The Daily Grand and Sundry

“SAO PAULO – About 300 Amazon Indians prevented workers from entering or leaving the construction site of a hydroelectric plant that protesters say is on an ancient burial ground, Brazil’s official news agency said Sunday.

Indians from eight tribes taking part in the protest are demanding compensation for losses caused by construction of the Dardanelos plant in the southern Amazon city of Aripuana, according to Agencia Brasil.

“They want a sustainable program in the region to make up for their losses in this archaeological site,” Brazil’s national Indian bureau coordinator, Antonio Carlos Ferreira Aquino, told the news agency.

The Indians have not resorted to violence since blocking the workers early Sunday, but a plant manager told the government news service that he feared for the workers’ safety.

Manager Paulo Rogerio Novaes said the Indians are seeking access to better living conditions in the region and are trying to attract attention for their demands.

“These are problems the state needs to solve,” he said.”

Zeke will be the nom de guerre of a friend of mine for this blog.

 A few years ago there was a great film, MY DINNER WITH ANDRE. directed by Louis Malle, just two guys sitting around, talking about cabbages and kings, for the whole film.

Inspired by that, every year I have had a Dinner with Zeke, now Zeke and his family. Zeke is a God fearing, gun totting, right wing fanatic, who lives in the High Desert, outside of Mojave.

To get to Mojave, you have to drive Highway 14, WHICH I HATE; it has the slope and the grade of an escalator, an almost vertical drive. Going up is bad, coming down is absolutely terrifying.

I hate going, but I have to go because Zeke and his families are big fans of mine. I have to go. Zeke and one of his families (he has been married four times) treated me like the THORPE ATHELNY family treated PHILLIP in the book, OF HUMAN BONDAGE. They took pity on me when I was involved with  my bitter version of the tawdry heroine,MILDRED.

So I go. But since I abhor the drive, I need a driver. LIBBY (not her real name) volunteers. She is a delightful little liberal girl, currently attending Dartmouth. She is here visiting her filthy rich parents. She is dying to go for she has NEVER met a full blown right wing, gun totting fanatic, let alone gone  to his home. She desires to go down among the heathen; she wants to be a Civil Rights lawyer.

Zeke won’t mind her coming, she is pretty. Zeke has long had an affection for pretty left wing girls.

Libby gets me there in her brand new BMW, though she was a mite nervous when we had to drive down a dirt road, but then again,she is on safari.

Zeke and I met in Mesa, Arizona (more on that in a later blog). Zeke is a Scot, a Highlander Scot…in all those films, like BRAVEHEART, when someone dashes in and says,  “The Highland clans have risen, and are coming down the glens to fight.” well, they are talking about Zeke’s people.

He has his degree from Georgia Tech.

He was and is a bona fide war hero;his favorite person in history is General Stonewall Jackson, for he found a quote one day about Jackson ,”Jackson was a blue eyed Presbyterian killer.” Zeke identifies.

He is a survivalist now, with many, many, many, many many guns, and canned peaches and instant oatmeal.

I have known three of his four wives. The first wife I met was his second, and I liked her a lot; she was a great lady.  He was a fool to cheat on her, but he is a restless soul. He has three of his sons living with him, all three by his current wife. I know of eight children from his marriages. Zeke has been very busy while I was writing.

We both have a keen interest in the American and English and French and Russian and Chinese Civil Wars, and the Paraguyan General Francisco Solano Lopez, who ,as President of Paraguay ,fought a war, at the same time, against Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay. A man after Zeke’s own heart.

The dinner went very fine; Zeke and his family were very courtly to Libby. She looked at them like Jane Goodall  would look at a talking chimp, total amazement. Who knew the gun totting chimp could not only chat but also quote T.S. Eliot? The High Desert is PLANET OF THE APES to Libby.

Zeke and I talked of cabbages and kings.

And Libby, impatient Libby, interrupted.

“What do you  right wingers think of Glenn Beck?”

Subtle.

Zeke answered, “I consider him the Imperial Grand Wizard of the New, GOLD BASED, world order.”

For a moment, Libby believed in Santa Claus. So Zeke disabused her.

“Do you think, I would bring my boys down from the High Desert to fight for Glenn Beck?…In a time, perhaps in a very short time, Mr. Beck will be a line from a T.S. Eliot poem; he will be a wind died down, a sun dropped in the west.” (Zeke writes poetry and paints murals…more on that in a later blog).

Libby, contentious,”How can you be so sure?.”

Zeke replied, “Because to be a real Nazi, you have to be seductive. TOMORROW BELONGS TO ME”

On the drive back down from the High Desert, Libby was very quiet. Surviving a trip to right wing fanatics had silenced her.

“Is TOMORROW BELONGS TO ME a secret right wing code?.”

“No, I will show you when we get home.” 

 We got back to my house about midnight, and she still wanted to find out about TOMORROW BELONGS TO ME. I am yawning and she is as eager as a puppy.

So I explained TOMORROW BELONGS TO ME, and why there is nothing to fear from Glenn Beck.

You can read all the books you want about  Nazis, attend any lecture, go to any museum. You can  watch SCHINDLER’S LIST over and over again. You may then understand what Nazis did, but not who they were.

It takes an artist of great, tormented genius to understand Nazis, and their seductivess.

The film CABARET was Directed by BOB FOSSE, a tormented genius.

It was based on a Broadway play, which was based on a series of short stories by Christopher Isherwood.   Between over lapping love stories, it was about the fall of democratic Weimar Germany into the clutches of the Nazis.

AUGUST 18, 2009

Leaders of California’s $1.6-billion citrus industry said Monday that a disease that was killing orchards worldwide was now rooted in Mexico, and experts warned that it was headed toward the state.

Citrus greening disease has infected six citrus trees on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, spread by an infestation of the Asian citrus psyllid.

There’s a virtual insect highway across the width of Mexico, and once the aphid-like insect hops on, California is in trouble, said Beth Grafton-Cardwell, a UC Riverside entomologist and director of the Lindcove Research and Extension Center, east of Visalia.

Mexico “is infested with the bug and they will gradually move the disease across the country,” Grafton-Cardwell said. “This disease is a citrus grower’s worst nightmare.”

“This is an existential threat. It would put us out of business,” said Jim Churchill, a Pixie tangerine grower in Ojai.

The disease doesn’t affect humans, but it’s lethal to citrus trees. It ruins the taste of fruit and juice before killing the plants, experts said, and there is no known way to rid a region of the pathogen once it has struck.

The disease has killed tens of thousands of acres of trees in Florida and threatens to put the Sunshine State out of the orange juice business, according to the state’s Department of Citrus.

Since its discovery in Florida in 2005, the disease has quickly spread to every citrus-growing county in the state, contributing to the death of about 5% of its trees every year. It has wiped out much of the citrus industries in China, India, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, and has ravaged parts of Brazil.

How long California’s citrus industry has before it too is afflicted by the disease is anybody’s guess, Grafton-Cardwell said. Also called Huanglongbing, or HLB, the disease could take years to reach the state, but it could arrive far sooner if someone helps it along by bringing an infected plant across the border.

Small colonies of psyllids from Tijuana have established themselves in San Diego and Imperial counties. But none of the psyllids trapped in those colonies turned out to be carriers of Huanglongbing disease. It was a lucky break, said Ted Batkin, president of the Citrus Research Board in Visalia.

What inspectors fear is the kind of citrus Armageddon that occurred in Florida, where officials surmised an uninfected psyllid fed on a diseased plant and flew to nearby citrus trees, spreading the disease. Other psyllids fed on the newly infected plants, distributing the pathogen throughout Florida.

An alternative source of infection could come from a psyllid carrying the disease hitchhiking in from overseas and starting the disease in California.

California had an exceptionally close call last month. Only the smart work of Chelsea, a Labrador retriever that sniffs out contraband plant material, kept diseased psyllids from escaping into some of the state’s prime citrus-growing areas.

While working with agricultural inspectors at a FedEx depot in Fresno, Chelsea pointed to a duffel bag that had arrived from India. A plastic bag of curry leaves inside the duffel contained one dead adult psyllid and nine live juvenile insects, or nymphs. Tests subsequently found that nymphs were infected with Huanglongbing.

...Hafner said the duffel bag belonged to an older woman from India who was visiting her daughter in Fresno. The woman’s luggage was lost in transit. The airline found the duffel and was delivering it to the woman at her daughter’s home via FedEx when it was intercepted by Chelsea and the inspectors California caught a lucky break when the traveler got separated from her luggage, Hafner said. The curry leaves might have escaped detection in customs.

“Something like this wouldn’t show up on an X-ray machine,” Hafner said. 

Although California farmers have been able to vanquish various species of fruit flies and phylloxera, an insect that once ravaged the state’s vineyards, the methods used to control previous threats are largely ineffective in stopping the psyllid. The insects are asexual and don’t need to find a mate, so just one infected insect can by itself create whole colonies of disease carriers.

There are no effective parasites or predators to use against the psyllid population. And growing and releasing sterile psyllids — a successful way to control fruit flies — will have no effect because of the bug’s ability to reproduce asexually.

Including various state, industry and federal efforts, about $50 million is earmarked for citrus greening research and containment efforts, officials estimate. Much of the research focuses on developing a disease-resistant tree. Grafton-Cardwell said there had been some progress, but such a tree was still probably years off. That’s why California officials are so focused on setting traps and rooting out any psyllid populations.

“We need to buy time for the scientists,” Grafton-Cardwell said. And for farmers.

“I lie awake at night worrying about this,” said Churchill, the Ojai tangerine farmer. “We have found the disease now in Fresno, and we have the vector, or insect, that carries it already in the state. We are just lucky they haven’t found each other.”

Fresno County Department of Agriculture
Agricultural Detector Dog
– Stephanie LeBarron, Handler & Chelsea

I don’t consider this bumper sticker cute, nor witty, nor hip.

It is racist.

Is Obama an idiot? That does not matter relative to this bumper sticker, Obama is not Kenya’s fault. That is like blaming Germany for Eisenhower, or Ireland for Kennedy, or Northern Ireland for Andrew Jackson(who was born of immigrant parents). Obama is America’s son, pure and simple. We didn’t blame Germany when Eisenhower lied about the U-2; we didn’t blame Ireland after Kennedy screwed up the Bay of Pigs Invasion of Cuba, and we didn’t blame Great Britain for Andrew Jackson betraying the word of the American government to the Cherokee Nation.

Those were America’s sons, as is Obama. Obama’s mother comes from the  Jeannette Rankin(check out Kamala Lopez’ film, A SINGLE WOMAN)/Emma Goldman political tradition. Obama is ours, from his Saul Alinksy training to his Harvard training to his Internet savvy. He is ours.

Now for the idiot part; Obama is certainly not the worst idiot in American history. Who are the worst idiots in America bar none?-   

Confederate Government Enlists Black Soldiers, March 1865

       In March 1865, the Confederate government began actively recruiting and enlisting black soldiers.  In early 1865 Robert E. Lee publicly advocated the enlistment of black troops, and in March the Confederate Congress authorized raising 300,000 new troops “irrespective of color.”  General Ordinance No. 14 stated “no slave will be accepted unless with his own consent and with the approbation of his master by a written instrument conferring the rights of freedmen …” (Official Record, IV, 3, 1161).  Shortly after, one witness recorded that the streets of Richmond were filled with 10,000 Negroes who had been gathered at Camp Lee on the outskirts of Richmond.  Negroes were armed and placed in trenches near Richmond” (Rollins, 1994, p. 26). 

The Confederacy were idiots to believe black soldiers would serve in its Army, longer than it took to be fed and find a way to desert to the Union. You are an idiot if you think slaves will fight and die to remain in slavery. A black soldier serving the Confederacy, now that is an idiot.

President Obama is not the kind of man who would sign up to fight for his MASTERS, therefore he is not an idiot. Case closed.

Kenya is not missing an idiot, Harvard is. The bumper sticker should say, HARVARD IS MISSING AN IDIOT, unfortunately in the Obama Administration,tons of idiots have  gone missing from Harvard.

Anyway this bumper sticker is a disgrace, and wrong on facts, and argument. To paraphrase Tallyrand; “It is worst than a sin, it is a mistake.”

OBAMA 2Q/2009

Obama is a charming, witty guy, very disarming, and very engaging. Great body language.

But there is something off putting in his world view. The current Iran crisis brings his world view into scrutiny. Obama will not forcefully condemn the mullah’s suppression of the young protestors. In his opinion, it is not the “smart” thing to do. Remember Harvard people are supposed to be smart.

Later in his news conference a Latin America reporter asked about the upcoming visits of President of Chile,Michelle Bachelet, and President Alvaro Uribe of Colombia. In response, President Obama gave a professorial discourse on how smart Ms. Bachelet and President Luiz  Inácio Lula da Silva (LULA) are. In his reply he did not mention President Uribe at all.

Now I must digress, and say something about President Lula. He is one of the great men alive today, for he ovecame himself. Born dirt poor,

“Lula did not learn to read until he was ten years old, and quit school after the fourth grade in order to work to help his family. His working life began at age 12 as a shoeshiner and street vendor. By age 14 he got his first formal job in a copper processing factory as a lathe operator.

“At age 19, he lost the little finger on his left hand in an accident while working as a press operator in an automobile parts factory.^“

^{All well and good, but this is the key to Lula, “}In 1969 he married Maria de Lourdes, who died of hepatitis later that year”.

His first true love died the same year they were married; she died of hepatitis; she died because Lula could not get her proper medical attention; she died because he was too poor to afford a doctor; she died because no doctor would treat her without payment.

This is how great Lula is, when he became President, he did not take the time to track down the doctors who refused his wife’s treatment to kill them. I would have. No man has risen farther above bitterness than President Lula.

In his answer, President Obama did not mention President Uribe; I assume he does not like President Uribe.

Uribe is smart also, smart enough to defeat FARC. but Uribe is a right wing smart guy and that does not seem to impress Obama.

All during that answer, Obama stressed smart, smart, smart.

There is the rub, Obama puts smart above the right.

President Obama makes his choices based on what is smart for the country, not what is right. Reagan would have spoken out for the youthful insurgents in Iran, for that is the RIGHT thing to do, maybe not technically smart, but right.

Now, my friends on the political left will tell me that we just had a dumb president(Bush 43) who did the right thing and look what trouble he got us into.

Point taken.

But the point is this, right will always win over smart. The German General Staff will always be defeated even though they are the smartest kids in the room. 

Obama does not understand that;he thinks smart will always win on its own volition; he is wrong.

This is Obama’s governing creed…

<PICK THE RIGHT PEOPLE TO DO THE SMART THING>

I think that will doom him to failure.

BUSH 43 governing creed was this,

<PICK THE RIGHTEOUS PEOPLE TO DO THE RIGHT THING>

That was an exercise in failure.

Reagan had it right.

<PICK THE SMART PEOPLE TO DO THE RIGHT THING>.

What Obama does not understand is that in a world of earthquakes, depressions, revolutions, typhooons, hurricanes,floods,wildfires, Tsuanamis, there is no smart thing to do. Nations only survive by doing the right thing.

Churchill knew it, Reagan knew it and hopefully Obama will learn it.

PRESIDENT LULA OF BRAZIL

It was doing my Hemingway period, first running with the bulls in Pamplona, and then off to the jungles of Ecuador to meet and greet Jivaros.

The Jivaros are an AmerIndian tribe, which practiced head hunting and head shrinking until a very short time ago. They were the tribe frisky about getting their pictures taken, since they believe the camera captured your soul. (Too bad Jon and Kate and Eight did not have a Jivaro counselor).

But Quito has a special appeal to me, in 1949, some  Orson Welles devotees, redid his THE WAR OF THE WORLDS broadcast on Quito radio; the city went berserk, and more than twenty people died in the ensuing panic spearheaded by mobs burning the city before the Martians arrived.  It must have been like Detroit on any given night. Mass hysteria always fascinates me.

 I can’t say the Jivaros are tamed, but my first contact with them were at this big obelisk, which literally marks the equator; they were selling mock shrunken heads to the touristas. I will speak more to my Jivaro experience in a later blog.

QUITO

Quito was a quaint town before globalization, quiet, nestled amid the cozy dead volcanoes. The hot spot was a pool party at the American embassy, where all the Gulf oil engineers and embassy staff would exchange gossip. It must have been a snapshot of  Panama Canal Zone Life  before the Canal was returned to the people we took it from.

Not the only gambling allowed in Quito at the time, was at the Intercontinental Hotel, in a pit. The gambling tables were in a pit, above you, on a circular catwalk were several Uzi carrying guards. User friendly environment.

I had fifty American dollars left, and my return ticket to Los Angeles, so I went to gamble.

I decided to play blackjack, so I joined the table with three men, one a Gulf Oil guy, one Colombian and one dude who looked like he had fallen from a James Bond film, with the LARGEST, BIGGEST, HUMOGEMOUS BLACK ONYX RING  I had ever seen. El Onyx del Negro.

About thirty minutes into the Blackjack experience, I pulled 21 with three cards. My mates congratulated me as I stood pat. The dealer also smiled, and then started dealing his hand. He dealt seven cards to himself, SEVEN CARDS, and got to 21, by dealing seven cards to himself.

I have never felt so cheated in all my life. I felt my temper rising, as did my mates. The EL ONYX del Negro leaned over, and whispered into my ear.

“Yes, my friend, you have been cheated, but before you do anything look up at the catwalk.”

I looked up at the catwalk and all three guards were grinning down on me with their Uzis.

Being from Brooklyn, I understood the odds, and folded.

Alone, broke, and depressed, I nursed a drink at the hotel bar when EL ONX del Negro came up to me.

“Let me buy you a drink, so you leave Quito pleased.”

So he bought be a drink, and a drink, and a drink, and a drink, and a drink. We were in our cups, please note and Quito is over 8500 feet up.

“Leaving for America?”

“Yes, in about five hours.”

“Too bad, you should come to my estancia and meet Prudence, she is also American, but a stupid one.”

“How so?”

“She is a person without fear, you should always have fear. She was hitchhiking the Pan American highway ALONE, I stopped  to give her a ride, and she is very pretty, so I took her to my estancia and kept her.”

“Kept her?”

 “Yes.”

“We call that  kidnapping.”

“ My friend, would you go into a bear’s den covered in honey?”

“No.”

“See you are not stupid, a pretty girl should not be hitchhiking the Pan American Highway alone, this is very dangerous country.”

“Didn’t people miss her?”

“No, I cabled her parents that she died crossing a river, and the river took her body far away so we could not find it. But who knows she might come up later, we are still looking for her…the parents believed me for she is very headstrong.”

“How long have you had her?”.

“Two months, I am leaving for Brazil tomorrow.You won’t be back to Ecuador will you?”

“No.”

“Good, don’t come back to Ecuador, for I will find out if you are in Ecuador.”

We chatted a little longer, he constantly telling me I should never return to Ecuador, all the while dispersing tidbits about the location of his estancia.

Then he left. The Man with The Black Onyx Ring.

I went to my room, packed what I had left. (I usually take old clothes to foreign countries; when they get dirty, I just leave them). 

At the Quito Airport, I called the American Embassy and without giving my name, informed them of Prudence’s plight, with all the information I knew about her location.

That done,  I got on the AVIANCA flight to Bogota.  To this day, I don’t know whether his tale was real or not, whether Prudence was real or not. What I do know is that when a man wearing a giant black onyx ring tells you, don’t come back to Ecuador, you don’t. I have never been back to Ecuador.

JIVARO handiwork

MARKING THE EQUATOR in EQUADOR