1. Dervala Hanley on Buddha Boot Camp: "A silent retreat, it turns out, is not silent at all."

2. "At a very early age, he felt the presence of something blocking his progress": thus begins the story of Stuart's liberation from the kundabuffer—basically, an invisible organ of sloth and obfuscation, which can be dissolved through the ringing of tiny bells in your ears every few minutes. There's an album about it, too. I'm told by a reliable source that this web site is a conceptual art project by an MFA student at Indiana University (now doing things like this), but if you'd prefer to regard it as a genuine evangelistic crackpot love movement, go right ahead.

Never mind hemp—why has industry suppressed the Wom Pom? And did your mother warn you about Madeira? (I must have listened to this record 200 times as a kid.)

So I saw the remake of The Quiet American, which is well worth seeing. It's not perfect—I agree slightly with this reviewer that the characters are sometimes kept at a distance, and it doesn't gain anything by softening the novel's pretty depressing portrait of Fowler and Phuong. (Though otherwise the reviewer seems to be out to lunch: I can't figure why she thinks that the final image of a blinded American soldier makes the Vietnam war look heroic, or that a Graham Greene story would be better served by more "adrenaline.") Anyway, hooray to Michael Caine for getting it released.

Then I was curious about the earlier adaptation which I hadn't seen. I knew Graham Greene had been unhappy with it, but I didn't know the whole story and it's quite a story: the anti-Communist message that was tacked onto the 1958 film was based on script advice from a CIA agent, Edward Lansdale. Lansdale had employed General Thé himself, and knew the General to be the terrorist that Greene said he was; but he told the director he could get away with making Thé and the American into misunderstood heroes, because the movie's audience wouldn't be familiar with those events. The movie was dedicated to Ngo Dinh Diem. I'm surprised Greene's head didn't explode. More about the making and unmaking of the story here.

Many of the international volunteer human shields have just been deported from Baghdad. These were people from all over who had traveled to Iraq to try to protect the civilian population with their bodies. It's a practical idea: if you know that Bush thinks American lives are more valuable than the lives of any other civilians, then why not put that to good use. Unfortunately, governments are rarely fond of practical ideas, and protecting civilians was never a priority for Hussein; so now the volunteers will be safe at home wondering whether all the people they had been living with (as well as the new volunteers who continue to arrive) are about to be incinerated.

One of them was John Ross, a correspondent for the SF Bay Guardian, who's been writing reports that are moving, funny, angry, and informative. Here's his last message and the previous ones.

Working as an office temp for the last few weeks has helped to remind me that "the system" is at least as flaky as I am myself, and it's been good for a few laughs, even if they're cheap laughs...

First I had a day-and-a-half job for—well I'd better not mention any names—let's just say a large, powerful accrediting organization for a prestigious profession that's known for its exacting use of language. They were carrying out their big licensing exam, and my job was to type test answers for handicapped applicants. I never did do any typing, because it turned out they hired twice as many temps as they needed, and they had a really hard time remembering the basic details of our duties (like, should we type double-spaced or single-spaced), but that wasn't the funny part. The funny part came halfway through our orientation, when the supervisor told us to type the answers verbatim and "not make any spelling corrections or grammickal corrections. You might be tempted to help out the applicant if they make grammickal mistakes, but you should just type the answer whether it's grammickally correct or not." She managed to use this made-up word about ten more times in the next few minutes while the temps all struggled to keep a straight face (and wondered if maybe she was just testing us).

Lately, I've been working at an investment bank that will also remain anonymous, doing data entry, which is kind of soothing and hypnotic (even if it doesn't use my grammickal skills)—and very, very, very, very, very repetitive: out of the 236 documents I perused so far today, 205 had the same three numbers on them. The other temps and I are the only ones having a relaxing time, though, because this whole floor is fretting about soon getting relocated to New York. And from what I've overheard, their idea of New York is sort of like when I was going to the city high school in Lancaster, PA, and my suburban friends asked me if everyone really carries knives there. One lady has been phoning all the police precincts in Manhattan to find out the crime rates in different neighborhoods. Someone else, when she heard the address of the apartment her co-worker was hoping to get, gasped: "Oh no! That's in Harlem! It's like the most dangerous neighborhood in New York! Haven't you heard of the Grand Concourse? Did you see Bonfire of the Vanities? It's that place!" Not that San Francisco is free of dangers: the same people were really nervous this morning, because they heard that a small anti-war rally was taking place eight blocks away, and maybe the protesters would be "targeting the financial district."

So I went to the movies the other day to see something really silly: Chicago, which could've been a whole lot better directed (you don't really need for a guy to dress up as a sad clown in order for us to know he's sad; you don't really need to zoom in on a thigh when everyone's already being sexy) but did have some good music, some decent actors, and some lines that still make me giggle

(* note: that last part is not literally true)

even though my friend has played me the original cast album about 200 times*.

Anyway, first there were a half-dozen previews for even sillier things that looked like they were no fun at all, but were supposed to be. And then the next thing I knew, I was looking at a huge, vivid, realistic, terrifying recreation of the World Trade Center blowing up in my face. I just about shit—and it took me a second to figure out what was going on: yeah, some jerk finally made the movie. Well, sort of. Actually this was a trailer for a cable TV movie about the allegedly heroic life of Rudy Giuliani, based on Wayne Barrett's book Rudy!. I'm guessing that it's a very loose adaptation, because Barrett is a merciless reporter but this was all rah-rah stuff. "We're going to war on crime!"... cut to: "But his crusade was shadowed by scandal"—picture of his girlfriend (as if anyone in New York gave a crap about that)... cut to: addressing the troops in a baseball cap... etc.

It still took me a minute to figure out who they were talking about, because he's being played by James freaking Woods. I know Hollywood bio-flicks tend to be awfully generous with people's physical appearances, but this is ridiculous. What's next, Denzel Washington as David Dinkins (or Willie Brown)? Ed Harris as Ed Koch? Woods is a good actor, but I doubt he could be very convincing in this, unless someone tore off his hair and put lemon juice up his nose or something to give him that haunted, uncomfortable, thinking-about-being-mean look Rudy has. (Or maybe, as per the StarBio Horoscope, it's the look of someone without "much past-life experience as a human being on planet earth.")

The reason any of this is worth mentioning, at a time when much worse things may be about to happen, is that it seems like skillful PR for Rudy as a future presidential candidate. And that's a scary thought, because we've already got more self-righteous tough guys than we can use. (Although, who knows, maybe the movie will teach me how he really tried to stop the police from doing all those bad things.)

(Note: this story has a moral. The moral is that in interacting with people who are firmly set on an inexplicable course of action, it helps to keep your suggestions simple. But it may not help very much.)

So I'm in the supermarket line and the guy ahead of me is about to leave, and the cashier rings up all my groceries and the bagger says "Paper or plastic?", and I say "No, I've got my own bag, here." I start reaching over but the guy ahead of me won't budge, and he says, "Nah, she's talking about my groceries."

I don't see his groceries, I just see mine, but now I see he just finished handing the cashier a $50 bill and she just gave him $38 change. Funny, my groceries also cost $12. I start to pay and the cashier tells me, "No, he just paid for yours."

The guy starts to pick up my bag. I say, "Whoa—no, that's mine. Thanks but I'm paying for my own."

The guy gives me a strange glare and I start to realize that he's got a different idea of the situation than I do, because as far as I can see, he never had any groceries. He was just standing in line.

The cashier figures it out a second later and starts asking him to give her back the change so she can give him back his $50. It's no use. He thinks he's being cheated somehow. "I paid for my damn groceries. Look"—and he starts taking stuff out of my bag, which is a bad shock for him: "Hey, I didn't get this—Grape-Nuts?" Soap—a potato—"I didn't want any of this shit!"

This went on for what seemed like a pretty long time, and another cashier got called over—it took him a while to catch on too, though she was subtly making the "koo-koo" sign, because he thought me and the other guy were a team—and they kept trying to get back the $38 change so they could give him $50, and trying to explain what his mistake was. Finally I had the best idea of my whole life, and I leaned over and whispered to her: "Can't you just give him back $12?"

So she did. He dropped it and accused her of throwing it at him. Then he picked it up, shrugged, took a roll of $50 bills out of his pocket and tried to give her one. Everyone was just about in tears, and not from laughing. Eventually our failure to understand was just too much for him. He told me:

"Okay, I'm outta here. I've had enough of this shit!"

I know there are more people than just my friends and family who understand that we're being lied to, who know that what's about to happen is a horrible massacre... I know there are millions of those people. But it's hard to remember that when the drums have been turned up so loud.

I used to think that when the news and radio and TV all acted like cheerleaders, they were just being sloppy journalists, pumping up their entertainment value, trying not to offend big business, catering to what they think we want. I used to avoid using the word "propaganda." Some time in the last two years, without realizing it, either I crossed over some line or they did, because now I can't read or listen to any of this shit without thinking You're lying, and the people you're quoting and interviewing are lying, and you know it, and you want this to happen as much as they do, you filthy liars.

Construction: Clear Channel, the owner of 1200 radio stations, is holding their own pro-war rallies.

Distraction: The morning paper is stuffed with full-page human-interest stories on how the families of soldiers are holding up. The reporters report on themselves: "They are on-site. They are embedded ... [Ted Koppel is] the highest-profile television reporter embedded anywhere." (Can't they keep their bedroom talk to themselves?) A New Jersey paper (owned by the billboard people, Gannett) tells us to "stay home, await word" if we're put on Red Alert—violators of curfew will be "the enemy."

Selection: the "full coverage" section on Yahoo News gives you a list of "related web sites" to deepen your knowledge of the issues, and this is the entire list in order: "Enduring Freedom", "Iraq: Facing the Threat", "DefendAMERICA", "Students for War", "Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb", "Attack on America: Taking Care of Our Own", "DefenseLINK", "Response to Terrorism", "Due Process Protections Afforded Defendants", "Rank Insignia", "The Pentagon", "U.S. Pacific Command", "Pentagon 9/11 Memorial Project", "DoD 101", "Give War a Chance", "Portraits of War", and for balance, "War Resisters League."

You don't do this kind of thing by accident. And it's not just about what's good for business; businessmen, on their own, don't try so hard. I hope I'm wrong, but it seems to me that most of "the corporate media" and the ruling party are now the same thing, not in some subtle common-interests way, but by a direct chain of command. Welcome to Russia.

Robert Jensen from Austin, Texas: "The Bush administration wants us to be afraid, but remain quiet about it ... So, we must speak of it, not to scare others but to bring us closer together. .... If we retreat into our private spaces, thinking we can hide, we will find out quickly that this fear will follow us everywhere. Our only way out is together, in public, facing not only our fears but the fears that others will project onto us, and inviting them to join us."

Paul Ford and friends in "How We're Coping":

After Bush's speech, I consumed two microwave bags of popcorn . . . . I also found myself browsing something like 30,000 personal ads on Salon, a process I call "shopping for regret."
. . . .
I feel that this current drive toward absolute horseshit began in 2000 ... [they] have taken the horseshit and baked it into giant biscuits and sent one to every American with an "eat this or get out of the country" sticker on them, and most Americans are sitting around eating this giant horseshit biscuit, thanking Jesus for the opportunity to chew, and many have actually eaten the sticker.

Tim Kreider sits in the Metropolitan Museum drawing Assurbanipal the Great:

... all of the artwork in the gallery we were occupying, the art we were all dutifully sketching in order to honor and celebrate the ancient and glorious heritage of the people our government was about to bomb, were bas-relief steles immortalizing the rulers of the first military empires in human history—bearded, barrel-chested deity-kings with eagles' wings and cannonball calf muscles straight out of How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way!, accompanied by lengthy fine-print cuneiform inscriptions that I happen to know, from art history classes, consist entirely of grandiloquent and dubious boasting about their bloody conquests ...

Get Your War On, page 22: "I know when to grieve, and for whom."

From New York, Sara writes:

My alarm did not go off this morning. I was late. It was World Water Day... time to go! AM subway ride, full of people heading to the peace rally... Patti Smith included.

After a day of making books in Bryant Park for World Water Day, and tying up some loose ends with a client, I got my first real cup of coffee for the day(around 5pm), bought a copy of Harper's magazine, and headed to Washington Square Park to see what the five helicopters were looking at.

From previous protest experiences, I decided to maintain a cushion of space between myself and any penned-in activity involving cops. So, instead of immersion this time, I decided to witness the event, have conversations with others who were in the park, and hand out information sheets on: "Know Your Rights. If you are arrested..."

A young man came up to me at one point and dropped a bag of marbles through the fence behind us. "Someone in the crowd put this bag in my pocket... then what they are doing is arresting people for this shit. I'm getting rid of this." [General Law #1: Do not have any item on your person that could be considered a weapon.] I don't know who was handing the marble bags out. This is plain odd.

The crowd was full of drumming circles, anti-war slogans, and people of all ages. Towards the North end of Wash. Sq. Park, near the Arch, was the main group, which was brimming between the fence-line and barricades... confronted and lit head-on by media vehicles, camera lights... and an ever increasing amount of police. The entire sidewalk (facing the north side) was a solid mass of blue from police uniforms, and a slow moving line of paddy wagons... situating themselves on all sides of the park. In the center of the park—where there is a huge circular fountain (with no water) a dance was well underway... and for a moment I was drawn in by the super trance-like rhythm of the drums and other instruments.

With an odd sound, I turned and saw the sillouettes of the crowd running towards the north side of the park (near the other main crowd)... to which I soon realized that the sound was that of horse hooves coming down the street. I gave up counting at around 30, but from estimating, I would guess there were between 75-100 police on horses, lining up double file on the street as well. This is when I decided to leave. The magnitude of force was unbelievable and disgusting.

To leave the park, which was now blocked off by metal barricades, I had to walk between two cops to get out of the park. A woman came up to me and asked, "How can you get into the park?"

"You have to go through the police I guess," I told the woman. "They have all entrances to the park blocked off" she replied.

I crossed the street and stood for quite a while in pure awe, trying to understand what I was seeing, and concerned about the potential for what could soon take place.

Hmmm.
I walked up to a few of the police blocking the NE intersection and asked if they would mind if Iasked them a question. They said yes, so I thought out loud:

"The marchers have a permit to legally protest today, this is a public park, why does that justify the presence of so many police to surround the park and block off all of the streets?"

The two cops replied, "Yes, the marchers did get permits to legally protest today, but the permit ran out at 4pm. We cannot have them in the streets now."

Hmmm. I replied, "So what they are doing is now illegal even though they are in the park and not in the street?"

"Yes. And we have to keep the streets clear for New Yorkers."

Hmmm.
"I'm a New Yorker," I said. "I do not see any protesters in the street, I only see police. This is a frustrating situation."

How much tax money does it take to subdue a bunch of pacifist peace activists? I wonder how many cops it takes to completely surround Wash. Sq. park and how much money their paychecks total... when it is one wall—on foot—in riot gear, two lines on horses, paddy wagons, buses, metal barricades, plainclothes cops in the crowd (quite amusingly obvious too), and don't forget to count the 5 helicopters overhead and armored (tank-like) vehicles winding up and down the streets...? Will this be the new math question on a standardized test? How does the joke go... How many people does it take to screw in a light bulb?

Can I fill out a handy little form on my taxes stating: my tax money is for education and public/humanitarian-based needs, my taxes should not fund the police force whom I have not witnessed fighting crime, or for military funding when aggression overrides innocent lives, human rights, and United Nations treaties.

My alarm went off at 8pm.

Oh man, I left New York just when things were getting good...

I got a call from another New York friend on Saturday—my wholeheartedly pro-American pal from Eastern Europe, who still unapologetically approves of the first Gulf War, but who also has an exacting technical mind and has found it hard to ignore the steaming piles of illogic that he's been seeing in the papers for the last two years. A couple months ago, he was getting a little hot under the collar about Bush's war plans, but he figured they'd come to their senses... and no way was he going to any of those protests, because they're full of hippies and radicals.

So now he calls me up sounding like he just got back from Mardi Gras in outer space. Seems he just finished marching down the street with a few hundred thousand people and apparently he thought it was pretty damn fine. Ha! Tomek, you're a hippie—your membership card is in the mail.

Meanwhile, Mayor Bloomberg continues to shoot for the title of World's Dumbest Smart Man. He already won the local qualifying round last year, when he supported raising the subway fare to $2.00, without even asking the MTA to reveal how it's spending its money, while the city keeps giving huge tax breaks and flat-out bribes to any company that threatens to move out of town, and paying God knows how much police overtime to bust people for standing on the sidewalk with an opinion. Now he looks like a national contender: last Wednesday, in between two of the largest peace demonstrations since Vietnam, he said that "the debate is over" and "all New Yorkers are behind the president." Next, the world finals—watch out, Tony Blair...

I haven't written about the demonstrations here... I've been in some marches and so on but I never know what to say about that. Today, again, I'm sitting at a desk at my temp job, which hasn't changed much except that the other temps and I have even less to do now, and they've moved some stock traders into the other side of the office, so I can hear people barking numbers all day and/or screaming in rage over the phone (and one guy gave a tense little speech about economic forecasts "if the war goes as planned"). Meanwhile, this morning there were many many people out in the street and many many many police. By the time I went out on my lunch hour, to meet up with the Quakers who are standing vigil at the Federal Building, the streets were pretty quiet. About 100 people were arrested this morning.

The paranoia in the financial district continues to grow. When I got to this building, I had to show ID to get past a wall of police—not in the lobby, not at the front door, but to get onto the sidewalk in front of the building. The thing is, it probably would be a bad scene if a crowd of protesters ended up on that sidewalk, because it's not an open space but sort of a corral around the building; some time earlier this year, they put up 8-foot-high concrete and plywood barricades all the way around the block, so you can't get onto the sidewalk (or even see in or out) except through small open spaces at the corners... which does make it less likely that someone will crash a truck into the lobby, but it also contributes to the general feeling of claustrophobic threat.

On Thursday, two guys walked into the lobby and sat on the floor, politely addressing passers-by, which caused one of the professional people in my department to freak out: "How could security have let that happen? I'm glad they were peaceful, but what if they'd had a bomb?" I couldn't think of anything to say to that, and I still can't. I hate to imagine what that kind of thinking will turn into, if anything else actually does get blown up in this country.

I got an anonymous postcard from New York:

DEAR ELI
I HAD A DREAM OF
YOU— YOU WON
AN ITALIAN
AWARD FOR THE
INVENTION OF A
SPECIAL CAT
DOOR! CHECK OUT[address of a useful web site]

Glad to hear it. I have a few ideas about who wrote that, but then again, I have more than a few friends who write cheerful goofy things in big capital letters.

Steve Bell isn't the only person who feels very unhappy about George Bush and Tony Blair... but he's uniquely able to communicate his feelings—

thus. (make sure your mouth isn't full before you click here.)

And on the home front, Tim Kreider reminds us about loyalty.

I've had this fear of taking days off from my ridiculous temp job, but once I realized that it was going to be an endless series of interchangeable menial tasks for the next few weeks, and that they really didn't care who was there at any time, I took a day off.

There were various demonstrations going on around town today. Bikes Not Bombs [scroll way down on that page for the detailed story] caused quite a stir—I'm pretty sure that's why I heard all those sirens downtown a little while ago. Unfortunately my good old rusty granny-bike is still in storage.

What happens at those things has a lot to do with which branch of cops you're dealing with. The Highway Patrol sounds like the worst so far. The SFPD, depending on where and when and who you talk to, is better than the NYPD at least (I suspect the mayor, despite all his blustering, has been telling them to take it easy) but has its share of wild-eyed hardasses—I hope I don't meet the guy from this story who says he gets juiced up on Red Bull to get ready for the "communists and anarchists"—and is doing some shady undercover stuff. But if you're going to get arrested and abuse is not your thing, the Federal Protective Service at the Philip Burton Federal Building is definitely the way to go. Maybe they were just in a really good mood today, but they are a classy crew and I recommend that everyone find a reason to get arrested by them.

What I went to was an ecumenical service organized by the Buddhist Peace Fellowship along with Catholic, Jewish, Protestant, and Quaker representatives. A couple hundred people gathered on the Federal Building plaza, where, apparently, the marshals had denied them a permit but allowed it anyway. We sang for about half an hour (the usual Quaker camp songbook stuff—"Imagine", "This Land is Your Land", and something lovely in Hebrew whose name I forget) and then each church group spoke. They were all good. The Catholic priest, the most topically political of the group, got a big laugh when he said he found it "very easy to support the Pope in this case"; the Buddhists, all very practical people, read from the Metta Sutta; and Michael Lerner, though I have some problems with his politics, is a damn fine preacher. The spirit was definitely there.

After the service, about 72 of us gathered around the flag, spoke briefly to make sure we all had the same thing in mind, and then walked up and sat down in front of the building entrance, singing. The federal cops had been waiting all morning for this (the service ran a little long), and immediately gave us the required two warnings. Then they started very slowly and gently taking people away one or two at a time. (Despite the pre-planning, one woman strayed inside the barrier by mistake, didn't hear the warnings because of the singing, and ended up getting arrested. She took it pretty well.)

There was still a big group of supporters outside the barrier, various press people going around taking names, and one busy-looking guy who wanted to get into the building and was very pissed when the cops told him to go around to the other entrance. Him: "You should all move to Iraq!" Someone else: "Peace." Him: "Yeah, hope so."

The handcuffs were no problem—instead of the metal or the plastic twisties, these guys use sort of a strong shoelace with a clip (incredibly loosely applied; in some cases you had to try hard to keep the thing on... which gave the whole thing a slightly kinky atmosphere). Sitting cuffed on the ground for half an hour, as they lined up batches of people before they were ready to process us, was a little more uncomfortable because I'm not at all limber, but at least we had some good music. Eventually we were all moved into a temporary area inside—basically the corner of the lobby. The friendliest cop in the world gave us a short speech about how we would wait here for our citations, and how we should stay seated on the floor if possible and not try to remove our cuffs; he pointedly avoided looking at a couple of people who had already wiggled out of theirs.

Then he left and nothing happened for about two hours. We took turns introducing ourselves—the group turned out to be even more ecumenical than the service, including three or four pagans, a Christian Scientist, a Mormon, and an "eclectic person"—and heard about some upcoming events and the Nonviolent Peaceforce. There was some nervous discussion of whether they were likely to stick us with a ton of federal court costs in addition to the $100 citation; it seemed like that was a scare tactic, but you never know. Still the mood was good. It was very strange being in the lobby, though; we were just far enough out of the way that we couldn't get people's attention on the street, but we weren't in jail either, just sort of furniture waiting to be moved.

Finally another cop, not the friendliest in the world but still not bad, showed up to announce that they were dropping all charges. "You already did your protest and made the media happy, so I presume that'll be okay with you." No citations, but we had to wait around to get our pictures taken, and sign a release form. He asked if we had any questions. Someone wanted to know if the release form included a promise that we wouldn't do it again (it didn't). A few people tried to get his opinion on the war, but no dice. One lady took a roundabout tack: "My husband works for Children's Protective Services. Have you ever seen a badly injured child?" "Yes I have. And my wife works for the Methodist Church in Burlingame, and I haven't arrested her yet."

We finally got out at about 1:00. Too late to catch the Muslim prayer service in front of Civic Center. I went home and took a long nap.

The AP write-up is pretty funny—not only are we a footnote to a story about pro-war rallies, but apparently we were all wearing "friar robes and prayer shawls." If only! The BPF press release is more accurate and includes the statement that was read there. And here are a few photos.