R.P. Barr

Bringing Mumbai home

In Mumbai a few years ago--while it was still called Bombay--I visited the Taj Mahal Hotel.  (We were staying at the more modern Leela Kempinski.) There was no gunfire then.  The place was as hushed as a museum with an atmosphere of bygone elegance.  It was the weekend, and I wasn’t working.  Dressed as casual as any American tourist, I felt quite out of place.  Someone, perhaps our driver, had told us about the history of the place, that it was built to offer equal luxury to Indians at a time when they were shut out of British hotels.  I believe that one of the ideas behind our entering the quiet lobby and polished hardwood and marble pathways of this institution was to find something cold to drink.  My colleagues and I were not dressed for the surroundings, and quietly left.

Across the street we watched the small boats in the harbor, never suspecting that one day a similar boat might carry a team of terrorists to attack the venerable structure behind us.

As I stood at the low, concrete wall of the waterside observation area, a short, white-haired man asked if I wanted to take his photograph.  I ignored him, since that is the preferred way to deal with the numerous beggars in that country.  He sat down on the sidewalk at my feet while I took a photo of the harbor.  A friend called me to look down and I saw that the man had opened a basket just a few inches from my leg from which a cobra was raising its head to see the possibilities.

The wizened entrepreneur had gotten my attention.  I had to admire his enterprise, so I took his photo with the snake, and gave him some rupees.  That was as dangerous as the neighborhood got in those days.

We also visited Victoria Terminus, the central railway station—which was a target of the terrorists as well.  There was a sign prohibiting photography inside.  That pained me, because it was such a photogenic site—ornate architecture and colorful with all the swarming passengers carrying bundles and bags and whatnot.  In the foyer, as we were working our way back outside, I looked up to see a gorgeous, elaborately decorated ceiling.  Well, I thought, I can understand the security aspects of resitricting photos of the traveling area, but surely no-one would mind if I shot this ceiling.  As I lifted my camera, a security guard in the corner caught my eye and wagged his finger at me.  Glancing over my shoulder, I saw a second guard a few steps away.  This was a chunky man in a white shirt with a lathi (long wooden baton) protruding above his head as he held it behind his back.  I have always said that I can take a hint without being beaten over the head, and in Victoria Terminus, I had the chance to prove it.

Sad to say, I don’t think the lathi was much deterrent against automatic weapons.

As a sign of the times, I believe there are more countries without functioning governments than any time since the Second World War.  Unlike the wave of independence movements that marked the last half of the 20^th century, we now see campaigns for anarchy and chaos as criminal gangs and ethnic demagogues seek to tear down all official authority.

The current crunch is going to exacerbate this tendency.  Piracy is already up.  The news commentators speculate on whether assaults, such as the ones in Mumbai, could happen in the U.S.  The “experts” site our border controls and the lack of foreign sympathizer networks within our country.

What they don’t mention is the rocketing rate of unemployment and home foreclosures.  There seems to be an uptick in hate crimes as well.  All it takes is a little organization and the rising tide of anger could bring about our own insurrection movements.

Obama promised hope and change.  When he gets in office, he will find that both are harder than he expected, and will take longer to achieve.  Meanwhile, this is a nation of people who expect a happy ending before the next commercial break.

I’m not making a prediction here, only posing the possiblity that the U.S. could be in for a ride as rough as that being experienced in the rest of the world.  

Hush Little Baby

A day or two before the election, there was a political conversation in my office.  I didn’t take part, but only listened as one of the participants asked the other why he was not going to vote for Obama.  He explained that his young daughter had been born with a disability, but every morning she  gives him a hug and says that she loves him.  That’s why he is against Obama.

 If I had had the time for an argument, I would have pointed out that his daughter was born while abortion was legal, and nobody anywhere is suggesting that it be made mandatory or retroactive.

Abortion used to be illegal.  The law was not changed because people wanted to kill babies.  It was changed because Christian conservatives used unwed pregnancy and out-of-wedlock children as symbols of sin and social disgrace.  Pregnant teenagers were expelled from school.  Daughters were turned out of their homes.  Women were fired from their jobs.  Of course women sought abortions since the alternative was social ostracism and economic ruin.

Now the pro-life crowd says that children are gifts from God, but still oppose using public funds to provide a level playing field for single parents.  Babies are still a punishment, although not quite the stigma they were in my youth.

 Personally, I do not believe that life begins at conception.  It began millions of years ago and is passed like a torch from generation to generation.  Therefore, I do not favor abortion.  That is not to say that I think it should be made legal.  The law is more complicated than morality.

If the fetus is not a person, then abortion is only a medical procedure.  If abortion is only a medical procedure, then it cannot be banned unless it is unsafe.   If the fetus has only partial status as a human being, that opens a door that we are trying to keep shut.  Slavery, bigotry, ethnic cleansing and genocide were justified on the basis that some people are less human than others.  A being is either human with no qualifications or is not human at all.  If you look at the recent laws regarding the rights of animals and even plants (in New Zealand, at least), then you can see how hard it is to argue for a fetus to have no rights. 

 If the fetus is a human being under the law, then its destruction must be characterized as murder, manslaughter, accident, or self-defence (suicide being absurd).  An abortion for any reason other than to save the life of the mother must be either murder or manslaughter.  If that is the case, then the killer and the person who hired the killer are equally guilty.  All accessories would also have to be charged.

 That scenario of sentencing a doctor, his patient, the clinical staff and any complicit family members to prison is not going to happen.  But, if criminal charges are brought against anyone at all, then the argument of treating this as less than a “real” homicide will get the law thrown out.

So, let’s leave the law alone and work at using available technology to prevent unwanted pregnancies in the first place.  Education for both boys and girls will reduce pregnancies.  I’m talking all forms of education: the basics to provide employability, artistic to provide better means of expression, and sexual to give young people the tools to make wise choices.

 The practice of passing laws against objectionable behavior is often lazy, cowardly and ineffective.  If any cause means that much to you,  then spend some time,  money and effort into changing what people want to do.  Rearrange societal rewards and penalties.  Nothing worthwhile comes easy.

 

Ruslana’s murder—the case is not yet over

When 20-year-old supermodel Ruslana Korshunova died in the middle of Water Street in Manhatten, the police ignored the improbability of the facts and rushed to a verdict of suicide.

 Among many others, her mother did not believe that her daughter took her own life.  She sought to have the case re-opened.  To do that she needed to raise money.  Someone she met or knew offered to set up a web site: http://www.ruslanamemorialfund.org/  It is a beautiful site, but apparently that is the only memorial funded by contributions.  The site’s operator has become unavailable to Valentina Korshunova and has provided no accounting for the donations raised.

 The question is whether the site operator is simply a thief, trying to enrich himself on someone else’s tragedy, or is he part of a larger conspiracy to prevent Ms. Korshunova from seeking justice.

 I have corresponded with several people who read my blog and have an interest in the case.  Some of that email correspondence was hacked.   I would write something to one person and the next day a stranger would ask me a question about what I had discussed.

 There are other indicators that someone with resources is trying to obstruct the pursuit of this crime, but I will withhold them for now.  It is enough to say that nothing is finished until it is justly finished.

Flashback--The War to End All Wars

Someone in the high command liked the alliteration and the chance to create a symbol, so they delayed the official cease fire for half a day in order to sign the surrender on the 11^th day of the 11^th month at 11:00.  Several hundred soldiers died in the interim—making it a more appropriate symbol for the war then the commanders had intended.

The generals still employed 19^th Century tactics while the troops applied machine guns for the first time, submarines, airplanes, tanks, poison gas, telephones, steel helmets, and cannon that could fire exploding shells from 60 miles away.

 Mata Hari was less a spy than a scapegoat for generals who couldn’t plan victories or explain losses. 

Young men fell in Africa, Arabia and across Europe.

 Considering all that, the U.S. military body count was relatively light at a little more than a hundred thousand.  Romania lost more than twice that many.  So did Serbia.  Of the 10 million civilian deaths, 767 were Americans.  The British, the Germans, the French, the Austro-Hungarians, and the Russians, along with some lesser lights, suffered 9 and a half million military deaths.

 I only met one former doughboy.  He had trouble receiving his VA checks while I worked for the agency and we spoke on the telephone regularly.  He told me once how he attacked a German machine gun nest.  On another occasion, he confessed that he had never been in combat.  He received his disability while marching over a bridge.  Allied cannon beneath the bridge began firing and he suffered a hearing loss.  One of the stories was probably true, maybe both.

 For about two years, he called every month complaining that he had not received his check.  He was convinced that someone was stealing them.  The checks were never cashed, however.  I dutifully traced each one, cancelled it, and requested a re-issue.  I notified the postal inspector.  Reporting the checks was not easy for this old vet. 

In those days Tourette syndrome was not widely known.  I had never heard of it.  What I knew was that veterans councelors did not have to listen to abuse.  No-one calls the government because they are happy with the service, but we drew the line at personal abuse.  When the old man’s polite conversation suddenly burst into profanity--  Click.  I would hang up.  So would anybody else in the phone battery who happened to take his call.  Then, he would call back begging for me not to hang up again.  Without missing a beat, his voice would turn gravelly and he would be off again.  Click.  I feel bad about it now, but at the time I felt that he was setting me up each time for an obscene tirade.

 Maybe he suffered more than a hearing loss in the war.  Maybe he didn’t want to talk about a head injury that caused his Tourettes.  Whatever it was, more than 70 years had passed and the war was not over for him.

 The last time we spoke, he was calling to say that his landlord had grown tired of his complaints about the checks, and came into the apartment to talk to the vet and his wife about what they did with the mail.  The wife explained that she always put the important things, like the checks, on the mantle.  The landlord found that there was a gap between the mantle and the wall above the fireplace.  He pulled the mantle face away and found all the missing checks, along with some other mail.  The old vet apologized over the phone, and thanked me for all my help.

 Another twenty years have passed and the boys of 1918 have all passed on.  The World War II vets are dwindling to a precious few.  The Vietnam vets are feeling the weight of age pressing on their old wounds.  The wars are never over.  The limbs don't grow back, the ringing in the ears continues, the minds don't heal. 

No-one should be commander-in-chief unless he’s spent time talking to the disabled vets of wars long past.