constant companions / Scarlett-Charlotte's bestest pal at the vet

I'm pretty sure this is the right kind of tortoise. Polyphemus was the name of the cyclops who trapped Odysseus and his pals in his cave, and munched on a sailor when he got hungry. My guess is a taxonomist stuck this one with the cyclops' name because they're big, ugly, slow and not very bright.

As Odysseus cooked up an escape plan, he chatted with Polyphemus, and told him his name was Oosey -- which sort of sounds like a diminutive of Oodysey.

After the Greeks stuck a big sharp stick in Polyphemus' eye and blinded him, Polyphemus screamed for help from the other big, ugly, dumb Cyclopses on the island. "Who blinded you?" they asked, and Polyphemus cried: "Oosey has done this to me!"

In Greek, "oosey" means "nobody," so Polyphemus was screaming "Nobody did this to me!" and his dumb neighbors just ignored him, and the sailors managed to sneak out of the cave clinging upside-down to the bellies of Polyphemus' sheep.

About two years ago, as old Charlotte-Scarlett's health began to fail, she had to spend a week at our regular vet. Amazingly, she recovered and came home again.

The vet staff liked her a lot. She wasn't terrified of the weird smells and the dogs barking; she seems to have regarded her stay at the vet more as a very curious adventure, a week at an exotic animal resort.

She had no claws (a previous owner had done that, certainly not us) and only had two teeth left, so she couldn't have harmed anyone if she tried. But in all the time we knew her, she never tried to hurt or scratch or bite anyone.

She wandered up and down the halls day and night, never got into trouble, and when someone had to move her or do something to her, she was very docile, you'd just scoop her up under her tummy and carry her around like a furry purse, and put her down anywhere, and the most she'd complain would be a startled little "mek!" noise.

South of here 20 miles there's a big city -- Springfield, where Homer Simpson lives, yes, that's the Springfield -- and it has a zoo, small, but with a good reputation.

The zoo had a tortoise, Francine, and, like Scarlett-Charlotte the Siamese, Francine didn't like the cold and certainly couldn't make it through a New England winter. So she wintered over at the vet's clinic in Amherst, slowly wandering around the hallways.

When Scarlett-Charlotte began to recover and wander around, she turned a corner and ran into Francine. She'd certainly never seen anything like that before. She was startled, amazed, fascinated.

She poked around its head with her paw, but Francine just did what tortoises do when anything tries to molest them, and pulled her head into her shell and sealed herself up until the cat lost interest.

For the rest of the week, S-C followed Francine all over the place. Then she climbed on top of Francine and let Francine carry her around the clinic like a big slow taxi. The vet staff said they were inseparable, constant companions, the friendly toothless de-clawed old Siamese and the ancient tortoise. S-C had a great time at the amazing vet clinic. She was sorry to leave -- but glad finally to come home.

Not long after, we heard that Francine had passed away. They live for a long time (documented record: 188 years), but not forever. As the lawyers say, old Francine predeceased old Charlotte-Scarlett.

We didn't want to tell Charlotte-Scarlett the sad news. S-C was so crazy about Francine the tortoise that she may have been the only cat on Earth who looked forward to going to the vet so she could poke and ride around on Francine.

Charlotte-Scarlett the old temple-guarding Siamese leaves our household

Hmm apologies if things have seemed to slow down here on Vleeptron ... been a very rough week.

That tan/brown sleeping heap under the Christmas tree is Scarlett, or Scarlett-Charlotte, the ceaselessly screaming shrieking Siamese cat. She was very old -- by some guesses maybe 17, but could have been older.

Last night she came to the end of her run. There wasn't any other choice, but we had to ask the vet to end her suffering. We all said goodbye Saturday night. She was exhausted, but awake, alert, she knew we were there petting her and speaking to her.

I don't mean to sound dumb, but I really don't understand why the animals and the people we love give us so much for so many years, make our household so happy and so warm and comforting and rich, and then die.

There's such a terrible hole in the living room now. For the last six months she'd pretty much lived her life in her one big comfy chair. At night we'd leave the public FM radio station, classical music, on for her. We suspected she liked light classical to bring peace and reassurance to her night.

The temptation is huge to want to believe in eternal life, an afterlife -- if and only if I get to hang with my animals again, to have them near me again.

Scarlett-Charlotte had been my mother-in-law's cat, and when Mom couldn't care for her, we moved S-C in with us, and S-C seemed to like the new arrangement. As she grew older, and got frail, we pampered the crap out of her.

Mom was raised in Georgia, so she named Scarlett for Scarlett O'Hara from "Gone with the Wind."

I tacked on Charlotte, from the 18th century romance novel "Charlotte Temple," by Mrs. Rowson. It's an English novel, but has the historical distinction of being the first novel with an American setting. The innocent schoolgirl Charlotte Temple is seduced by an army officer cad, who takes her to America to be his mistress while he fights the rebels, and then abandons her. I think I posted the first few pages of it on Vleeptron, where Charlotte first meets the scoundrel lieutenant.

So I'd call out to her: Charlotte-Scarlett! And then give her very rough fingernail scratching on her back and butt, she liked that a lot.

No, quite frankly, I don't understand suffering, and I don't understand death. I don't see the point of it all.

A lot of the stories in "The Arabian Nights / 1001 Nights" end this way:

And they lived happily ever after,

until there came the Destroyer of Friendships,

the Shatterer of all Loves.

Charlotte's breed seems to have been bred to be guard cats for Buddhist temples.

How can a cat guard a Buddhist temple?

We found out quickly. Charlotte is very smart and very observant and very high-strung.

When, in the middle of the night, while we slept, she detected anything Wrong with the household, anything or anyone where it shouldn't be at that hour, she would begin to shriek, howl, very much like a baby's cry. Unignorable, impossible to sleep through.

And she would keep howling until one of us woke up, got out of bed, and walked out into the living room to see what Charlotte was screaming her brains off about.

That's how she guarded the temple.

Very effectively. If nobody acknowledged, addressed and fixed Charlotte's complaint to her satisfaction, nobody slept.

She was an extremely challenging old cat to love. She wasn't designed to love and be all warm and fuzzy. She was designed to guard the temple.

I'm sorry the photo doesn't do her justice. She had an exquisitely beautiful face and color markings. Her body grew a bit scrawny and thin and old, but her face, her expression, remained beautiful to gaze at into her last days. Her long thin tan tail ended in a black tip. The toes of her paws were in the same soft but startling black.

She had very little interest in or love for the outdoors. But a few superhot days each summer, she would cautiously agree to go into the front yard, lie under a bush, and let the Sun bake her for hours. An old tropical cat is always cold in New England. In winter, she paid very close attention to the sounds of the thermostat, because when it clicked, that meant that soon the metal radiator would get hot -- and Charlotte would make a beeline for the hot radiator.

She had strange, difficult relationships with the other cats, they made her nervous and fearful. But she fell instantly in love with big giant Maine coon Elmer, and gazed in astonishment at his handsomeness, so we gave him a new nickname: Tyrone Purrer.

In her last years she grew senile, and was often disoriented when she woke in the middle of the night, and howled: Where am I? How did I get here? Where is everyone? What's going on?

But it was easy to calm her down with our voices and by petting her, and she would go back to sleep.

She didn't like adventures or thrills, or strangers. She particularly didn't like the vacuum cleaner. She watched the outdoors closely through the living room window, and when a bear was smashing around in the bushes (trying to get at the bird feeder), that would terrify her for the entire next day.

She had a very scary-looking crisis early Thursday morning, and we put her in a big cardboard box with a blanket, and drove her to a new vet clinic in Deerfield that's always open and specializes in dog and cat emergencies. They're not running a charity, and Charlotte's last days ran up quite a tab -- two blood transfusions and all sorts of diagnostic tests, that finally made it clear she was dying, and nothing could prevent that. All that was left to do was to end her suffering and torment.

The staff of the emergency clinic was very expert at managing the love and concern of the pet owners. Everyone in that waiting room was worried and miserable. One dog waited his turn to have a little black beard of porcupine quills removed from his chin.

There was a big old sheep-herding dog, and an 8-month-old boxer with mysterious, frequent little seizures. It was 10 at night, and mom and dad brought their 6-year-old daughter, a study of worry and concern long past her bedtime.

They herd and protect our sheep, guard the temple, kill mice and rats (and moles and bunnies and squirrels and chipmunks and birds). And drown us in torrents of unconditional love. Living with us gives their world meaning, safety and peacefulness. Knowing we're there lets them sleep long and deep. I think they dream about hunting -- and sometimes have nightmares of being chased by dogs or coyotes.

I have no interest in hunting, but have infinite admiration for their skills at hiding, stalking, racing, pouncing, the quick kill. It's quite horrible to see it up close.

Much more horrible, in city and country, if they weren't such skilled, dedicated hunters. The mice and rats would quickly take over, plague would come back, a huge amount of our grain would be lost, bread would skyrocket in scarcity and price, we would be a lot hungrier.
It's the middle of the night, and for the first time since Charlotte came to live with us, I miss her yowling terribly, I wish it were coming from the living room interrupting my thoughts and my work, and I would get up and soothe her with my voice, and pet and scrunch her with my fingernails, until she knew where she was, and settled back down in her chair, and purred, and went back to sleep, with soft classical music playing on the radio.

PizzaQ -- find the 2 differences between Reality & not-Reality / Galveston / Flaco Jimenez: accordian but it not suck

Click, certainly.

From our trove of photos from Cape Cod. Taken on the only Sun-shiney day of the whole week.

But I liked the fog and the ocean gale and the violent lightning storms. I don't think Chatham Lighthouse, long automated, blows a horn, but in the night fog you could see its beam swing across our pond every 20 seconds. Cape Cod was and remains very dangerous waters to navigate. Typically the skipper or bridge watch makes 3 small little mistakes in a row, none of which by itself would cause harm, and then the ship hits the rocks and everybody drowns. In the Quaker Meeting House Cemetery, every sixth gravestone: Lost At Sea.

My brother is a mahof, of both musical and spiritual matters, of a whomp-butt Unitarian-Universalist church near Washington DC. Last trip I had lunch with him and Pastor Lilly of the Universalist Society of DC, I think she originally hails from the Texas Gulf Coast, maybe Galveston -- the Hurricane Smash Hit Center of North America -- but I could be wrong about that.

Galveston historically is destroyed by hurricanes more than any other city. These tropical cyclones of the North Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico must like the local seafood -- a lot of shrimp -- or the music -- Janis Joplin was from there, and this is also the region where Tex-Mex and Flaco (Skinny) Jimenez el Rey de Tex-Mex, who also plays the accordian and it not suck, was born and blossomed.

There's a large German-American population in this part of Texas, and in some towns you can hear nothing but deutsches on the street. (New Braunfels also has WurstFest (30 October - 8 November 2009) where thousands of cowgirls and cowboys in cowboy and cowgirl hats and cowboy and cowgirl boots dance much Polka and consume much Wurst and Beer.)

They had their accordians and polka music, and their Tejano neighbors paid close attention to all the things they were doing wrong to music, and the ways they were tormenting and insulting music, and sometimes the Tejanos played in their polka bands. So polka somehow partially morphed into Conjunto/Tex-Mex, a truly unexpected miracle. I think recently I posted Flaco's English/Spanish/German cover of

"en el Cielo no Hay Cerveza"
"In Heaven, There Is No Beer"
"Im der Himmel dar ist kein Bier"

so that's why we drink it here
and when we're gone from here
all my friends will be drinking all the beer

It's a sad sort of song about a serious defect in Heaven.

But back to the U-Us. I wanted to snap this very handsome piece of architecture, so I talked S.W.M.B.O. into parking in the strip mall while I got out with the little digital camera and photographed the church across the road perched up on a hill.

Very much as you see it here. But

What You See
Is Not What I Got
when I looked at the church.

Back at the Graphic Arts Department of Agence-Vleeptron Presse, I changed -- fixed, I think is a good word -- Reality to suit my taste with 2 specific changes.

My new way, this way, makes a better New England Cape Cod Tourist Postcard. Reality sucked, so I fixed it. Now it's Better Than Reality. It's New, Improved Reality (tm).

One change (1) is/was Large, and the other (2) Smaller, a bit more subtle.

Okay, 2 slices extra mozarella, capers.

If nobody gets these, I may explore a possible future as a counterfeiter. I already make faux postage stamps, how hard can this be?

3rd & final warning / CORRECTED crappy unauthorized English translation of "Petite annonce amoureuse" / aussi: les Filles du Roy

TO: Robert Merkin
FROM: SG@Académie_française.fr
SUBECT: L'AVERTISSEMENT TIERS ET FINAL

M. Merkin:

l'Academie Française exige que vous ne tentiez jamais de parler ou écrire en français encore.

Cette est votre avertissement ters et final.

Philippe de Montebello
Secretaire-General
l'Academie Française
Paris
France

=======================
patfromch said...

That cover is just awful.

The music isn't. Folksy pop, a bit of country, georgeous quebequois accent. Call me an Idiot, somehow this reminds me of the Indigo Girls or Joni Mitchell in their best moments. This Is Montreal, Not Nashville.

Uplifting music for a wonderful hot sunny summer afternoon like today (even though the lyrics are not meant to be uplifting somehow).

Vleeptron has broadend my horizon once again ! I for one know who I am going to play this to, wonder if she likes it...

==============

Did you see the goofy YouTube video? La realizatrix (?) is as talented and funny as les chanteuses.

Okay, about the cover.

I have "Pronto Monto" down in the basement in vinyl, my Shrine to les Saintes McGarrigle c'est la bas aussi, candles, incense ...

"Pronto Monto" was released in 1978, when Anna was 34 and Kate was 36. Above, les Soeurs McGarrigle in a more recent photograph.

I would whack a perfect stranger if either of these ladies asked me to. They could pay me by singing to me.

=======================

There is a little ambiguity about the authorship of the song "Petite annonce amoureuse." It's by Kate and Anna McGarrigle, but may also have been co-written by Philippe Tatartcheff, a poet who has written songs the McGarrigle Sisters have made popular before. One source co-credits almost all the songs on this album to Tatartcheff.

Tatartcheff lives or once lived in Val d'Or, in Northern Quebec, and his Day Job was as a miner in a gold mine. Gold mines are our deepest human-made penetrations into the Earth, and are extraordinarily dangerous workplaces. To get the gold we love so much, a lot of people die every year all over the world. I drove through Val d'Or and stopped for gas on a day there'd been a very bad collapse, with lives lost, in the gold mine. The young woman I spoke to said everyone in town knew someone trapped in the mine.

The price of gold is up -- it always goes up during economic crises or collapses -- and suddenly a long-abandoned mine in the center of Johannesburg, South Africa, has re-opened. Hundreds of badly (but regularly) paid miners are going down one of Earth's deepest holes again, because people trust gold, where they have lost faith in other forms of value storage -- stocks, bonds, derivatives, pork belly futures, exotic loans and odd financial arrangements with questionable promises on pieces of paper. We have lost faith in paper, and instinctively want to hoard gold, which we can touch and pet and admire and weigh and assay.

Gold was regarded as the tangible manifestation of the Sun on Earth, and silver the manifestation of the Moon. Women were often prohibited from being associated with or coming near goldsmiths and gold metallurgy; their presence was believed to spoil or ruin the magic associated with working in this unique metal, which never rusts or oxidizes. Thus gold is believed to be the only uncorruptible -- eternal -- substance on Earth, requiring special priestly ritual.

All else which we experience decays, rots, rusts.

Gold has unique chemical and industrial properties. It can be hand-pounded to foils of one or two or three atoms of thinness. (You can wrap chocolates in this foil, and eat the chocolate, gold foil and all, without harm.) The contact surfaces of electrical connections which must be reliable (telecom, space) are often gold or gold-plated. Gold dissolves only in a highly concentrated cocktail of Aqua Regia -- nitric and hydrochloric acid.

* * *

"La vache qui pleure" (2003) is the McGarrigle Sisters' second album of (mostly) French / Quebecois songs.

After bothering a very nice fellow named Aesop on the Internet Relay Chat UnderNet channel #Montreal, I have hammered out an Unauthorized English translation, I did the best I could.

Aesop informs me that "fille du Roy" is a 300- or 400-year-old expression for prostitute, streetwalker, sex worker.

{Aesop} Fille du Roy = Whores
{Droog4} ah ah ah ah merci
{Droog4} this is a local nuance i do not know
{Aesop} Im not a whore, i feel happy or not.
{Aesop} it's an old timer expression
{Droog4} the singers are Montreal sisters, now they are maybe 60 annes
{Aesop} fille du roy = more than 300-400 years old expression
{Aesop} hehe
{Aesop} it was used in the times of kings and knights
{Droog4} ah wow, i would never have known this, this is not in regular Larousse
{Aesop} nop

If you find mistakes, glaring or subtle, in this translation, SVP Leave A Comment, set me straight. I did the best I could. I tried to retain or reproduce the expressing style of the singers, the intentions of the woman who sings


A little personal love ad

Looking for man five-foot-three
I'm no debutante, no Fille du Roy
Sometimes I'm happy
Sometimes I'm not
Please answer my ad

Whoever answers this ad
He'll get a nice reward

Whoever answers this ad
He'll get a nice reward

Me I'm not quite five-foot-two
But I'm not lame
I wouldn't be taller than you
You'd be a little taller than me
For the love of God, answer

I've had it with being alone at my place
It breaks my heart, hurts my liver too
Dogs run away from me
Cats stare at me
Little kids are scared of me

I only smoke good tobacco
I like mice, I hate rats
Two paws, three or four paws
Bums or fine aristocrats

Five-two, five-three
Glass eye, wooden leg
Militaire
Débonnaire
And especially savoir faire

Stop me before I post more McGarrigle Sisters Québécois songs

Speakers ON / Right-click: Open in New Tab
or just click and watch their very funny YouTube
(realisé par / directed by Sarah Mishara)

From the 2003 album "La vache qui pleure"

(There's a famous brand of cheese: La vache qui rit)

Petite annonce amoureuse
(a little personal love ad)

by Kate & Anna McGarrigle & Philippe Tatartcheff

Je cherche une homme qui a cinq pieds trois
Moi j’suis pas la fille du Roy
Ou bien ça va
Ou ça va pas
S’il vous plaît répondez-moi

Qui annonce reçoit réponse
Qui demande a récompense

Qui annonce reçoit réponse
Qui demande a récompense

Moi je n’ai que cinq pieds deux
Pourtant je ne suis pas boiteux
C’est tu trop
C’est tu trop peu
Répondez pour l’amour de Dieu

J’en ai assez d’être seul chez-moi
Ç a crève le coeur et puis le foie
J’éloigne les chiens
J’effraie les chats
J’fais peur aux petits enfants

Je ne fume que du bon tabac
J’aime les souris, j’hais les rats
À deux ou trois
Ou quatre pattes
Vilains ou bien aristocrates

Cinq deux, cinq trois
OEil de verre, jambe de bois
Militaire
Débonnaire
Et surtout du savoir faire

© 2009 Kate & Anna McGarrigle, All rights reserved.

shifting strategies, new major US offensive in Helmand and opium-growing provinces of Afghanistan

Click image for larger, clearer

Associated Press (newswire USA)
Thursday 2 July 2009

U.S. Marines exchange fire
with Taliban in searing heat

by Jason Straziuso, Associated Press Writer

NAWA, Afghanistan (AP) -- U.S. Marines hiked through searing heat and took fire from small pockets of militants Thursday after landing in this Taliban-controlled southern region of tree-lined fields, mud homes and crisscrossing waterways in the first major operation under President Barack Obama's strategy to stabilize Afghanistan.

Elsewhere, the U.S. military announced that insurgents were believed to have captured an American soldier missing in eastern Afghanistan on Tuesday. The missing soldier was not involved in Operation Khanjar, or "Strike of the Sword," under way in southern Afghanistan.

The southern offensive was launched shortly after 1 a.m. Thursday (4:30 p.m. EDT Wednesday, 2030 GMT), as thousands of Marines poured from helicopters and armored vehicles into Taliban-controlled villages along roughly 20 miles of the Helmand River in Helmand province, the world's largest opium poppy-producing area. The goal is to clear insurgents from the hotly contested region before the nation's Aug. 20 presidential election.

The Marines have not suffered any serious casualties and have seen only a sporadic resistance, said Lt. Abe Sipe, a spokesman for the unit.

"The enemy has chosen to withdraw rather than engage for the most part," Sipe said. "We had a couple of heat casualties, but not deemed serious in nature at this time."

Officials described the offensive as the largest and fastest-moving of the war's new phase and the biggest Marine assault since the one in Fallujah, Iraq, in 2004. It involves nearly 4,000 newly arrived Marines plus 650 Afghan forces. British forces last week led similar, but smaller, missions to clear out insurgents in Helmand and neighboring Kandahar province.

"Where we go we will stay, and where we stay, we will hold, build and work toward transition of all security responsibilities to Afghan forces," Marine Corps Brig. Gen. Larry Nicholson said in a statement.

Pakistan's army said it had moved troops from elsewhere on its side of the Afghan border to the stretch opposite Helmand to try to stop any militants from fleeing the offensive. It gave no more details, but U.S. and Pakistani officials have expressed concern that stepped-up operations in southern Afghanistan could push the insurgents across the border.

Transport helicopters carried hundreds of Marines into the village of Nawa, some 20 miles south of the provincial capital of Lashkar Gah, in a region where no U.S. or other NATO troops have operated in large numbers.

The troops took many insurgents by surprise, dropping behind Taliban lines, said Capt. Drew Schoenmaker, from Greene, N.Y.

"We are kind of forging new ground here. We are going to a place nobody has been before," said Schoenmaker, 31, who commands Bravo Company of the 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment.

Several hundred Marines took positions in a freshly plowed dirt field at 3 a.m. The soft, deep dirt proved challenging for troops weighed down with days' worth of water, food and gear, and many frequently stumbled.

At daybreak the Marines walked along tree lines, and at 6:15 a.m. the company took its first incoming fire, likely from an AK-47 along a tree-line. The next three hours brought repeated bursts of gunfire and volleys of rocket-propelled grenades, sending deep booms across the countryside.

A small force of Afghan soldiers accompanying the Camp Pendleton-based Marines got into several scraps with an insurgent force of about 20 fighters. The fire came from a mud-brick compound, and the Marines, the Afghan soldiers and their British advisers surrounded the compound on the east and the south.

Before the mission, Schoenmaker, the company commander, said he would practice "tactical patience" as a way to avoid civilian casualties -- ” an issue newly arrived Gen. Stanley McChrystal has underscored in recent weeks. Though troops in many similar circumstances have called in airstrikes on such a militant-controlled compound, Schoenmaker did not.

"We made the decision to isolate the compound and not destroy it because we couldn't confirm if civilians were inside," he said. The militants were believed to have escaped out the back.

A Cobra helicopter circling overhead for most of the day fired rockets at a tree line nearby. Other troops walked through fields of corn and past mud-wall homes. Only a handful of villagers dared to venture outside.

Helmand's deadly heat, well over 100 degrees Fahrenheit, proved to be another enemy the Marines had to fight. Because soldiers were on foot, they had to carry all their own water and food. Forward observers and snipers spent the entire day under the cloudless sky.

"It's like when you open up the oven when you're cooking a pizza and you want to see if it's done. You get that blast of hot air. That's how it feels the whole time," said Lance Corp. Charlie Duggan Jr., 21, of Baldwinsville, N.Y.

The Marines trained for months in the heat of the Mojave desert for the deployment, and many appeared happy to be here.

At one point Thursday, some 50 Marines were relaxing in an abandoned and dilapidated mud brick compound, their dusty-brown uniforms stained with perspiration. Suddenly someone spotted an Afghan male who appeared to be watching them from a nearby road.

The Marines quickly threw on their flak jackets and Kevlar helmets.

"It sucks but it's what you've been training for your whole life," Lt. Chris Wilson, 25, of Ramsey, N.J., said with a smile as he held a radio with an eight-foot antenna. Thursday was Wilson's first mission into a combat zone.

Last summer, the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit took the town of Garmser --€” about 15 miles south of Schoenmaker's company --€” and helped provide security for an area U.S. commanders say is now relatively secure.

The U.S. would like to replicate the success in Garmser to the north and south. The strategic setting can help the military slow the opium poppy and heroin trade and interdict fighters coming from Pakistan.

Of immediate need is security for the country's Aug. 20 election.

Southern Afghanistan is a Taliban stronghold but also a region where Afghan President Hamid Karzai is seeking votes from fellow Pashtun tribesmen. Without such a massive Marine assault in this southern section of Helmand, the Afghan government would likely not have been able to set up voting booths to which citizens could safely travel.

The Pentagon is deploying 21,000 additional troops to Afghanistan in time for the elections and expects the total number of U.S. forces there to reach 68,000 by year's end. That is double the number of troops in Afghanistan in 2008 but still half as many as are now in Iraq.

The Taliban, who took control of Afghanistan in 1996 and were ousted from power following a U.S.-led invasion in 2001, have made a violent comeback, wreaking havoc in much of the country's south and east.

Thousands of British forces, fighting under NATO command, have been in Helmand since 2006 with broadly the same strategy, but security has deteriorated. They have encountered stronger resistance than had been expected from Taliban fighters bankrolled by the vast opium and heroin trade.

Reversing the insurgency's momentum has been a key component of the new U.S. strategy, and thousands of additional troops allow commanders to push into and stay in areas where international and Afghan troops had no permanent presence.

In March, Obama unveiled his strategy for Afghanistan, seeking to defeat al-Qaida terrorists there and in Pakistan with a bigger force and a new commander. Taliban and other extremists, including those allied with al-Qaida, routinely cross the two nations' border.

Obama told The Associated Press on Thursday that he will reassess the possible need for additional U.S. troops in Afghanistan after the August elections.

The president said the main U.S. goal is to keep al-Qaida from acquiring a haven from which it can train fighters and launch attacks on the United States or its allies. He said the U.S. and its allies also must build up the Afghan national army and police and enable Pakistan to secure its borders against terrorist movements.

Last year, NATO and Pakistani forces cooperated in a series of complementary operations on the border, but the overall commitment of Islamabad to Washington's aims in Afghanistan has long been questioned. Pakistan has frequently been accused in the past of failing to stop — and sometimes aiding — the movement of insurgents into Afghanistan from its side of the border.

- 30 -

Associated Press writers Fisnik Abrashi in Kabul, Nahal Toosi in Islamabad and Lara Jakes in Washington contributed to this report.

======================

Reuters (newswire UK)
Friday 3 July 2009

Q+A:
Opium and Afghanistan's insurgency

by Jonathon Burch

KABUL (Reuters) -- Controlling the opium trade in Afghanistan, the world's leading producer of the drug, is a key element in the fight against Taliban militants.

With thousands of U.S. Marines launching a major new offensive against the Taliban-led insurgency in southern Helmand province, the epicenter of world opium production, the U.S. envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan, Richard Holbrooke, has also foreshadowed a new approach to controlling the trade.

Following are questions and answers about Afghanistan's poppy production, its role in the insurgency and efforts to combat it.

HOW MUCH POPPY IS GROWN?

Afghanistan produces 93 percent of the world's opium, a thick paste made from the poppies that is processed to make heroin, according to United Nations figures.

In 2008, 157,000 hectares of opium were cultivated, down 19 percent from 193,000 hectares in 2007. Opium production only declined 6 percent to 7,700 tonnes because of record high yields.

Helmand cultivated 103,000 hectares in 2008.

In the same period, prices fell by about 20 percent, meaning the value of the opium to Afghan farmers fell by about a quarter from roughly $1 billion to about $730 million.

The export value of opium, morphine and heroin at border prices in neighboring countries fell to $3.4 billion in 2008 from $4 billion in 2007, according to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) 2008 Afghan Opium Survey.

WHAT IS THE LINK BETWEEN OPIUM AND THE TALIBAN?

The Taliban are mainly funded by the opium trade.

Despite the drop in cultivation, production and prices, the UNODC says the Taliban and other "anti-government forces" still make "massive amounts of money from the drug business." Their take, mainly from levies on processing and trafficking, has been put at between $200 million and $400 million, with up to $70 million more from "ushr," or charges on economic activity.

UNODC executive director Antonio Maria Costa has also pointed to the danger of opium stocks held by the Taliban. "For a number of years, Afghan opium production has exceeded world demand. The bottom should have fallen out of the opium market, but it hasn't," he said in the UNODC's 2008 Afghan Opium Survey.

"So where is the missing opium? Lack of price response in the opium market can only be the result of stock build-ups, and all evidence points to the Taliban."

HOW DOES IT AFFECT MILITARY STRATEGY?

Addressing the opium problem will no doubt form a big part of General Stanley McChrystal's new counter-insurgency strategy, part of Washington's wider effort to defeat the Taliban and stabilize Afghanistan.

McChrystal and other commanders say their new strategy is designed to win the hearts and minds of ordinary Afghans, "to talk more and shoot less."

But the amount of money farmers can make from opium instead of other crops like wheat is a big problem. Destroying farmers' livelihoods by eradicating opium crops would make it very difficult to win them over to the fight against the Taliban.

In 2007, the gross income ratio for farmers from opium to wheat was 10:1. In 2008 that narrowed to 3:1, although that was partly due to drought. The United Nations has called for greater international development to consolidate on gains, along with "more honest government" and more security, it says.

WHAT ABOUT ERADICATION?

Holbrooke told a G8 conference this week that Washington is to phase out poppy eradication in a dramatic overhaul of its anti-drug strategy.

"The Western policies against the opium crop, the poppy crop, have been a failure. They did not result in any damage to the Taliban, but they put farmers out of work," Holbrooke said.

Haroun Mir, political analyst and co-founder of Kabul's Afghanistan Center for Research and Policy Studies, agreed.

"I'm sure this new (Holbrooke) decision to shift the counter-narcotics policy has something to do with the new General McChrystal," he said.

In total, only 5,480 hectares -- less than 4 percent of all cultivation -- were eradicated in 2008 compared with 19,047 hectares in 2007, a 71 percent drop.

Eradication is also costly and dangerous. At least 78 people involved in eradication, most of them policemen, were killed in 2008, a 75 percent increase on 2007, according to the UNODC.

Supporters of poppy eradication say it is only a small part of a wider counter-narcotics policy and is only carried out on targeted areas where farmers have access to alternative crops.

Holbrooke says Washington will now concentrate on intercepting drugs and chemicals and going after drug lords.

(Editing by Paul Tait and Alex Richardson)

- 30 -

© Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved

India court ends colonial-era ban on homosexual acts

The New York Times
Thursday 2 July 2009

Indian Court Overturns
Brit Colonial-Era
Gay Sex Ban

by Heather Timmons

NEW DELHI — In a landmark ruling Thursday that could usher in an era of greater freedom for gays and lesbians in India, New Delhi’s highest court decriminalized homosexuality.

“Discrimination is antithesis of equality,” Delhi High Court judges wrote in a 105-page decision that is the first in India to directly guarantee rights for gays and lesbians. “It is the recognition of equality which will foster dignity of every individual,” the decision said.

Homosexuality has been illegal in India since 1861, when British rulers codified a law prohibiting “carnal intercourse against the order of nature.” The law, known as Section 377, has long been viewed as an archaic holdover from colonialism by its detractors.

Gay men and women have rarely been prosecuted in modern times, but it has been used to harass, blackmail and jail marchers and participants in gatherings.

The repeal applies only to the territory of India’s capital city, but it will force India’s government to either appeal the decision to the Supreme Court or repeal the law nationwide, lawyers said.

In their decision, Chief Justice A. .P Shah and Justice S. Muralidhar declared Section 377, as it pertains to consensual sex among people above the age of 18, in violation of key parts of India’s Constitution.

The law violates Article 14, which guarantees all people “equality before the law;” Article 15, which prohibits discrimination “on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth;” and Article 21, which guarantees “protection of life and personal liberty” they said. The repeal comes after a broad campaign organized by gay rights activists, authors and celebrities, lawyers and AIDS awareness groups.

- 30 -

And these three made a solemn vow: "John Barleycorn must die!"

Click image for larger

There really is no reason why some beverages should taste so wonderful.

This song celebrates the torturing and beating and murdering and burying of grain -- the brutal punishment of barley -- which nonetheless grows and is resurrected and becomes a brew so delicious and potent that it triumphs over its tormenters, and flattens all those men who wounded it so badly.

Some form of this myth and song -- often accompanied by village harvest dance -- dates from pre-Christian pagan times. The Christian missionaries who converted the pagans tolerated these myths and songs to bridge the gap between old faith and new faith, and use the old beliefs to explain the new resurrection and triumph over death.

Speakers ON / Rightclick: Open in New Tab

John Renbourn - guitars, vocals
Tony Roberts - vocals, flute, recorders, oboe, piccolo
Jacqui McShee - vocals
Sue Draheim - fiddle, vocals

(Many samples of Sue Drahem's music)

Keshave Sathe - tabla, finger cymbals

John Barleycorn

(traditional England / Scotland)

There were three men come from the West
Their fortunes for to try,
And these three made a solemn vow:
"John Barleycorn must die."

They plowed, they sowed, they harrowed him in,
Threw clods upon his head,
'Til these three men were satisfied
John Barleycorn was dead.

They let him lie for a very long time,
'Til the rains from heaven did fall,
When little Sir John raised up his head
And so amazed them all.

They let him stand 'til Mid-Summer's Day
When he looked both pale and wan;
Then little Sir John grew a long, long beard
And so became a man.

They hired men with their scythes so sharp
To cut him off at the knee;
They rolled him and tied him around the waist,
And served him barbarously.

They hired men with their sharp pitchforks
To pierce him to the heart,
But the loader did serve him worse than that,
For he bound him to the cart.

They wheeled him 'round and around the field
'Til they came unto a barn,
And there they took a solemn oath
On poor John Barleycorn.

They hired men with their crab-tree sticks
To split him skin from bone,
But the miller did serve him worse than that,
For he ground him between two stones.

There's little Sir John in the nut-brown bowl,
And there's brandy in the glass,
And little Sir John in the nut-brown bowl
Proved the strongest man at last.

The huntsman cannot hunt the fox
Nor loudly blow his horn
And the tinker cannot mend his pots
Without John Barleycorn.

1st Day Issue / Tierra de los Sueños / the New Appalachian Trail / Maine to Buenos Aires

Oh yes by all means
please click the image
to make it larger.

I am SO PSYCHED! I am packing my backpack and gettin out my hikin' boots! If I leave Right Now, I should be in Buenos Aires oh maybe ... gee, I don't know, this is a real schlep. But what an adventure! Even with my lousy feet, I am confident I will succeed, nothing can stop me, nothing can possibly go worng!

Petites Boîtes

Click for larger

Petites Boîtes

French lyrics by Graeme Allwright
translated from "Little Boxes"
by Malvina Reynolds


Kate & Anna McGarrigle sing
a very nice (abbreviated) version HERE
(intro to episode of "Weeds")


Petites boîtes très étroites
Petites boîtes faites en ticky-tacky
Petites boîtes, petites boîtes
Petites boîtes toutes pareilles
Y a des rouges, des violettes
Et des vertes très coquettes
Elles sont toutes faites en ticky-tacky
Elles sont toutes toutes pareilles

Et ces gens-là dans leurs boîtes
Vont tous à l'université
On les met tous dans des boîtes
Petites boîtes toutes pareilles
Y a des médecins, des dentistes
Des hommes d'affaires et des avocats
Ils sont tous tous faits de ticky-tacky
Ils sont tous tous tous pareils

Et ils boivent sec des martinis
Jouent au golf toute l'après-midi
Puis ils font des jolis enfants
Qui vont tous tous à l'école
Ces enfants partent en vacances
Puis s'en vont à l'université
On les met tous dans des boîtes
Et ils sortent tous pareils

Les garçons font du commerce
Et deviennent pères de famille
Ils bâtissent des nouvelles boîtes
Petites boîtes toutes pareilles
Puis ils règlent toutes leurs affaires
Et s'en vont dans des cimetières
Dans des boîtes faites en ticky-tacky
Qui sont toutes toutes pareilles.

¿Fue esto la cara que lanzó 1000 buques? / Appalachian Trail now goes all the way from Maine to Buenos Aires!!!! Hey guys! Hike it today!

Oh yeah, click EVERYTHING!

This is WONDERFUL news! I've wanted to hike the Appalachian Trail all my life -- the Nature, the Beauty, the Solitude, the Adventure! -- and now the Appalachian Trail has just become SO MUCH BETTER!

Thanks to a cooperative effort between the USA National Park Service, the Appalachian Trail Club, and several Central and South American governments, now you can hike all the way from Maine to Buenos Aires!!!

========================

En la Argentina,
un gobernador de EE.UU.
engaña a su esposa

El gobernador de Carolina del Sur, Mark Sanford, que se había ausentado misteriosamente durante cinco días, volvió a su casa y confesó públicamente su affaire

WASHINGTON -- El extraño misterio de la desaparición durante cinco días del gobernador del estado norteamericano de Carolina del Sur, Mark Sanford, dio un giro más bizarro aún hoy cuando reapareció sorpresivamente admitiendo no sólo un "exótico" viaje secreto a Buenos Aires, sino que además mantuvo una relación extramatrimonial con una mujer argentina.

Un affaire que, más allá del escándalo mediático, podría tener graves consecuencias para la carrera política del republicano.

"Le he sido infiel a mi mujer. Inicié una relación con una muy, muy querida amiga de la Argentina", reconoció Sanford en una rueda de prensa pocas horas después de reaparecer, tras pasar casi una semana sin dar señales de vida.

Sanford, cuyo nombre se barajaba como posible candidato presidencial por el Partido Republicano para 2012, había desaparecido el jueves de la semana pasada sin revelarle ni a su familia -mujer y cuatro hijos- que estaba de vacaciones, ni a sus colaboradores cercanos, a dónde se iba.

En la víspera, su esposa Jenna había asegurado a la prensa que no sabía "nada" de su marido desde entonces, mientras que el personal del gobernador, ante las crecientes críticas de políticos de su estado por la desinformación acerca del paradero del jefe regional, emitió un comunicado afirmando que Sanford estaba haciendo excursionismo en los Montes Apalaches.

Pero nada de eso era cierto. Un periodista local fue testigo de su llegada en la mañana de hoy al aeropuerto estadounidense de Atlanta en un vuelo procedente de la Argentina.

"Quería hacer algo exótico", explicó Sanford al reportero del diario "The State". Buenos Aires "es una ciudad fantástica", agregó indicando que conocía la capital argentina de dos viajes anteriores.

Aventura lejana. Lo que no reveló al periodista es lo que diría públicamente unas horas más tarde ante unos medios que confesaron quedar atónitos: Que la "amistad" que comenzó de "manera inocente" ocho años antes con una mujer argentina pasó a "algo más" hace un año y que desde entonces ha mantenido una aventura extramatrimonial de la que su familia tenía conocimiento desde hace cinco meses.

"El perdón no es un proceso inmediato", dijo Sanford. Sus palabras iban dirigidas a su mujer y sus cuatro hijos, ausentes de la rueda de prensa y para los que pidió "privacidad". Pero el mensaje podría estar destinado también a las esferas políticas de su partido, que con Sanford ven sumarse un escándalo más en momentos de por sí más que bajos para la oposición estadounidense.

Otra infidelidad. Y es que la admisión de una aventura del gobernador por Carolina del Sur se produce apenas dos semanas después de que otro alto político republicano, el senador por Nevada John Ensign, admitiera también un affaire amoroso.

Como consecuencia, Ensign dimitió de su puesto como presidente del Comité de Políticas de su partido, el cuarto puesto más importante de la formación republicana en el Senado. Al igual que Sanford, Ensign era considerado un candidato potencial para las elecciones presidenciales de 2012.

El gobernador por Carolina del Sur anunció hoy su renuncia como presidente de la asociación de gobernadores del Partido Republicano. Sin embargo, no reveló si también dejará su puesto al frente de su estado ni si este "traspié" sentimental cortará su carrera política.

Pese a todo, no es ésta una situación de la que los demócratas de Barack Obama puedan sacar mucho jugo.

Y es que también ellos saben bastante de problemas sexuales en sus propias filas: el año pasado, un escándalo de prostitución acabó con una de sus figuras más promisorias, el gobernador por Nueva York Eliot Spitzer. Unos meses más tarde, poco después de renunciar a la carrera presidencial por los demócratas, el ex senador John Edwards también tuvo que admitir una relación extramatrimonial.

- 30 -

=================

CIUDAD DE BUENOS AIRES (Urgente24).-- El "secreto" ha sido develado: la amante argentina del gobernador de Carolina del Sur, Mark Sanford, se llama María Belén Chapur, y no es funcionaria, sino una atractiva morocha de 43 años, vecina de Palermo, divorciada hace mucho tiempo, madre de dos hijos adolescentes y ejecutiva de la firma Bunge & Born.

Según los registros de graduados de la Universidad Católica Argentina, María Belén obtuvo el título de licenciada en Ciencias Políticas, con especialización en Relaciones Internacionales.

Chapur se mantiene en excelente estado físico haciendo mucho deporte. Participó al menos de dos grandes maratones como fue la 'Marathon Nike 10K', y la 'Maratón Accenture', en la cual corrió como parte de la empresa Bunge Argentina SA.

Según relató hoy un cronista de Radio Continental que conversó con sus vecinos, Chapur es una mujer muy linda y en muy buen estado físico.

Esto pudo advertirlo todo aquel que la vio por TV, cuando Chapur colaboró en 'Después de Hora', el noticiero de medianoche que conducía Daniel Hadad y que emitía América 2.

También es políglota. En efecto el 14 de noviembre de 2005, el sitio 'El Reloj', publicó unas declaraciones de la mujer en una nota sobre los argentinos que aprenden chino para lograr nuevas oportunidades de trabajo.

"Incluso un conocimiento básico del mandarín es de suma ayuda, según la estudiante Belén Chapur, de 39 años.

El año pasado, antes de tomar clases de mandarín, Chapur acompañó a su marido -un exportador de soja- a un viaje de negocios a Pekín. Pese a su fluido español, francés e inglés y su básico portugués tuvo muchos problemas para comunicarse con sus interlocutores durante el viaje.

"Fue como jugar a 'dígalo con mímica"', recordó. "He viajado a varias partes del mundo y ése fue el lugar donde más me costó comunicarme", agregó."

Por supuesto, no le cuesta tanto con el inglés. Ayer Sanford lo confirmó en una conferencia de prensa, en la cual pidió perdón a su familia "y a mi gran amiga argentina", lamentando las implicancias de su aventura.

"Quería hacer algo exótico ... Buenos Aires es una ciudad grandiosa", dijo el gobernador, cuya escapada fue descubierta por una periodista que lo encontró en el aeropuerto de Atlanta, cuando regresaba de su volcánica aventura rioplatense.

Sanford le había dicho a su esposa que viajaba unos días a los Appalaches para trabajar en la paz montañosa en la redacción de un libro, pero que en realidad su destino era Buenos Aires, donde lo esperaba Chapur.

Mencionado entre los posibles candidatos republicanos a la Presidencia en 2012, el futuro político de Sanford ha sufrido un golpe letal con su affaire porteño.

El diario 'La Nación' dijo esta madrugada que sus intentos por contactar a Chapur no habían hallado respuesta, pero la "viglia" en torno a la mujer comenzará en minutos y seguramente durante el transcurso de la jornada no podrá evitar el asedio de los cronistas.

La novela en torno al destino de Sanford habìa comenzado al fin de la semana pasada, y ni sus asesores sabían donde estaba. "He engañado a mi esposa, desarrollando una relación con una amiga argentina que comenzó de forma inocente, pero que luego fue algo más profundo y como consecuencia herí a mi esposa, a mi familia y a mucha gente más", afirmó ante las cámaras de televisión estadounidenses.

El mandatario contó que el vínculo empezó hace ocho años como algo "inocente" y aseguró que "ella estaba a miles de kilómetros de distancia" y sólo se intercambiaban ideas a través del correo electŕonico. Varios de esos correos fueron publicados en las últimas horas en el diario 'The State'.

Sanford reconoció que la relación fue creciendo y con el tiempo se desarrolló una "amistad significativa", que luego se transformó en "algo más". "En ese momento comenzamos a cuestionarnos cómo hacer de aquí en adelante, y a reflexionar sobre cómo dejar esto en el pasado. Fui para explicarle que había algo real, pero que pensando en la gente de Carolina del Sur, mi esposa y mis hijos, tuve que tomar una decisión", explicó.

El gobernador aseguró que tras la aventura dio por finalizado su romance con la mujer argentina y trató de minimizar el episodio, que pese a todo se convirtió en tema inevitable entre los norteamericanos y en un nuevo escándalo que involucra a un funcionario público.

"Quiero pedir perdón a mi esposa, a mis cuatro hijos y a todo el pueblo de Carolina del Sur. Se trata de un proceso y no estaría aquí si no pudiera decir que estoy comprometido a hacer lo correcto", concluyó el infiel Sanford ante la prensa. Las explicaciones deberá seguir dándolas puertas adentro.

Chapur figura ahora incluso en la biografía de Sanford en Wikipedia, donde se lee:

=====================

"Extramarital affair

On June 24, Sanford arrived at the Atlanta Hartsfield Airport, at 5:43 am on a Delta Flight 110 from Buenos Aires, Argentina.[31] He was met at the airport by only one reporter, The State's Gina Smith, who had received a tip that the governor would be arriving in Atlanta.[32][33] He gave her a brief sit-down interview, wherein he claimed that he was alone for the entire trip, and did not give any other details than that he drove the coastline.[32] Sanford said that he had considered hiking the Appalachian trail, but at the last minute decided to do something "exotic".[32][34] When asked why his staff said he was hiking, Sanford replied, "I don't know." He later said "in fairness to his staff," he had told them he might do such hiking. Sanford said he cut his trip short after his chief of staff, Scott English, told him his trip was gaining a lot of media attention and he needed to come back.[35] These events prompted Republican state senator Jake Knotts to comment, "Lies. Lies. Lies. That's all we get from his staff. That's all we get from his people. That's all we get from him."[34] Several hours after arriving back in the US, Sanford held a press conference, where he admitted that he had been unfaithful to his wife.[36][32] He told reporters that he had developed a relationship with an Argentinian woman that he had met "a little over eight years ago, very innocently,"[37] and that the relationship had turned romantic about a year before.[32] Sanford's wife had become aware of his infidelities around five months beforehand, and the two had sought marriage counseling.[32] She said that she requested a trial separation about two weeks before his disappearance.[38]

Sanford resigned as Chairman of the Republican Governors Association,[39][40] and he was swiftly succeeded by Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour.[41] Sanford has not commented about the possibility of resigning his position as governor.[32]".

==========================

Un último dato, no menor: Sanford había representado a Carolina del Sur durante tres períodos en la Cámara de Representantes, donde curiosamente en 1998 votó en favor de enjuiciar al presidente Bill Clinton por su aventura extramatrimonial con Monica Lewinsky.

Y aunque los demócratas analizaban ayer todos los detalles del caso para intentar sacar rédito político, entre sus propias filas también hubo recientemente algunos casos similares.

El año pasado, un escándalo de prostitución forzó al gobernador de Nueva York, Eliot Spitzer, a renunciar a su puesto. Pocos meses más tarde, el ex senador y ex candidato presidencial demócrata John Edwards también sepultó su carrera política al admitir que le había sido infiel a su esposa.

- 30 -

Veterans, widows and orphans vs. momzer, ganef, meshugineh Frumm & sociopath / Madoff's victims write the judge who will sentence him Monday

Click for larger.

Below the body of this story from The Jewish Daily Forward aren't Comments ... but letters written by Bernard Madoff's victims to Madoff's sentencing judge, who will hand down Madoff's prison sentence on Monday 29 June.

As the story notes, much of the public has the impression that Madoff exclusively scammed the rich and famous, movie stars, entertainment personalities, and that greed and folly were elements of every victim's fate.

These letters to the sentencing judge show the actual situations and profiles of Madoff's victims. After a lifetime of hard work and careful saving, they wanted a comfortable, modest, safe retirement. They had no fantasies of yachts and private jet planes to Aegean isles.

If anyone has wondered why Vleeptron has not blogged much about Bernard Madoff until now, it's not from a co-religionist's sympathy.

It was out of concern for my health and blood pressure. I didn't want to blow a gasket.

For one thing, Madoff lives a subset of Judaism with which I have Zilch closeness or familiarity, and his Adventures are not likely to make me want to get closer to what my mother used to describe as "meshugineh Frumm" (crazy Orthodox Jews).

Theologically, when Madoff dies (Nostrabobus predicts that will be in prison; he faces 150 years), and requests entrance to Heaven by proving he has never eaten pork or Chesapeake Bay crabs, or mixed meat with dairy, I can't wait to see the vinegary expression on God's face.

Heaven, if it exists, or other Post-Mortem rewards, just don't work like that. It's not about the lobsters and the pork chops.

But in evaluating how good a Jew Madoff is, Huckleberry Finnstein is happy to defer to the opinion of Elie Weisel, survivor of several Nazi concentration camps, and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. The funds for Weisel's charity, and Weisel's and his wife's life savings, were wiped out by Madoff's Ponzi scam. [The full story of Weisel's opinions about Madoff is printed at bottom.]

Asked what punishment he would like to see for Madoff, Wiesel said: "I would like him to be in a solitary cell with only a screen, and on that screen for at least five years of his life, every day and every night, there should be pictures of his victims, one after the other after the other, all the time a voice saying, 'Look what you have done to this old lady, look what you have done to that child, look what you have done,' nothing else."

In fact many of Madoff's victims didn't even know their finances were involved in any way with Madoff's schemes, and had never heard of Madoff. They only learned they were ruined when Madoff confessed and the headlines started screaming.

One charity entirely wiped out when the Madoff bubble burst paid for competent private defense lawyers for Pennsylvania kids in trouble with juvenile court. Instantly Pennsylvania's minors in trouble lost their lawyers, and now wander through the court system defended, if at all, by overburdened, bargain-basement state-supplied public defenders -- lawyers at the very bottom of the legal Skill Chain.

Pennsylvania's kids will now do lots of time behind bars not because of their authentic crimes or guilt, but just because this charity can no longer pay for adequate defense lawyers. Similar stories abound throughout the USA's charity sphere.

Authentic suffering -- not just cutting back from French to New York State wine -- but diseases untreated, dashed college hopes, old women and old men having to go back to working night shifts at convenience stores just to avoid homelessness ...

What would I like? I'd like Madoff to give the money back to those he stole it from.


But where the money never existed, or where it's vanished, he can't.

And where he's hidden the money in anonymous coded bank accounts around the world, he won't.

====================

The Jewish Daily Forward
English edition
New York City USA
Wednesday 24 June 2009

Madoff’s Victims Speak Out

Veterans, widowers, parents, the elderly and the sick. They are hardworking people who believed in living within their means, saving for a rainy day and putting money aside for their grandchildren’s college tuition. From across the country, victims of Bernard Madoff’s $65,000,000,000 Ponzi scheme wrote in painful detail of their hardship and losses as they implored U.S. District Judge Denny Chin to give Madoff the maximum prison time allowed by law, 150 years, at his June 29 sentencing.

In their own voices, some of the victims wrote of losing their homes, having to go on food stamps or needing to go back to work, despite being in their late 60s, to make ends meet. Many of his victims said they were shocked by the news that they were broke. Then as the slow realization set in, they found themselves questioning their faith in humanity and coping with the emotional and physical pain that the financial upheaval has wrought.

Despite the pervasive assumption that those who invested with Madoff were celebrities, the wealthy and well connected, the messages released by the court illustrate that many of Madoff’s clients had been ordinary Americans. They had trusted him or their financial advisers with their life savings, and they asked why the Securities and Exchange Commission had not saved them from the massive fraud.

Madoff surrendered to authorities last December and pleaded guilty in March to 11 criminal charges in connection with the scheme. What follows are excerpts from some of the 113 statements written by Madoff’s victims.

-– Alison Cies

* * *

Our parents didn’t, and don’t, deserve to lose everything they saved for over the decades, and they don’t deserve to have to say goodbye to their safe, unflashy home. They never harmed anybody.… Bernard Madoff lied to, and thus stole from, my parents ON A WEEKLY BASIS, with every weekly packet of confirmation slips that he sent out. That means that he lied to them, and stole from them, 52 separate times in a single year. And, because they invested with him approximately two decades ago, that means that Bernard Madoff lied to them, and stole from them, 1,040 separate times. He deserves to stay in prison for at least that many years.

Abby Frucht
Wisconsin

I am an 80-year-old man in poor health whose remaining years have been totally devastated by Bernie Madoff. My wife and I have lost every dollar of our life savings in Madoff’s fraud scheme with no hope of recovery. We have had to sell every asset that we own in order to survive, and we don’t know how long the proceeds will last. I cannot begin to describe to you the toll that Madoff’s actions have taken on us financially, physically and emotionally…. Mr. Madoff is a ruthless and unscrupulous man with no conscience or remorse.

Leonard Forrest
Port Saint Lucie, Florida

I have personally been in contact with several victims, most of whom have lost their entire life savings. None of these people had millions of dollars invested. They were, for the most part, humble, hardworking individuals who invested prudently and diligently to provide for their retirement. I am one of those people…. I had never heard of Bernard Madoff prior to his highly publicized arrest on December 11, 2008. And I realized only after receiving Michael Sullivan’s letter on December 20 that my entire life savings had probably been lost. I am 52 years old and once had hopes of retiring with modest means. That possibility has disappeared…. Due to his egregious deeds, Mr. Madoff deserves no better than to live under a bridge in a cardboard box, scavenging for his food and clothing, living the existence which he has undoubtedly relegated some unfortunate victims to.

Robert G. Mick

I recently read a report that Mr. Madoff has hired a jailhouse consultant who is supposed to teach him how to put his best face forward during the sentencing phase. Please be aware that he (or his wife) is using our money, that belonging to the victims, to pay that consultant. This is just one more slap in the face and once again demonstrates total disdain for the victims of his massive fraud.

Michael De Vita
Chalfont, Pennsylvania

We have a 16-year-old daughter. We took her to New York three years ago to meet Bernie Madoff. He had the gall to shake her hand as we thanked him for taking such good care of our money — her college money — and all of our extended family’s money. He robbed us not only of our money, but of our faith in humanity, and in the systems in place that were supposed to protect us. Please remember his victims. Sentence this monster Madoff to the most severe punishment within your abilities. Madoff is a serial criminal.

Randy Baird

We trusted the SEC to protect us, and they failed us. At this point, we really feel like we cannot trust anyone ... I am hoping that the judicial system does not fail us, as well.

Sheila Ennis
Manhattan Beach, California

Twenty-one years ago my husband invested our life savings with Bernard Madoff. He died from a heart attack two weeks later. Shortly after I buried my husband, I met with Bernard Madoff. He appeared to be a genuine, kind man. He put his arm around my shoulder and assured me that my money was safe and I should not worry. I have to admit that I was not sophisticated in investing or finance and I trusted this kindly man ... Look at the faces of the people in the courtroom; they are a small representation of the thousands that he has destroyed. Please keep all of us in your mind when you decide the fate of this heartless human being.

Norma Hill
Armonk, New York

I am opening up my family’s financial status to anyone who wants to see it, which is incredibly humbling and humiliating after years of hard work and major philanthropy. My family’s name can be seen on buildings for the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, the Hebrew Home for the Aged and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem ... Mr. Madoff seems to have done all he could to protect his family, while now I have lost almost everything I have to protect mine ... I had to pretend to smile when my 10-year-old daughter was around, and try not to reveal the fear that I was living with ... What gave him the right to do this to us?! He knows everything. He knows where the money is and who else is involved and is not talking, thus he shows no remorse for what he has done. For this alone, he deserves the maximum sentence. Combine that with how much suffering he has caused his investors, and it’s a slam dunk.

Caren Low
Harrison, New York

Bernard Madoff did not come forward because he felt regret for his actions. He came forward because he knew he could not continue his fraud. He came forward in his own calculating way to keep the damage at a minimum for himself and his family. While he was sitting in his penthouse apartment, waiting for a hearing with his upscale lawyer and his legal team to minimize the prison time, my husband and I had to put our house up for sale, scramble to pay our bills and try not to go bankrupt ... We cannot afford a lawyer to help us.

Florence and Richard Roth
Jupiter, Florida

Not wealthy, I am not the typical media portrayal of a Bernard Madoff victim. I live in a modest two-bedroom house, and I own one car. I was a small business owner and I worked six days a week for most of my life and funded my own IRA in order to retire comfortably. Now I am considered under the poverty level, and I do not think I can last another six months in my home ... The impact of this crime is far-reaching, and Bernard Madoff must be severely punished for a crime of this magnitude. Please take into account that Mr. Madoff stole not only money, but lives, dreams, futures and security.

Angelo Viola
Staten Island, New York

Mr. Madoff has not cooperated with any law enforcement entities to unravel his decades-old crimes. He has not cooperated in identifying other accomplices, and essentially he took the easy way out by pleading guilty, thus avoiding any cross-examination and the thorough investigation of the facts which a trial would have necessitated ... I feel I have been economically raped. Mr. Madoff has not only stolen my money; he has stolen my lifestyle and my family’s lifestyle. I recognize I will never be able to earn what Madoff stole from me, my wife and our children, and we, as a result, are sentenced to living a life devoid of our life savings and the security and comfort that provided to us…. While the popular perception has been that the victims were primarily very wealthy Jews, the reality is that most of the victims were your neighbor next door, hardworking, middle-class, tax-paying citizens. Madoff didn’t discriminate, as long as the money was green; he took it for his own benefit.

Richard Shapiro
Hidden Hills, California

I am 76 years old. I have served my country in the Korean War and have been a good tax-paying citizen. I was recommended to Madoff in 1997. I had two other investment counselors, but Madoff outperformed them every year (or so I thought), and I moved all of my money (it was in an IRA) to Madoff. I am now destitute. We had to sell our home in upstate New York at a very reduced price to avoid foreclosure. We are now living in one room in my daughter’s house in California. I cannot pay my long-term health insurance. I had to give up my car, and we are applying for food stamps. Our lives are a nightmare.

Allan Goldstein
Woodland Hills, California

My husband is 92 and I am 87 years of age, and the distress and misery and anguish his vile acts have caused deserve a severe sentence. If I could, I would charge him with heartbreak, sadness and tears.

Shirley Stone

Patricia Brown
Danbury, Connecticut

I am a widow of 81 years old. My husband and I invested our money for 20 years so we would have a worry-free retirement…. My husband passed away on April 8 after a long battle with cancer. In December, I found out that Madoff stole all of my money — I am broke — robbed by “The Madoff Gang.” Now I find that I was also robbed by my government. My husband and I paid taxes for years, and it is unlikely that I will ever get that back. Not only did Madoff steal money, but he caused the government to steal also…. Madoff victims have been portrayed in the media as wealthy and privileged individuals. Nothing could be further from the truth. Many Madoff victims are elderly individuals or retirees who were saving for the future and had the misfortune to believe in a powerful Wall Street insider who was repeatedly investigated and given a clean bill of health by a government watchdog agency named the SEC.

Emma De Vita
Chalfont, Pennsylvania

Compiled by Alison Cies. Contact her at cies@forward.com

=================

The New York Times
Friday 27 February 2009

Elie Wiesel levels
scorn at Madoff

by Stephanie Strom

What does Elie Wiesel, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Holocaust survivor who has dedicated his life to fighting hatred and intolerance, think about Bernard Madoff?

" 'Psychopath' — it's too nice a word for him," Wiesel said in his first public comments on Madoff and the Ponzi scheme he is accused of perpetrating on thousands of individuals and charities, including the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity.

" 'Sociopath,' 'psychopath,' it means there is a sickness, a pathology. This man knew what he was doing. I would simply call him thief, scoundrel, criminal."

Wiesel's charity lost $15,200,000, and he and his wife, Marion, lost their life savings. "This was a personal tragedy where we discovered all of a sudden what we had done in 40 years — my books, my lectures, everything — was gone," said Wiesel, who shared his story as part of a panel discussion on the Madoff scandal on Thursday.

He said he began investing with Madoff at the suggestion of an old friend whom he declined to name, "just a wealthy man, not in the financial business." Wiesel said, "He too lost $50,000.000."

The Wiesels met Madoff on only two occasions, he said, adding that during one encounter Madoff had tried to persuade Wiesel to abandon his post at Boston University, where he teaches the humanities, philosophy and religion, for a chair at Queens College, alma mater of Madoff's wife, Ruth.

"We must have spoken about ethics," Wiesel said. "Some learn, and some don't."

After seeing how consistently Madoff generated handsome returns buying fairly plain-vanilla securities — "He bought 100 shares of Coca-Cola and sold 500 shares of Pfizer," Wiesel said, describing his understanding of the Madoff strategy — the Wiesels decided to invest their charity's assets with him as well.

"We checked the people who have business with him, and they were among the best minds on Wall Street, the geniuses of finance," Wiesel said. "I am not a genius of finance. I teach philosophy and literature — and so it happened."

Wiesel spoke on a panel at the "21" Club moderated by Joanne Lipman, the editor in chief of Portfolio, the Condé Nast magazine devoted to business and finance.

Another panelist, James Chanos, who specializes in short-selling, or betting that certain stock prices will fall, said Madoff's investors bore some responsibility for not heeding the warning signs.

"Every checklist of responsible behavior on behalf of fiduciaries broke down here: 'we're not going to tell you what we're in,' 'you can't see where we're investing,' the statements weren't clear, the strip-mall accounting firm," Chanos said.

Harvey Pitt, former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, said that Madoff investors were not the only ones hoodwinked in the last several years, that investors in Wall Street firms also tolerated less-than-ideal transparency. "I really do believe that there was criminality at a lot of these firms," Pitt said, citing the different valuations that financial institutions placed on the same financial instruments.

"It's not per se fraudulent to have different values for different purposes, but someone has to look at that and figure out what was going on," he said. "These kinds of things reflect more than happenstance or carelessness; they reflect criminality."

Wiesel said, however, that spotting problems was not easy. "Remember, there was a myth he created around him, that everything was so special, so unique that it had to be secret," he said, adding that his charity's accountants had not identified potential concerns about Madoff.

He said he was amazed at the outpouring of support for his charity in the wake of the scandal. "Unsolicited, hundreds of people, literally, hundreds of people we have never known sent us money through the Internet, $5, $18, $100, one even $1,000," he said.

The Elie Wiesel Foundation will hold a benefit concert on May 26 to raise more money, and Wiesel has a book, "A Mad Desire to Dance," coming out soon.

Asked what punishment he would like to see for Madoff, Wiesel said: "I would like him to be in a solitary cell with only a screen, and on that screen for at least five years of his life, every day and every night, there should be pictures of his victims, one after the other after the other, all the time a voice saying, 'Look what you have done to this old lady, look what you have done to that child, look what you have done,' nothing else."

- 30 -

Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul! / the Chambered Nautilus / Spira Mirabilis, the Logarithmic Spiral

Click image for larger

Logarithmic spiral tiling by Steven Dutch, University of Wisconsin - Green Bay (USA)
Photo of nautilus shell by John Lienhard, University of Houston (Texas USA)
Graph by Wolfram MathWorld

The e in the equation is Euler's constant

e = 2.71828 18284 59045 23536 02874
......71352 66249 77572 47093 69995
......95749 66967 62772 40766 30353
......54759 45713 82178 52516 64274
......27466 39193 20030 59921 81741 ...


Time has not been kind to Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Time is right.

There's not much that he wrote that deserves a ticket to Immortality. He let himself be trapped by every embarrassing cliche and convention of the Worst Moment of English-Language Literature, the 19th century.

Not all his contemporaries ended up in the trap. Holmes' fellow Civil War soldier -- actually a Union Army field medic -- Walt Whitman made of himself a volcano of originality, and singlehandedly prepared American poetry for the far more interesting and important 20th Century. He pioneered tools and perceptions for poets that endure to this day in the best American and English-language poetry. The best English poets are all intimate with Whitman. But nobody needs to feel embarrassed that he or she forgot to read the collected works of Oliver Wendell Holmes.

This is either an exception to his typical long-winded Victorian claptrap, or it isn't. You decide. Or skip it entirely and wait for Vleeptron to post something, anything, more interesting than this poem. Perhaps tomorrow would be a good time to post my new pimento cream-cheese sandwich recipe.

Eugene O'Neil liked one phrase -- maybe the whole poem -- and titled one of his last plays, finally produced posthumously, "More Stately Mansions." It is possible, even through the Victorian claptrap, to like this poem not for its clumsy verbosity, but for its sentiment. A not very great (though, in his day, immensely popular) poet is sincerely yearning for something many would recognize as important, and does the best Victorian job he can to express his yearning.

He wishes to celebrate a simple, pretty marble, and reaches for a garishly colored 12-pound Spalding bowling ball. Simplicity and directness, not to mention brevity, were not centerpieces of Victorian poetry.

The chambered nautilus itself (Nautilus pompilius) is a unique and impressive ocean cephalopod (the same group as octopus and squid). It rises and sinks in the ocean because of its hard-shell air chambers; as it grows larger, it grows new, larger, watertight chambers. The squishy, living, many-tentacled creature lives safely inside the most recent and largest chamber of the remarkable shell.

The shell is nacre, or mother-of-pearl, made from calcium carbonite extracted from seawater.

The illustration above shows the geometric pattern of the chambered nautilus, which mathematicians have noted and admired for centuries. The math alone -- a logarithmic spiral first described by Descartes -- is sweepingly elegant and simple. Jakob Bernoulli called it spira mirabilis, the marvelous spiral.

It grows larger and larger -- but its shape is always the same, chamber after chamber, year after year. An infant nautilus has exactly the same shape as a full-grown nautilus; near Indonesia and the Great Barrier Reef of Australia, shell diameters can reach 268 millimeters = 10.6 inches.

Hawks and flying insects, tropical cyclones, brocolli florets and spiral galaxies also obey the plan of the spira mirabilis.

And yet no marine biologist has ever suggested the chambered nautilus has the slightest realization of what a clever, even wonderful mathematician and physicist it is. Alan Turing spent a lot of time late in his life studying and writing about these built-in, automatic mathematics skills of living things, and how computers might be programmed to mimic this phenomenon. DNA itself has astonishing computational skill and power, used chiefly to correct the tiniest errors in its endless replications. Without this superfast, superpowerful, constant digital computation, our kids would look a lot less like Mom and Dad, if they survived conception, pregnancy and birth at all.

I don't know how tasty Nautilus pompilius is. If it tastes anything like squid or octopus, it might be delicious. If I got my hands on some, I'd start with fresh-ground black pepper, but lightly, not to smother what's probably a very subtle taste.

I have no idea how two chambered nautiluses have sex and reproduce. I don't think Holmes had any idea, either, which is why so much of his poetry found a welcome home in high-school textbooks -- our shrines for Literature Certified to Be 100% Sex-Free. There's a lot less Whitman in high-school textbooks.

~ ~ ~

The Chambered Nautilus

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894)

THIS is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign,
Sails the unshadowed main,—
The venturous bark that flings
On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings
In gulfs enchanted, where the Siren sings,
And coral reefs lie bare,
Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair.

Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl;
Wrecked is the ship of pearl!
And every chambered cell,
Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell,
As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell,
Before thee lies revealed,—
Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed!

Year after year beheld the silent toil
That spread his lustrous coil;
Still, as the spiral grew,
He left the past year's dwelling for the new,
Stole with soft step its shining archway through,
Built up its idle door,
Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more.

Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee,
Child of the wandering sea,
Cast from her lap, forlorn!
From thy dead lips a clearer note is born
Than ever Triton blew from wreathèd horn!
While on mine ear it rings,
Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings:—

Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll!
Leave thy low-vaulted past!
Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea!

text: Yale Book of American Verse (1912)

Leonhard Euler on the front 10 franc CH note / Leonhard Euler's pretty pictures on the obverse

One click makes it larger
And one click makes it small

patfromch said...

Did you know that there is a Hotel Euler in Basel?

[the link to the Hotel Marvin Euler has been removed. See Comments below.]

I am going to walk by on Thursday and will give it a nod. Most guests probably don't even know who Leonard Euler is, that he once used to be on one of our bills or where Königsberg is. They probably just want a soft bed, room service and a wake-up call in the morning.

The heydays of BASIC were before my time, I can only remember trying my hands on a Commodore 64 and later MS-DOS and have forgotten most of it. Bill Gates still claims that he knows BASIC by heart as this video shows:

MS is still developing post-Basic stuff, check this out:

I have decided to go back to school and work for a CompTIA A+ exam, basic skills in programming languages such as Java or SQL may be inevital I fear. Apart from many other things. Oh bloody hell. The introduction lesson will be on said Thursday when I will walk past the Hotel Euler.

And I can't believe I am pulling plugs for MS. Get Ubuntu or even better, get a Mac ! You can still run Windows via Bootcamp or Wine if you really have to

====================

Can you walk in the lobby and see if maybe they got a pretty little free postcard of the hotel? I asked you last year to scout me up some good local hotels -- I think you just found my hotel in Basel.

(I know I owe you some postcards. I got the postcards. I got the stamps. I just haven't put the stamps on the postcards and mailed them yet. I think Freud called this kind of behavior Anal Retentive, it comes from Bad Toilet Training at Age 2 or whenever.)

Okay, I pronounce the above Extinct Banknote a tie with NL's 1000 Guilder Spinoza note.

You should have seen the Gazillion Koroner notes of the Socialist Heroes in Czechoslovakia, they had a nasty-looking Soviet-style soldier holding a Kaloshnikov with the cylindrical ammo magazine. If he had a Speech Balloon, he would be saying: Don't try anything funny, Tovarich.

A Gazillion Koroner would have bought you a cup of coffee in Prague -- if they had any coffee, which was not all the time. Edible food was also a common challenge.

I used to have a flatmate who said that capitalism was by far the best economic system, because only a capitalist economy could produce 14 competing different models of electric guitars. How could Marx possibly have refuted that? I don't think Marx even played the ukulele. (Karl, anyway, I think Groucho plays the ukulele in a couple of movies.)

Anyway, if you want to be a Successful, even a Great Sovereign Nation, you don't put a threatening soldier on your money. You put your country's greatest Philosoph on your money.

Or the world's greatest Mathematician, if he just happens to hang in your Sovereign Nation. You festoon your hard cash with the portraits of your most brilliant Dreamers.

In the little Amsterdam hotel, I asked the front-desk lady to make me a phone call to the Spinoza House because I don't speak any Dutch, and she very nicely made the phone call and found out what I needed to know about visiting Spinoza's little house (he rented the upstairs from a sympathetic surgeon) in Rijnsburg.

Later I was in the bar and she came up to me, she looked a little embarrassed, and said:

"Of course I have heard of Spinoza. But ... just who was he?"

I didn't know the Dutch word "Wijsgeer," but my father had used the word "Philosoph," he pronounced it with a pan-Euro spin, so I told her he was a great Philosoph. She nodded, she understood, she smiled. Danke wel.

The Euro was already in business and had extincted the old Guilder notes. But later I found out why she knew Spinoza's name -- and had even seen his face now and then.

You could probably have bought a used deux chevaux with a Spinoza.

The Euler, on the other hand -- 10 Suisse (old? new?) francs, this was real Straßegelt, 20 of these jumped in and out of your wallet every week. Everybody knew what Leonhard Euler looked like. In Confoederatio Helvetica he was as familiar as Elvis.

Interestingly enough, the Nasty Socialist Hero Soldier with the Kaloshnikov was a symbol of hyperinflation and worthless currency. Nobody in Prague wanted it, they asked for DM or Pound Sterling or U$, anything but the local stuff.

But with Euler and Spinoza -- this is Real Money, you can have a very nice brandy, or a short airplane flight, or a long train trip along the Rhine. I'll bet a Spinoza could have bought you Companionship in Amsterdam for the evening, and you would get change back.

I so terribly miss the Old Money. It was such a pleasant nightmare changing it two or three times a day when you crossed a border, seeing all these new faces, wondering who they were -- not just the Dreamers, but the Queens and Kings, the Revolutionaries who overthrew them, the Statesmen.

Newton made the biggest impression of all. After his nervous breakdown, his friends dragged him out of Cambridge, he bought a house in London, and eventually used his fame and connections to become England's Master of the Mint. He had to supervise a new coinage.

The old silver and gold coins kept shrinking -- people would use scissors to snip around the outsides of the coins. So Newton invented Milling -- the ribbed circumference of coins, so you can tell immediately if it's the original size or has been snipped and shrunk.

A counterfeiter and confidence man accused Newton of corrupting the currency. He probably thought Newton was a silly old Dreamer and no match for the confidence man's clever attacks.

Newton defended his new coins very effectively. When it was all over, he was still Master of the Mint. And the confidence man -- well, counterfeiting and Monkey Business with the national Money is considered High Treason, and the punishment for that was to be Drawn and Quartered. That must have hurt.

In an earlier Vleeptron post I showed the Euro coin found in Spain with Homer Simpson's image on it. This counterfeiter has a lot of talent, but I don't think he has much business sense or much of a future as a counterfeiter.