This scares me a hell of a lot more than anti-gov psychos, Al Qaeda or any other country, for that matter.

Gates also predicted North Korea will have a nuclear missile that directly threatens the U.S. within five years.

Sweet.

The calm before the storm (written before, posted after)

Was looking out the kitchen window just now, and outside saw one of the kids across the way, looking through a bag for something. What Xmas goodies would be hiding outside in below-freezing weather, I'm not sure, but I was convinced it must be just that, something holiday related --what else would he be doing this afternoon? From this distance I couldn't make out what he finally grabbed, but perhaps it was only a soda or sweet-treat (hey, they have their laundry and dryer outside, why not save on refrigerator space?). Still most likely what he and his family, like a lot, if not most, people on this block, in this city, across the country, and many other parts of the world, are doing right now--celebrating Xmas.

Leaving aside the meaning, practice, and politics of the holiday itself for the moment, it shares with other such days or events a reflected ubiquity: part of what makes occasions like these transcend the norm is some kind of self-identification with a prevailing tide. Of course, this is just an extremely amplified quotidian condition. (You might say that in a city, especially like NY, this everyday experience is generally more amplified than the rest of the world. Riding the subway at certain times of certain days allows quite a bit of certainty about where people are going or what they're doing--going home, "out," to work, to school, to a game, or, especially this time of year, shopping--and a bond can be formed around it. But, then again, NY, as much as or more than any other place, has such a diversity of peoples and cultures, that at any given time there are more divergent streams of human activity to temper whatever calendrical monolith might be at hand--disasters, natural and otherwise notwithstanding. Indeed, this is one of the many things I love about NY. So it is true, at this moment, that any place outside the city in any direction has a probably greater homogeneity of holiday than does my charming Bushwick block. That said...)

(disclaimer: no he doesn't)

This above-average unanimity can be both beautiful and terrifying. Most migratory birds having already fled south, their stationary brethren remain: pigeons still share the fluid simplicity of their group-think flight, even in the most casual and daring aerial acrobatics, that we, begrudgingly perhaps, admire from our earth-bound in(if you consider that we on the ground move as individuals more easily)dependence, and are left with our self-identities intact. If hesitant with appreciation, perhaps it's only the formality of their movement that can't help remind us of the lock-step of jack-boots, from the twentieth century and of today. Although China's displays of mass-maneuvering now titillate for those with Olympic fervor, their neighbors to the east prepare for thermonuclear Armageddon with similarly militaristic moves, and dressed not too dissimilar to boot.

NY in a way gets a special dispensation for being especially Xmas-y, despite our low-density celebration, and yet not in spite of but for our dour and multicultural norm--everybody's rooting for us (of course, Hollywood and literature haven't hurt). In a similar fashion, the city has now become sacred ground for those who, before almost a decade ago, would've have rejoiced if Manhattan ever wound up underwater (ironically, if puzzlingly, many of the newly devout still would). The same could be said though of most I've known, including those who were there, who now morn the loss of the towers, despite their own unique aesthetic and economic villainy they maintained while standing.

For all my resident lonely-Jew-on-Xmas status, I've had a handful/fair share of uniform Christmastime. But, today, like many, I'm the outsider looking in. Only, and here's why it's actually really hard to ever be completely alone--no matter the feeling or lack of corporal or even digital proof--there are plenty of other people similarly, for want of or for wont, passing the day like any other Saturday and yet are singularly aware of narrow focus of so many around, if for no other reason than it's a little more quiet around than usual. But, like in front of some window display, standing in the cold, there is a warmth, actually and emotionally, to be felt in a group.

What a Dick & Bogart's North Korean Blowout

I recently watched the infamous Nixon interview (Is it redundant to call something Nixon infamous?). Not the movie of the play based on the interview, but the original.

There’s no way Nixon could be a politician now. His speech, mannerisms, and sweaty odd-looking face would be enough to make people not vote for him—besides the crap that comes out of his mouth, not limited to the stuff Hitchens writes below.

I’ve heard it plenty before that even in his first loss to Kennedy in ‘60 was due to the discrepancy in their TV images, that Jack knew how to work it and Dick didn’t. But supposedly that must have been countered by the time he won two in a row. Whatever coaching they did, wouldn’t be enough today. The sweating thing especially: in old movies I’ve seen, there are these incredibly sweaty guys, sometimes the main character—think Carl Malden or Gene Hackman. Unless they’re in the jungle or playing sports (or having sex) stars don’t sweat, not naturally and thus uncontrolled. But just that face, too. That shit is old school.

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Hitchens on Richard Nixon from his column at Slate.com:

The impressive thing is that even in the smallest details, the obsessive nastiness and criminality of the bigger picture is further delineated. The foulness of Nixon's mind was not "compartmentalized" between one issue and another. For example, like most "family values" Republicans, he was distressed by the Supreme Court's finding in Roe v. Wade. But, like almost anybody, he could imagine an exception where abortion might be excusable or even desirable. "There are times when an abortion is necessary. I know that. When you have a black and a white. Or a rape." The association of ideas between the first mental picture and the second one is so clear as to be—if it were not so hideous—pathetically laughable in an individual, and really quite alarming in a president of the United States.

As so often, his remarks about black Americans are crude and often sexual, while his innuendoes about his Jewish fellow citizens are more sinister. And, as ever, the worst interludes of anti-Semitism occur when Nixon is chatting to his friend Billy Graham. This time—February 1973—the two cronies are discussing Jewish opposition to the evangelical Campus Crusade movement. What the Jews don't seem to get, observes Nixon, is that they bring dislike on themselves. Why, just look at the record—disliked in Spain, disliked even in Germany. It could be America next. "What I really think is deep down in this country, there is a lot of anti-Semitism, and all this is going to do is stir it up." To this aperçu (incidentally suggesting that anti-Semitism "in this country" is not located all that "deep down," since it's being vented in the Oval Office), he adds, "It may be they have a death wish. You know that's been the problem with our Jewish friends for centuries."

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Here's my impression and paraphrasing of Hitchens at a talk/interview he gave recently. I found the video at this pretty cool site: FORA.tv (thanks Allan).

(I know this poster is Chinese, but as close as I can get. Relax.)

Attempting, what he thinks an impossible task, to describe what life is like inside contemporary North Korea, Christopher Hitchens, after already likening the nation to that of George Orwell’s 1984, draws one contrast. While there is no mention of religion in the book, the state having taken the place of all things, the purported irreligious communistic country, North Korea, is, rather, similar to a particular western faith: Christianity. The president, the country’s founder, and his son, the current leader of the commi-esque party and the military, not president, are fused into one identity. Only, the president has been dead fifteen years. Hitchens quips, “It’s only one short of a trinity.”

Apparently, he's almost here. Won't that be a lot of fun. Actually, though, I feel better now that I know, like most heirs apparent of even anti-western countries, he was educated in liberal European schools. Sure, know your enemy. But now matter how careful and restrictive, they will encounter more people and things that counter the homegrown isolationist tendency.



Just look at what Europe did to Bogey.