorities of any kind summoned. No one intervened that occasion or any of the times events spun out of control in our family. Back then, I believed such a level of domestic violence as ours was just the way families were.

I’ll never understand popular nostalgia for the 1950’s and 60’s. For me, it is an era filled with bigotry, denial, ignorance and shame, all mixed together under a veil of uncomfortable secrecy. No way I’d ever want to go back.

Trans 101

(Please be advised, the following post contains a graphic discussion of sexual anatomy.)

Testosterone acts swiftly and dramatically on a female body. My first shot a week before my bike accident had been a measly one cc--one cubic centimeter--of Testosterone Enanthate, a thick, transparent suspension of synthetic testosterone in sesame oil. The nurse who injected me was so quick and painless about it, I wondered afterwards if she'd done it right.

I didn't wonder for long. My shot was on Tuesday and I woke up Thursday morning to find the center of my consciousness had shifted in the night from my head to my crotch--where it has resided ever since. My sex-drive increased overnight by a factor of ten. It has waxed and waned in intervening years, but the constant, visceral focus of my attention on my genitals hasn't.

This is pretty similar to how my male friends describe their feelings.

Biologically, the penis is homologous to the clitoris, meaning that as a fetus grows in the womb, the same group of cells develops to form either a clitoris or a penis, either outer labia or a scrotum, depending on a series of complex hormonal signals and processes. Another way to think of it is that a penis is sort of a very large clitoris--large essentially as a result of the presence of testosterone during fetal development. If you add testosterone to the mix later in life, like I did, the potential for growth—while far less—still exists.

Despite everyone’s original "bisexual" potential, most babies are born with a clitoris, vagina and two ovaries, or a penis, scrotum and two testicles. At the same time, a large number—1 in 2,000, by some estimates—are born "intersexed." They could be seen to have, say, a small penis with a split, empty scrotum, or an enormous clitoris with pendulous outer labia. Internally, they may have a vagina and womb, or not; ovaries or testes, an ovary on one side and a testes on the other, or even what are called ovotestes--a blend of both. Their gender identity—whether they feel like a girl or a boy—can be one, the other, or neither.

Another term for a non-standard mix of sexual characteristics is "hermaphrodite." Unfortunately, modern medicine usually responds to these births as "medical emergencies," surgically altering the infants to cosmetically approximate one sex or the other.

Among other things, the surgery often damages the person’s sexual potential later in life. Not operating—as intersexed activists advocate--is not life-threatening. The real challenge posed by the presence of hermaphrodites is to the fallacy (“phallacy?”) that there are two--and only two--sexes. Their very existence belies this.

So, how does all this fit in with transsexuality?

No one really knows for sure. One theory states that in addition to genitalia, a fetus' brain develops along a female or male pathway in response to hormones. In this way, transsexuality could be viewed as a sort of "neurological intersexuality."

For example, if a woman pregnant with an XX (female) fetus is prescribed a medication containing a masculinizing hormone (or “androgen”) during the first trimester, the probability is increased that her "female" baby will be born with genitals approximating a small penis and empty scrotum. A sort of real-life test of this was accidentally performed in the 1950's and 60's when widespread and misguided use of the androgen progesterone (to prevent miscarriages) led to a documented increase in intersexed births.

In a possible transsexual scenario, the androgen would be given after the 16th week of gestation, when the baby’s external genitalia are formed but before the neurological pathways in the brain are fully developed. The newborn would look physically female but grow up to feel mentally and emotionally male.

Like me.

Of course, this explanation for female-to-male transsexuality is only a theory. And it ignores the effects of genetics, environment, and other factors.

My father remembers that my mother was prescribed a medication while pregnant with me. On more than four previous occasions, she had miscarried or given birth only to have the newborn die. My father doesn't remember what medication, when she started, or how long she took it. But I was born in the era when the synthetic hormone, diethylstilbestrol (DES), often in combination with progesterone, was the drug of choice to avert miscarriage.

Growing up, I had no words to describe my identity struggle. Over time, I came to understand in an inarticulate way that it stemmed from the shape of my body, particularly my genitals. My response was to conclude that some boys had penises and some didn’t, and I was one of the ones who didn’t.

Unusual, you say? Well, scientists who study the formation of gender-identity say that very young children believe what makes a person a boy or a girl are clear, simple indicators, such as short or long hair, pants or a dress, heavy boots or delicate high heels, and to a lesser extend, inclinations, like a passion for rugby and monster trucks or an interest in dollies and tea-parties. Children know about penises and vaginas, but consider them unimportant to gender. Irrelevant, in the face of a person’s long braids or buzz-cut, interest in Barbie or passion for football.

I like to think I never outgrew this primary, elegantly simple stage.

Physically, I was a small-boned but strong and wiry child. With short-cropped, white-blond hair and striking blue-green eyes, I was scrappy and unafraid to take on even larger boys if provoked.

But I didn’t know what sex to call myself. Under pressure from society, I forced the belief that I was a boy without a penis into my subconscious, where it lay forgotten for almost 30 years.

It came back to me in an odd way. A day after visiting a "clothing-optional" beach in San Diego, I was working at a computer terminal thinking back on the succession of nude men I’d seen, displayed along the beach on colorful towels like assorted canapés. My friend and I had been strolling along the gay section and the Southern California aesthetic of male beauty—tan, lean bodies with cut, gym-toned torsos—had been very much in evidence.

And every one of them had a penis. Reflecting back, I realized I'd registered surprise each and every time. Come to think of it, I did the same in locker rooms—in fact, every time I encountered a naked man with a penis, I felt surprise.

What was going on? Men have penises, that's a basic operating principle of society--some would say of “nature.” Why, then, should I be surprised to see the principle in action?

Because, I thought, I don't believe it. I don't equate penises with manhood. That’s the moment I realized that all my life, I had believed some boys had them and some didn't. Deep down, I had cherished the hope that one day, society would come to realize what a meaningless measure of manhood a penis really is.

In the meantime, I’d never stopped looking for others like me. Eventually, I found them, though it took many more years and was in a different form than I’d originally imagined as a child.

Technical difficulties....

I (foolishly) tried to make some html changes that Blogger's server couldn't digest, resulting in a crashed Krieg9 for the past 12 hours. Sorry for any inconvenience. I don't want to spend my entire vacation trying to figure out the technical ins and outs, so, for the time being, this is the new template.

Any comments, temporarily mail to brynn@myway.com.

Naked


Three years after my bike accident, following "top" surgery in an out-patient clinic to remove breast tissue and reshape my chest in a masculine way, when I looked like a man but had undergone no lower surgery, I once again found myself in a hospital, this time for back surgery.

I had been forced off work and onto medical disability by a ruptured spinal disk, which left me in constant pain and unable to walk without a pronounced limp. Drugs, physical therapy and a spinal epidural had all proven ineffectual at treating the injury, leaving back surgery as my final option.

I was scared. While my surgeon considered the procedure routine, any surgery carries risks, and this one included paralysis from the waist down and possible loss of bladder and bowel control. Contemplating this, and the fact I would be under general anesthesia and therefore completely at the mercy of the surgical team, I sat down for a one-on-one discussion with the surgeon's chief nurse ten days before entering the hospital.

The surgeon knew I was transsexual, but as I'd only decided that day to go forward with the surgery, he hadn't had a chance to inform his nurse. I wondered to myself, was disclosure necessary? With back surgery, maybe they'd only strip me down to my boxers, in which case no one need know I wasn't a "normal" male. I thought about this as the nurse asked me a series of routine questions about my health, including confirming I was on testosterone without inquiring as to why. When she finally asked if I had questions, I took a deep breath.

"Yes,” I said. “First, will I be unclothed during the procedure?"

Across the expanse of her large, polished wood desktop, the nurse looked up from my thick medical file. Ramrod straight, an older woman with just the trace of a German accent, she nodded. "Yes.”

"Oh…." I said. “Then you won't be leaving on even my underwear?”

"No.” Her tone registered the slightest impatience. “You will be completely naked."

“Oh.” I slumped down a bit in my hard, straight-backed chair. "Well then, there's something I have to tell you."

I took a deep breath. Then, "I'm a female-to-male transsexual and I haven't had lower surgery. You say I'll be unclothed during the procedure, so I want to make sure the surgical team and after-care nurses and everyone else are all informed ahead of time, to make sure they’re not surprised..."

I trailed off. I could see I’d lost her at the word "transsexual." She was hefting my medical file, a blank expression on her face and as I watched she dropped the file over the edge of her desk and onto the floor by her feet. It almost seemed like a deliberate action, though I knew it wasn’t. She bent over to retrieve the file, grabbing a confusion of papers and pages which she dumped in a pile back on her desktop.

"Oh," she said, avoiding my eyes while she tried to stuff the unruly mass of papers back into the file-folder. "Ok…Well, that's fine. I…I don't see any problem."

I watched a crimson blush climb her pale features as her hands scrabbled with the papers, thinking I'm really glad you're not monitoring my anesthesia level right now.

Then I tried again. "I wanted to tell you this now,” I said, “because not everyone has a positive reaction to the information and I don’t want them to be distracted or upset while they’re supposed to be taking care of me."

She cut me off. "But you said you haven't had the surgery yet.” She scowled, as if I was intentionally trying to ruin her day. “So I don't see what problem there is!"

I suddenly realized the words "female-to-male" had slipped past unnoticed in her reaction to the word, "transsexual." As was true for many people, the existence of females who transitioned to live as men was clean off her radar screen. She had assumed I was male, transitioning to female, saw I looked completely masculine and wondered why in the world a lack of surgery would pose any challenge to her staff.

I sighed again. Leaning forward in my chair, I annunciated very slowly and distinctly. "I have no penis."

Her jaw dropped. "You?! What? …Oh!” She inhaled sharply and sat back in her chair. Comprehension slowly washed over her features and, though I hadn’t thought it possible, she blushed even redder. "That...the…then…that explains the testosterone."

"Yes," I said, squaring my shoulders. And, as was my strategy in situations where someone was reacting badly to my disclosure, I adopted a calm, sympathetic demeanor. Treating the whole thing matter-of-factly when it obviously wasn’t exhausted me but it tended to take the wind out of the sails of over-the-top reactions.

"Do you understand now why I'm telling you this? It's not that I want to make you--or anyone--uncomfortable. I just want to make sure that everyone can focus on doing their jobs--on taking care of me during surgery. I don’t want them to be caught up in their reactions because they suddenly realize I'm ...different."

"Yes. Yes, I understand now. Of course…of course, I understand." The shuffling of papers slowed as she began to regain control of herself.

I, on the other hand, was shaken. Her meltdown had unnerved me.

After I left that day, I considered delaying the surgery and trying longer to heal my injury with physical therapy. The prospect of, say, my surgeon’s assistant or someone tripping on the physical reality of my body and oops! making even a small mistake, terrified me. I found it hard to shake the vision of the highly trained and experienced nurse reduced to a stammering klutz by my mere spoken revelation. The physical reality of my body was even more dramatic.

Walking abroad in the world possessing what looks like (while clothed) an intact male body, everyone assumes that I have all the expected plumbing. This expectation, needless to say, sets up a tension in my day-to-day existence. I never forget--indeed, society’s insistence on a two-sex system and its discomfort with transsexuals ensures I never forget--that I am different. I live one traffic accident, one false arrest, one ill-chosen confidence away from embarrassing--and possibly lethal--exposure.

One such case of an exposure gone wrong occurred on Christmas Eve, 1993. Twenty-one-year-old Brandon Teena was raped and, a week later, brutally murdered in Falls City, Nebraska, by two companions who discovered that their “male” friend actually possessed a female body. The small town sheriff Brandon turned to for protection was more interested in lurid details of the crime than in arresting the known assailants. His inaction gave the rapists time follow through on their threat to kill Brandon if he went to the authorities.

Word of Brandon’s murder spread like wildfire through the ftm community. On the verge of my first shot of testosterone, I knew that it could have been me. Murder of us is so widespread, frequently accompanied by sexual assault and a viciousness born of extreme emotions, that activists have informally coined the phrase, “the transsexual death penalty.”

I decided to call the nurse back a week later and feel out how she was adjusting. Keeping my voice nonchalant, I asked if she had any questions for me. Any concerns?

"No,” she replied, “none at all."

She sounded a bit nervous but generally under control. I reiterated that my main concern was that no one be distracted from doing his or her job, and she told me to rest easy: her staff were professionals and they would perform their jobs skillfully and well. We finished our conversation and I hung up.

I sat there staring at the phone, my hand shaking slightly on the receiver. At the time, I was living in a second-story flat in the Mission District of San Francisco. My four housemates consisted of two "boy-dykes," a fem lesbian and another ftm who was my best friend. They were at their various jobs, so I had the large, run-down Victorian to myself. Sun splashed in through the windows overlooking Guerrero Street, and I listened absentmindedly to the shrieks and laughter of children at recess at a nearby Catholic school.

What should I do? I wanted to call back and cancel the surgery, but what then? As it was, I couldn't work, couldn't walk much farther than a few blocks at a time, couldn't even cook for myself or do dishes or other household chores. If I canceled now and didn't get better, wouldn't I run the same risks if and when I decided to reschedule the surgery? I felt a flash of resentment. Why should I have to worry about this on top of the risks of the surgery itself?!

Finally, I removed my hand from the receiver and levered myself up out of the armchair and onto my feet. I'd done all I could to make sure my surgery would go well. Now, best let go of my worries and proceed.

Fortunately, the surgery was successful beyond anyone's expectations. Members of the Kaiser surgical team treated me with kindness and respect. The nurse who rolled me into the operating arena pointed out brown paper covering the room’s plate-glass windows. "For your privacy," she said. "Just like we do for our own."

Flat on my back, already feeling the effects of the drugs they'd pumped into me, I was more relaxed than I'd been in a long time. Surgery-smurgery, I thought, bring it on!

They told me to count down from 10: I was out by seven.

An Accident


They said I was unconscious for 10 or 15 minutes. Out-cold, in a crumpled fetal position on asphalt still damp from an early morning fog off the San Francisco Bay, while a crowd of my co-workers gathered, curious to see what had happened. Outside their growing circle, my mountain bike lay, taxi-cab yellow against the dull-gray pavement, its knobby tires slowly spinning down. It was relatively undamaged from the accident that had left me with a concussion, fractured arm, sprained wrist and patchy map of road-rash across my body.

I came to slowly, confused. I’d been dreaming, which made me think at first that I was home in bed. But the voices I heard above and around me didn't fit. One voice in particular, hoarse with excitement, broke through my haze.

"I looked up, yeah, and I saw this guy flying through the air! And he landed and I expected him to get up, but he didn't. He didn't get up…he just lay there, not moving. So I ran over…"

The voice receded again, as if down a tunnel, and my focus shifted to the cold, lumpy surface beneath my back, which resolved abruptly into gravel and asphalt. My heart started thumping as a picture popped into my mind--bicycle handlebars, and beneath them, a fat, off-road tire sunk deep in a roadbed rail-groove. On my final approach to work, outside the gate to Bayer’s Biotech facility in Berkeley, California, I’d tried to cross railway tracks to skirt a double-parked semi-trailer truck. As my tire encountered the wet tracks, however, my bike had jerked beneath me and without warning, slipped into the groove. A split-second later, wheels locked tight, it had stopped dead.

But the guy flying through the air couldn't be me. I'd just had my first shot of testosterone a week before. Fellow Bayer employees all knew me as a woman--a short-haired, cross-dressing odd sort of woman, true, but a woman nonetheless. That I was actually a female-to-male transsexual—or "ftm"—just beginning transition was as yet unknown. No coworker would use male pronouns to refer to me.

But the driver of the double-parked truck might. The man with the excited voice might be him, in which case, the guy he was referring to could be me. Flying through the air.

There was no escaping it: I must be lying in the road. Had been for a bit of time, it seems. Who—if any—of my coworkers had seen the accident? More importantly, who had heard the truck driver call me "he?" With any luck, they’d just think they’d misheard. Or that the truck driver was befuddled. Slowly, I opened my eyes and looked up…to see a circle of Bayer employees five or six people deep surrounding me.

Shit! I clenched my eyes shut again. Heart racing, fighting nausea, I rolled over onto my side, struggling against the tangle of my bike-bag. All I wanted to do was escape the stares of those 30 or 40 people. Nothing else mattered. Not my head, which was pounding. Not the palms of my hands, scraped raw, nor my arm, which screamed in pain.

Somehow, I managed to get up onto my hands and knees and crawl a few feet—no one tried to stop me—before once again collapsing. Face down, fighting not to throw up, it occurred to me then that I might have a neck or spinal injury and should not have moved at all. The full extent of my predicament began to sink in. Still, so strong was my desire to flee the stares of coworkers who knew me as a woman but had heard the truck driver call me "he," I would have kept on crawling if I’d been able to.

Instead, I rolled over on the pavement and stared up at the sky, avoiding the eyes of my coworkers, wishing more than anything I could turn back the clock and walk, not ride my bicycle over those damned railroad tracks.

The ambulance arrived. Two paramedics jumped out and knelt on either side of me. One immediately immobilized my head and neck while the other checked my pulse and looked me over for injuries.

"What's your name?" He asked, shining a penlight into my eyes.

"Brynn C."

"What’s the date?"

"March 2nd, 1994."

The two men worked over me, untangling my bike bag, packing sandbags around my head and neck, and immobilizing my left arm. That was when I heard someone tell them I'd been unconscious for more than 10 minutes and really began worrying I might have caused permanent damage by trying to crawl away.

"Who's the president?" The EMT broke into my reverie, leaning over me. They really ask that? I thought before answering, "Bill Clinton."

His next question brought me up short. "Are you on any medications?"

Medications? Testosterone was a "medication," wasn’t it? I stared up into the inquisitive faces of my coworkers. Did I need to mention it? Would testosterone's side-effects be of any concern under the circumstances? My mind raced.

A concussion, which I must have suffered to lose consciousness for 10 minutes, causes the brain to swell, right? And testosterone leads to water retention and weight gain when first injected by a female-bodied person. So, could water retention worsen a concussion?

"Are you on any medications we need to know about?" The EMT repeated his question, his tone more insistent. In my state of mind, everyone in the surrounding wall of people seemed to be hanging on my reply. If I said, "Yes, testosterone," word would spread like wildfire, and Bayer's several thousand employees would all know by day's end that I was a transsexual. Hardly the way I'd planned to come out.

"Are you?" The paramedic asked again, his face looming.

"I.… I'm..." Suddenly, my stupor cleared enough for me to see the simple solution. "I’ll tell you later, ok?" I said in a low voice.

The EMT hesitated just a beat. Then, "Sure," he said, and the two of them finished strapping me to a body board and loading me into the ambulance.

Having never ridden in an ambulance before, I'd thought it would be exciting. The wailing siren, flashing lights, the drama of being the center of all that attention. Well, it was anything but. My condition wasn’t serious enough to warrant a siren, it seemed. A blessing I failed to appreciate at the time, so intent was I on not throwing up, as every bump in the road, every corner, every time we accelerated or braked, I prayed for unconsciousness.

"I feel sick," I finally managed to croak, but the words fell monumentally short of describing my misery.

"Hey, Joe, ease up a bit," the EMT spoke through the partition to the driver. Then he turned back to me. "So, what about those medications?"

Ah, jeeze, how was I going to tell this young guy I was on testosterone? That, in essence, I was one of those?

I took a deep breath, then blurted out, "I'm a transsexual and I had my first shot of testosterone a week ago. I don't know if it affects a concussion or not, but I thought you should know."

There was the slightest of pauses. Then, "That's cool," the paramedic said and wrote something down on his clipboard.

I felt so exposed. The silence lengthened and out of nervousness, I started talking. "Have you ever, ah, seen or dealt with anyone like me before?"

"Nope." The guy looked at me over the edge of the clipboard. "But that's okay." Then his face creased in a smile. "We're trained to deal with all sorts of things. Don't sweat it."

Gratitude washed over me. I was so thankful that he wasn’t put off. I was eternally grateful, in fact, that he was willing to treat me like a fellow human being. I exuded gratitude as I went back to fighting nausea, bouncing over potholes and careening around corners, until the ambulance arrived at the Oakland Kaiser emergency room.

Where, in short order, my composure met with a series of setbacks. A quick assessment by the triage nurse relegated me to an out-of-the-way section of a corridor. Still strapped to the stretcher, my body began to fail me. I started shivering uncontrollably, the room began spinning, my stomach was heaving and, worst of all, I had to relieve myself. Immediately. And they hadn't left me with a call button or any way to signal for assistance.

So I called out, not too loud. "Nurse?" Then a bit louder, "Nurrse!" Images of patients clamoring for attention in third-world hospitals flitted through my mind's eye. At the moment, though, the only thing more humiliating than yelling for help was the prospect of losing control of my bowels while strapped to the stretcher. Pretty soon I was shouting at the top of my lungs, "Nuuurrrsse!"

A white-haired, grandmotherly woman in a white uniform—the quintessential nurse—finally appeared, and I realized my ordeal was just beginning. Defecating into a bedpan while several nurses looked on was bad enough. But there was also the issue of the packer.

That’s right, I was packing—not in a suitcase, in my briefs. My ftm brothers and I had devoted an inordinate amount of time to devising a sort of handmade prosthesis, to give heft and a bulge to our trousers. After much trial and error, we'd settled on a fabrication of condoms filled with hair-gel and sewn inside a cut-off section of pantyhose. The "packer" looked quite lifelike beneath the fabric of pants. Exposed, it looked ridiculous, if not downright obscene.

And I had one in my briefs.

The urgency of the situation gave me little time to deliberate. I briefly considered putting my hand down my pants and sneaking the packer out before they undressed me. But then, where would I put it?

With seemingly no other choice, I came out under duress for the second time that day. "Ah, excuse me, but before we go any further, I have to tell you something," I started.

The nurse was down by my feet, pulling a blanket off my body. She paused and looked up expectantly. "Yes, dear? What is it?"

It's hard, that’s what it is. I sighed, then plunged on. "I'm a transsexual," I said. God how I hated that word! But nobody knew what ftm meant. "I'm female-to-male and I'm wearing a…a thing in my pants. It's kind of embarrassing and I want to take it out…"

"Oh, that's okay, dear!" The nurse actually chuckled and kindly patted my knee. "We've seen everything here. Don't you worry about it a bit. Diane?!" She called to another nurse. "Just a second, she'll bring you something to put it in." A younger woman appeared, disappeared, then returned with a large, white plastic bag.

"Here you go." While the first nurse finished removing my shoes, the other held open the bag. I reached down awkwardly with my unbroken right arm, pulled the packer from my underwear, and shoved it quickly out of sight into the bag. The nurse then stashed the bag discretely under my stretcher. The whole thing, disclosure to concealment, took just a couple of minutes, and neither nurse displayed the slightest unease or prurient curiosity. They were true professionals, for which I once again felt excessively grateful.

There remained the ordeal of the bedpan. Suffice it to say, only dire necessity made the humiliating feat possible. The tact of the nurses salvaged a modicum of my dignity. Still, by the time I was cleaned up, tucked under the blanket again and wheeled off to X-ray, I'd had quite enough of this hospital experience, thank you very much! Yet it would be hours before I’d eventually be released to go home.

I daresay, my experience would have been much more trying had I been farther along in my transition that day. As it was, after only one week on testosterone, my voice was still high-pitched and feminine, my face and body relatively hairless. Despite the fact I felt like a man, I still looked totally like a woman. With no surgeries, a doctor or nurse would find exactly what they expected beneath my clothing.

That wasn’t true the next time I found myself, by chance, in a hospital.

Something different....

I'm going to try something new here.

I'll be on vacation in Brooklyn (with my sweetie!) starting tomorrow and rather than leave Krieg9 to languish, I've decided to post excerpts from my (in-progress) memoir.

I plan to post every day or every other day, depending on my schedule and on readers' interest.

Please be aware, the details of my life could rock your world, especially readers who have come here seeking war news and political commentary. Even a few of you who know me personally may be surprised.

I am not telling my story to shock or offend, however, but because I believe it's worthy of telling for a variety of reasons. In regard to this blog, my politics and radical perspective have been intimately shaped by the events of my life.

As for my timing, I just finished reading the book, Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides--a tour-de-force, I highly recommend!-- and the fact that Eugenides was just awarded the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, gives me hope that readers, or, at least, my readers, are ready to hear my story.

One final caveat: What I'm posting here will be truth, not fiction. I know, it's the Internet...where truth is as malleable as twice-chewed bubble-gum and just as precious. But I'm serious. This is the true story of my life.

With no further ado, the first installment will follow ....

GOP Astroturf update....

Editors at the San Diego Union Tribune can console themselves: they weren't the only ones to be scammed by the GOP Team Leaders Action Center.

From from it. According to This Modern World, the list of dupes has become woefully long. Time Magazine just added its name, followed by the Kalamazoo Gazette, the Huntsville (AL) Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Anchorage Daily News, the Gallitin (TN) News Examiner and the Glasgow (KY) Daily Times.

These fine examples of American print journalism all published--verbatim--the same letter on "creating jobs and fostering economic growth," composed by TLAC operatives. They placed it in their "letters to the editor" sections, presenting it as a heartfelt missive, painstakingly penned by a real person, rather than the digital result of a couple of mouse-clicks that it really is.

What an all-time low for U.S. journalism. Granted, astroftuf is nothing compared to the Jayson Blair scandal, which pales in comparison to the appallingly shallow, sporting-event-like coverage of the 2002 election debacle and piss-poor, fawning, Pravda-like reporting of the Bush administration's invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

But still.

This Modern World post here.

The Brits have the right idea...!

LONDON, May 19 — Shareholders of GlaxoSmithKline voted today to reject the proposed pay package for the company's chief executive, Dr. Jean-Pierre Garnier, and other top executives.

The vote, by a slim margin of 50.72 percent to 49.28 percent, was the first rejection since a new investor-protection law was enacted in Britain earlier this year requiring executive pay plans to be put to shareholders for a vote.

The component of the pay plan that drew the most criticism was a severance provision that would have entitled Dr. Garnier to $23.7 million in bonus salary and stock if he were to resign or be dismissed any time through 2007; it would also add three years to his age when calculating his pension. Dr. Garnier was paid £2.45 million ($4 million) in 2002.

I love that: adding 3 years to his age! Why not make it 60 years, declare him hypothetically deceased, and cut off the pension all together? With the proceeds of $4 million/year (for how many years?) he'd still be way better off than the tens of thousands of rank-and-file retirees and laid-off workers his American counterparts have hung out to dry with no pensions.

Complete story here.

Glover should dump MCI....

WASHINGTON, May 19 — MCI, the former WorldCom, agreed today to settle accusations of fraud by the Securities and Exchange Commission by paying a $500 million penalty that will ultimately be given to investors.

The penalty was the largest ever sought by the commission, and the agreement resolves the biggest fraud case ever filed by the agency....

The article goes on to say that the SEC had actually sought $1.5 billion from MCI for committing the biggest fraud of all time by using improper accounting techniques to misstate its earnings by more than $11 billion. They accepted $500 million "in recognition that it was all the company could afford."

Lawyers for investors say the $500 million will not satisfy shareholders' claims, which run in the "tens of billions of dollars."

As usual, part of the settlement allowed the company to neither admit nor deny the fraud accusations. Still, WorldCom and its former senior executives are not off the hook yet: they may face additional penalties, and the company--along with its board, top executives and former investment bankers and analysts at Salomon Smith Barney--are all defendants in a class-action suit brought by shareholders and bondholders.

So, what was Glover doing promoting a company run by such a band of crooks anyway?

Complete story here.

MCI coming together to fire Glover....

If this can be believed, MCI is dropping Danny Glover as a spokesperson due to his anti-war views and activism.

Normally, I'm not eager to jump to defend a celebrity's right to schill for corporate America.

But it's already bad enough that everything we see, read and hear through corporate media is falling under the control of fewer and fewer giant companies. Now, those behemoths want to control even the minds of their actors and spokespeople.

If you want to let MCI know how you feel about this, go here.

And, by the way, don't credit (or blame) Joe Scarborough for MCI's actions. This Modern World says here that MCI has been looking for a reason to drop
Glover for some time.

American empire....

Great speech, given by world-renowned author, Arundhati Roy, in New York City at the Riverside Church on May 13, 2003.

Some samples:

Way back in 1988, on the 3rd of July, the U.S.S. Vincennes, a missile cruiser stationed in the Persian Gulf, accidentally shot down an Iranian airliner and killed 290 civilian passengers. George Bush the First, who was at the time on his presidential campaign, was asked to comment on the incident. He said quite subtly, "I will never apologize for the United States. I don't care what the facts are."

I don't care what the facts are. What a perfect maxim for the New American Empire. Perhaps a slight variation on the theme would be more apposite: The facts can be whatever we want them to be.

[...]

So here we are, the people of the world, confronted with an Empire armed with a mandate from heaven (and, as added insurance, the most formidable arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in history). Here we are, confronted with an Empire that has conferred upon itself the right to go to war at will, and the right to deliver people from corrupting ideologies, from religious fundamentalists, dictators, sexism, and poverty by the age-old, tried-and-tested practice of extermination. Empire is on the move, and Democracy is its sly new war cry. Democracy, home-delivered to your doorstep by daisy cutters. Death is a small price for people to pay for the privilege of sampling this new product: Instant-Mix Imperial Democracy (bring to a boil, add oil, then bomb).

[...]

When the Turkish government temporarily bowed to the views of 90 percent of its population, and turned down the U.S. government's offer of billions of dollars of blood money for the use of Turkish soil, it was accused of lacking "democratic principles." According to a Gallup International poll, in no European country was support for a war carried out "unilaterally by America and its allies" higher than 11 percent. But the governments of England, Italy, Spain, Hungary, and other countries of Eastern Europe were praised for disregarding the views of the majority of their people and supporting the illegal invasion. That, presumably, was fully in keeping with democratic principles. What's it called? New Democracy? (Like Britain's New Labour?)

Complete speech here.

Way to go...!

ARCATA, CALIFORNIA -- More than 100 cities, and one state, have condemned the USA Patriot Act as giving the government too much snooping power. In Arcata, a liberal fold in Northern California's Redwood Curtain, the City Council has gone a step farther and criminalized it.

Starting this month, a new city ordinance makes it a crime punishable by a $57 fine for a city department head to voluntarily cooperate with unconstitutional investigations or arrests under the aegis of the Patriot Act, the anti-terrorism bill passed in the dark days after Sept. 11.

Ok, it's little more than symbolic. But with all the disheartening news out there, it's still inspiring!

Complete story here.

Fleischer to resign....

Ari Fleischer, President Bush's press secretary, has announced he will resign in July to enter the private sector.

Say what you will about the Republican's morality, their strategy and tactics, like those of tyrants before them, are extremely effective. And none more so than Spin-meister Fleischer, who never flinched from straightforwardly refusing to answer embarrassing or unwanted questions.

Frankly, I'm surprised he's resigning just as Bush's presidential campaign starts to gear up. I wonder what--if anything--is behind the move?

Does anyone trust the word of the U.S. anymore...?

From the N.Y. Times:

BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 16 — In an abrupt reversal, the United States and Britain have indefinitely put off their plan to allow Iraqi opposition forces to form a national assembly and an interim government by the end of the month.

Instead, top American and British diplomats leading reconstruction efforts here told exile leaders in a meeting tonight that allied officials would remain in charge of Iraq for an indefinite period...

Then this gobbledygook doublespeak, to make it seem alright:

Mr. Bremer [the new civilian administrator], who was accompanied by John Sawers, a British diplomat representing Prime Minister Tony Blair, told the Iraqi political figures that the allies preferred to revert to the concept of creating an "interim authority" — not a provisional government — so that Iraqis could assist them by creating a constitution for Iraq, revamping the educational system and devising a plan for future democratic elections.

"It's quite clear that you cannot transfer all powers onto some interim body, because it will not have the strength or the resources to carry those responsibilities out," The Associated Press quoted Mr. Sawers as saying. "There was agreement that we should aim to have a national conference as soon as we reasonably could do so."

Whenever that happens to be....

As recently as 11 days ago, Jay Garner, Bremer's predecessor, said the core of a new Iraqi government would emerge "next week, or by the second weekend in May."

And on April 28, the United States and Britain sponsored a political gathering of about 300 Iraqis and supported their call for a national conference to meet by the end of May to select a transitional government.

Do they look like they're in-over-their-heads and in disarray?

Zalmay Khalilzad, described in the article merely as President Bush's "envoy to the Iraqi opposition," was not that long ago, heir apparent to the Iraqi presidency. He was't even in Iraq for this most recent meeting.

Bremer is quoted as saying he would meet with the opposition leaders for further discussions in two weeks.

Riiiighhht...!

All I can say is, if the Iraqi opposition is surprised, they haven't been following U.S. foreign policy for years.

Complete story here.

Bush's "victory" against terrorism is quickly turning to ashes....

RABAT (Reuters) - At least 20 people were killed in at least four separate bomb attacks in Morocco's commercial capital Casablanca on Friday night, the state news agency said.

Jewish, Spanish and, apparently, Belgian targets were also struck, the MAP agency said. Three of the blasts were car bombs. Two policemen and a security guard at a Spanish center were among the dead. Glass, blood and debris littered the scenes.

``There are body parts all over the place,'' Moroccan journalist Aboubakr Jammai told the BBC...

Damn Bush. Everything's unfolding like a predictable ancient Greek tragedy.

Next act, he and his cabal will respond with more violence. Which will be met in kind. Back and forth, in a sickening slam dance of death, destruction and anguish.

And who will benefit? Arms dealers, religious fanatics and despots. The usual, and--not by accident--Bush's closest companions.

Yes, all along in this, they have been stupid, like a fox.

The complete, sad story here.

And this too....

An insightful, noteworthy blog by a Chasid in Brooklyn....(Here.)

New blog link....

Just added another blog to my recommended: Bush Wars. (Here. )

Check it out!

Democrats losing ways....

Emma Goldman over at Notes on the Atrocities has been critiquing the Democratic Party’s national election strategies—or lack thereof--and her remarks have got me thinking of something I first read online (sorry, I can't remember the link). It has provided me with the most sensible explanation ever since for the Democrats’ often baffling actions.

The assumption underlying most liberal criticism of the Democratic Party (including Emma's) is that it wants to "win elections," not merely "stay in power."

A subtle distinction, admittedly, but a critical one.

In a two-party system, staying in power--as the minority party--is a given, no matter how badly you represent constituents. All you have to do is please enough voters and avoid offending too many, hence, a “middle-of-the-road” strategy is favored. The “fringes” are expendable: too far right, they’ll vote Republican anyway; while the left has traditionally been shunned in this country for fear of losing the center. Even the risk of severely alienating voters--as has come to pass with the left--is considered worth it because the disgruntled voters often fail to vote for either party, thereby hurting none.

This theory might sound idiotic at first. But if the Democrats’ real goal is to keep the campaign contributions rolling in and hang on to their jobs—as apparatchiks, candidates and, when possible, elected officials--the secret is to avoid distancing too many voters and--most important--don't upset donors, who tend toward the conservative. It doesn't matter if you always come in second place. In fact, in some ways it's preferable.

As perpetual runners-up, the heat’s off. Look what the media and the Republicans put President Clinton through! When the reins are not in your hands, you don't have to expend so much effort. It's not your fault when things go wrong, you can blame the other guy. And you can even use your second-place status as a campaign tool to raise more money.

Money is the key to understanding the Democrats' insistence on nominating milquetoast candidates and constantly advancing disappointing, middle-of-the-road campaign strategies. Since the ascendance of the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Party has been a money-making machine, not a party. Keeping the principals in power and cash is the machine’s main goal, winning elections is secondary.

That’s not to say that individual candidates don’t want to win--lord knows, Lieberman and Gephardt are ambitious. Or that some, like Dean, are even idealistically motivated. But they are at the mercy of a party whose main purpose is to perpetuate its machinery and keep the gravy train rolling.

Threats to a woman's right to choose....

From the N.Y. Times:

MIAMI, May 14 — Gov. Jeb Bush has asked a court to appoint a guardian for the fetus of a developmentally disabled rape victim...

[...]

At issue is whether appointing a guardian for a fetus could force a woman to maintain a pregnancy if the interests of the guardian for the fetus conflicted with the interests of a mother or her representative. In a 1989 case, the Florida Supreme Court declared that it was "clearly improper" to appoint a guardian for a fetus. In the current case, neither the woman nor anyone caring for her has sought to abort the fetus.

[...]

Critics say the governor actions are intended to keep the issue in the courts until the woman is in the third trimester of her pregnancy and can no longer obtain an abortion.

"Our take on this is that this woman's needs, her desires and her interests need to take precedence," said Bebe Anderson, a lawyer with the Center for Reproductive Rights, an advocacy group. " If she is incompetent, someone else should represent her and her interests alone and make that decision for her."

[...]

Religious groups praised the governor's actions.

"If a guardian is appointed, there would be a clear recognition that there is a human being occupying that womb," said Brian Fahling, senior trial lawyer for the American Family Association's Center for Law and Policy. "The governor has the constitutional duty to uphold the right to life."

On a local level, for the past two days a group called, "Justice for All," --a misnomer if ever there was one-- has invaded the University of California, San Diego, campus with a 20' by 9' triple-sided display of huge, lurid, color photos showing what they claim are aborted fetuses.

The obviously well-funded, anti-choice nonprofit, based in Wichita, KS, says it is not religiously subsidized--a ludicrous claim. Apparently, the group travels the college-campus circuit with its foot soldiers and shockingly offensive and misleading exhibit. It gets its foot in the door on state-funded campuses through the ruse of being "invited" by the local affiliate and thrives on controversy. It would like nothing better than for the university to kick it off the premises so that it could then scream "First Amendment Rights" and initiate a high-profile lawsuit. (Already happened with the University of Texas and perhaps others.)

What sickens me about this extreme Right group--in addition to its stand on a woman's right to choose--is the way it hides behind Constitutional protections that you know it would dismantle if it ever achieved its ultimate goal of an American theocracy.

Jeb Bush story here.

Put Tenet's feet to the fire...!

The 9/11 survivors and their loved ones deserve the truth.

WASHINGTON, May 14 — Seven months after telling Congress he would do so, George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, has yet to provide the names of agency officials responsible for one of the most glaring intelligence mistakes leading up to the attacks of Sept. 11, according to Congressional and agency officials.

Soon after the attacks, the mistake emerged, showing that the Central Intelligence Agency had waited 20 months before placing on a federal watch list two suspected terrorists who wound up as hijackers.

Had the information about the two hijackers been promptly relayed to other agencies, the government might have been able to disrupt, limit or possibly even prevent the terrorist attacks, intelligence officials and Congressional investigators said.

The N.Y. Times article says that two agency leaders responsible for tracking Al Queda in 2000, when the CIA failed to put the 2 suspects on the watch list have actually been promoted!

Full story here.

First apply for American citizenship....

Then join the Republican Party and get in tight with Bush, Cheney, et al. Haven't you noticed whose getting the Iraqi contracts?

Mr. Henderson, a South African entrepreneur, thought last week that he had lined up everything he needed to start Air Baghdad, the first commercial air service into and out of Iraq since the war.

Mr. Henderson had flight approval from American military commanders to operate his first route between Baghdad and Amman, Jordan. He had a plane and crew. Because armed gangs are attacking and killing road travelers with increasing frequency, he had throngs of customers ready to pay one-way fares of $650. He even had insurance from Lloyd's of London.

But just as the first passengers were ready to board his 50-seat commuter plane last Thursday, Air Baghdad was grounded. The decision boiled down to this: he was moving too early to make a profit and might get a jump on his competitors. [Emphasis mine.]

But, hey, no worries about Bechtel, Halliburton or the others....

Full story here.

Pro-choice does not equal progressive....

It turns out that pro-choice Democratic women elected with bundles of checks from thousands of contributors to Emily's List, the high-profile feminist national PAC, have been voting less-than-progressively on non-Choice issues.

...In the 107th Congress, for example, Dianne Feinstein (CA) and Hillary Clinton (NY) voted against bankruptcy protection for the poor. Who knew? Emily's List also helped finance the election of Senator Debbie Stabenow (MI) so that she could vote against food safety and for the nuclear industry; for Senators Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, both from Washington State, who cast numerous votes for Fast Track and nuclear subsidies as did now-former Senator Jean Carnahan (MO) who also voted to open ANWR for oil drilling.

The votes of several women who were first elected with the support of Emily's List should put them in good standing with the Republican right. Once in Congress, Blanche Lincoln (AR) and Mary Landrieu (LA) were 'delisted' for violating their agreement with Emily's List and casting ballots against abortion choice. A glance at their voting records, however, gives ample evidence that their support from a "liberal" and "progressive" PAC, as founder and president Ellen Malcolm describes Emily's List, was always questionable. Mary Landrieu, who bragged during the 2002 election cycle that she voted with President Bush 74% of the time, cast votes against food and workplace safety, against fuel economy standards, and in favor of the John Ashcroft confirmation and federal subsidies for nuclear power. Blanche Lincoln voted against campaign finance reform, against food and workplace safety, against consumer bankruptcy protection, against fuel economy standards, but for nuclear power and Fast Track. By the next election each had a well established name in her state, and voters returned both of these women to Washington without the support of the PAC that had helped place them in Congress to begin with.

According to this piece on Common Dreams, it seems that Emily's List does not track any aspect of candidates' agendas beyond reproductive rights, and therefore sometimes ends up endorsing the less progressive candidate in a race merely because she is a female.

As a one-time contributor to Emily's List, I am dismayed.

Westinghouse story is false....

Well, I couldn't verify the Westinghouse allegation (see below) made at On the Fritz, because it's bogus.

And yes, I knew the photo was a fake. Puhleeze.

It seemed such an apt visual comment, however, and it really cracked me up. I love hyperbole. The problem is, there's a fine line between it and downright falsehood.

[Note: added on 5/20: The photo was a great sight gag, but I'm taking it down. It's slowing this site's load time tremendously....]

Revolting.....

In every sense of the word.

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Senate voted Thursday to suspend taxes on stock dividends for three years, restoring the centerpiece of President Bush's economic plan in a package of tax cuts that is still half the size he wanted.

"It would encourage investment, it would encourage jobs, it would encourage growth," Sen. Don Nickles, R-Okla., said just before Vice President Dick Cheney cast the tie-breaking ballot in the 51-50 vote to abolish dividend taxes in 2004, 2005 and 2006....[Emphasis mine.]

Cheney stands to gain around a cool quarter of a million dollars each year, by most estimates, if the plan he cast the tie-breaking vote on becomes law.

How's that for democracy?

The two Democrats, Sens. Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Zell Miller of Georgia, who gave Republicans the edge they needed for passing this today should be booted come next election.

Full story here.

Vinnell a CIA front...?

This brief article in today's Times/U.K. says the target of Monday's terrorist bombing in Saudi Arabia may be a CIA front.

AS BEFITS a company that has been accused of being a CIA front, of recruiting “executive mercenaries” and attempting to overthrow the Prime Minister of a Commonwealth state, the Vinnell Corporation kept a low profile in Riyadh.

Its discreet security fooled nobody, however: the bomb attack was the second it has suffered in eight years. In 1995 seven people were killed....

According to the article, Vinnell was brought to Saudi Arabia in the 1970's to train Saudi troops to guard oil fields. Since then, it has helped the Saudis increase their National Guard strength from 26,000 troops to around 70,000. Vinnell employees were even seen fighting alongside Saudi troops in the 1991 Gulf War. (I didn't know Saudi troops fought in that war.)

Meanwhile, the article says, on the other side of the globe in the early 1980's, two Vinnell employees were embroiled in a failed attempt to overthrow Maurice Bishop, the left-wing Prime Minister of Grenada. Soon after that, a former employee was implicated in the Iran-Contra scandal.

CIA front or not, it doesn't exactly sound like a company with clean hands.

Information in the NY Times is just as damning. It identifies Vinnell as "a Virginia subsidiary of Northrop Grumman." (Here). Northrop, a "$25 billion global defense enterprise" (by its own self-description) is anything but an innocent noncombatant in the Middle East.

A fact Vinell employees seemed cognizant of. A Northrop spokesperson said in the NY Times article, that the compound in Saudi Arabia was referred to as "Camp Vinnell" on the company website.

Thus, contrary to the way Bush officials are trying to spin this latest attack, Vinnell employees were aware that they lived on the front lines of the "battle against terrorism" in Saudi Arabia.

There's more.

[Note added on 5/20: the following regarding Westinghouse is false, a bogus posting. See post on 5/15....] According to On the Fritz, Westinghouse--a Northrop affiliate--just won a multibillion dollar contract to provide "infrastructure redevelopment" for post-war Iraq--despite the fact it has little or no experience in the large-scale construction field. (I haven't been able to independently verify this yet. I'll keep you posted.)

Not in any way to justify terrorism, but these connections shed quite a different light on Monday's bombings, don't they?

(Thanks also to Common Dreams.)

Wag the dog real-life....

If you haven't read elsewhere that the famous Jessica Lynch "rescue" was a staged media event, check out this Guardian/U.K. story.

Jessica Lynch became an icon of the war. An all-American heroine, the story of her capture by the Iraqis and her rescue by US special forces became one of the great patriotic moments of the conflict. It couldn't have happened at a more crucial moment, when the talk was of coalition forces bogged down, of a victory too slow in coming.

Her rescue will go down as one of the most stunning pieces of news management yet conceived. It provides a remarkable insight into the real influence of Hollywood producers on the Pentagon's media managers, and has produced a template from which America hopes to present its future wars.

Via Common Dreams.

S.D. Tribune update....

Remember the astroturfing incident involving the San Diego Union Tribune, discussed here on and on This Modern World on 5/9?

Well, I never heard a word from the UT, despite the fact I emailed and faxed a letter to them. But the link to Steven Zasueta's "letter to the editor," --which was actually written by someone at the GOP's Team Leaders Action Center website-- has been killed. Whether this was done in response to public consternation or simply due to the passage of time, I guess I'll never know.

How to win friends and influence people....

BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 13 — United States military forces in Iraq will have the authority to shoot looters on sight under a tough new security setup that will include hiring more police officers and banning ranking members of the Baath Party from public service, American officials said today.

Full story in the N.Y. Times here via Common Dreams.

What next, Saudi Arabia...?

I have been struck in recent days by the increasingly critical tone adopted by U.S. media and the Bush administration toward Saudi Arabia.

According to This Modern World, (here), CNN has finally been emphasizing that 15 of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 were Saudis. (About time!)

Then there's this disapproving tone (echoed throughout the nation's media) in today's N.Y. Times:

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia, May 14 — The United States Ambassador to Saudi Arabia charged today that some weeks before the car bombs of Monday night, American intelligence operatives picked up signs of an imminent terrorist attack and urged the Saudi government to improve security at foreign compounds here, but got little or no response.

Reflecting what some officials said was increasing American frustration with the Saudi efforts against terrorism, the ambassador, Robert W. Jordan, praised Crown Prince Abdullah and Prince Saud al-Faisal, the foreign minister, for their "sincere" vows of a crackdown on military groups. But he also said that "executing the plan to provide additional security is another matter, and I think there's some ways to go on that, quite frankly."

[...]

Even the White House, which has tried in recent months to repair relations with the kingdom, said today that Saudi efforts to combat terrorism remain inadequate, despite some recent improvements.

"Repair relations with the kingdom"?

Since when? Is this not the same Bush administration that facilitated the evacuation of bin Laden's family by air out of the United States in the days following 9/11 when all civilian aircraft were supposedly grounded? The same administration that has been bedding down with the Saudi royal family since before the time of G.W.'s daddy?!

Have I missed something? Or is "repair relations with the kingdom" yet another White House phrase slipped manipulatively into press releases to re-write reality in preparation for another Machiavellian twist?

I would worry if I were a member of the Saudi royal family--who, by the way, are denying that the kingdom failed to heed U.S. requests for greater security. The U.S. has decided to close its Saudi military bases. And now, nonessential American personnel have been ordered out of the country because, again from the Times:

"Saudi Arabia is now one of the fronts in the battle against terrorism," an aide quoted the [American Ambassador Robert Jordan] as telling them. "Innocent civilians and children don't belong on battlefields."

That's damned right, they don't. And just where, by definition, do terrorists' battlefields lie?

Eight Americans were killed in Monday's attack, out of a total of 29 - 34 victims--depending on the news source. (Breaking news, as reported here yesterday, erroneously placed the death toll in the 90's.) As tragic as 8 violent deaths are, they are negligible compared to the nearly 6,000 slain on 9/11 by Saudi hijackers. And we didn't tell Americans to leave Saudi Arabia then.

Just what exactly does the Bush regime have in store for the Saudi Kingdom?

Complete N.Y. Times story on the administration's irritation here.

The face of our future...?


If we U.S. citizens do not oust Bush and the NeoCons from power and replace them with leaders willing to address the root causes of terrorism--the war between Israel and the Palestinians, dire poverty throughout much of the Third World, the out-of-control arms industry, the widening gulf between the globe's haves and have-nots, the proliferation of despotic, repressive regimes, and so on--this will become our daily reality.

And it will increasingly take place on U.S. soil.

Don't believe me? Look at Israel. If ever there were a lesson against using force to respond to terrorism, Israel is it.

Yet what other response does Bush offer?

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia, May 13 — The death toll rose to at least 90 today in the three suicide attacks against residential compounds and a business in the Saudi capital, according to news reports quoting the State Department.

[...]

Mr. Bush called the bombings "despicable acts committed by killers whose only faith is hate." The crowd of 7,000 at the Indiana State Fairgrounds roared its approval when he said, "The United States will find the killers, and they will learn the meaning of American justice."

And people applauded....

The U.S. electorate's mindless adulation of Bush more and more evokes images of Nazi Germany's devotion to Hitler.

If we don't stop the Republican juggernaut, we are all going to learn the bitter meaning of "American justice."

Lessons continue apace in San Diego: ballooning government budget deficits; massive lay-offs of school administrators, teachers and others; libraries cutting their hours; social services disappearing; businesses closing. And all we hear from Washington are drums of war and tax-cuts for the wealthy.

Complete story of the Saudi Arabian bombings here.

Two views of the situation in Iraq....

The mainstream view, promoted by President Bush on May 1st and embraced by Americans who seek no further for their news than Fox or ABC:

"In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed. And now our coalition is engaged in securing and reconstructing that country," the president told some 2,000 sailors and airmen aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln some 100 miles off the American coast. "In this battle, we have fought for the cause of liberty, and for the peace of the world. Our nation and our coalition are proud of this accomplishment "

(Full story here.)

Alternate view, believed by the rest of the world, including Americans who are more discerning in their choice of news sources:

You have only to step inside Saddam Hussein's old palace complex - where coalition officials trying to rebuild Iraq are based - to see that the task is way beyond them.

When the civilian administration of the ORHA (Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance) first arrived there, it was said there was only one working shower for 800 people. The situation has improved a little now, but they work in sweltering offices and sleep five or six to a room.

There are no telephones on the desks, and the real world of looted buildings and car thefts outside the palace is a distant prospect. No one is allowed out without an escort of soldiers....

According to the Telegraph/U.K. story, Barbara Bodine, the (recalled) U.S. official in charge of Baghdad, was unaware for 24 hours after the event that US soldiers had shot dead more than a dozen Iraqi protesters in Fallujah a fortnight ago. Likewise:

More than a month after the fall of Baghdad, the city still has no authority - no mayor and practically no police on the streets - while looters continue to pillage government buildings and honest folk keep their daughters at home for fear they will be abducted by armed thugs.

(Complete Telegraph story here.)

Which one do you believe?

NPR concludes their Graham crusade....

Well, I woke up to what I hope is the final NPR story on Billy Graham's religious revival here in San Diego.

The closing night was last night. True to form, NPR's local affiliate covered the event in a reverential, dare I say "worshipful?" tone. They devoted 3 or more minutes to the story (I didn't actually time it--it seemed even longer!) and once again inflated the numbers of attendees.

NPR introduced the story saying, "a quarter of a million attended," neglecting to qualify, "over the four days." Yet, NPR numbered last night's crowd at only 54,000.

So, according to NPR's coverage, there was a capacity crowd the first night (70,000, according to Qualcomm's website); 46,000 the second night; not sure Saturday night, so let's be kind and say 70,000; then 54,000 last night. That's maximum 240,000--IF it was a capacity crowd on Saturday, which I doubt. And that's not accounting for people who attended multiple nights. It's possible, though again, doubtful, that the same 70,000 attended each night.

There again, maybe NPR was consulting the local ultra-conservative San Diego Union Tribune for their crowd estimates. The U.T. numbered the attendance at 270,000 over the 4 days--a true miracle, considering the stadium can't hold that many people.

The U.T.'s tone was positively awed. It opened:

His handshake is still firm. His spirit still strong. So don't look for the Rev. Billy Graham to retire anytime soon.

"I'm going to retire when the Lord says retire," the 84-year-old evangelist said....

The U.T. labeled the event, in which "men, women and children prayed and praised in Mission Valley," probably the "largest Christian event in county history," and praised attendees for leaving behind clean parking lots.

What a tribute.

The U.T. reporter said that after he delivered his sermon, Graham bid farewell to San Diego. "I probably will not preach another sermon in San Diego, but I'll see you in heaven."

Not me, you won't.

Complete story, if you can stomach it, here.

If they say it's true, it must be so....

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - The American general who commanded the Iraq war issued a statement Sunday saying Saddam Hussein's Baath Party "is dissolved," ordering the political organization that ruled the country for 35 years to cease existence immediately.

The message from Gen. Tommy Franks, commander of coalition forces, was read over U.S.-controlled Information Radio on Sunday afternoon.

If it's so simple, why don't they just declare "Peace between Israel and the Palestinians IMMEDIATELY"? Or, "The recession is over NOW"?

And have they forgotten that many upper-level Baath government and party leaders, including Hussein and his sons themselves, remain at large?

Moreover, party membership or affiliation was required for many, if not most white-collar jobs in Iraq. American officials have already been putting Baath leaders back in positions of power--like re-appointing Hussein's personal physician, Muhammad al-Rawi, to his former post as president of Baghdad University, the largest in the country.

AP story here, via My Way.