The Civil War was the first war to be extensively chronicled with photography. One would think that just that fact alone would have caused humanity to have chosen other ways to settle disputes. Looking at the dead Civil War soldier in this photograph, we can see no glory. In the picture we don’t see the vainglorious portraits that painters had portrayed war to be for centuries before. This photograph shows war as it is in all its finality, all its brutality, all of its reality.

You see, there is absolutely nothing glamorous about war. Somehow, after the honesty of the photographs of the Civil War, the new medium became the vehicle of obfuscation. From the Spanish-American War, through both World Wars, the powers that were decided that war must be romantic. Soldiers were all good-looking and brave. (We did have Willie and Joe by Bill Maudlin during WW II, but those were drawings and meant to be humorous). Photography, the ultimate truth-teller, was used to lie, to pervert, and to propagandise.

Then, along came the Vietnam War. One day a photographer caught the instant when a South Vietnamese officer blew the brains out of a suspected Viet Cong. The suspect’s hands are tied behind his back. He’s wearing a plaid shirt. It’s not the black pyjamas we were told the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong wore. It’s a very western shirt. To the left of the officer, there’s a South Vietnamese soldier in camies and a helmet. He’s looking at the head of the prisoner and smiling as the bullet finds its target. The officer looks scruffy. His uniform is dishevelled as is his hair. His right arm, the one holding the gun, is strong and his muscles are flexing as he pulls the trigger. We can’t see the bullet, but we know that it’s found its target. The prisoner’s face is twisted in a grimace and the hair on the right side of his head, the side were the bullet has entered, is blown sideways. We are witnessing a man at the instant of his death.

This is war. No niceties here. No civil rights. No attorney. No judge. No jury. Rough justice means a bullet to the brain and you’re dead. This was not John Wayne in the “The Green Berets,” a movie that came out that same year of 1968. Wayne was, of course, playing a caricature of himself by then. But real war and its photographs bore no resemble to Wayne in any of his World War II movies, either. This is the war that ‘they’ talk about when they say is that it’s hell.

This photograph started our 1968. That would be the year that the whole world went mad. Rough justice would be played out on the streets of every country in the industrialised west. There was another photograph, however, that also became emblematic of the war in Viet Nam: it was the image of a naked Vietnamese girl, burning from napalm, running down a country road screaming with other children from her village. Soldiers stand in the background. No one is attempting to help her, to cover her up. She is innocence laid bare to the world, stripped of all dignity in the name of war.

So, the truth could be told with photographs. Since then, no matter how hard the military and various administrations try to suppress it; the truth would manage to get out. At the end of the first Gulf War, we saw a photograph of a highway of death where fleeing Iraqis had been killed in their vehicles. One could almost smell the stench as we looked at the burnt corpses caught in mid-action trying to get out of their burning vehicles. Yes, there were some military vehicles, but there were many more Toyotas, Hondas, etc. These may have been commandeered by the Iraqi military. We’ll never know. Because this is war. This is what war is about. No niceties, no civil rights, no attorney, no judge, no jury.

On this Memorial Day, the 5th since George W. Bush declared “Mission Accomplished” on the deck of the aircraft carrier, Abraham Lincoln: let’s keep our volunteer soldiers in our thoughts and in our hearts. Let’s work to bring them home. Safe. Let’s also keep the Iraqi and Afghan civilians in our hearts and let’s work to be sure that they came get home. Safe.

Please give what you can to Médecins sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders) and support Kiva.

And, of course

–James Madison, The Federalist Papers, No. 51

Can we appeal to our better angels and, in turn, oblige ourselves to be more responsible? The problem for all of us ordinary stiffs was defined a few centuries back by Plato.

In “The Republic,” Plato describes a cave where people don’t see what’s really happening in their world. What they do see are shadows made by puppets and reflected on the walls. It’s not as if the people in the cave even see the puppets, they see the shadows of the puppets.

Today, we see the shadows of what the puppet masters want us to see. Don’t believe it? Where do you get your news? How do you know what’s going on in your world? More to the point, who owns your news source? (more…)

Some time back, near the train platform in our small town, the highway department planted a grove of trees. They are non-fruiting plum trees. They were planted in straight lines and seemed far too close together. I was sure that these little trees would never last. They looked as if they were in an island of loneliness where no one would look after them.

Yet, come the first spring, they were still there and flourishing. Years have passed and not one of them has died and they all perform their same ritual of blossoming and shedding each year. Noticing this pattern, I started to feel empathy for these “ladies.” I had decided by then that they were ladies. Why? Well, they put on their best finery every spring. They cover themselves with light pink blossoms but then, by May, their blossoms have fallen off and they are wearing the dark plum-coloured leaves that they will have through summer and into the fall. Come winter, they will lose their leaves and stand barren until the next spring. Year in and year out, the pattern never varies.

Then, one day I realized something about these ladies. Their dusky leaves look a lot like changeable silk taffeta. This fabric was very popular around the 1860s. It shines and appears to change colour as the garment moves. It comes in many colours, but around the time of the Civil War it came in a grey and a plum colour that were particularly popular. The ladies, I decided, were women who were waiting for their men to come home from the war. They get their hopes up every spring and wait by the train platform in their best pink finery. But, as April fades into May, and their soldiers don’t return; their pretty pink gowns are discarded. They put on their widows weeds of plum-coloured leaves. As winter approaches, with all hope gone, they stand there ragged. The rains come and go, the winter winds press against their limbs, and the widows keep their vigil.

Why Gaithersburg? Because it was a crossroads during the Civil War. Many a Confederate soldier left there, never to return. So, these are the widows of Gaithersburg. A small town still, no longer just a crossroads; but these widows with no fruit borne, await their Johnny Reb’s return and change their clothes as their hopes rise and fade.

Please give what you can to Médecins sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders).

And, of course

(hewa ni hataraki: work for peace)

I had been waiting for the Italian election to be decided before I wrote about it, and as of Saturday afternoon it appears the deadlock has been broken. Silvio Berlusconi has said that he will resign and Romano Prodi has his speaker of the senate, Franco Marini. This was only after 4 parliamentary votes that gave the Prodi coalition its first real test. But let’s go back a few weeks to the election itself.

I was in Italy during the election with the HB. We had travelled by train from Vienna and arrived in time for the election. It was an exciting time. There were election pamphlets everywhere. No windshield wiper or rear window was free of them. We were in Tuscano, in Firenze specifically. There were no Berlusconi supporters to be found in Toscano. Everyone from the taxi drivers to the hotel staff were Prodi supporters.

If Toscano had been reflective of all of Italy, Romano Prodi would have won by a landslide. Italy, however, is a fractious country. Italians have never really ever believed that it is anything more than the city-states that for so long defined it. That is why, when you tell someone from Villareggio that you had good lasagne in Pisa he will reply quizzically, “You had good lasagne in Pisa?!?” It may seem minor, but it is emblematic of the Italian psyche.

So, we knew better than to hope for a landslide; that would never happen in Italy. But, we had never expected the election to be as close as it was. Prodi’s coalition won by an incredibly narrow margin. To give Silvio credit, the outcome was in doubt for several days. That said, he really should have given it up a lot sooner. But then, Silvio has never been known for having a keen sense of logic, or irony.

This is the man who said that he was giving up sex for the election period. He also compared himself to Christ in the travails he’s had to face. He went on to state that anyone who didn’t vote for him was an unprintable Italian scatological word for a part of the human anatomy (yes, that’s redundant). (more…)

I’ve been away for a few weeks. I was in Vienna (Wien) and then Florence (Firenze). I had always said that I wouldn’t go to Austria as long as Jörge Haider was still drawing a breath, but I had a need to see Klimt and Schiele. So, off I went to Wien.

Wien was decimated during the Second World War (see: The Third Man) and it didn’t profit by its reconstruction. There are rows upon rows of ugly concrete apartment blocks. As I looked out of my hotel window, I realized once again that many people don’t care where they live. Or perhaps it’s that they can’t afford to care. We don’t all have a real choice as to our living arrangements.

Wien has its charms. Stadt Park and the Hofburg Quarter are two. It certainly has good food and lots of it. It has some of the most dramatic skies in the world. It’s exciting to watch the weather move through. Yet, somehow I kept thinking of that saying, “How clever those Austrians, they’ve made the world think that Beethoven was Austrian and Hitler was German.”

There is a lively art scene in Wien, and the museums are top notch; but I kept wanting to stop old men and ask them what they did in the war. I had this same desire in Spain every time I saw an old man wearing a beret. “Whose side were you on?” In Spain no one would ever own up to having heard of Franco, so I couldn’t engage anyone in a discussion about him. This is why I should never go to places like Austria, Germany, Poland, or anyplace that capitulated or conspired with the Nazis. Of course, that would put most of Europe off limits for me. So, it’s best I don’t think about it. (more…)

Why do some people have a problem with death? I don’t mean the concept of it, though admittedly that may be where the problem lay. No, I’m taking about the simple concept of expressing to someone that a person has died.

I may have to scream if I hear again, “he/she passed on” or sometimes this is shortened to “he/she passed.” Passed what? Wind? A note? Or merely passed by? I don’t get it. Why are we so leery of stating that someone is dead?

This is not a metaphysical question. I’m not questioning the concept of heaven and/or hell. Faith is not a part of my complaint here. It’s just that dead is dead. A person’s spirit lives on (whether we like it or not), but that body is dead, dead, dead.

After my mother died, I was speaking to a friend form high school days and she asked about mum, “She’s dead,” I answered. “Oh, Anon, how could you just say that?” friend asked. “’Cause she is. Did you want me to say the she ‘passed on’?” “Well, it’s just that ‘dead’ is so final, so cold.” “I’m sorry, I’m not getting this. Are you saying that my mum isn’t dead?” “No, it’s just so, I don’t know, final.” (more…)

I love this photo of Jeanne Moreau and Orson Welles. It’s from the film, Chimes at Midnight made in the mid ‘60s. Welles was far past his prime, while Moreau was just reaching her pinnacle. Welles lived on, but his genius displayed so early in his life, was spent.

I worked with him near the end of his life. He could barely walk for his bulk. He was to be the host/narrator for a mystery series, but it was obvious that he had little interest and even less energy. It was like watching a ghost: promise unkept. (more…)

The existential administration continues on its merry way. Despite the fact that approximately 2/3 of Americans have lost faith in their cause and their abilities, Mr. Bush, et al insist that good days are right around the corner. Unfortunately, that corner is at the end of the longest block in the universe.

So, when Reuters published this photo of Mr. Cheney last week; it was as if someone were sending him a message. Of course it’s not just Dick Cheney who needs this message. Now that the book Cobra II has been published, we can see that there were Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Cheney, Rumsfeld, Franks and Bush. And they all need to retire

When so much blood and treasure has been spent, why is it so hard to pull back from the brink? (more…)

Well, well, well, Francis Fukuyama is sorry. Professor Fukuyama had thrown his lot in the neo-cons in the lead up to the Iraq War. Now 3 years later, he is admitting that he, and they, were wrong. “By invading Iraq, the Bush administration created a self-fulfilling prophecy: Iraq has now replaced Afghanistan as a magnet, a training ground and an operational base for jihadist terrorists, with plenty of American targets to shoot at,” Fukuyama now admits.

Unlike Ken (“It’ll be a cakewalk”) Adelman or Richard (“They’ll greet us with flowers”) Perle, Francis Fukuyama has finally given up the neo-con dream of world domination. (more…)

I took this picture so many years ago that I can’t remember too much about it. We had run across a group of buildings that all had these trompe l’oeil murals. This one is my favourite because it’s almost Montmartre. In preparing it for this post, I realised that I could crop the top and bottom and it would look like no more than a bad copy of a Utrillo, but then the point would be lost.

Trompe l’oeil has always fascinated me. There must be that willing suspension of disbelief as one stands in front of the fakery. That’s what makes it fun. What if you could just walk into and down that street? Would that be the ultimate extension of Existentialism? It’s tempting, to walk into another dimension and out of the so-called real world.

Yes, the reality of it becomes all too real when your head hits the wall. But, what if you could walk right in? Of course, everyday we are faced with this very dilemma: real politik is an exercise in existentialism. (more…)