Monday!
1
Kate Hepburn has died in Connecticut. Such a fine actress she was. I savored watching her films and now I have some but not all my favorites on DVD. Her power was in her intelligence and her ability to remain a winning sweetheart. Hepburn was the proto woman of modern times. In "Guess who is coming to dinner" She exemplified the honest dilemma of every social liberal. Spencer Tracy gave her the best of tender affection and thus bloomed her talents and gave us a wonderful legacy.
2
The US is getting tough in Iraq. I have mixed feelings about this. There has to be law and order and still a promise of justice. It will take time, but I do have faith in America's military to do the best thing.
More later
David Star@Audiea.com

SUNDAY!
well, I'm here, it's been a busy week. Even Rachel Lucas has taken a few days off!
1
The Supreme Court did the obvious on Thursday, in taking down Texas' absurd sodomy law. In a hundred years, folks will wonder what the fuss was about.
Before the 19th century, the term Homosexual did not exist. The idea of a man living a life based upon a particular sexual act would have been laughable. Men got married as a matter of social expectation and what they did on the side was not discussed in polite society. Gay folk like kids too. Few human beings seek a life that is without some kind of family. Most Gay men get married and have kids but peruse occasional homosexual contact.
2
What is rarely talked about is the fact that most Gay men do not want a male lover all the time. The clash of egos and the usual male competition can be exhausting.
They are perfectly comfortable with their wives. (Not because they want to dominate any one, but because they have had relationships with women all their lives, there is a distinct need in most men for some kind of female association) Their homosexual urges can be satisfied by casual encounters with other Gay men who have a similar sexual need. Men need sexual relief, some need crave homosexual contact, but are not interested in living a complete lifestyle that is primarily homosexual. The dirty secret is that few men actually want Gay marriage for fear they will be expected to live a distinctly Gay life.
3
What is important, is to understand a very basic need for acceptance and to secure sexual activity that is not cause for humiliation or social rejection.
One reason why the public has become more accepting of Homosexuals, is a genuine revulsion of political and religious loathing of Gays. Watching right wing political or Religious persons express cruel hatred toward anyone or any group, frightens just about everyone.
4
I knew three different men in Boston who had wives, kids, mortgages and a secret life. They came to Sporters on Cambridge street, drank beer with Friday night friends. They got a blow job and maybe a healthy balling and later, after some casual conversation, went home to their families.
5
In the 20th Century denouncing Jews or Blacks lost favor. All political parties thrive on demons and portray themselves as devil slayers. Not every issue can be cerebral. The gut needs action too.
America vilified Communists, even though most of us had not a clue what Communism actually was. J. Edger Hoover decided for us, it was easier that way.
We as a nation are Christian, so we need saints to define our demons.
Nevertheless, abusing Homosexuals was seen for a long time as tacky and in bad taste. Marines and some angry boys occasionally rolled a queen, but respectable society went after Blacks or later Roosevelt Liberals.
Gay Bashing has lost its flavor mostly because most folk know someone who is Gay or Lesbian and don't like the mental image of that person battered or dead.
6
Modern urban cultures just as urban Rome and Greece are now realizing that human beings come in a hundred different styles, colors, and flavors. Allowing the largest number to survive and prosper does society well.
The Republicans are anxious to get past this Gay thing. Tom Delay can make all the noise he wants, his job is bomb thrower. But no one else really cares.
7
There is still a bit of tension over Gay marriage, but that will pass. By 2012 the United States will have Gay marriage in most states and the issue will fade away as public rant over thinking and reasoning machines begin to appear.
In the end genetics will end the homosexual way of life. History will probably regret that decision. Eventually the whole thing will be forgotten.
8
For our generation, the hard part will be allowing Gay men to live lives outside recognized Gay marriage. To understand the larger population that wants a heterosexual marriage but occasional Homosexual contact.
In my own life, I prefer a distinct Homosxual relationship. But while thinking about what to say here, I have heard much discussion about wanting a family and a chance at occasional Gay sex. As I write, I can detect the conflict that will come. Men who will resist being locked in Gay marriage will become less visible and thus support for Gay marriage might suffer. Many men and women crave same sex affections as well as heterosexual affections. Oh this will be a tangled web, and interesting to watch it play out.
Will society understand the distinctions and variances?
More later
David Star@Audiea.com

WEDNESDAY!
Again? Don't we have enough troubles here? I have spoken about Wednesdays before!
Well, what can we do? Just wait for Thursday.
1
Hot, very hot day in the city 90 in Union Square.
2
GW Bush appears to have decided that the US must find peace in the middle east. I'd like to know what he did to get Hamas and the rest of the Bad Boys to call a cease fire? Perhaps the leadership decided that Ariel Sharon was getting good at killing the bastards. If there is truth to this, the assassinations should carry on. Kill enough of the leadership and the club will falter for a decade or more. Hamas must have about a hundred top dogs and a thousand or so pups. Kill the big teeth and show no mercy.
I acknowledge this sounds cruel, but it's not. Political reality is that once peace comes, the real thing indeed, the guys who run the PA will have to quietly kill off the hard heads who don't get the point. The US had a so called "Whisky Rebellion" in the 1790s. G Washington sent in the troops and after that the authority of Uncle Sam was not questioned.
Arafat will no go quietly and the Iranians need a distraction.
Israel must also stop it's own extremists and be serious about it. Most of the settlements must be dismantled and the crazies stopped. Sadly a bullet is a very efficient tool. Prisons are expensive.
3
Maynard Jackson died this week. He was 65. Jackson was mayor of Atlanta a total of three terms. He was quite a personality and he was very good at getting complicated things done. I lived in Atlanta in the early seventies and I voted for Jackson. I even met him several times.
Atlanta has been blessed with a number of outstanding mayors. Mrs. Franklin, the present mayor is a well educated, rational, and mature. She is doing a fine job and gives proof that if given a decent chance, Blacks will do quite well.
More later.
David Star@Audiea.com

MONDAY
Pretty day, cool foggy and a bit windy.
Here is a wonderful article from the New York Times.
It offers fun information about humanities effort to understand time and to establish a rational syatem of time measurement and accuracy in the late 19th century.
A fuller edition of my essay on Atticus Finch will appear tomorrow, Tuesday 6/24/03
1
June 24, 2003
The Clocks That Shaped Einstein's Leap in Time
By DENNIS OVERBYE

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — What does it mean, Albert Einstein asked in 1905, to say that a train arrives someplace — in Paris, say — at 7 o'clock?

You might not think you need to know something as deep as relativity to answer such a question. But Einstein needed to answer the question to invent his theory of relativity, the breakthrough that wrenched science into a new century and enshrined the equivalence of matter and energy.

In his last step, after a decade of pondering the mysteries of light and motion, Einstein concluded that there was no such thing as absolute time, envisioned by scientists since Newton, ticking uniformly through the cosmos. Rather there were only the times measured by individual clocks. To talk about times and measurements at different places, the clocks have to be synchronized, he said. And the way to do that is to flash light signals between them, correcting for the time it takes for the signal to travel from one clock to another.

A simple prescription. Yet when Einstein followed it, he found that clocks moving with respect to one another would not run at the same speed. The modern age was born.

Einstein's relativity has long been regarded by scholars as a monument to the power of abstract thought. But if Dr. Peter Galison, 48 — a Harvard professor of the history of science and of physics, a pilot, art lover and nascent filmmaker — is right, physics and Einstein have flourished more in their connections to the world than in any ivory tower aloofness. And one clue to the origin of relativity can be found in something as mundane and practical as a 19th-century train schedule. "It's in as plain sight as it could possibly be," he said.

As Dr. Galison relates, before the advent of factories began to standardize life, and railroad systems with crisscrossing tracks made it imperative to know which train was where and when, there were too many times, one for every village.

In the last part of the 19th century, the coordination of clocks and the standardization of time had engaged the passions of nations, business leaders, astronomers and philosophers. The patent office in Bern, Switzerland, where Einstein worked, was a clearinghouse for patents on the synchronization of clocks.

In New England, the Harvard and Yale observatories were competing to sell time signals to the public, and in Paris pneumatic tubes snaked under the streets to synchronize the city's clocks with blasts of air. Far from being a bit of abstraction by a loner genius, the clocks that Einstein used as examples in his papers were as familiar then as computers are today.

That is one of the messages of Dr. Galison's new book, "Einstein's Clocks, Poincaré's Maps: Empires of Time," due out in August from W. W. Norton. Part history, part science, part adventure, part biography, part meditation on the meaning of modernity, Dr. Galison's story takes readers from the patent office to lonely telegraphers sitting in the rain in the Andes, from the coal mines of France to town councils in New England as it circles around the exploits of Einstein and his rival, the French physicist, philosopher and mathematician Henri Poincaré.

It offers gritty descriptions of how undersea cables are made and issues cosmic-sounding pronouncements just this side of metaphysics.

Although the book sheds fresh light on the context in which Einstein made his great leap forward, it is not a history of relativity, Dr. Galison said. Rather it is an attempt to capture a rare moment when the very abstract and the very concrete collided, when physics, philosophy and technology all converged around one question, the meaning of simultaneity.

At such moments, as he writes in "Einstein's Clocks," "We find metaphysics in machines and machines in metaphysics."

Dr. Galison has made his mark exploring such moments of collision, both in modern science and out of it. "He is now recognized as one of the premier science historians in the world," said Dr. Michael Riordan, a physicist and historian at Stanford.

"Einstein's Clocks" is the third in a series of books, beginning with "How Experiments End," in 1987, and "Image and Logic: A Material Culture of Microphysics," published in 1997, in which he has reimagined 20th-century physics, in all its complexity and messy interdisciplinary overlaps "from the shop floor," as Dr. Daniel Kevles, a science historian at Yale, once put it.

In Dr. Galison's telling of science, the meters and wires and epoxy and solder come alive as characters, along with physicists, engineers, technicians and others in the armies of modern science.

"You seldom read a page without some concrete object being depicted in its particularity," said Dr. Lorraine Daston, of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science. "Clocks and maps come to embody ways of understanding the cosmos."

Dr. Galison has written and edited books on subjects as diverse as the architecture of scientific laboratories and museums, photography, intellectual property and the history of aviation. He and a Harvard colleague, Pamela Hogan, a documentary filmmaker, produced "Ultimate Weapon: The H-Bomb Dilemma," about the decision to build the hydrogen bomb, which was shown on the History Channel. He teaches a course on filming science.

"I'm interested in what counts as a scientist," he said. "How do we track the history of what it means to be a scientist at different times?" Dr. Galison is working on a book about theory in physics, to complete the trilogy with experiments and instruments, and another with Dr. Daston on the history of objectivity.

He is also a pilot, with instrument and commercial ratings. And he is a husband — his wife, Dr. Caroline A. Jones, is an art historian at M.I.T. — and a father of two.

Fortunately, he does not need much sleep. "You can do a lot reading between 3 and 5 a.m.," he said.

Gadgets and art are in Dr. Galison's blood. His great-grandfather Frank Alexander was an inventor who maintained an electrical laboratory in his house and once worked for Thomas Edison. "The whole place stank of ozone," Dr. Galison recalled.

The oldest of three children, Dr. Galison grew up in Manhattan. As a high school student at Riverdale Country School in the Bronx, he developed a love of French literature, and after graduating a year early he arranged to work for a year in a physics laboratory at the École Polytechnique in Paris. On the side, he studied philosophy and took a math course. A year later he entered Harvard as a sophomore.

Looking for a major, he stumbled into the history of science department. "And that seemed like a wonderful place for me to be because they were happy for me to do as much math and physics as I wanted."

Peter Galison's first book grew out of his Harvard Ph.D. dissertation. In it he examined how scientists decide to stop looking for errors and conclude that they have an argument that will stand up.

The book also led Dr. Galison, with the encouragement of two Harvard physics colleagues, Dr. Steven Weinberg and Dr. Howard Georgi, to pursue a second doctorate, in particle physics, during a three-year postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard.

Dr. Galison's second book traced two different ways of doing particle physics — studying images like the tracks of cosmic rays recorded in devices like cloud chambers, and counting statistics, like the clicks on a Geiger counter. It showed, said Dr. Weinberg, now at the University of Texas, that "they are not only different techniques but become whole different ways of life."

The book's publication coincided with a "genius" grant from the MacArthur Foundation. Dr. Galison used it to buy a small house on Cape Cod and as a psychological boost to take risks and be innovative.

He likes to emphasize what he calls "the disunity of science," arguing that the border skirmishes and "shootouts" between overlapping subcultures and disciplines inside and outside the laboratory give science its strength and coherence.

"My question is not how different scientific communities pass like ships in the night," he wrote in "Image and Logic." "It is rather how, given the extraordinary diversity of the participants in physics — cryogenic engineers, radio chemists, algebraic topologists, prototype tinkerers, computer wizards, quantum field theorists — they speak to each other at all."

To understand this, Dr. Galison has borrowed from anthropology the idea of a trading zone  languages like creoles or pidgins, for example, where people from different backgrounds can find common ground.

Such trading zones or creoles are the lubricant of large projects. For example, Dr. Julian Schwinger, a Harvard theorist who had worked on the radar project at M.I.T. during World War II, used calculational tricks he learned working with engineers in that work in his Nobel Prize-winning reformulation of quantum mechanics.

"Schwinger takes the techniques that he helped develop during the war to communicate with the radio engineers and brings them back into the heart of physics," said Dr. Galison. It's the kind of "man-bites-dog story" that he loves.

Clock synchronization functioned as kind of a trading zone in Einstein's day, Dr. Galison said, occupying as it did the domains of physics, philosophy and technology.

"Einstein's Clocks" began, as Dr. Galison tells it, one spring day in 1997 when he found himself staring at a line of clocks in a Northern European train station.

"There's a whole line of these beautiful clocks," he recalled, sitting on the couch in his Cambridge study. He noticed first that the minute hands were aligned, then that the second hands were all ticking in unison: the clocks were synchronized.

"And then I thought, well, wait a second, maybe Einstein saw clocks in stations that were synchronized."

That was the beginning of an odyssey into a nearly forgotten chapter of history. "What was amazing was the prominence of synchronized clocks, not the difficulty of finding out about them," Dr. Galison recalled. "They were everywhere."

At the beginning of the 19th century, he said, many clocks didn't even have minute hands, but by the end of the century the drive for precision and coordination was on, spurred by the demands of trade and national pride and even metaphysics.

"There was a struggle over whose time would dominate, and at every scale." Dr. Galison said. "From trying to synchronize the clocks within an observatory or within a school or within a factory, to counties, states, regions, railroad lines, the country, and eventually there were people who were advocating a single time for the whole world, what they call cosmopolitan time."

One of the men in whom physics, philosophy and technology merged was the Frenchman Poincaré. Einstein is a household name today. But at the end of the 19th century, it was Poincaré, a mathematician, physicist, philosopher and member of national academies, who was the famous one — as consummate an insider as Einstein, toiling in obscurity at the patent office, was an outsider.

As a mathematician and astronomer, Poincaré helped invent chaos theory, Dr. Galison said, and as a philosopher and follower of the French Enlightenment he championed a scheme of decimalizing time.

Among his noteworthy feats now is what he did not do: he did not invent relativity, even though he had some of the same ideas as Einstein, often in advance, and arrived, with the Dutch physicist Hendrik Lorentz at a theory that was mathematically identical.

The difference was that Poincaré refused to abandon the idea of the ether, the substance in which light waves supposedly vibrated and which presumably filled all space. The ether provided a definition of absolute rest, and of "true" time — the time measured by a clock not moving relative to the ether. "He was truly a universal man; he was one step away from relativity," said Dr. Arthur Miller, a relativity historian at the University College London.

Poincaré argued that the laws and principles used to describe reality and do science are simply those that are most convenient — the notion that parallel lines never meet, for example.

We are free to choose another way to organize experience, Poincaré said, but we don't have to if it would make life more complicated. One such convention, he said, was the notion of simultaneity, what it means to say that two events in separate places happen at the same time.

"There is no absolute time," Poincaré said in his book "Science and Hypothesis." "To say that two durations are equal is an assertion that has by itself no meaning at all and which can only acquire one by convention."

In 1898, in a philosophical paper, "The Measure of Time," he had set forth such a convention, a method of defining simultaneity — synchronizing distant clocks — that was identical to Einstein's scheme. It consisted of telegraph operators sending signals back and forth.

Two years later he pointed out that if his telegraphic procedure was used to synchronize clocks that were moving with respect to the ether, then those clocks would not agree with clocks at rest about which events were simultaneous. Neither he nor Lorentz, however, ascribed equal validity to the times kept by the different sets of clocks. That was the step that Einstein alone took.

When Dr. Galison dug deeper into Poincaré's life, however, he discovered that all this telegraphy was no metaphor.

In addition to all his high-flown academic activities, Poincaré was immersed in practical work. He was a mining inspector, for example. Most important, he was deeply involved with the French Board of Longitude, even serving as president, sending teams of soldiers and surveyors across the oceans to map the far-flung empire.

Coordinated clocks were central to this enterprise. To measure the longitude of some mountain or port or gold mine in the New World, it was necessary to measure the difference between the time some star crossed the meridian there and the time it did back in Paris. The leaders and rivals in filling in this "electric world map," as Dr. Galison calls it, were England and France, even though for several years they were embarrassingly unable to agree on the distance between their own principal observatories, Greenwich and Paris. Paris lost out to Greenwich as the locus of zero longitude, but in 1909 Poincaré used the Eiffel Tower to broadcast time signals to the world.

With relativity, Einstein threw out the ether, along with absolute space and time.

Poincaré couldn't do that, Dr. Galison said, because of his conventionalist philosophy. Any intuition that helped make sense of the world was all right to use. The ether was one of those. Giving it up would be like a carpenter giving up a hammer. "You could, but why would you do that?" said Dr. Galison.

Ultimate truth was not a reason, he explained. As a good rationalist Poincaré didn't think that scientists should make reference to "pseudo-religious" notions like the Order of Nature.

To Einstein the ether was a fifth wheel, Dr. Galison pointed out. Einstein sought simplicity as a clue to underlying truth, often referred to the "old one."

"Poincaré never spoke that way," said Dr. Galison. For the Frenchman, what you saw in the world was what you got.

Poincaré and Einstein represented two different visions of what modern physics should be like, Dr. Galison said, noting that although he wasn't willing to give up the ether, Poincaré often spoke about a crisis in physics.

Einstein, he said, has been called "the last 19th-century physicist and the first 20th-century physicist. In a way you could say that of Poincaré too."

Experts on relativity history agree that Dr. Galison has unearthed fascinating material and built a strong if circumstantial case that Einstein's eureka moment about time could have been influenced by his patent office clock work. Einstein's patent reports were destroyed as part of standard procedure. But the scholars caution that there is much more to relativity than synchronizing clocks. The main thread, they agree, lies in the idea that the laws of physics are the same no matter how fast you are moving and that the speed of light is always the same.

Dr. Miller of London, who discussed the time unification campaign in his own book, "Einstein, Picasso, Space, Time and the Beauty That Causes Havoc" (2001), said he was glad that Dr. Galison had dug out Poincaré's connection with the longitude bureau.

So why has this aspect of the origin of relativity lain hidden in plain sight for so long? Although Poincaré was a public figure at the time, he never wrote about his engineering activities, Dr. Galison said.

To some extent, the two men tended to portray themselves as lone thinkers in their later years. In a speech in 1933, Einstein said that being a lighthouse keeper would be a good occupation for a physicist.

"Certainly, from the early 30's to his death in 1955 everything about him and the way he presented himself and the way he was understood by others made him a kind of almost mascot to the idea of isolated thought," Dr. Galison said.

"But that is not how he lived his younger life, when he was a sociable guy, passionately involved with Mileva," Dr. Galison said, referring to Einstein's first wife, Mileva Maric. He loved to argue, tinkered with machines and spoke out against World War I. "This is somebody very much in the world."

In his papers Einstein was always using modern machines to illustrate his ideas, Dr. Galison noted. "There is something wonderful about Einstein invoking trains and telegraphs to get a transformation of space-time, Poincaré turning the Eiffel Tower into a radio," Dr. Galison said.

"In the long run I think what's happened to them is that we, partly through our own doing and partly through our doing to them, removed these physicists from the concrete situations that they were involved in. And I think in a way lose some of the fascination that these ideas had for them and still could have for us in a way."

It's our loss, he said.

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company | Home | Privacy Policy | Search | Corrections | Help | Back to Top
MORE LATER
David Star@Audiea.com

SUNDAY
1
The US is saying Saddam Hussein might be dead. Again the GOP plays this fools card. Senator Pat Roberts (R Kansas) says that Hussein may have been killed last Wednesday while traveling in western Iraq.
The Right Wing plays these games, announcing terror alerts and then new evidence of WMDs and now the latest attempt on Hussein's life. Cry wold enough and you'll be ignored.
Saddam Hussein is probably safely out of Iraq or dead. The US should shut up until there are credible facts showing what the truth actually is.
Religious frauds use these alerts and the ongoing BS about Saddam Hussein as a tool to hustle the gullible and credulous.
2
Here is a scrap test heat of my Essay on "Atticus Finch: Loss and Redemption."

ATTICUS FINCH: An Alternative perspective
David A Fairbanks 22 June 2003
San Francisco California.

1 To Kill A Mockingbird

At its core, TKAMB is about loss and redemption. Harper Lee speaks to her generation and all who come there after about the fundamental needs and expectations of human communities.
From the start she provides us with clear-cut
of persons affected by social prejudice, neglect, and the consequence of profound ignorance.
She does something else as well, in more subtle tone, Lee tells us that we can no do good or help anyone unless we understand several vital facts and do all we can to never lose sight of these facts.

1. Every human being has genuine value.
2. No one however ugly, odious, or violent must be left behind.
3. Kindness can and does kill as easily as intentional violence.
4. Social and political justice must be universal.
5. All efforts at creating a compassionate community must never cease and everyone must be a part of the process.

Lee offers the reader a number of examples of loss and efforts at redemption through characters in each phase of life.

1. Dill Baker Harris, a child.
2. Arthur (Boo) Radley, a young adult, under forty.
3. Mayella Ewell, an abused child becoming an abused adult.
4. Robert E. Lee Ewell, ignorant, desperate, and alcoholic middle age adult male.
5. Maude Atkinson, an older adult abandoned by her family and later her husband.
6. Aunt Alexandra, a middle age woman, divorced, alone, and unable to develop a sustainable relationship. Knowledgeable in a general way, ignorant in a deeper more damaging way.
7. Mrs. Dubose, an elderly morphine addict at the corner who lives with her Black female attendant.

In each character Lee tells us of the ongoing effects of neglect and the way it corrodes human interactions and replaces them with rage, violence, and eventual self-destruction.
She also shows that despite this deadly pattern there is genuine hope and a real chance at redemption that comes through education that is free of bias, social interaction that is founded on solid principals of integration of all persons into the community and a universal commitment to treating every person in a humane fashion and helping them overcome their rages and to mitigate the effects of human folly.

Lee tells in a general way that Atticus Finch is the promise of a better community and his impact on his children and others give ample proof.
But I contend that Lee offers a deeper subversive message about Atticus Finch as well.
In all his intelligence and honest compassion, he is locked into a worldview that creates unintended disaster and social tragedy. He sets limits on his tender mercies and callously denies even a scrap of redemption to a select few.
Just as white culture denies Tom Robinson simple justice, fairness, and a chance at life based on race. Finch denies Robert E. Lee Ewell any chance at redemption and in doing so endangers himself, his children, and his community.

Here is the rub. How can society step past a simple compassion offered in a general way, and lend it to the genuinely despised? What can be said to cause a true offering of hope to men such as Robert E. Lee Ewell?
The Nazis had an answer: calculated genocide toward those persons and groups of persons who did not meet a specific formula of social context. The Republicans in our time have an answer: state sanctioned social animus that allows greater neglect and further damage to society. (The Republicans operate on the idea that they can live the good life and die before the damage wrecks civilization) 20th Century Liberalism offered kindness and Federal assistance that led to the unintended consequence of resentment and sustained dependency on the state.

I do not believe Harper Lee sought to tell a tale without grappling with a deeper cause and effect. It is only a guess, but that she was aware and attempted to give some kind of acknowledgement to the cause and effect of Atticus on his community and how he must have struggled with his own values and their consequence.
Like all leaders or philosophers of sorts, Finch is forced to make choices and to accept a certain amount of tragedy.
Nowhere in TKAMB does anyone reach out to Mayella Ewell. The trial ends and she retreats back into her invisible life, filled with sexual, physical, and emotional torment.
Arthur Radley retreats back into his life as a profound recluse and is never seen again.
Mrs. Dubose dies.
Dill Harris goes on but is bewildered and stumped by the obscene cruelty in his own life and the tragedy he witnesses in larger society.
Lee offers no solutions to these damaged lives. She does hint that in Jem and Scout there is a generational promise of society getting better at understanding it?’s obligations.

2

Atticus Finch represents societies effort at administrating justice and to protect a community from it?’s own folly.

More tomorrow Monday 6/23/03

David Star@Audiea.com

SUNDAY!
Excelent article in Sunday's NY Times Op Ed Page.
Read it and weep!

June 22, 2003
Desert Double Feature
By MAUREEN DOWD


WASHINGTON

Looking back, you have to wonder if Rummy and Saddam were in two completely different movies, Rummy starring in a heroic war adventure like "Sands of Iwo Jima" while Saddam was scheming in a slick heist caper like "Ocean's 11." (With a soundtrack by Frank Sinatra using the Iraqi dictator's favorite song, "Strangers in the Night.")
Could we have been at war with someone who wasn't fighting back?
In Iraq, Rummy wanted to prove that the sleek, high-tech American military could be used to fight in unconventional ways. But maybe Saddam, who gives creepy new meaning to the phrase ultimate survivor, was playing an even more unconventional game.

What if he never meant to mount a last stand in Baghdad but merely spread word that there was a dread "red line" of chemical and germ warheads ringing the capital to give himself time to melt away into subterranean safety?

Two nights before the war began, Qusay or his minions were busy plundering a billion dollars from Iraq's central bank.

As U.S. tanks sped through Iraq, meeting surprisingly little opposition except for fedayeen harassment, Saddam may have been burning records of his weaponizing and terrorizing. He had probably already hidden or destroyed any bad stuff during the year the Bushies spent trash-talking about whupping him.

Maybe he decided that rather than hit America with biological warfare, he would use psychological warfare, discrediting the U.S. with allies by stripping the anthrax cupboards.

Was the tyrant sending out doubles in public while he plotted his getaway? Or making loyalists pretend to be double agents, dishing fake tips to the C.I.A. about where the Ace of Spades was dining so the U.S. would bomb the wrong places?

Saddam knew how hard it would be for America to rely on trust and understanding in a part of the world that we don't understand and where no one trusts us.

He had 12 years between wars and Bushes, after all, to plot ruses.

His captured top lieutenant has told American interrogators that he fled to Syria with Saddam's sons after the war (until Syria expelled them) and that Saddam was hiding in Iraq.

Maybe Saddam has been chortling from the sidelines as his guerrillas and Islamic militants kill enough U.S. soldiers to make Americans queasy. Maybe he could inflame an Iraqi rebellion over chaotic conditions, to expel the occupiers who came with no occupation plan.

Or, if Saddam brought a plastic surgeon underground with him, perhaps he could resurface as a fresh face, a populist candidate in Viceroy Bremer's first democratic elections.

After all, Baath, the name of his party, translates as Resurrection.

It's funny that the Bushies didn't recognize a heist when they saw one, given that they pulled off such a clever heist of their own: They cracked the safe of American foreign policy and made off with generations of resistance to pre-emptive and unilateral attacks.

On Friday, senators on the intelligence committee cut a deal that lets "a thorough review" — i.e. a Republican whitewash — go forward into whether the spy community ginned up prewar intelligence. The Democrats, already Fausted by their prewar fear of being pantywaists, naturally caved on open hearings.

Open, closed, who cares? Congress is looking in the wrong place. They're scrutinizing those who gathered the intelligence, rather than those who pushed to distort it.

George Tenet might have buttered up his bosses by not objecting loud enough when the Bushies latched onto bogus or exaggerated claims, but if obsequiousness is a subject of Congressional investigation, we're in for a busy summer.

The hawks started with Saddam's demise and worked backwards.

As the latest New Republic reports in its "Deception and Democracy" cover article: "In the summer of 2002, Vice President Cheney made several visits to the C.I.A.'s Langley headquarters, which were understood within the agency as an attempt to pressure the low-level specialists interpreting the raw intelligence. `That would freak people out,' said one former C.I.A. official. `It is supposed to be an ivory tower. And that kind of pressure would be enormous on these young guys.' "

It's scary, all right. Dick Cheney's hot breath on your raw files.

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company | Home | Privacy Policy | Search | Corrections | Help | Back to Top

These are not the best of times in America. Our children will wonder about us!
Imagine the stage plays they will write?
More later.
David Star@Audiea.com

Saturday!
Hot day, 78 in The City. Windy as usual.
Tomorrow I'll post an essay on Greagory Peck and his role as Atticus Finch in To Kill A Mockingbird.
David Star@Audiea.com

FRIDAY
Been struggling with computer troubles. They have passed.
1
The US appears to be pleading with the Israel's and Palestinians to behave. This is a waste of time. Both sides need to hear a strong but reasonable voice that can also send a forceful message to Tehran, Hamas primary financier. Peace will come when extremists are locked away, have gone broke or are very dead.
Ariel Sharon deserves considerable credit for dismantling some of the settlements and Abbas deserves credit for taking hard positions that will win him no points with Arafat and the crazies in the streets.
2
Iran has to change ands it's time to make clear that business will not be the same. They are playing North Korea's game with Atomic weapons and the US has to make abundantly clear that it is not going to work.
Iran needs a moderate path toward reform. The key is to force the Ayatollah's to get the point that the revolution has been corrupted and that the next generation will turn violent if the smoldering resentments are not dealt with intelligently.
3
Three Barbie dolls made a run for it at the recycling center early this morning. They scampered out, met the fence, panicked a few minutes and then calmed down enough to realize there was a way through. They found it and hot footed it toward downtown San Francisco.
At least once a week I see desperate get away. Bears, birds, snakes, even old clock radios unwilling to die quietly.
More later
David Star@Audiea.com

TUESDAY!
Pretty dawn in The City. We will feel the heat today!
Hume Cronin passed away Sunday. He was a superb actor, never recognized by the Academy Award Committee. As Jessica Tandy's Husband he was a universal favorite. Tough but witty in a delightful way, Cronin was an actors actor. The ultimate B man and second lead. From Lifeboat in 1942 to Gadgets in 1992 and a dozen roles in between he filled a critical spot in outstanding films. He will be missed.

Here is a brief article from the Globe and Mail detailing Iran's mounting troubles.
This is sure evidence the west has decided to try and get rid the Religious Regime in Tehran. Let's hope it works. Iran has great potential and should be liberated from the stale revolutionary guards who have ossified from serious progressions to street thugs trying to protect privledge and power. The revolutionary generation is corrupt, and the nation is drifting into poverty and irrationality.
David Star@Audiea.com

MOUNTING PRESSURE ON IRAN
By PAUL KORING
From Tuesday's Globe and Mail
UPDATED AT 1:46 AM EDT
Tuesday, Jun. 17, 2003

Washington — Iran's increasingly beleaguered ruling theocracy faced renewed
pressure at home and abroad yesterday as antigovernment protests gained
support and Tehran's controversial nuclear program was assailed.
The International Atomic Energy Agency, European Union and Russia
demanded that Tehran come clean concerning its ambitions, echoing the White
House, which believes the ruling clerics are seeking nuclear weapons
capabilities.
In the Iranian capital, swelling week-long, pro-democracy protests — the largest
since the 1979 revolution — were bolstered by nearly 250 academics and writers
who published a statement yesterday challenging the divine infallibility of
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The joint statement represented a
significant challenge to the ruling clerics. In the past, those who dared make
similar statements have been arrested or beaten.
"We've offered our support, our encouragement and we made clear what side
we stand on," U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said,
although the White House insists the unrest in Tehran is entirely domestic and
that aside from a torrent of radio broadcasts, Washington is not financially aiding
the pro-democracy movement.
Tehran's Foreign Ministry lashed back, accusing Washington of "blatant
interference" in Iran's internal affairs and arguing that "America is waging a
psychological war."
According to its official news agency, Iran also rejected IAEA demands for more
intrusive nuclear inspections unless they were accompanied by financial aid.
For Tehran's ruling mullahs, the United States is increasingly a threat.
With U.S. troops now along two of its borders — in Afghanistan and Iraq — and
pressure for change mounting, the theocracy faces unprecedented threats after
mostly failing to deliver prosperity or stability nearly a quarter-century after a
popular revolution swept the Shah from power. All but encircled by pro-Western
governments, including NATO member Turkey and U.S. ally Pakistan, Iran's
hopes of extending its influence throughout central Asia have dwindled.
Ominously for Tehran, one of the most hawkish advisers to U.S. President
George W. Bush, Richard Perle, is now openly calling for "regime change" — the
catchphrase that underpinned toppling Saddam Hussein's regime in Baghdad —
although no prominent American has yet called for war against Iran.
"There may be change in Iran because the regime in Iran is miserably
unpopular," Mr. Perle said yesterday in Berlin at the German Council on Foreign
Relations. "Young Iranians will find better uses for their limited resources than
building nuclear power in a country so rich in oil. We can already see signs that
Iranians .5.5. would like to see regime change. They should be encouraged."
Washington also ramped up the pressure, adding credence to reports that North
Korea has shipped Iran new, longer-range missiles that could carry nuclear
warheads by not dismissing them.
"I've seen those reports," Mr. Boucher said. "I don't think we have any
information I can share with you on that."
Pressure was building on Iran, meanwhile, to fully account for its nuclear
program.
Although Russian engineers are helping Iran build a nuclear reactor, Russian
Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov called on the Iranians to adopt stricter measures.
"We hope that Iran will sign the additional IAEA protocol, which will allow the
extension of the provision of the IAEA over all nuclear facilities in the territory of
the country," he said from New Delhi.
In Vienna, Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the IAEA, said "Iran has failed to
report certain nuclear material and activities," and called for Tehran to honour its
pledges to fully disclose the scope of its nuclear program.
IAEA board members are considering a report from Mr. ElBaradei urging that
Tehran agree to the Additional Protocol to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
That protocol, agreed to by most NPT signatories, gives international inspectors
wider access and more intrusive, short-notice inspections.
"The onus is on them to come clean," said Finland's Foreign Minister, Erkki
Tuomioja, one of several EU states backing a demand that Tehran accept
tougher inspections or face losing a pending trade deal.

Monday!
Hot day in the city, already eighty on lower Nob Hill.
Fire before the calm
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Hamas has rejected the US effort at a cease fire. This will be their undoing. Israel will get a silent nod from the Bush Administration and the Mosod will start a campaign of assassination that will go unnoticed except to family and friends. It's remarkable how treacherous people can be. A Hundred dollar bill can buy off just about any neighbor. The Arabs are like everyone else. Kids see things and when asked, offered money or a CD player they will fess up to everything. Later they will have remorse but it will be in their hearts and never see the light of day.
Hamas seems oblivious to the fact that time has run out. The fact that PM Abbas is committed to the so called road map should serve as ample evidence that the elder leadership has decided to end the Infatada and find a way out. The Israelis are now in a position to slaughter Hamas simply because the Palestinian business community is hurting and have had enough. The Israelis have plenty of financial resources. The Palestinians don't have as much.
The United States will finance special Ops against certain figures in the Hamas movement and the organization will be depleted.
Another factor to consider is the increasing tempo toward change in Iran. The older generation of religious leaders are well aware that France and Japan, Iran's primary trading partners are no longer willing to look the other way. Paris and Tokyo are in hard times and need US loans and banking support. Iran can not offer very much. Japan is increasingly worried about terrorism. As their own social discontent create troubles at home. Iran's leadership must take action to avoid a flash revolution.
The world has grown weary of violence and the usual funding sources are drying up. Hamas must either go in for the quick kill or start a genuine dialogue. My hunch is that they will try for the quick kill and get beaten to a pulp and then have no choice but to settle. Iran will procrastinate on reform and end up with serious violence in the fall and a possible US led intervention.
Israel will be under considerable pressure to find some kind of peace before the 2004 election cycle starts in the US.
The next few months will very likely see serious violence as all sides try to get into a favorable position.
More later
David Star@Audiea.com

Sunday!
Stunningly beautiful day! Perfect skies, celestial blues with a few high thin clouds and some westerly breeze. Went with friends to Heron Head Park south of Pier 96. Splendid time was had for all.
1
US is after Saddam Hussein's hold outs in NW Iraq. I wonder? Are we after local politicals who just don't want us there? We will need a few of the indigenous predators to set up something eventually.
Nation Building always starts with using crazies and ambitious predators, empire builders, and dreamers to get the show started. The Founding Fathers were generally wealthy cranks and social renegades. We needs these guys and gals who defy convention. Iraq will end up with a weak client state dependent on us to save them. If we can build careful alliances with greedy and personal driven local fellows we will have a loyal team on the ground.
Am I saying too much here?
More tomorrow.
David Star@Audiea.com

SATURDAY!
Te weaher has turned warm again! SAn Francisco had a stunning Friday night! Full moon that lit up the sky and gave the air a etheral splendor!
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Here is a wonderfull article by Reverend Donald Sensing over at "One Hand Clapping" (Printed without permission) I savor his rational judgement and genuine passion for all of us. If only the Palestinnians and Israeli's read his Blog!

How to create a nation!

What Mahmud Abbas can learn from David Ben-Gurion
Israel's birth problem was highly similar to the Palestinians' - who shall have the monopoly on military force? Ben-Gurion solved it, can Abbas?

One of the things that makes a sovereign state sovereign is holding a monopoly on the use of force, especially military force. This monopoly is proving to be a huge hurdle for birthing a Palestinian state. Prime Minister Mahmud Abbas nominally commands the Palestinian Authority's security forces, but he has not yet demonstrated just how much real control he has of them. And, as I posted Wednesday, the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas violently refuses to accept Abbas' authority. Unless Hamas is brought to heel there is no prospect for a sovereign Palestinian state.

Israel faced exactly the same problem - with one critical distinction - in its fight to gain sovereignty in 1948-1949. There Jews fighting for independence in what was then called Palestine before the UN Mandate of 1948 legally established Israel. The main Jewish group was Haganah, headed by David Ben-Gurion. The British were ruling Palestine then, under an old League of Nations mandate, and Haganah opposed the Brits as much as they opposed anyone.

There was another Jewish fighting group, Irgun, which had broken away from the more moderate Haganah. Irgun was headed by Menachem Begin. In April 1948, Irgun killed 250 Arab civilians at a village near Jerusalem, which precipitated a large exodus of Arabs from areas controlled by Jewish forces.

On May 14, 1948, Ben-Gurion and his political allies announced the establishment of the state of Israel. Britain immediately surrendered its old mandate and the United States recognized Israel on May 18. Within a year, 53 nations had recognized Israel and the UN General Assembly had admitted Israel.

The obstacle to Israeli sovereignty

Israel's declaration of independence did not bring the end of fighting. The Arab nations instantly denounced both Israel's declaration and the Western powers that endorsed it and moved to wage war against the new nation. Inside Israel, all was not well. Ben-Gurion announced on May 28, 1948, the establishment of the Israeli Defense Forces, of which Haganah would form the core. But Menachem Begin and the Irgun at first refused to recognize the new politico-military arrangement and would not submit to Ben-Gurion's command. However, in early June Begin and Ben-Gurion reached an agreement to absorb Irgun into the new IDF. Neither man wholly trusted the other by any means.

For some time before the agreement, Irgun had been arranging a shipment to Israel of 1,000 European Jewish volunteers, along with arms and ammunition aboard the ship Altalena. The ship sailed, late, from France on June 11. Irgun's representatives in France did not notify Begin's headquarters in order to maintain security. However, the British announced on their international radio the ship had sailed.

Begin became alarmed that news of the ship's departure would be seen by the new government as a breach of its truce with Irgun. He met with Ben-Gurion's representatives on June 15, promising them that the ship had sailed without his knowledge or approval. Ben-Gurion consented to land the ship, but not at its intended port of Tel Aviv. They quickly agreed on an empty beach on the Israeli coast.

But a strong dispute arose over the disposition of the ship's arms. The two sides agreed to devote 20 percent to the Jewish units in Jerusalem, but Ben-Gurion balked at Begin's insistence that all the remainder be allocated to Irgun's battalions as they were integrated into the IDF. Ben-Gurion feared that Begin was trying to create an army within the Army, and flatly refused.

(Some accounts, maintain that Begin considered it a matter of honor that units under his command join the IDF fully armed, and that his intention was not to maintain control over the units at all.)

The short Jewish civil war

At any rate, Begin refused. When the ship landed on the beach, Begin met it personally. Ben-Gurion was then faced with exactly the same problem facing Abbas today: shall the fledgling nation be truly sovereign? That means that it had to have the exclusive monopoly on the use of force, especially it must maintain and solely command all military forces. Ben-Gurion told his government,

We must decide whether to hand over power to Begin or to order him to cease his separate activities. If he does not do so, we will open fire! Otherwise, we must decide to disperse our own army.
He ordered the IDF to confiscate the ship's cargo and authorized the IDF commander to use lethal force to do so, if necessary. The commander of the IDF's Alexandroni Brigade, David Epstein, sent an ultimatum to Begin that nakedly threatened him if he failed to comply with the government's decision.
If you do not agree to carry out this order, I shall use all the means at my disposal in order to implement the order and to requisition the weapons which have reached shore and transfer them from private possession into the possession of the Israel government.
But Epstein gave Begin a mere 10 minutes to respond affirmatively, extremely impractical, and though the message was a model of clarity it was also very insulting to send to someone of Begin's stature. Begin made no response at all.

Egos came to the fore. Believing his honor tarnished by Begin's silence, Epstein immediately began combat operations. Casualties ensued but the fighting did not last long as the two sides soon negotiated a ceasefire. Begin boarded the ship and set course for Tel Aviv. Ben-Gurion directed the IDF chief of staff to fortify the Tel Aviv beach. When the ship came into range of IDF artillery, it was taken under fire and was struck. When the ship's captain saw the fire was spreading, with the holds packed with explosives, he ordered everyone to abandon ship.

All in all, 16 members of the Irgun were killed, along with three IDF soldiers. The ship was destroyed.

Sovereignty carries the authority of command

Begin seems to have been amenable to transferring his forces to the IDF. He probably boarded sailed the ship to Tel Aviv in order to negotiate anew the disposition of its valuable arms and ammunition. But Begin failed to recognize that he no longer had the political authority to negotiate anything anymore with Ben-Gurion and the new Israeli government. For his part, Ben-Gurion was determined for Begin and his subordinate commanders to understand that henceforth, there was one government of Israel, and the government would give orders that must be obeyed, not offer opening gambits of negotiations.

The lesson for Abbas

This is a lesson that Abbas needs to study well. If there is ever to be an independent Palestinian state, under Abbas or anyone else, there must be a truly sovereign Palestinian government holding the monopoly on the use of force.

I said earlier there was one important difference between Ben-Gurion's 1948 problem and Abbas' problem today. It is this: in 1948 both the IDF and the Irgun, along with their commanders Begin and Ben-Gurion, each had the same political objective: a free, independent Israel within the terms of 1948's UN Mandate (which basically recognized the Jews' territorial claims). Hence, for Begin and the Irgun to surrender their armed sovereignty was not for them to abandon their dream. All the Jews wanted the same thing.

But no such agreement exists between Abbas and Hamas. Let us allow that Abbas truly does desire a West Bank Palestinian state and is truly willing to surrender the claim of the "right of return" of Palestinians. These are exactly the things that Hamas opposes with every violent fiber of its being. Hamas wants to destroy Israel as a political entity and establish a Palestinian-Muslim state there. Hamas rejects any idea of a permanent Palestinian state anywhere else.

That is why I said that Hamas must be crushed in order for the Roadmap to Peace to have a chance of success. There is no correspondence between what Hamas wants and what the Roadmap calls on the Palestinians to do. Abbas surely must realize this, but is paralyzed and won't do anything about it.

by Donald Sensing. Link to this post: 6/13/2003 06:17:02 PM Comment (2) Shout Out

More later!
David A Fairbanks http://audiea.blogspot.com
Star@Audiea

Thursday!
Cold, partial sun in The City today.
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Israel is after Hamas big time. The Palestinians Authority is being shown as utterly impotent. Why should anyone take PM Abbas seriously? He foolishly stated on Monday that he would not use force against Hamas. Now, the Israeli's are doing his dirty work for him. While it's understandable that PM Abbas must assert authority that is rational and demonstrates a genuine desire for nonviolent resolution to the larger conflict, Hamas is ultimately HIS problem and he can not have credibility if he allows Israel to solve his troubles for him! If you want to rule a country, even a country in the making, you must have the courage to stand up to the street fighters as well as rival political organizations. PM Abbas faces limitations that he created!
Ariel Sharon will never allow terror to go unanswered. His leadership is based entirely on the fact that he will draw blood from whom ever assaults the Israeli People.
Yessar Arafat might be disliked, but he is known everywhere as a genuine fighter for his people.

The United States is discovering (Again!) that it has no choice but to get in deep and essentially orchestrate a peace settlement. GW Bush is right where Reagan, Bush the first, and Bill Clinton were: "Get on the ground and be ruthless toward all sides." Israel can not be treated differently from any other client. If we want the Palestinians on our side and as a loyal client state then we must treat them as we treat the Israeli's. PM Abbas has to see and believe in every decision he makes that Uncle Sam is there, watching and listening and prepared not just to speak when needed but willing to get physical every time it is warranted! You can not talk down belligerents. If this was true, we would not be in Iraq or Kosovo!

Israel can not go on assassinating Hamas. At least not with missiles and grenade attacks that are public and kill bystanders. The United States must get in bed with Ariel Sharon and slap him hard every time he acts out of line.The US must admit, by it's actions, that Israel is no longer on a loose leash. We made sure the Israeli's understood this in 1967 and 1973 and it helped them get ahead and we were taken seriously by Arab States. Today, we are wasing advantage gained by the psychological impact of the War with Iraq.
The Bush Administration must get serious in ways it has shown no interest in thus far. Here is where GW Bush will be defined in the eyes of every Hamas operative as well as the Arab leadership. There can be no half measures.
At Sharm el Sheik, Egypt GW Bush asserted himself and was taken seriously. Today Mr. Bush speaks through others and it weakens him. His statement on the White House lawn Wednesday, comes across as hasty and displays a startled leader. Regrettably every move is final and consequence is heightened in such an incendiary situation as the Middle East.
The United States looks inept, even thought it is not. Perceptions rule every human enterprise.
Today Thursday, Israel went right on shooting in Gaza and the Hamas street fighters are out in force.
I will not sit here and say I have a solution. I am just a armchair critic like most Bloggers, but from this chair, I see the Bushies fumbling around and I see PM Abbas stumbling and once again Ariel Sharon and Hamas are fighting their war. It has to become OUR war and kept that way.
More later
David Star@Audiea.com

Another Wednesday!
Pat Trembee read what I wrote and asked: "Do they need to know all that!" He also says that he does not have a little dickie!" Well!
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The violence in Israel has started again. It's the Hatfields and McCoys. A culture of pointless violence that is exciting and better than watching reruns on TV. We finance all sides and they want our attention! Cut off the money and media attention and they might eventually get over it.
Israel should not exist. The idea was great in 1948 and deserves great admiration. But as time passed Israel became a bitter state that is so lost in rage and bigotry toward everyone. The Jews deserve better than endless war and ongoing inflation and poverty. Give Long Island New York to the Jews! Move the Temple Mount to Rock Creek and then start a new Zion or New Israel as a independent republic allied with the US. The Palestinians will not accept a fragmented state any more than American Indians want to. The sad truth is that some ideas are great in every way but reality.
I am pro Israeli and a big supporter of the Jews. But I'm also a realist. Does anyone actually think things can change? When? A thousand years from now?
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I'll pay $5. to the person who finds the missing 727.
More later
David Star@Audiea.com

Tuesday Evening
A Boeing 727 went missing in Angola.Where is it? How can a jet plane 150 foot in size vanish? If you see a lost 727, notify the US government. I have no doubt right-wing radio hosts will blame the Clinton's and Pat Robertson will blame Liberals and Secular Humanists. And the left will trash GW Bush and the House Republicans. Newt Gingrich will make millions peddling fear in Dixie. I need to make a few million! The plane will show up, probably in some African soy field.
Here is the offical ABC News report:
Rogue Missile?
Intensive Search Under Way for Airliner Missing for Nearly a Month

By Pierre Thomas


June 10
— The U.S. government has secretly launched an intensive campaign to find a Boeing 727 passenger jet that mysteriously disappeared in Africa three weeks ago, sources told ABCNEWS.

Intelligence agencies have used satellites to try to locate the plane, the CIA is working its human sources in Africa, and embassies in Africa have been informed of the disappearance and asked to provide any information they may come across, sources said.

The plane's status is discussed every morning in meetings at various intelligence agencies and congressional intelligence committees. A number of government officials told ABCNEWS everyone is frustrated.

"When an aircraft of this size has been missing for so long it does raise some questions as to where it is and what it's being used for," said Chris Yates, editor of the London-based specialist publication Jane's Civil Aviation Security.

The Boeing 727 is 153 feet long and weighs 191,000 pounds.

Many Options

The plane disappeared out of Angola on May 25. But a government official says the Angolans do not know whether it was bound for Burkina Faso, South Africa, Libya or Nigeria. It's also not clear how many people were on board.

Some U.S. officials believe the plane may have been stolen to run drugs or guns. Others suspect it may have been crashed for insurance money.

American officials have so far turned up no evidence the disappearance is related to terrorism, but no one knows for certain, but the plane's disappearance raises some troubling security questions.

"It's extraordinarily troubling that you can literally disappear off the face of the Earth once you are airborne and fly across a continent like Africa," Yates said.

Other issues that officials cite include:

The lack of security at many African and Third World airports.

The limited oversight of flights in some African countries. Preliminary research shows some countries don't require flight plans.

The security of the international avaition market. Could this plane resurface in legitimate aviation without anyone knowing, or change hands on the black market? How secure are we when an airliner can go unaccounted for?

The most worrying possibility is that the plane might be used as a flying missile against a U.S. target in the manner of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

"An aircraft could be either stolen or hijacked overseas, fly to the U.S., on schedule, and it wouldn't be seen on FAA [Federal Aviation Administration] radar, if it didn't want to be seen, until the very last minute," said Richard Clarke, former White House terrorism czar.

The chance of that happening is slim, Clarke said. "The government believes the plane would not have enough fuel to reach the U.S."

But that doesn't rule out an attack on a U.S. embassy or facility overseas in Africa — making U.S. officials no less intent on finding the missing airliner.
Copyright © 2002 ABC News Internet Ventures.
Click here for Press Information, Terms of Use & Privacy Policy & Internet Safety Information applicable to the site.
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ABC World News featured 9 ads for medicines today. I am sure the news is just filler to keep you around for the ads. When will we get serious news again?
3
Rightwing News, a superb Blog features a list of top blogs. Excellent list. You can't understand America if you read only those blogs that you agree with. Rachel Lucas features a hilarious rant against her Spanish class and her usual angst concerning guns and liberals. Her wit and her genuine passion is wonderful. She is a true adult, free of delusion.
More later
David Star@Audiea.com

Tuesday!
Yesterday, Monday, was June 9th 2003. On Thursday June 9th 1978, Clark Attaway was a member of the US Army Euro Intelligence team. (DIA) Recently promoted to major, he was working with General Stanley Griswold.
Clark Attaway’s primary task was observing Soviet officers who occasionally visited Paris, Berlin, or London when on leave or in the immediate months after they departed the Red Army or Navy. (Few were spies. Most were harmless guys getting a break from the gray life in Russia) Attaway had a list of 421 Soviet Officers he and his four member staff kept tabs on.
At twenty-seven, Attaway had serious responsibilities. He was teamed with Frank Yaneski, a first generation Russian born and raised at Miami Beach Florida. Franklin Yaneski was a year older than Clark and was married to Cherry, a high school sweetheart. Frankie as he was known was colorful, often in trouble with IA for his antics and willful flamboyance; Attaway was placid as a summer afternoon. Clark lived his adventures through Frank, whom he had known in Miami when they worked at Royal Castle, a burger joint.
2
In June of ’78 Attaway was on assignment in Boston, Mass. Staying at the legendary Beacon Chambers, a men's residence on Myrtle Street.
On the 9th Attaway stepped into “Sporters” a famed Gay bar on Cambridge street. While there he met an impish white haired Irish boy named J Patrick Trembee. They shared a dance and had a couple of beers. Soon enough they retired to Trembee’s studio over on Cedar Street and had a friendly evening.
During the next ten days, Attaway saw Trembee six times. They chatted and argued sports and politics and had fun.
Gradually Attaway realized Trembee was generally a bit high on beer most of the time. The kid was eighteen, worked in a sub sandwich shop out by BU. The place was called “Banzai” after the famous Japanese WW2 war cry.
In late June, Attaway returned to his duties in Free Berlin.
In mid July he flew into Boston and discovered that Trembee was in the Charles Street Jail. Pat and his friend Jack Aresbec had set off six fire alarms on Charles Street one night while being seriously intoxicated.
Clark visited Trembee at the jail and saw him truly sober for the first time. Unshaven and angry to the point of hysteria. Trembee, all of 119 pounds, (he’s 5.7) remarkable white hair, bright luminous blue eyes, no lips to speak off, longish hands and feet, and always twitching, jerking about, talking in a loud Irish accent. Attaway was aghast and got away from this kid as fast as possible. He found that bail was seventy-five hundred and that Pat faced three years in state prison for felony criminal mischief.
Deciding Trembee was a psychopath and probable alcoholic Attaway let it go.
3
On August 10th, Clark flew in to Boston on his way to San Francisco. He had 48 hours to kill. He had been thinking about Pat Trembee a lot. Those blue eyes and the unkempt white hair! The kid was full of chatter and energy.
Clark also had serious doubts about what he should be doing. He was almost a decade older. He generally stayed away from kids. He disliked chicken hawks as much as the next guy. For him it had been an odd adventure and not much else. Pat was good in the sack, in a general way. The kid was anything but kinky and to be honest was not very romantic. Clark remembered his own salad days. He had been foolish, learned little and often alienated potential lovers by his political rants.
4
On the afternoon of the 11th Clark stopped by the jail to see if Trembee was still there. He was and he looked sullen, and desperate. Clark listened as Pat pleaded he pay bail. Trembee’s father was being a jerk about it.
Attaway thought it over. He told Trembee that the kid had a serious drinking problem. Trembee became abusive and Attaway left.
On the 12th Attaway delayed his flight west when he had a chance to met Karl Trembee. They caught up with each other at a cafe in Back Bay. Clark listened, and soon became angered at the old mans cruelty toward his own son. Karl Trembee sipped beer, went on about how he was a truck driver for Arrow Line, a serious fellow who paid his bills on time and hated these Hippies that were ruining America!
Attaway sensed he was seeing Pat Trembee as an older man; it was no thrill!
Karl was former US Navy, two terms. (Korea) he was a salt of the Earth, living in what had been his father’s house in Brookline. Trembee was married almost forty years; he had two older children. Pat had been a surprise when Daddy was forty-five. It was evident, the old salt failed to have any real empathy for his son. If anything, the old grunt seemed to be jealous of Pat’s youth. He railed at his son’s indecision and lack of interest in college. Trembee railed: “I offered him a way to get out and be something! But he wants to make sandwiches! What the hell kind of life is that?”
Attaway suspected some bigotry in there as well. Clark did not meet Mrs. Trembee.
That evening Attaway sat in Sporters and thought it over. Pat was trouble, but he was also a kid and he was trying to live a life in a time when such a life was seen as evil or worse.
Later that night, Clark connected with a casual friend. They went to the fellow’s apartment. Lying in bed, Clark realized he wanted to be with Pat Trembee. The truth worried him.
4
The next day Clark contacted an assistant DA in the Suffolk County’s DA's office. No deals were going to be made Trembee was a known troublemaker. He'd been in the Middlesex jail the year before for mischief in Cambridge. A sympathic judge had let him off.
Clark notified Griswold he'd be a few days late. Clark was going to try and help. He would be able to walk away with a clear conscience.
He saw Pat that evening brought him candy, magazines, and a notebook. Again they ended up arguing about drinking. While there, Fiona Trembee came. She was Karl’s younger sister and Pat’s landlady on Cedar. Clark took an immediate liking to her.
Pat toned it down in her presence.
5
On the street Fiona told Clark that She had left the US when married to her Irish Army Officer husband Jeffery O’Dell in the late 1940s. After Jeffery’s death in 1975 she returned to Boston, and used estate funds to buy a row house on Beacon Hill. She was working with “ADM Properties” as a “Process Server” and Landlord of 12 properties over in Savin Hill, an area she knew well. She told him about her work as a Rent Collector in Dublin. Her humor was deep and a bit racy.
The next day Clark came by, asked about Pat. He ended up taking Fiona to lunch at Harvard Gardens. She explained that she wanted to bail Pat out, but that she was worried about the kids drinking. And her brothers temper.
At three they went to see Pat, who was a bit ill at ease with his Aunt there. Pat was also quite visibly suspicious of Clark talking with her.
Attaway informed Pat that he would bail him out if Pat wrote his Aunt a letter admitting he was alcoholic and making a solemn promise that he would join AA and get off the beer forever.
Angered and embarrassed, Pat told Clark to “Buzz off”
Fiona stepped in and warned Pat that he was running out of time. He would be before a judge in two weeks and he did not have an attorney or any kind of defense.
Pat broke down, cried like a defiant kid pleaded to be bailed out.
Clark was becoming concerned with how he looked to the guards. He excused himself and went outside. Soon enough he started walking. He got on the Redline, went to Cambridge. In Harvard Square he called Frank Yaneski and they had a long talk. That night Clark sat in Quincy Market, trying to get J Pat Trembee out of mind.
6
On the 15th Attaway stopped by the jail and learned Fiona had bailed Pat out the evening before.
Assuming the kid was in his studio, smashed and lost to the world, Attaway decided to find out. He went to Cedar Street.
His aunt said Pat was out somewhere. Seeing she was distressed they sat in the foyer chatting and sharing stories about Europe. Finally, Fiona said: “He likes you. You’re a soldier, strong and serious. You’re evidence that he can survive even though what he is.”
Attaway smiled. “I get the drift.”
Fiona added: “He drinks because he has no love in his life. He might be physically 18, but he’s 40 in his mind. He has a loving older brother and sister, but they are not here. His mother is a High School principal in Brookline, very strong and not very patient with boys drinking. Pat’s mother knows what he is, but they never discuss it. Karl Trembee is a bigot and there’s no charity there.” Fiona added with bitterness: “Loneliness can kill a heart.” She stood, faced the stairs. “JP is not a bad person, he is alone, no real friends and he seems unable to decide what to do with his life.” She added: “He does not care about the future because it seems so empty.”
Wanting to run away as fast as he could, Clark went to the door. “There’s not much I can do Mrs. O’Dell.”
“Help him get into the Army.”
Clark smirked. “He would be out in a month.”
She was quiet a while. “Last night JP talked about you. He says you were good to him, treated him as an equal.”
Clark avoided her eyes. “Well, I try to be decent.” He wanted to vaporize. “I have to go.” He hurried out.
7
Clark stood at the corner. Thinking about Pat’s situation, he knew the drill. Attaway had grown up in Perrine, Florida. It had been tough. Dade Country was a cruel place in the 1960s.
Walking west on Cedar he saw Pat, shaved and cleaned up heading his way.
They stopped. Pat told him to “Fuck off”
Clark smiled. “Get all you can boy, there’s no drink at MCI Concord.”
“I’m not drunk! I’m sober as a judge.”
“Good for you. I’m sure there’s beer in your studio.”
“No, there isn’t. Aunt Fiona took my beer.”
“Tough life kid.”
Pat eyed him. “Why are you here? Are you looking for a trick?”
“No.” Clark wanted to belt the little twit!
“You’re a liar!” Pat sneered, grabbed at his pants, and snickered: “You want it?” He took a step: “You like little dickies?”
Clark stiffened. “You are less nasty when you’re drunk.”
“You look like a pig!” Trembee stepped past Attaway. “I resent guys blabbing about me to anyone!”
“Aunt Fiona is all you have Boy Chick.”
Trembee turned, spit at Attaway: “Haul it up the road loser!”
Clark fumed. (He was trying not to laugh as well) “So you want to ruin your life, get at Daddy?”
Trembee spun around, came at Attaway, fists flailing: “You creepy shithead!”
Clark effectively dodged Trembee’s rage. Soon enough the kid stopped. Winded, he hugged himself. “Go back to the Army you thug!”
“I’m a thug? You’re the fighter!” Attaway laughed. He started walking.
Trembee soon called out. “I haven’t been had in months.”
Attaway snickered: “Tell the neighborhood!”
Trembee shouted: “I need sex!” He did a circle, faced Clark, and grabbed his pants again: “You think you can get it to rise?”
Attaway took a step: “You’ll have to be drunk to get it up sweetie.”
Trembee watched him a few seconds. “You ever have a adult?”
“Many times. I love London.”
“English! I should have known! Irish Boys have pride!”
“They do?” Clark laughed. He changed the subject. “Tell the truth JP, have you ever actually made love?”
“Huh? What are you saying?”
Attaway smiled. “Sex is fun, but making love is better.”
Flush faced Trembee replied: “I know the difference. You never made love with me!”
“I tried, several times.”
“Bull Shit!”
Attaway watched him. Neither wanted to leave. It was obvious they wanted to be together. Clark wanted Pat in every way. It was not as sexual as simple wanting to be with a warm body and share the day.
Trembee spoke. “Eighty dollars ands you can BJ me all afternoon.”
Attaway replied with scorn: “Somewhere you have to stop tricking and start a life where you have a real companion and learn to make love and control the rage.”
“Yes Father!” Trembee hissed.
Attaway considered it. “I misread you. I thought there was something inside. I thought I came close to it the times we were together. I was wrong, there’s nothing inside you except childish rage.”
Tremble bristled. “You don’t know me!”
“Oh, I do.” Attaway spoke with anger. “You are every kid who ever realized what life is about. You are like most guys, you evade the truth and don’t ever grasp the fact that the biggest threat to your life is you, not anyone else.”
“Aw fuck you.” Trembee turned, started walking. At the corner he stopped. He was obviously aching. His eyes were smarting.
Clark felt lonesome and unable to walk away, not this way. He came to him. “Listen JP I went into the Army at eighteen. I ran away, thinking I could be a different person. I never could. So, I quit drinking all the time and I decided that I’d live my life. I do not deny anything and I accept that the military is a bit old fashioned. I mind my P’s and Q’s and I get by.”
Trembee spoke. “I’m eighteen, not that it matters.” He took a step back. “Tell the truth! Do you like young boys?”
“I don’t see it that way. You were there, and you invited me to your studio. You undressed and you took me. I came back and you offered me more. I do not abuse anyone.”
“I was drunk.”
“Yah, I know, but under the fog you knew what you were doing.”
Trembee watched him a few minutes: “Suppose I was fourteen, and had lied to you about my age?”
“I would have walked away.”
“I’ll bet.” Trembee stared at him. “You think ‘cause I’m small and have white hair I’m easy? I’m not! I can get $400 at Chestnut Hill any time! Old Queens think I’m a dolly! I know the game. I know what a pedophile is!” He stepped away: “What can you do for me?”
“Nothing really.”
“You’re right about that Army guy!” Trembee stepped away: “I admit I liked you. But you saw my freaking father! You have been bending Aunt Fiona’s ear! Shit, you don’t know how to keep it discrete!”
“I ask questions to get answers. I wanted to help you JP. You need to get off the sour attitude.”
Trembee stared ahead: I’m a Homosexual, that’s a ticket to hell around here.”
“For some.”
Trembee watched him. “Yah!”
Attaway replied. “Life is what you make it. Adults will respect you if you are good, purposeful, and understand their willingness to accept you if you help them. They have to suffer the bigots too!”
“Say that again?” Trembee drew closer.
“The country is growing up. Times are changing. The old ideas are fading. Most adults are indifferent to your sexuality. They are interested in your talents and ability to get things done. If you can give them true value, they will be there when you need them, because you have something profitable to offer.”
Trembee blinked several times. “You scratch my back and well.” He turned. “I hate this shit.”
“Leave Earth, you’ll never make it here as long as you are angry.”
“I did not ask for this.” Trembee took several steps.
“Then go straight, be a drone and do as the predators say.” Attaway had not moved.
Trembee turned. "It's so easy to say!"
Attaway came to him. "Today is August 15th 1978, in a year you'll be in prison, a convicted felon! What kind of life is that?"
Pat was pale. "You are cruel."
"I tell the truth!"
"I need a." Trembee spoke with bitterness. "I need a ticket out of here!" He turned red-faced. "You like seeing me this way!" He started walking. In front of his Aunts house he turned, Clark had not moved.
Pat went inside. A few minutes later he came back out, saw Clark at the corner. He came to him. "What are you doing?"
Attaway smiled. "Waiting for you."
"You want a trick? Eighty dollars!"
Clark smiled. "You don't sell it."
Trembee glared. "You don't know me!"
"I do." Attaway replied. "You need a lover, a friend, and serious lovemaking, you just don't know how to get those things."
"Ah fuck you!" Trembee turned.
Attaway spoke. "Good luck Pat." He started walking south on Cedar.
Soon enough Pat came after. "Wait!"
Clark stopped.
Trembee faced him. "I need a friend, and some good sex."
Attaway was quiet a moment. He spoke with tease: "Pat Trembee Friendship day!"
Trembee went red. "Dish it out loser!"
Attaway warned, "I'm returning to Europe day after tomorrow."
Trembee considered it. "We could have a little, you're not so bad."
Attaway replied. "You are the best I've ever had." Clark was shocked by his own words! He saw the look in Pat’s eyes; there was tenderness behind the rage.
"Um little white haired boy?"
"You are no boy!"
Trembee watched the sky a moment. "Be good to me Attaway, I'll give you a life time."
Clark came to him. As they embraced, Pat muttered: “So discrete, eh Attaway!”
“I’m not ashamed.” Clark replied as he licked Pat’s ear, causing him to giggle: “Lick the good little boy, get a thrill Daddy!”
“Shut up JP.” Clark warned.
Trembee giggled: “Okay soldier, take your little Irish darling upstairs and teach him how to make love.”
8
Pat pled guilty and was given a three year suspended sentence. (Did Fiona make a few calls?) Over the next few months Pat got drunk several times when Clark was away, but as the year passed, he realized Clark was just right for him. Pat entered a detox center in March of 1979 and has never taken a drink again.
Today 25 years later, they are still together. It has been quite a journey. They shared an apartment in the 1980s on Philips Street. (Boston) In 1991 Clark was made Western Director of "Office of Select Investigations" (DOJ/FBI) Clark has been in San Francisco ever since.
Pat worked Banzai until 1986, went to "New Harvest" and in 1991 after the move west became a manager of Sizzlers on Geary St. in San Francisco. He was fired in June 1995 and went to work in the Federal Cafeteria in Oakland in September 1995. He quit in 1998 and became a mentor for the Contra Costa County Youth Services. He started college in 2000 as he turned forty. He will be a certified psychologist in 2005
In 2001 Clark and Pat moved from San Francisco to Pleasant Hill, out by Concord.
Last Sunday I chatted with Pat. He and Clark are in Boston for their Silver Anniversary. He says: "We are older, wiser. I was a lucky kid. How many naughty Gay boys settle into a life so early and it lasts longer than a few weeks?"
I did not mention that Pat grew restless and had left Clark in 1989 and was gone almost two years. That he almost married Jean Meredith. I did not mention Clark being in Kuwait so much in recent years. I do know that they made it to the new century and are genuinely happy. Maybe restless at times, but still at the end of the day, Pat and Clark are together.
I met Pat in the summer of 1977, he was a loud kid working at Banzai and I did security at an apartment house up the street. I was 26 and he was 17. I liked his sass and good cheer that was underneath it. I met Clark in the fall of 1978. We became friends and have been ever since. I talk with Pat on the phone about once a week.
Happy Anniversary guys! My heart is with you always!
More later
David Star@Audiea.com
Trembee

Sunday! Just eight hours to go and I'll have completed week 12 at the recycle center at Pier 96.
We're getting dense fog with cooler weather in recent days.
1
The New York Times had an internal rebellion this last week. Mr. Raines and Boyd are gone, victims of staff resentment fueled by bonehead decisions and cynical attitudes toward a number of subjects among them the Jayson Blair story. These men acted with visible bias toward the Bush Administration in their public discourse, thus creating a tint to Times articles that could not be ignored. Journalists are assumed prejudiced in some fashion. No human can evade their own mindset 100%. But there can and should be a noticeable detachment in articles. Editorials are for emotion, partisan views, and cultural bias.
Historically the NY Times was seen as the Gray old Lady, stuffy, a bit snooty and always indifferent to emotion in presenting facts. The paper reported the antics of kings with the same detachment as murders in Brooklyn. In recent years the paper appeared jealous of the low brow cheap thrill mindset of Rupert Murdock's "News Corp" Profits are nice, and the Times has been suffering of late, but long term loss of credibility is serious and can and does destroy newspapers.
Andrew Sullivan has some fine articles and links at his blog concerning the NY Times turmoil.
More later
David Star@Audiea.com

Saturday!
Funny Cide lost! I'm out of ten dollars! Great horse all the same. Empire Maker is a great horse too! We'll see some fine races yet!
Cindy and Andrew are getting along. Dogs! You can't beat them!
More later.
David Star@Audiea.com

Thursday!
My new Ty dog Cindy is learning to get along with Archie, my great big dog, and Andrew, my other Ty dog. You'd think polyester pets would just lay there, but no! They don't. They want attention and they can raise hell. (Are my delusional fantasies taking over?)
I'm having fun The fantasy's allow me to cope with mass resignations at the NY Times and the threat of News Corp taking over all media. Some rightwing Republicans are talking about abolishing broadcast TV. Shut down the free TV and everyone will need cable. But what happens if you piss off enough of the public and they turn of their TV and start living a different kind of life? I assure you that humans can and do change all the time. It's a myth that we're all sheep and that we slavishly follow the crowd. Truth is, people go with the flow in a general way because it allows them to be independent in other ways. Rational folk soon realize that within the heard you can enjoy quite a bit of freedom, as long as you don't wear loud yellow. TV is popular because it's cheap and demands no real skill to use. Just sit there and watch.
2
Michael Savage walked away from KSFO and might walk away from his national radio show. How many times can you rant over this that and the other? Savage has made a lot of money in recent months but has also been sued by several organizations and is deep into the litigation. Hate someone? File a damage suit and keep them in court and spending money! David Duke the Klansman discovered the price for saying mean things. He was sued by a number of political groups as well as individuals and after a few years fled the country. He lives in England most of the time these days.
Mike Savage is no reactionary, he never was. He's a former DJ who started his own Morton Downey shtick and has done quite well. My guess, is that he's tired and realizes the "Angry Guy" routine can only go so far.
The Spurs will win the NBA playoffs this year.
We're expecting some chilly weather this weekend. The heat will return. I am certain we are reliving 1999s weather! Wet spring, warm summer, wet fall, cool winter.
More later.
David Star@Audiea.com

Evening. I have a new Ty dog. Cindy. I already have Andy, from Reno. I also have a great big Gund dog, Archie. My pets are all excited and having fun.
Here is a reprint of my proposed revived 2d amendment to the US Constitution:
"The right of all citizens upon the age of thirteen, to purchase, own, use, construct, sell, or give away, long or short barrel firearms shall not be abridged"
Article One: The right of the several states that CHOSE to do so by a sixty percent consent vote by registered voters to limit or regulate the access, sale, or urban use of firearms is permitted.
Article Two: No person shall be denied ownership of firearms without due process in a free and open court of their immediate peers.
Article Three: This revived amendment shall not be altered except by a two thirds consent by the registered voters of the several states.
What say you?
More later
David Star@Audiea.com

Just a thought;
GW Bush said today in the middle east that "Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish state, thus the right of return for Palestinians would be unadvised and unacceptable. I understand the presidents sentiments, but do not all Jews have the right of return? Regrettably this will be the sticking point. Palestinians who have dreamed of a return to sacred lands will smolder and resent this decision. I understand the reasoning. But there must be some way to accommodate the Palestinians.
What do you think? Reverand Sensing at "One Hand Clapping" has a good essay on this issue.
It's 8:45AM and already it's 70 in Union Square!
Off to the laundry!
David Star@Audiea.com

Another Wednesday! They never stop.
FUCK AMERICA ONLINE!!!
In December 2000 I signed up for AOL. I did not want to. A friend had the service and it featured some thing called instant messaging. My friend was bewildered why I wouldn't want such a sweet thing. Yah right! I tolerated AOL just six weeks. I cancelled the service by phone, a fools move right there. I am a big loud guy. I weigh 270 and I have been in Security for thirty years, don't fuck with me! So I was in no way polite. I used my Marine DI tone on the minimum wage airhead and he transferred me to his supervisor. I mentioned that I knew Diane Feinstein personally. I actually do know her. I entered a contest in 1983 about a new City Song for SF. No, I did not win. But anyway, she was mayor and I was granted a 4 minute confab with her. I guess I made her laugh. I ran into Feinstein and her hubby Mr. Blum in 1991 and she actually remembered me! I'm pretty weird as it is, not easily forgotten. Anyway, I warned the AOL Rep that I loved redmeat confrontations and I would have great fun if they pissed me off.
They cut the service that day. But dear friend they billed me for three months and their AOL reps called five times bitching I had not paid my bill.
After a while, I sent a letter to Feinstein's office. Someone called AOL because I got a sweet letter from Virginia telling me that AOL prosecutes all harassers. I sent a note saying: "Let the Games Begin!" They never replied.
Now, in March of 2002 AOL REINSTATED my account and sent me a bill three months in a row!

READ CAREFULLY
American law operates on the premise that all defendants are innocent until a jury makes its vote known. Business routinely bill a month or so after a service has been cancelled. They operate on a delicious 19th century scam. "Most folks are chicken shit and will pay the bill, one or two months before getting the nerve to squeal!"
If you can sucker 100,000 fools by 2 months payment of $5 each, baby you have ONE MILLION DOLLARS!
Get my drift? AOL has 36 million customers. If they over charge them FIFTY CENTS EACH that's EIGHTEEN MILLION DOLLARS! Free and clear. Unless you challenge it you will have to pay! They are innocent until proven guilty of criminal activity. Billing systems make mistakes. That EIGHTEEN MILLION can buy a lot of politicians and charm a few judges!
THINK! If ATT can add a buck to you cable bill for some weird tax, "US AD SERVICES SEQUENCE TAX" And you DO NOT Challenge it, hey babe, they get the millions and you get laughed at during the accountants annual dinner!
Credit companies always have a small fee of some sort, it gives them a dollar per customer, adding up to multiple millions and guess what? Who wants to spend hundreds on legal fees to get back a buck? But eighty million customers a month? That's eighty million dollars in fools fee!

Here is a piece by Rachel Lucas. I sent her an Email advising I was reprinting this. Her Blog is great fun. Here is a sensible adult who sees things as they really are. Read it and weep!
AOcrap
I hope this trend continues unabated until AOL is no more of this world. I can honestly say that I have never had such difficulty with any company in my entire life as I have had with AOL, and that was five years ago.

I had their dial-up service - it was my first Internet connection back in 1996, when you really didn't have a lot of choices. So when cable broadband came along and was in my neighborhood in 1998, I decided to switch. Obviously. So the call to AOL to cancel my dial-up account was made, and what ensued was three long months of pure AOL-inflicted hell.

First, you have to get to a human being on the phone. Then, after telling that person you want to cancel your account, you're obliged to tell them why. I told my Very Helpful Customer Service Representative that I was switching to broadband. Whereupon she told me that would be a mistake because broadband was a fad that would soon vaporize. No, I'm not kidding.

So I told her to stop asking me questions and just cancel my account. She told me that they had a Very Special Offer for me if I'd stay with them. I carefully explained, much like I would to a toddler, that I was not going to stay with AOL because I wanted AT&T Broadband, and that she was wasting her time - and more importantly, my time - by trying to talk me out of it.

At which point she put me on hold for ten minutes, claiming she had to find my billing information. Bitch. Oh and yeah I remember all this in detail because it really pissed me off at the time and I hold grudges.

Anyway, after at least half an hour on the phone, she agreed to cancel my account for me, effective immediately. But lo and behold, my next bill came with a full month's charges (beyond the date the rep had told me it would stop). Which meant, of course, another breathtakingly painful phone call to AOL, which resulted in nearly fatal hypertension on my part because the "customer service" rep (HA!) claimed he couldn't find my info in the system.

Me: "I'm looking at the bill right now and just told you the billing information thereupon."

Rep: "I'm sorry ma'am but you're not in our system."

Me: "You hate your job, don't you? I would too if I worked for a crap company like AOL."

Rep: "No ma'am, I like my job. Has your address changed?"

Me: "Like I already told you four times, no."

Rep: "Oh wait, I see. I typed in your address wrong."

Me: "Great, thanks for wasting another 15 minutes of my life. Now make it credit back the charges for the three weeks I haven't had AOL service."

Rep: "I can't do that, ma'am. You still have service now."

Yeah that's right. The stupid twit I'd talked to the first time hadn't canceled my account. Being the wily consumer that I am, I had written down her name, the date of our conversation, AND the confirmation number. Upon sharing that information with the current rep, he admitted he could see the cancellation order but it said June 6 instead of April 6. At which point I had to do a handstand to get the blood back into my head.

Anyway, it took those nutpigs three months to cancel my account and correct my bill. And then? And then??? A year later, I saw a charge on my credit card for $23.95...from AOL. I shit you not, my friends. I hadn't had any contact with that sorry excuse for a company in a year, and suddenly they were billing me. It was a dark, dark day in the life of Rachel, mostly because I truly felt homicidal and that was unpleasant.

It took two months to get that cleared up. Apparently, their computer "system" had regenerated my account, out of the blue. Yeah, right. Smells like bullshit to me.

Anyhoo, as you can understand, I have a deep and abiding hatred for AOL. And so I hope they continue to lose customers and eventually fold with a spectacular humiliating bang of failure.

P.S. No, I don't want to hear any defenses of AOL or any positive testimonials. My experience with them was horrid and nothing shall ever change that stark reality. Their crappiness is immutable and eternal. Plus it's fun to bitch so don't rain on my bitchy parade.

Posted by Rachel at 12:59 AM
Rachel Lucas Link is at your right. I have NEVER met her, and I have no idea if she'd ever talk with me. I live in SF, that might scare her away. But anyway, her Blg is fun and full of adult ideas and family tales.
More Later.
David Star@Audiea.com