Section 25 Entry 0001. Date: 2003 March 12 Wednesday.

  (diary)   (previous)   (top)   (bottom)   (next)  (topics)  (contents)

Signs of war - a cafeteria in Washington, DC, has renamed "French fries" as "freedom fries" and (if I heard correctly) "French toast" as "freedom toast". (This news from NPR.) I find myself reminded of Philip Roth's novel "Our Gang" (I think that's the title) which (if memory serves) contains the story of how Tricky Dicky decides that America's next mission has to be to invade Denmark.

Lately, from time to time, I have been noticing a vagrant thought wandering around in the backblocks of my mind. This thought goes round muttering to itself, "Yeah, well, and, seriously, what's going to happen when the Americans invade Japan?" However, so far, I've had no trouble ignoring this thought.

America? Invade Japan? Even my fertile imagination has been unable to find a scenario for that. So far.

.... home at the end of a rather long day, and on the TV news there's something about Tama-chan, the stray seal which has somehow been surviving (for months) in the murky rivers of the Tokyo-Yokohama area. Today, it seems, Tama-chan is missing, and everyone is worried.

In the English edition of today's The Asahi Shimbun (which, here in Japan, is bundled with the International Herald Tribune) there's a story about how an organization called "The Society That Thinks About Tama-chan" (Tama-chan no Koto o Omou Kai) made an attempt to capture the beast on Tuesday, with a view to deporting it to arctic waters ... this to the disapproval of the Society To Watch Over Tama-chan (Tama-chan o Mimamoru Kai).

(This is a country where groupthink runs so deep that some people who feed stray cats in Yokohama formed their own society, the name of which I forget, but it was something within easy bombing distance of "The Feeders of Stray Cats Society" or something like that.)

Next up on the news, something about how the USA may go it alone in Iraq if the Brits can't pitch in and shoot their own share, and I'm watching TV thinking, "Huh? Huh? Wuh - what? What's happened?" ... the TV doesn't really explain, and I'm left here wondering what that's all about, whether it's just some stupid rumor, or whether the world has gone and gotten bent out of shape (again) while I've been at work, and whether George Bush is now all set to get a divorce from Tony Blair, or what.

I'd like to get on the Internet and check, but I can't. After all, I've just come home from a day spend wandering around in the fallout zone, and the first thing I've got to do is have a bath and (scrupulously) wash the pollen off of my polluted body and out of my hair. The hayfever season is on us with a vengeance.

.... and while I'm soaking in the bath, the paranoid little voice that's wandering around in the ragged hinterland of my mind pipes up, and it says:-

"You wanna know what this is all about? Bush is gonna nuke Iraq, that's what it's all about. And he knows the Brits won't go for it, and so he's not going to tell Tony Blair until the last moment, and he's preparing the American republic for the fact that the Brits are going to turn chicken at the last moment, they just can't stand the smell of that much burning baby."

.... and I do my best to ignore that voice. It doesn't, after all, have the authority of sanity. Nevertheless, there does seem to be a certain weird logic to this proposition.

Fact: the Bush doctrine says "we'll nuke 'em if we need to." Fact: the weather's getting hotter and the delays are getting longer. Fact: the northern front is looking problematical, regardless of how much airpower the Americans have. Fact: the great American public doesn't like long movies. And it did say on TV that Downing Street was taken by surprise by the American declaration that the US was prepared to go it alone if it had to. Right?

So the logic looks good. But, on the other hand, as a novelist I know that you can take the same handful of facts and build from them a dozen different entirely possible and yet totally disparate plot lines. But certainly it seems reasonable to guess that the Bush team might have cooked up something, as yet unannounced, that the British are not going to be able to stomach, and the two plot possibilities that (from a novelist's point of view) look most workable are:-

(a) George Bush has decided to nuke selected chunks of Iraqi real estate; or

(b) George Bush has decided to partition Iraq into three malleable minor nations, a Kurdish nation to the north, a Sunni Muslim block centered around Baghdad and a Shi'a block down toward Basra. Which would explain why the US has already decided that, for the purposes of postwar administration, Iraq will be carved up into three such chunks. (Salam has documented this administrative decision on his blog.)

And of these two options - considering this from the point of view of a novelist who is looking for a plot rationale which, at this stage of the story, would cause the British to disengate from the war - option (1) seems the more plausible, the more workable from the point of view of a good fictional plot.

Well, okay, let's get on the Internet and try to find out what's really happening.

---

Today's handy Arabic phrase, lifted from Salam's blog: "al-ithara wa al-faza." This, apparently, is the Arabic for "shock and awe," what is what America plans to do to Baghdad ... mention on Salam's blog of someone in Iraq getting burnt to death by their own stored gasoline, and that didn't even require an American bomb.

---

NPR National Public Radio, I think, a state-sponsored American outfit, a kind of American answer to Japan's NHK and Britain's BBC. This is one of the most civilized products of American culture ... (silence here as blogger Cook wrestles with his soul and ... successfully ... resists the temptation to make a cheap crack) ... and chunks of it can be heard on 810 AM, rebroadcast by the American military radio station Eagle 810, though at what hours I don't know. I tune in by accident now and again, like this morning, for example. (The Asahi Shimbun carries a sketchy program listing for AFN, the Armed Forces Network, of which Eagle 810 is a part - the network which used to be called FEN, the Far East Network - but it just says cryptic things like "6:00 - Eagle 810 Morning Show," which isn't much help.)

---

Section 25 Entry 0002. Date: 2003 March 13 Thursday.
  (diary)   (previous)   (top)   (bottom)   (next)  (topics)  (contents)

Apart from teaching English and wargaming George Bush's wars, I've been pretty busy with the website recently, and this week I've added the following stories:-

The Ghosting of Heineman Jubiladilia, a fantasy story set in Chalakanesia. (The archipelago of Chalakanesia, a place which is beset by the activity of the metapsychic faultline, is the setting of a novel that I am currently working on, and it is also the setting of the story Diving on the Wreck.)

"Gap Music," a horror - fantasy story about recovered memory.

"The Warden of Jestabel Zee," a fantasy story about a man confronted by a threat of violence.

"An Alien in Japan," a science fiction story about aliens set in Japan, which touches on a couple of the strange aspects of Japanese life, one of them being the totally pointless practice of keeping alive these pieces of four-legged vermin known as dogs - that I really don't understand.

---

Section 25 Entry 0003. Date: 2003 March 13 Thursday.
  (diary)   (previous)   (top)   (bottom)   (next)  (topics)  (contents)

This morning I spent some time going over the newspaper and trying to analyze Donald Rumsfeld's catastrophic diplomatic gaffe. The puzzling part about this is that there don't seem to be any people standing in line waiting their turn to say, "Hey, dude, you messed up bigtime!"

Why the lack of reaction? Maybe there's just too much news going on. When you're looking at the news reports and you see all this ominous scary stuff, like a report saying "George Bush woke up this morning and got out of bed," then Tony Blair's five minutes in the electric chair may not seem worth writing about.

However, as I was born British, and thought about the British psychology of war quite a bit back in the days of the war over the Falkland Islands, I've personally found Rumsfeld's boo-boo to be the most interesting thing in the news, much more interesting than the new bang-bang, the MOAB, the Mother of All Bombs.

The chronology of the Rumsfeld gaffe seems to be this:-

1. The US is ready to go to war in Iraq with or without a UN mandate. Britain's Tony Blair says that Britain may join the US in attacking Iraq without a UN mandate.

2. The British public gets uneasy, and British cabinet minister Clare Short threatens to resign.

3. American Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld stands up on his hind legs and says, in effect, that the United States doesn't really need the British. (What he says of the British, to quote his actual words, is "What will ultimately be decided is unclear as to their role - that is to say, their role in the event of a decision is to made to use force.")

4. Rumsfeld's words come as a big surprise to Tony Blair over in England, in Downing Street.

Now, why Rumsfeld's words are such a diplomatic catastrophe is because they send two messages to the British public. One is the message that "you're not really important," which is probably true, but, even so, should not be said, because it's a slap in the face. Diplomatically, it's not smart to insult people.

The other message, the message which is really lethal to Tony Blair, is that "America does not need you," which lets the British off the hook morally. Because, at a moral level, despite the widespread opposition in Britain to the war, there are probably a certain number of people who feel - at least to a degree - that they have a duty to support their old and reliable ally, America, if America really needs that support. But now Rumsfeld says that America doesn't.

And now the average fish and chip eater is saying, "Well, Tony, what're we doing in this war movie?"

So what Donald Rumsfeld has done is to seriously undermine Tony Blair's position, and right now Tony Blair probably feels as if he's been knifed in the back. And it's not really clear whether Donald Rumsfeld (or anyone on the American side) realizes what an error this is.

It's not smart to burn your allies. And, in a political sense, what Rumsfeld has done is to take a bucket of scalding water and empty it over Tony Blair's head.

So the question has to be asked: what persuaded Rumsfeld that this was a smart thing to do? I mean, given that he has an IQ of 564 or whatever it is, why did he do such a dumb thing? And the obvious answer would seem to be that the remark was meant for domestic consumption, and Rumsfeld either didn't bother to think how it might be received in Britain, or else thought about it but plain didn't care.

In an American context, the remark seems to mean, "Hey, John Q., don't worry! We're America the Tough, we can go it alone! So the allies are shaky? Forget 'em. If push comes to shove, we don't really need 'em."

And, from a propaganda point of view, this might make sense, assuming that you view your allies (Tony Blair, in this case) as just so much disposable tissue paper. ("Well, so it looks like the Blair guy isn't going to be able to come through for us. Okay, let's flush this toilet ....")

And when it comes to propaganda, Rumsfeld and company obviously know what they're doing, because they're winning hands down, at least with their key target audience.

One thing that really shook me today, when I read the paper, was a statistic in today's newspaper, which quotes a New York Times/CBS News survey saying that 42 percent of Americans believe Saddam Hussein "was personally responsible for the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon," although assertions that Saddam has bloody hands as a consequence of 9/11 would seem to be counterfactual.

(I recently got a similar shock - an even worse shock, in fact - when I saw the statistics on how many Americans doubt the validity of the theory of evolution. It seems that evolutionists are a decided minority in the States.)

So, as far as the rhetoric wars are concerned, the Bush team seems to be winning in America, even though Rumsfeld's big mouth has gone a long way to trashing America's war shaky war support in Britain, and quite possibly trashing Tony Blair's increasingly shaky career along with it.

I feel reasonably confident that right now Tony Blair feels rather as if he'd been struck by a bolt of medium-strength lightning. A phrase surfaces, from what source I have no idea (maybe it's proverbial): "Whom the gods love, they destroy." It was Blair's misfortune to embrace the gods, only to find out that America is a land where love (like fame) only lasts for fifteen minutes.

.... and now it's 12:15, and I'm on my lunchbreak, crouched on the carpet under a table, the laptop under the table with me, because a minute or so back this subtle shuddering started, and then something creaked in the framework of the building, and I got worried ... but it seems to be over now. Just a little tectonic reminder telling us that there are bigger things than George Bush stalking this planet.

---

The "chip" of "fish and chips" is a culinary item which was once referred to, if I correctly remember the planet I used to live on, as a "French fry".

---

Section 25 Entry 0004. Date: 2003 March 14 Friday.
  (diary)   (previous)   (top)   (bottom)   (next)  (topics)  (contents)

Would the Americans assassinate Saddam Hussein, if they had the chance? Sure. On the front page of today's International Herald Tribune, an American official says this

"That's what we're talking about every time Washington dangles the possibility that Saddam Hussein could be allowed to go into permanent exile," an official said. "Exile" is a kind of code word for "death," he said.

Saddam Hussein probably suspected as much, but now he can read about it in the paper.

Today's interesting Internet fact: if you hunt around, you can find links with names like "Pentagon fixes its beady eyes on independent journalists and promises to drill them dead if it catches them anywhere on the bloodstained sands of Iraq."

(Just kidding. Actually, in the world of sober fact, the wording of the links is boringly conservative, and generally they just say matter-of-fact things like "Pentagon plans to murder independent journalists.")

---

Section 25 Entry 0005. Date: 2003 March 15 Saturday.
  (diary)   (previous)   (top)   (bottom)   (next)  (topics)  (contents)

This morning, I've been watching CNN, and I've taken note of George Bush's sudden attempt to transform himself into George the Peacemaker, the man who (overnight) has decided that he has a mission to bring peace and harmony to Israel, sorting things out so Israelis and Palestinians can live together in love and harmony. Color me unconvinced. This is a bit like watching Tyrannosaurus Rex trying to wriggle into a rabbit suit.

"Uh oh ... this stalking business doesn't seem to be going to plan ... let me wriggle into this here bunny suit and see if that makes a difference."

Also on CNN, the embarrassing news about how the documents saying that Iraq tried to buy five hundred tons of uranium from Africa are actually forgeries. Really embarrassing. There he is on TV, George Bush, touting the five hundred tons, which turns out to be a figment of the forger's hand.

What should really happen now is that someone should tell George about another forgery. That letter he got from God? The one that arrived in the mail, return address Outerwhere, Not This Planet? The letter that George reads each night, just before he says his prayers? The one that tells George that he can end the killing in Israel just by killing a bunch of people in Iraq? Well, that one's a forgery, too.

---

Section 25 Entry 0006. Date: 2003 March 15 Saturday.
  (diary)   (previous)   (top)   (bottom)   (next)  (topics)  (contents)

So I'm sitting at home here in Japan with Shostakovich on the stereo, and I'm cruising round America, and I drop by at The Village Voice, and I see this interesting headline, "Kmart Calls Cops When Easter Rabbit Protests Military-Themed Holiday Baskets". This I have to click on. What's this all about? I mean, what exactly is a military-themed holiday basket?

Explanation:-

Kmart, among other national retailers, sells Easter baskets in which the traditional chocolate bunny has been replaced by toys including plastic soldiers armed with machine guns, rifles, grenades, and knives.

A related article tells how "Tri-state Rite Aid, Genovese, and Wal-Mart stores promise their martial Easter baskets will arrive soon".

Since the cops had been called in to arrest a protester, my initial idea was that there was a free speech issue here, and that it would be interesting to explore it. But, instead, I became absorbed by the sheer spectacle of Easter converted into an arms bazaar. In fact, my mouth dropped open. Only in America.

Nowhere is there any mention of any product called the "Happy Jesus Bombs A City Playset," but, judging from what is already on sale, can that be far behind?

Does this mean that America is a nation of gun nuts and militaristic warmongers? Well, apparently not. Americans just like a little fun, that's all:-

"There was no intention on our part to offer up a violent Easter basket. We're very conscious of what will and what will not offend our customers. It was meant to be a lighthearted and fun gift," says Kmart spokesperson Abigail Jacobs. "It's in my opinion a harmless toy included in an Easter basket."

(The explanation, above, comes from an online Village Voice article called "Full Metal Bonnet" by Erik Baard, subtitled "Retailers Put All Their Grenades in One Basket.")

Thought of the day: America is always one step stranger than you think.

---

Link: Village Voice article "Bunny Busters": Kmart Calls Cops When Easter Rabbit Protestes Military-Themed Holiday Baskets

Link: Village Voice article "Full Metal Bonnet": Retailers put all their grenades in one basket

---

Anyway, to get back to the free speech issue, the protester at Kmart was apparently arrested for trespassing.

As I cruise the Internet, I don't see any headlines reading "America calls in the cops to stomp on free speech," but I do see a trickle of news about the cops being called in to arrest free speechers for the crime of trespass. Like, for example, a man and his son in Alabama, who were confronted by security guards in a mall after they wandered in wearing T-shirts bearing peace slogans.

Out of curiosity, I just this minute went to Google News and punched "protest trespass" into the search box. This throws up results for items which are in the news now, and for the "protest trespass" search I got "about 93" results (Google's "about").

For example, the Arizona Daily Sun has an article (ten hours old) about a guy (name given) who was arrested "on a charge of criminal trespassing at 9:29 a.m. Thursday, after he chained himself outside Congressman Rick Renzi's office to protest war with Iraq."

The Chicago Sun-Times says "Eleven people protesting Thursday at Boeing Corp.'s downtown headquarters against war in Iraq were charged with criminal trespass."

And so on and so forth.

A majority of the articles located with a Google News search for "protest trespass" turn out to relate to the war against Iraq, but what struck me was that a disproportionate number of these reports are from Britain. Yes, Tony Blair is really in trouble.

Google News: a primitive but better-than-nothing research tool for keeping track of what's really happening in the world.

---

The significance of listening to Shostakovich is that for months I've been too busy to listen to any music - the thought of music just hasn't entered my head. However, the course that I've been teaching on Saturdays has now ended, and so today I dusted off three Shostakovich CDs and loaded them into the stereo system that I bought at the junk shop a while back. (Literally dusted them off - these things haven't been played for two or three years.)

---

Section 25 Entry 0007. Date: 2003 March 16 Sunday.
  (diary)   (previous)   (top)   (bottom)   (next)  (topics)  (contents)

Sunday, so I spent the day at home playing happily with the George Bush Peace Kit (if you're lucky, the Easter Rabbit will bring you one of these), and in the course of the day I sorted out the Cyprus problem by invading Switzerland, then I made a permanent peace between India and Pakistan by bombing Burma.

In yesterday's International Herald Tribune I read an opinion piece saying that some people in high places in America (including some people in the Pentagon) think that George Bush and his team have lost touch with reality. But they're missing the point. If you control the nukes, you are the reality.

---

  (diary)   (previous)   (top)   (bottom)   (next)  (topics)  (contents)

---