another night at the Sea End

Came way too close to coming to blows last night with some huge dude named Emo or Amo or Emu. 'Coming to blows' is probably the wrong phrase, seeing as how I've never 'come to blows' with anybody. 'Getting my ass kicked' is probably a more accurate logism. Emu didn't take well to my tone of voice I guess, and at one point we "had a problem". He really was an alright guy, who, I found out later, had to wake up the next morning and "dig a grave" for his uncle. The problem started with a disagreement over some facts. Emu's hat had one safety pin stuck in it. When asked why the safety pin, Emu responded, "To keep me safe". At one point he had four. Each one gone represented a time he'd almost lost his life (here is where the discrepancy lies, because four became seven, and when I reiterated the new figure he accused me of calling him a "bullshitter"). I have no doubt Emu has come close to losing his life several times, probably out on the water. He has also been to prison twelve times and got out only a week ago for a five month stint (we are assuming domestic violence, but not sure). Regardless, the experience was thoroughly unpleasant and had me on edge all night.

"IF GEORGE BUSH spent more time and money on mobilising Weapons of Mass Salvation (WMS) in addition to combating Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), we might actually get somewhere in making this planet a safer and more hospitable home. WMD can kill millions and their spread to dangerous hands needs to be opposed resolutely. WMS, in contrast, are the arsenal of life-saving vaccines, medicines and health interventions, emergency food aid and farming technologies that could avert literally millions of deaths each year in the wars against epidemic disease, drought and famine. Yet while the Bush administration is prepared to spend $100 billion to rid Iraq of WMD, it has been unwilling to spend more than 0.2% of that sum ($200m) this year on the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria."

This is from an old opinion piece printed in The Economist. The author argues for a more ambidextrous foreign policy, which recognizes the power of using negative and positive means to make change. I think he has a good argument, and one which is applicable domestically as well. I happened to see this guy Tony Campolo on George Stephanopolous's show last weekend, an evangelical, who made a similar argument for fighting poverty, but in the context of the much talked about "moral issues", specifically the defense of marriage (ie the attack on homosexuality) and abortion. While remaining typically right-wing in his statements on abortion, he did make a very good point about homosexuality, saying Christ never once addresses homosexuality in the Bible, but does say over and over again that we have to help the poor. Love thy neighbor as thyself. The Bush administration has artfully dodged the bullet on this--shifting the country's focus to these figurehead "moral issues" of homosexuality and abortion, which really pose less of a problem to things like family values than does poverty, both economic and spiritual.

For the whole Economist story, go to
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm?story_id=1403544

dill pops, saturday morning

Cartoon titans, salt & pepper,
race in America plus sugar equals
academics and pro-bono
phonemes making new words or
streetlights a straight-forward sentence,
roots recent, not depth
but a pigeon's trajectory turned
magpie from long hours in cold, clear air.