Rwanda, Something, Some Place to Remember:

This is a photograph of the former general of the Rwanda Peoples Front (RPF) and incombent president of Rwanda. He is the first democratically elected president of the country since the 1994 genocide that is said to have killed as many as 1,000,000 people. I have been reading the book "Shaking Hands With The Devil" by Romeo Dallaire who was the United Nations' commanding General of their mission to Rwanda just prior to and during the genocidal period, which lasted one hundred days. This was perhaps the sixth or seventh major genocide of the 20th Century; Armenians, Jews, Cambodians, and Rwandans are the big four. Genocide has been there on smaller scales though that have been just as hideous but have not gotten the press. There are thought to have been two million Christians killed in China after 1949 when the Communists took over. There are the Native Americans, Kosovars, Poles, Gypsies, and more who have been slaughtered. The reason always comes down to a simple, "We just don't want to deal with people who are different from us." Now we are facing what the world considers the latest genocide which is happening in Darfur. Again, the world watches and waits. Governments wring their hands, leaders punt the problem to over leaders, and during this time thousands, millions parish in the most brutal of fashions. While I live my life and have never been denied a cheeseburger at McDonalds other people have fought for and lost their lives slaughtered like so many cattle. What is wrong with this picture? What is wrong with me?

Wall Street Redux: July 20, 2007

The following is a reprint of a short essay I wrote about the stock market at the time it hit one of its all time highs. The level it hit which stimulated this article may still be the all time record high, I am not sure. It had gone over 14,000 for the first time in the history of the stock exchange. Everyone was quite excited. I was not of the same mind set. That may be attributed to not owning much stock, if any. It could also be attributed to personal lack of skill and an overt sense of the evil of serving two masters. I have come to enjoy blogging. Blogging makes it so easy for one to look back and "see" what one was thinking. Perhaps you guys will find this interesting. The bubble popped, but it took a year for that to happen big time. When it did happen it was more explosive than anyone could have imagined.



The rich remain rich and prosper more. The poor remain poor, not poorer, just flat poor. The stocks are hot potatoes. They get warm, warmer, exciting, then too hot. As they begin to glow white from their heat (perhaps we are almost there) those who are best at the game drop them on those less expert. The great players remain__rich, and the others, well, they oft times get burned. Wages go down. Hopes for an early retirement gone, back most of us go to reality...creating our own livings with our hands, minds, and mostly time. Seems the money ends up in the same pockets and never really ends up changing the lives of those who are of lesser means. Yachts get bigger, hotels rise higher, Airbus builds ever bigger planes, Boeing ever faster, more efficient ones. More ways of taking others money are invented either by Madison or Pennsylvania Avenues. The control stays in the circle...the circle of the rich and the educated. I can not get too excited about the market...we celebrate ourselves, we don't help others. We celebrate the bigger house, the blacker BMW, the awesome HD wide screen in our entertainment rooms. But, real never seems to change much. When the bubble (illusion) bursts we cry for ourselves. I don't play, perhaps I am a fool, perhaps I am not smart enough, perhaps I know my limits, perhaps I've watched the system enough to know better. I have to keep reminding myself to not store up my treasures where moth and rust destroy. There are few things more rusty and moth eaten, less trust worthy, than our stock markets. Still, I guess I'll vote Republican again. I always have...somethings never change (maybe). But, I keep thinking...one can't eat carbon fibre or drink ethanol for breakfast. And, silicone chips go lousy with Easy Cheese.

Thinking About The Election

I am fifty-six years old. I have voted in every presidential election since I was first age qualified in 1970. My first vote was in 1972 when President Richard M. Nixon was challenged by George S. McGovern. Mr. Nixon won that election, giving him his opportunity for a second term, in what is considered one of the great landslides in presidential politics. Mr. Nixon won in excess of sixty percent of the popular vote and the Electoral College vote was a walk over. Two years later Mr. Nixon would resign in disgrace over what was known as the Watergate Scandal. Republican Party operatives were guilty of invading the Democratic National Committee's Washington, D.C. offices in the Watergate Office Complex. The thieves were arrested and in the following investigation it became known that the robbery was instigated at the "highest levels" of government, meaning the White House, its staff, even the President. Mr. Nixon worked hard to cover up the connection and it was this cover up that caused him to be faced with impeachment and removal. Seeing the hand writing on the wall Mr. Nixon resigned leaving the Presidency to Mr. Gerald Ford who all believed (and it turned out rightly so) to be the antithesis of Mr. Nixon. Mr. Ford was a good and honest man. At the time I voted for Mr. Nixon. I confess that at the ripe age of twenty I didn't give it much thought. Democratic Presidents had led us into war and Mr. Nixon promised to get us out...with honor. My parents tended to see things from the Republican point of view. Mr. Nixon also canceled the draft. I had a low number, was likely to be called up, and then "poof" the draft was over. I went back to college, a long story that I will not bother you with. Looking back I see my apologetic for my vote as being intellectually simplistic and obviously self serving.

I have voted in each subsequent election whether it be a local or national one. I have been both pleased and disappointed with the outcomes of those elections. I have also thought much more deeply about those elections, much more than I did the one in 1972. I did not know at the time that Mr. McGovern had been a bomber pilot flying out of Fogia, Italy during World War II at the same time that my father had been. My dad flew B-17's and Mr. McGovern flew B-24's. There were tens of thousands of soldiers there and I have reason to believe they never met. Both did receive the same decoration, the Distinguished Flying Cross. They were true heroes of equal stature. My father was a very sober thinking man regarding war. He never bragged about it, didn't talk much about it, and when he did speak about what he and his fellow soldiers did he never spoke without mentioning that he had the utmost concern and despaired for the people "on the ground" who were at the receiving end of his crew's bombs. Mr. McGovern spoke in a biography of his war years about how terribly concerned he was about two bombs that got stuck in his bomb bay which wrongly released and hit a barn in a farmer's field near the family house. For years Mr. McGovern lost sleep over the possibility that his mission had ended in the death of innocent people on that beautiful farm. The bombs were intended for military targets like rail yards and weapons factories. Years later he found that small farm, spoke to an eye witness, and was told that his bombs had killed no one. Mr. McGovern speaks of the immense relief he experienced nearly fifty years after the event. In 1972 Mr. McGovern was considered the "Peace Candidate." He spoke frequently of the collective guilt that we Americans had regarding the death and destruction going on in Indo China.

Apparently we Americans, at least most of us voting Americans, didn't want to hear that. Mr. Nixon ended up expanding the war into Laos and Cambodia, brought death and destruction to hundreds of thousands of innocent country folks (farmers) while carpet bombing jungles and villages. Mr. Nixon actually lead the United States to drop more tons of explosives on Vietnam that it did in Europe during World War II. Go figure. Victory with honor. And...when all the fire, smoke, and dust settled the North Vietnamese Communist Government was victorious. America came home with a strong sense of defeat and, to some, great shame.

Years later our veterans are most likely not able to find someone in Vietnam who can assuage their emotional pain. B-52's, F4 Fantoms, F105 Thunder Chiefs, F100 Super Sabres, and A6 Avengers each dropped four to fifty times as much high explosives as could a B-17 Flying Fortress or B-24 Liberator. Hit or miss those bombs killed somebody somewhere on the ground. No one escaped. Little wonder some Vietnam veterans suffer deep and debilitating emotional pain more than thirty years later. There is no one in Vietnam who could say to them, "Oh, we are all right. You missed us."

At fifty-six I face another presidential election. This is the most difficult vote that I have ever had to cast. I have never been so conflicted. At the same time I have never been so well informed. Thinking can be dangerous, boys. Guns or butter, war or agriculture (peace), conflicting economic philosophies, racial injustice, sexism, health or aging, experience or youth, divergent views of what it means to be patriotic, to abort or not to abort, confusion about the President's "pay grade", to grow government or to shrink it, to support my interests or to let them sublimate to the needs of others, to be young at heart or wise in middle age. These are the things that I am thinking so hard about. What should I do? The pain of not knowing is excruciating in a very real sense. Will my vote make a difference? Has it ever? I truthfully am not sure. I encourage you guys to think hard about life, your soul, your family, your nation, the world. I am asking you to accept pain. I think you and I need to suffer through election times. Soon, and even now, some of you will be asked to blacken in a dot, punch out a chad, or pull a lever. When you do, and I hope you will take this responsibility seriously, make sure you have suffered long and hard before you decide and cast to the future you heart's desire, your vote. And when you do, win or lose, don't brag or cry. Pray and work hard for righteousness. Live by Faith in God our Father.