Obama's Vietnam

by Dennis Green

I listen to Leon Panetta, head of our CIA, on ABC’s This Week and it’s obvious, as the old French saying goes, that his ass is sucking air. Panetta presides over one of the weakest and most discredited intelligence agencies in the world. The CIA could have foreseen and prevented 9/11 and didn’t. It hasn’t anticipated and prevented the attack on Fort Hood, the Detroit Bomber, the Times Square Bomber, or come anywhere close to finding Osama bin Laden.

“He’s somewhere in the tribal areas of Pakistan,” Panetta says, and then adds, “We haven’t had any certain location intelligence on him since the early 2000’s.” Wow! America, the most powerful nation in the world, and we can’t even find one terrorist, lost track of him almost ten years ago, and with all those satellites, all that money, all those agents, no results. Failure.

Panetta also reminds me of the national leaders lying to us during the Vietnam War. He attempts to assert that we are having success against the Taliban in Afghanistan, but other reports, (Face the Nation), make it clear that we are failing in that effort too. He can’t even explain precisely how the Taliban is a threat to the security of the United States, except to say that “They are willing to harbor Al Qaeda, who are still trying to attack us here.”

Neither Panetta, nor Obama, nor Clinton, nor anyone else can explain how North Korea or Iran pose a threat to our security. Even if they acquire nuclear weapons, so what? The Soviet Union had more warheads than we did, and the “Mutually Assured Destruction” clause prevented both sides from using them. If either Iran or North Korea launched a missile in our direction, we would retaliate with hundreds of our own long-range missiles, and wipe them off the face of the earth. Suicide bombers with suitcase nukes? Don’t make me laugh.

Just as our invasion of Iraq was totally unjustified, based on lies about Weapons of Mass Destruction, our entire involvement in the Middle East lies on a platform of lies and exaggerations. Incompetence made 9/11 possible, and we can only hope those agencies responsible for our security are now on their toes. But if Obama perpetuates the conflict in Afghanistan, especially using the strategy of Counter-Insurgency, he is doomed to become another LBJ.

Using a “Counter-Terrorism” strategy instead, however, has one big disadvantage to our Military. It doesn’t require 150,000 troops on the ground. Perhaps as few as 10,000, and a more efficient use of drones and the occasional commando attack on Al Qaeda across the border into Pakistan. Illegal? So what? If we can invade Iraq, we can certainly penetrate Pakistan from time to time.

But our Military needs and wants a full-scale force deployed in Afghanistan to retain the kind of power they have during wartime. Are we, as Obama said, “A nation at war?” Doubtful. Except for those Jarheads and Special Forces, Navy SEALS, Blackhawks and others, nobody knows and nobody cares, except to wonder why we spend all those trillions and all those lives. For oil? For Israel? Certainly not for the U.S. of A.

Panetta explains how “excellent” the CIA has become, since the bad old days when it couldn’t find its own ass with both hands. And again, he is about as convincing as General Westmoreland explaining how much we were winning “Hearts & Minds” in Vietnam by burning hooches. Yep.

One of the reasons Americans have lost faith in their own government is the pathetic War in Afghanistan. And the more President Obama ties his destiny to outcomes there, the more miserable and forsaken that destiny will be.

©2010 Dennis Green

The 2//3 Rule

by Dennis Green

This year, California voters and legislators have an opportunity to make some very significant choices. There’s the race for Governor, the legalization of Marijuana, and perhaps most importantly, for the legislators, a choice between “Feed the Beast” or “Starve It.” The perception of runaway government could easily stop here.

It’s been stopped in its tracks in the U.S. Senate, where the two-thirds rule has become the norm. With the increased use of the filibuster, by both parties, it now takes a supermajority of 60 votes in the Senate to get anything done. Considering the mischief that body is usually up to, I believe that’s a very good thing.

The use of the parcel tax initiative to get around the will of the people in California to limit property taxes with Prop. 13, is compromised by the requirement of a 2/3 majority voter approval. That compromise has not prevented the passing of a bundle of parcel taxes in Alameda, including five for the public schools, to supplement the $80 million a year they receive from regular property taxes.

But that 2/3 majority also saved us from Measure E, the most recent, and most horrendous demand from the schools, to preserve their status quo while unemployment, foreclosures, defaults and deficits characterize this recession for the rest of us. Even so, only 35% of registered voters said “Yes on E,” but with a turnout of barely 50%, one more percentage point, a democratic minority of 36% could have put it in force.

That means, with a 50% passage, only 26% of registered voters could pass any initiative. We’ll see how that plays out in Sacramento and then express our own views in November.

Legislators can vote for the “Passing the Budget on Time” initiative, which would eliminate the 2/3 requirement for all California initiatives, or for the “Stop Hidden Taxes” initiative, which would impose the 2/3 requirement on virtually all state and local government fiscal initiatives. I know how I’m telling my representatives to vote.

Much of the anger toward government — coming not from just the Tea Party but from those of us who see its bureaucracies as bloated and overpaid and in cahoots with multinational corporations — is the perception that civil servants hardly serve, and haven’t taken the hits from the recession that workers in the private sector have.

Much of the money from the $800 Billion Stimulus package have gone to saving the jobs of teachers, police and fire, or creating many new public service positions. The problem with that: product and manufacturing innovation, creating new value, happens only in the private sector. In the public sector, only “services” are provided, often of a dubious nature. Many taxpayers don’t benefit from such public services at all.

Moreover, those public payrolls are bloated. Fire and police unions resist layoffs, or the closing of precincts or fire stations of doubtful usage. Reading the local fire report or police blotter, we see many activities that hardly justify those generous salaries and retirement benefits. In Alameda, police and fire personnel can retire at age 50 with 75% of their final year’s salary, often over $100,000.

Liberals say “Raise taxes,” or “Do away with Prop. 13,” and those sentiments make me loath to be in their camp on those or other issues. Nor am I in sympathy with so-called “conservatives,” who defend hundreds of billions of wasted tax dollars in “Defense” spending. I’m just an old tax resister. Curmudgeon? Or Wise Old Tribal Elder…?

But when I see how our government spends the billions it already gets, I’m glad the 2/3 majority rule is a possible hedge against them taking even more.

©2010 Dennis Green

No One There Gets Out Alive

by Dennis Green

A group of mothers of a squad of young men serving in Iraq gets together for the first time. Only one of the men is still alive, and he is brain-damaged and severely compromised. One of the mothers says, “My other boy escaped the war uninjured and came back alive. But the person he was when he went off to fight never did come back. In a sense, that boy also died.”

And I realize that there are no survivors of war. And I’m not even sure any longer that any of us survive our stateside combat situations. With every major loss, or setback, illness or injury, a piece of us dies too. And yet, I can still sense the presence, inside me, of my old self, who has never really changed at all. It’s the same self as the one I could feel inside me when I was five years old. “Me TOO!” he shouts, and jumps up and down with joy.

But war must be the most horrible experience of all. The closest I’ve ever come is resisting the National Guard during war protests in Isla Vista following the murders of those four students at Kent State. (“Four dead in Ohio!” as CSNY sang…) And even in those campus and street protests there were moments of sheer terror.

And I realize a lot of the clothing I’ve bought in the last five years has a certain military flair about it — shirts and jackets with epaulets, camo patterns, (both dramatic camo or faint and subtle versions, in jungle green and desert gray or brown…), snaps and belts and zippers. I also sometimes tuck my pants cuffs into the tops of my boots, which themselves have a military look, the overall effect quite soldierly.

Commentators tell us that we’re completely oblivious to the ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. I think that’s bull, that in reality we are depressingly, if unconsciously, aware of it all the time. That awareness, the pain of that awareness, has crept into our fashions, where cultural awareness lurks but reigns supreme, at least for a dandy like me.

Even those many graphic skulls are an echo of the battlefield, not some worldwide plague. And war is NOT a worldwide plague. Some nations, like Cuba, are positively peaceful.

Citizens of a nation at war, let alone one seemingly at perpetual war, also suffer a terrible toll. Knowing that we pay taxes to support the war, that our neighbors’ children go off to fight there, maybe die or come back injured or changed utterly and not for the better, that innocent civilians in those far-off lands are dying too…does NOT enrich our karma, or our lives… unless, that is, we manufacture weapons of destruction.

It seems that for my nearly 70 years of life, America has been at war more of those years than we’ve been at peace. WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Bosnia, Gulf, Afghanistan, Iraq. My God in Heaven! We have a warlike nature.

So we are either a most belligerent people, or we really are the “Peacekeepers” we keep telling ourselves we are. Of course, on the wild wild Western frontier, the Colt .45 was called The Peace Maker too.

Genetics. I suspect that the more violent a nation’s history is, the more likely the violent and belligerent are to survive, and come to dominate the gene pool. “Everybody OUT of the pool!” It’s a wicked place to be.

If I go live on another planet, another dimension, I only hope I’m among a more peaceful breed of creatures. Bonobos perhaps.

©2010 Dennis Green

Roll Away the Stone!

by Dennis Green

General McChrystal revisited. A close examination of the Rolling Stone article, (I subscribe!), reveals that it’s about a lot more than loose lips, but rather a huge failure of policy. Counter-Insurgency, (COIN), may have worked to some degree in Iraq, but it isn’t working in Afghanistan at all. McChrystal was fast losing the support of President Karzai, Ambassador Hollbroke, Vice President Biden, Secretary of State Clinton, and even his own men.

COIN assumes a large degree of nation-building parallel to the armed combat pushing the Taliban our of certain villages and regions. That requires a strong and respected central government, a clear distinction between civilians and the enemy, and an ability to protect those civilians from intimidation and slaughter by the enemy, and also by our own troops. Avoiding that “collateral damage,” McChrystal’s own fighters claim, is impossible in Afghanistan. “So all a Taliban fighter has to do is lay down his gun, and he’s an innocent civilian and we can’t fire on him or defend ourselves!” says one.

If you roll away the Rolling Stone, you get a view of that war that you won’t see on TV, especially on Fox Noose. The article reveals a bitter division between command and fighting force that we haven’t seen since the worst days of Vietnam. The twisted logic of our presence there also alienates the American public from the conflict in ways we haven’t seen since ‘Nam either.

I can just imagine…well, I don’t have to…I can hear their voices in this article, what it feels like to be risking your life in an unpopular war hampered by an unworkable policy and a strategy that puts you out there, vulnerable to attack by IED or sniper, not being able to tell the enemy from the friend…strike that…having no friends, but surrounded by suspicious and hostile villagers who may not shoot you…may not harbor those who will…no win, no “victory” possible, just more stalemate.

During the last half of the 70s, most of the 80s and 90s, the U.S. military was frustrated by the failure of Vietnam. This frustration shows in McChrystal’s voice as he chaffs against those who disagree with him. In fact, as the reporter for Rolling Stone and his editors say, the General had the opportunity to review the article before its publication, for fact-checking. He knew exactly what was in it and how it would be received. He is quoted as saying he wanted to “send a message” back to Washington with its content.

He had sent messages before — with a speech in London, for example, during Obama’s period of assessment, calling for 40,000 more troops and a confirmation of his policy, preempting his Commander-in-Chief. He had been warned, and obviously ignored the warning. But the issue here is more than a Top General with very poor judgment. It is a question of why in the hell are we there at all, and especially pursuing a doomed strategy.

There are no Sunnis in Afghanistan, as there are in Iraq. Afghanistan is a failed state that was easily, after the Soviet defeat, taken over by an Islamic Extremist party, the Taliban, easily pushed aside by our invasion, but barely kept contained as an insurgency.

The alternative is a “Counter-Terrorist” strategy that contains and winnows away at Al Qaeda with drones, keeps very few troops on the ground defending the borders, and lets the Afghanis decide how to deal with the Taliban.

The right wing here claims that it’s the deadline for the beginning of withdrawal that makes the COIN policy unworkable. That shows the same fundamental misunderstanding of Afgani culture, society and politics that General McChrystal displayed. And even his own troops saw through that myth.

©2010 Dennis Green

Mutiny on the Bounty

by Dennis Green

In some Third World countries, military coups against a civilian government are still common. In America, the balance of power between the military establishment and civilian government has always been contentious, going back to General/President Washington’s support for the Federalist Papers, which encouraged a powerful central government and a very strong military, versus Patrick Henry, Samuel Adams, James Monroe and the other Anti-Federalists, who didn’t want so much power vested in a potential “monarchy.”

Chain of Command is vested in America in the hands of a civilian Commander in Chief managing the military, but that scheme of things, settled in our Constitution, is being challenged. It’s not just General McChrystal who is out of bounds, but the entire Military/Industrial Complex. And the threat to our democracy is very real.

Many Americans want us out of Afghanistan, not just Iraq, and I’m one of them. But after long deliberation, President Obama was persuaded, or pressured by the Generals, to commit more troops in a Surge in Afghanistan instead of getting out now. All reports are that the Anti-Terrorist campaign against Al Qaeda is fairly successful, the Anti-Insurgency campaign to unite and stabilize Afghanistan championed by McChrystal is a dismal failure.

Afghan President Karzai has threatened to join the Taliban, and has been at times alienated from Ambassador Holbrooke and Vice President Biden, both of whom were targets of McChrystal’s unfortunate insubordination during combat operations in the field. The story in Rolling Stone reveals that the General encouraged the same insubordinate spirit among his own subordinates toward civilian oversight.

Combat encourages a certain “Hot Dog” spirit among troops in the field. Moreover, 7,000 casualties in ten years make Afghanistan a nightmare of frustration for the warriors serving there. Up against a deadline for troop withdrawal, a failing strategy, a hostile or indifferent U.S. public, it is understandable that such sentiments would arise. But a General who broke military code sets a precedent for rebellious, even treasonous attitudes that our democracy cannot tolerate.

So now, it’s even more important that we get out of Afghanistan. Obama should shorten the time-table he imposed on the Generals. That country and culture does not lend itself to the so-called “Anti-Insurgency” strategy developed by General Petreus and pursued by McChrystal. Even more so than Iraq, it is a tribal country ruled by village and regional war lords that never have and never will be faithful and loyal to a strong central government. Even our allies know that, and are leaving.

None of our Generals make any sense when they say that we must make a “long-time commitment” of twenty years or more to Afghanistan. You hear in their voices a narrow, military perspective that is neither strategic nor tactical, but merely self-serving. “War is Job One!” they seem to be saying.

“No, it’s not!” we citizens reply. “Freedom is Job One, and that means freedom from the kind of foolishness that got us into the Middle East up to our asses in the first place.” We’re fighting for oil, and neither Chevron nor BP is picking up the tab. As for Israel, after 50 years of maximum U.S. support, let them fend for themselves.

Mutinous thoughts, I know. But Mutiny is as Mutiny does. I cannot be loyal to a government that is controlled by a powerful military in cahoots with arms manufacturers and such mercenary units as Blackwater or Halliburton. Even General/President Washington warned us against a standing military, as General/President Eisenhower warned us against the burgeoning military/industrial complex. They should know.

©2010 Dennis Green

Measure E Fails

by Dennis Green

At this hour, with only a few hundred votes left to be counted, Alameda voters have apparently rejected Measure E, the school parcel tax which would have given this island city some of the highest school taxes in the Bay Area, if not the nation. They would have cost homeowners $659 a year, and commercial property owners as much as $9,500 per year per parcel. It would have raised $14 million per year for eight years, on top of $80 million per year going to the schools from regular property taxes.

I’ve already taken down my “No on E” yard sign. For one thing, it’s not polite to gloat, and for another, I expect a vicious and violent backlash from sore losers who exhibited such behavior during the campaign. Yard signs opposing the new tax have been stolen or defaced. Merchants displaying “No on E” window signs have been threatened with boycotts. One immigrant store owner was cursed and told to “go back where you came from.”

These Gestapo tactics were meant to intimidate opponents of the school tax in the most bitter, divisive and undemocratic campaign conducted in this town in recent memory. Regardless of the final outcome, bad feelings are likely to linger for many months.

And so will school parcel taxes. In a “Heads I win/Tails you lose” strategy, the defeat of Measure E will leave in place two previous taxes, Measures A & H, until the end of 2012. Opponents expect AUSD to come at us again before they expire, with yet another parcel tax proposal. Funds leftover from the Measure H campaign already constitute a potential war chest for just such an effort.

Just a few months ago, Alameda voters overwhelmingly rejected a ballot initiative granting an Orange County developer, SunCal, exclusive rights to impose their plan on Alameda Point, site of the former Naval Air Station, without adequate compensation to the City. We voted 85% to 15% against the proposal.

Yet, SunCal has persisted in its negotiations with City “leaders” to proceed with nearly the very same plan — with only very modest changes to get around the ordinance limiting the size of new housing — in a brazen denial of voter’s clear message. So the precedent is there for the school district to do the same.

I have been very active and vociferous in the opposition to Measure E, writing many articles for publication in local newspapers and online news sites, as well as my own blog. And for exercising my Second Amendment freedom of speech rights, I have been called a “curmudgeon,” “pathetic” and “misguided.” As if I have no right to my opinion.

And that opinion is far better informed than most of the yahoos who have been insulting me. I have fourteen years experience as a classroom teacher, have thoroughly researched the need for Reform in America’s public education system, as well as finding data which refutes the claims that all our parcel taxes have produced “excellence” in our schools.

If anything, this campaign has kept my adrenalin levels fairly high, and that’s probably a good thing. Simultaneously fighting kidney failure and dialysis, the political knife fight has kept me on my toes, provided a useful distraction from the illness, and given me a deep sense of satisfaction in articulating my own views.

Now, we’ll see if all the doomsday scenarios come true, if half the schools are closed, 70 teachers laid off, and those remaining so discouraged by the voters clear message that they either slack off in their teaching or move to a more affluent district with higher pay rates, like Orinda.

©2010 Dennis Green

Resist Socialism!

by Dennis Green

All during the Cold War, Americans feared the brand of socialism known as “Communism.” Income redistribution, and a nation organized along the lines of extreme equality. But today, if there is any socialist threat, it is the radical and authoritarian form of National Socialism known as “Fascism,” which seeks to organize the state around corporate values, a strong and authoritarian central government, and racism, and rejects individualism as antithetical to the collective will of the people.

Few Americans today, only those over 70, remember the rise of Fascism in both Italy and Germany, culminating in the Nazi regime under Adolph Hitler, with his storm troopers, his blitzkrieg and his concentration camps leading to the Holocaust. These Fascists believed that it was essential to have the will and the ability to commit violence and wage war in order to keep the nation strong.

If some of these features begin to sound hauntingly familiar, you’re right. America, since the late Sixties, has come to resemble more a Fascist state practicing national socialism than the “Red Commies,” “Pinkos” or “Fellow Travelers” feared in the Fifties and early Sixties. Current events push us even farther in that direction.

Since Richard Nixon took us off the Gold Standard in 1971, the dollar has been a “floater.” That is, with its value tied to nothing but the credit worthiness of the United States Treasury, its ability to borrow and print more money, our economy has been vulnerable to one balloon and recession after another, which simply strengthen the positions of corporations. The so-called “TARP” bailout for financial and banking corporations in 2008 was only the most recent example of a bubble bursting and the Fed essentially nationalizing those corporations.

In recent memory, the bailout of Chrysler and of the Savings & Loan industry are further examples of this radical trend. Even President Obama has gotten into the act, basically nationalizing Chevrolet and now faced with the prospect of keeping British Petroleum alive so they can stop their spill, clean up the horrible mess and compensate the victims. What is that $20 billion “slush fund” if not a nationalization of its assets?

The Tea Party Movement has it all wrong. It’s not that government is taking over the corporations — rather that the corporations have already taken over our government. Goldman-Sachs alumni dominating Treasury and the Fed, corporate lawyers elected to Congress, and more corporate lobbyists swarming over Washington than termites on an old wooden house.

In California, we are told by two former corporate CEOs — Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina — that knowing how to run a big business qualifies them to manage our government affairs. Fiorina neglects to mention that her management style almost drove Hewlett-Packard into bankruptcy. And people who know government, and its ways, say that corporate management — which tends to be authoritarian — is far from the democratic process.

Racism in America today most often takes the form of a cry against “Immigrants!” While at the same time exploiting their labor…

Nearly all of the Fortune 500 corporations pay very little in taxes to the government, and many of them profit from various subsidies, low royalties for access to national resources such as timber, oil and coal. As we’re learning from the BP Oil Spill, powerful corporations have their way with government, with the environment, and with us.

Eisenhower warned us about the growing “Military/Industrial Complex,” for that was an example of national socialism. He had fought Fascism and the Nazis in Europe during World War II, and knew what it looked like when corporations begin to control the military, and a nation keeps going to war for no apparent reason except to demonstrate its own power.

Resist Socialism! National Socialism, that is. It’s in control of the United States of Beneton, but we can still take our country back.

©2010 Dennis Green

The Achievement Gap

by Dennis Green

That’s how it’s referred to euphemistically by the Alameda School District Trustees and Superintendent, “the achievement gap.” Instead, it’s the failure of the schools, and the teachers, to close that gap for African-American and Hispanic students. While the unemployment rate for Americans in general is around 10%, for African-Americans, it is 15%. And that’s an achievement gap directly traceable back to the schools.

But no one wants to admit that. The new parcel tax initiative in Alameda doesn’t even promise to address that gap, and there is no language in the new “Master Plan” describing or explaining why such a gap exists. Nor why that gap is much greater in the West End schools than in the Gold Coast or the East End or in Harbor Bay. No one admits that the schools, and the teachers, are just plain failing these kids, in real time, in the classroom, and then in their grade books.

The drop-out rate is much higher, and the graduation and success rate much lower for these ethnographic groups than for “White” and “Asian” students, and the conventional explanation is all about culture, that these kids don’t learn English, that their parents don’t believe in education as a way out of the ghetto, that they are undisciplined and unruly. Anything but admitting any responsibility for maintaining discipline and order, and motivating the students to learn.

It’s definitely time to reform education in America, and the public schools. Or to make “vouchers” available to parents who want to choose instead to enroll their children in private schools. Why should we support a failing system, when Catholic schools graduate 90% of their students, and a charter school in Oakland, “Native American Charter School,” graduates 100%, and they all qualify for admission to quality universities?

Vouchers used to be the call-letters of conservatives, and especially of the Religious Right. No one paid much attention, except the teachers’ unions, which made fun of the notion. Why should private schools be allowed to compete on a level playing field with the public schools? Why should the public schools have any fair competition? Indeed.

But tenure and the seniority/senility system have ruined public schools. They give teachers lifetime job security, regardless of their real performance, and allow the oldest and some of the most sleepy-time, to keep their jobs instead of younger, more fired-up teachers, in the face of the few layoffs that get past the unions.

The achievement gap is horrible in its consequences, and very costly. Public school dropouts constitute a much higher percentage of prison inmates than graduates, are much more vulnerable to STDs and other communicable diseases, more likely to go on welfare and drugs, and the achievement failure of their schools, and their teachers, will haunt them for the rest of their lives.

As a former teacher, I’m angry. And I blame my former colleagues, who refuse to take any responsibility whatsoever for the fact that America spends more per student than any nation on earth, and its students score in the bottom third worldwide. This is an achievement gap that will surely make America a third-rate power, economically and in terms of innovation, unless we reform the public education system NOW!

©2010 Dennis Green

The Fine Art of Flirting

by Dennis Green

I sent an email to a lovely chum recently about flirting, and among the things I said are these: “Understand this: there IS no competition. You are one of a kind. Every woman is one of a kind, and my affections for women do not overlap in any way. I do not compare them, play them off against each other, or try to be with more than one at a time. If I'm there, I'm there 100%.

“Flirting is simply the way men and women bond in affection, a way of saying, ‘I really like you. I think you're neat, and bright and lovely and fun.’ Men bond with each other through horseplay, teasing, ‘capping’ on each other and putting each other down. From about age five onward. You see it all the time at the Tree.”

And as I was writing these sentiments, I realized just how important they are. I often have a dozen flirtations going on at any one time in my life, and they don’t compete or overlap, but exist solely on their own. They don’t threaten my relationship with Diane, don’t lead to love affairs, (anymore), but are often as deep and passionate as the best such affairs, which, for me, have also been great friendships.

I am crazy about women, and not just in a sexual or romantic way. I love talking to them, getting their slant on things, seeing them having a good time. Some of my best friends are lesbians, and I even dated one for a year, without ever getting even a goodnight kiss. They think and feel differently from us men, and way differently from gay men. Fag hag? Who’s zooming whom?

I tend to be drawn to very independent, strong-willed women. Feisty, sassy, confident enough to have a sense of humor, even about themselves. We’re told by some that this is the “new breed” of liberated, modern woman, but I suspect they’ve been around all along. What has changed in my lifetime is the role they’re expected to fill in society.

Very few of the women I know are married, or stay married. Most of them have lively, successful careers, or at least jobs that support them which they also enjoy. Some of them are lonely, have pretty much given up on the notion or expectation that they will find long-term, full-time companionship with a partner, either male or female.

What the media calls the greater opportunities available to women can also be a tremendous weight of responsibility. Not only do they not, or cannot, depend on men, or a man, to take care of them, but they often find themselves caring for an aged parent, or rearing their children all alone. As they assume higher and higher roles in management and politics, they also discover how lonely it can be at the top.

There is talk these days about “The End of the Man’s World” and I can’t help but feel sorry for my women friends. If you’re going to inherit the earth, I think, we’ll all be watching to see how much better a job you do with it. No wars? No crime? No divorce or domestic violence? No corruption? A kinder, gentler world? We’ll see.

In the meantime, some of the most pleasurable moments of my life are those times I’m flirting with a woman. We both know we like it, we want to, we might, we could, and we won’t. Not in this lifetime anyway.

©2010 Dennis Green

Israel Takes the Bait

by Dennis Green

Once again, the Israeli government, and especially its commando raiders, showed particularly poor judgment in the attack on a flotilla of humanitarian aid bound for Gaza. Once again — as in their invasion of southern Lebanon and their brutal attack on Gaza last year — our favored nation Jewish state has blundered sorely enough to bring down worldwide condemnation, and to threaten relations with their only Arab ally, Turkey.

After meeting with Vice President Biden, Egyptian officials announced that they are opening their borders to Gaza for the delivery of humanitarian aid and limited travel, a decision prompted by the attack.

Killing nine and wounding dozens more, many of them critically, the Israeli commandos say they were merely defending themselves, but films show that the contest between “blunt instruments” and automatic weapons was anything but fair. But the worst of it is the arrogance and indifference Israel displayed toward world opinion. Independent observers searched the flotilla for weapons before embarking, and they say there were none on board, and no captured guns of any kind have been displayed by the Israelis.

Someone is lying.

And what is that to U.S.? Well, Hamas, Hezbollah and Al Qaeda all say that our unflagging support of Israel, no matter what it does, and our failure to criticize its actions, except continued settlements in Palestinian territory, justifies attacks on the U.S. and its citizens “by any means necessary.” And they may actually be right. Not morally, but correct in their logic by Aramaic standards.

The willful killing of civilians during wartime is terrorism, whether it’s 9/11, drone murders in Afghanistan or civilians in Lebanon and Gaza.

Meanwhile, more than 5,000 Americans have died in two wars to avenge the 3,000 killed on 9/11. You do the math and tell me how “effective” and “exceptional” that is. A five year old can tell you it’s nuts.

So are we an exceptionally violent and stupid people? And why did President Obama, skeptical of both wars during his campaign, change his mind and imitate his predecessor’s “Surge” in Afghanistan, leading to many civilian casualties from the very imperfect drones, and a surge in American deaths as well? The current issue of Rolling Stone says, “Oil.”

That old saying, “Follow the money,” seems to be pertinent again. Corruption at the highest levels of our government, in both parties? Oh, say it isn’t so, Joe

Campaign election law suggestion: prohibit any donations to legislators from any corporations or special interests which will be affected by legislation under consideration by those legislators, either in committee or on the floor of Congress, or by the Executive branch in its proposals and vetoes. Radical. Yes. But so American!

Make the lobbyists AND the legislators punishable by imprisonment and huge fines for violating this law. Banish offenders forever from the halls of Congress, from running even for dog catcher in their home towns. Tattoo their foreheads with the symbol for fraud and deceit: “INC.” For “Incapacitated.”

Require the same sort of transparency and firewall at the Pentagon. No hob-nobbing between generals and defense contractors, between even Pentagon minions and lowlings from companies like Boeing and Winchester Arms. Same penalties, same tattoo on the forehead, but with a pentagon, five-sided geometric symbol added.

Then see if our leaders are so eager to take us off to war, or keep us there. And if they do, always vote against the ones who vote to take us there, or keep us there, as we voted against Hillary Clinton and John McCain, those numbskulls.

I do not expect such changes in our laws, or our national character, during my lifetime. But I’ll tell you, one incentive I have for stretching out the years left to me is the hope that such a change might come about. Instead of shunning the veterans returning from Vietnam, we should have shunned the generals, the politicians and the weapons manufacturers who sent them there!

Israel always takes the bait, much to its chagrin, but so do we, its most powerful and influential ally. An affinity made in Hell.

©2010 Dennis Green

Governor Moonbeam

by Dennis Green

What do you get when a moonbeam matures? A ray of light. Hah! Just got my “Jerry Brown/Governor/2010” T-shirt, lawn sign and collectible button. I’m an official volunteer for the campaign, and they have used some of the language I’ve sent them as Jerry speaks to nurses’ unions and other simpatico groups. And, unlike Nutmeg’s people, we’re not Brown Shirts. Mine is black.

We’ve all watched here in California as Whitman does her best to buy the office, but chances are the voters are too smart for that. A Huffington tried that a generation ago and failed, and only his ex-wife remains in any spotlight. We American voters will not be bought.

Jerry Brown did something when he was Governor of California in the Seventies that has put our state ahead of all others in the Green Movement. He put into effect building standards that make all buildings in California put up since 1979 80% more efficient in heating and cooling than they ever were before. And building energy use is 40% of all U.S. energy consumption, compared to automobiles at 30% of the total.

And our automobiles, thanks to initiatives taken by Brown, are constantly ahead of the rest of the country in mileage standards and pollution control — so much so that everyone from Chevron to Chevrolet continually attempts to have them declared illegal. President Obama’s new energy plan would make both our automobile and building energy conservation standards nationwide.

I have a personal interest in all this. In 1996 I met him in a meeting we undertook on behalf of the Chamber of Commerce in an attempt to mediate the dispute between the City of Alameda and the Port of Oakland over noise control standards applying to the Oakland Airport. That meeting was arranged by then-publisher Chip Brown. Anticipating that Brown would be elected, we asked him to be “A kindly, more gentle neighbor to Alameda.”

Jerry and I hit it off at that meeting, in a small office in his gigantic loft building headquarters in Oakland, and he impressed me so much that I walked across the big loft floor with him and asked him how I could help with his first campaign for Mayor of that fair city. I spent most of that summer writing pitches, stuffing envelopes and answering phone banks in that loft building, until my heart attack and failing stents made it impossible.

During that time, I had enough contact and observation of the man, his friends and his dedicated co-workers that I was greatly impressed. And his two terms as Mayor of Oakland saw more progress than in the previous 30 years or all the years under Ron Dellums since. He brought 2,000 more federal office workers and the buildings housing them to downtown Oakland, financed the resurrection of Telegraph Avenue and Grand Avenue, the demolition of Pioneer Square and the consolidation of businesses in Jack London Square, and a vast expansion of the Port of Oakland shipping crane facilities along with a good-neighbor policy by the Airport.

I saw the Alameda Chamber as a powerful political force, and with the help of Paul Fossum made it so, something it has not been since our involvement there. And in the course of that effort, I made many new friends and allies, and Governor Moonbeam was one of those, one of the very best!

So I wear my Jerry Brown for Governor T-shirt, and sport the lawn sign, with not only great pride, but with some of my best memories from my many political campaigns and adventures. Just say no to Nutmeg, and vote for Jerry!

©2010 Dennis Green

No Amnesty!

by Chief Lone Wolf

As a member of the Lakota tribe, I share the universal Native American resentment of European illegal immigrants and their descendents. They did not apply for citizenship, take a test, wait in long lines to qualify for our approval, pay us for our land or mineral rights, instead stole our land, the gold beneath it, slaughtered us and the great prairie herds of buffalo, and imprisoned the few tribal survivors on reservations, where they could neither hunt nor graze their ponies nor practice their nomadic way of life.

They made no effort to learn our language, our culture or our religion. Instead, they made every effort to impose their foreign (and often forked) tongue upon us. They stole our children, put them in Christian missionary schools, cut their hair, forbade the wearing of native dress or speaking of our language and the practice of any rituals of our culture and religion.

These illegal immigrants laid claim to “citizenship” by right of arms, and claimed that their European offspring, merely because they were born here, could be called “American.” Only very recently have they honored any of their promises in treaties signed with us, or shown any respect at all for our native customs.

They have even granted us the honorific, gratuitous title of “Native Americans.” Which suggests we might have been here first, and that they are not only late-comers, but the real illegal immigrants.

And their arrogance doesn’t stop there. Now there is a movement afoot called “The Tea Party” which promotes the slogans, “Close Our Borders!” and “No Amnesty!” One of their figurehead leaders is a woman who hails from Wasilla, Alaska, once the home of the noble Inuit tribe, but overrun by drunken gold miners from the south and eventually conscripted as a state of the union.

These people are intent on barring the return of any brown-skinned people to the continental United States. Although the territories of California and most of the seven western states were seized illegally and by force from those same people’s ancestors, their attempts to return are made the butt of jokes and threats. “Wetbacks” they are called, “Taco Belles” and “Beaners.”

The most lawless people on earth, white Americans, charge that these “illegal aliens” are breaking the law. Whose law? By what precedence? Many of those brown-skinned people are descended from the very tribes that once populated all of North and South and Central America, later their bloodlines fouled by the European Spanish conquerors, and later the French. Where is the justice in this?

“We stole this land fair and square!” is all the white settlers can say. “Might makes right.” “If you’re black, get back, but if you’re brown you can stick around to mow my lawn.” Brown-skinned “illegals” are the slave laborers of today. Liberated mothers paying their nannies $2.00 an hour.

And The Louisiana Purchase? From the French?

I only wish one of these Tea Party people would come upon my land. I haven’t taken a scalp in years! And as for this whole debate about immigration, and “illegals” I can tell you exactly who is the illegal alien. And for him, for them, for YOU…NO AMNESTY! No justice, no peace.

©2010 Chief Lone Wolf

Respecting the Source

by Dennis Green

I listen to Neil Young talk about how he writes his songs, “It just comes to me. It’s a gift. And I have to pick up the gift. What kind of respect would it be for me to ignore it? And if I don’t pick it up, right away, the minute it comes, it won’t be there. You have to respect the source.”

He also talks about having a serious illness, with a brain aneurism that almost killed him, and how an elderly black woman sat by his hospital bed, held his hand, and talked to him, saying, “He’s not going to take you. You’re going to be alright. The Master loves you.” And I envy him that moment. But for Neil Young, that whole experience did the same thing it did for me, left him with a spiritual certainty, non-specific, non-denominational, but very deep and very real.

Respecting the source, I know that in my own life I’ve been gifted too. Oh, not to the degree at all that Neil Young has been. But I’ve been able to be a writer, to make my living at it, to write also just for fun, to write novels, short stories, poems, commentary, even newspaper articles. I’ve written millions of words and enjoyed them all. I’ve been gifted with this.

One story I wrote in my early twenties, “Yellow Bird,” is my personal favorite. It’s about an elderly widow who talks to her canary. A sweet little vignette, it’s not more than two and a half pages long, but it resonates. And, like most of my stories, it’s not entirely made up, based on real life but with a twist. The story, a chapter from my first novel, Sketches of Boyhood & Youth, was published in the UCSB literary magazine, Spectrum, in 1964.

I also did a lot of writing for advertising clients. Some of the finest work I did over the years was for rehab programs, and two tag lines stand out in my memory: “Take Hold of Your Life Before It Slips Away,” and another, which is still used by Mountain Vista Farms in their TV commercials: ‘”Change Your Perspective, Change Your Life.” A different kind of poetry.

Dealing with people, getting their stories, their perspectives, getting to the heart of what they do and who they are — these are the chops I learned first as an editor at the University interviewing professors and writing their profiles. A journalistic exercise, but it also served me very well in the business of marketing and advertising. Capturing the essence of what a client does.

Most recently, I had several stories and poems published in Red Hills Review, a ‘zine created, edited and published by Julia Parks. And I had a great deal of fun writing my column “Geezerville: A Wry Take On Aging” in the Alameda Sun, another project of Julia’s, and also giving workshops at her “Literati Book Fair,” held at the former Officer’s Club at the Base.

So my full life has been greatly enriched by this one particular gift, a gift of gab, a writer’s voice, and ideas, phrases, voices that come to me from the Source. Because it’s given me so much joy and just plain entertainment, I respect that Source and am in perpetual awe and wonder.

©2010 Dennis Green

Grace Under Pressure

by Dennis Green

That was Hemingway’s definition of courage: “Grace under pressure.” Whether his final act of suicide was courageous I hesitate to say. His family believe it was, and that’s all that really matters.

I always thought of my father as a very stoic man, silent, withdrawn, even taciturn. But lately I’ve changed my mind.

He certainly had his sorrows. He and his first wife went through a very wrenching, painful divorce in their early twenties. During the Depression, he rode the rails looking for work and went for days at a time without eating. At 32, he almost died in a tragic sawmill accident, and lost the use of his left arm. And at the end, he died a slow and lingering, painful death of lung disease, on oxygen for five years.

But he never complained. And I heard some writerly advice the other day that helps me better understand his silence, and also points the way to a new direction for myself. An editor advised a man about to write a book about the premature death of his daughter, “Write from grace, not pain.” When I heard those words, I thought of Hemingway, and of my father.

Writing from grace, the author explained, means writing with restraint. “I felt nothing but pain and grief, but I knew that if my story was to succeed in helping other people, it would have to be written with restraint.”

Again, hearing his words, I thought of my own father, and suddenly it came to me that what I mistook for taciturnity in Dad was simply a gentlemanly restraint. And that’s what Stoicism really is — not an absence of feeling, but a restraint of the impulse to vocalize virtually everything you think and feel. And then something else occurred to me, something about my writing.

“Self-expression is not, in itself, communication. Good writing involves discipline and self-restraint.” That was me, 45 years ago, instructing my students at the University in my English and composition classes. Good advice. And now I have to take it to heart all over again.

I’ve been writing a lot about my illness lately and my distress about my illness, candidly, in some detail, and as one friend wrote back, sometimes with “more information” than you really need. ; - ) I’ve attempted to describe even those moments of self-pity. Why? Because I’ve been laboring under the conviction that it might be helpful to you other humans who are also mortal, and will suffer similar indignities, or just make up some of your own!

But no more. No more detail. No more mention of my condition in these essays. If things improve, if there’s good news, I’ll include it in a brief cover note, but I shall not refer to my illness or treatment in these posts again.

I shall instead practice the restraint, and the self-censorship my dad did. And if an unconscious motive in writing about my condition has been to help me cope with it, as writing so often does, it has served its purpose. I have coped, and have no concerns about doing so in the future.

Not with the dialysis at any rate. I’m sure other trials await.

©2010 Dennis Green