A FEW THINGS TO THINK ABOUT

I have a couple of things that I need to focus on in my private life, so to those few who do wonder why I am so uncharacteristically quiet, this would be the reason. I have, of course, noticed the revelations about Mr. Suleiman in Egypt and wish I could write something meaningful about it, other than America still hasn't learned anything, but there is so much information out the, pieced together by so many people, that I would not have anything insightful to say that hasn't been stated by them.

I also have noticed the whole pomp and circumstance in the media world about the threat by WikiLeaks to take the Guardian to court for libel.

At some point I think I shall have to sit down my former colleagues in the mainstream media and take a big book, preferably a leatherbound one, and beat some actual knowledge into their so obviously vacuum-cleaned heads. And explain the difference between libel and embarrassing somebody by revealing hitherto unknown facts. Libel is a legal measure designed to help stop the spreading of factually incorrect information, lies or incomplete information, the publication of which is designed to hurt somebody's reputation. It has nothing to do with transparency or the free flow of information, which incidentally should mean the free flow of factual information.

Considering that the Guardian has verifiably lied, so has the New York Times, I would shut up quite quickly before somebody like me starts to completely dissect each of the different accounts and point out the holes in them, not to mention the big whopping lies of Mr. Bill Keller of the Times, as in the Guardian got the cable datain October, right, Bill? Because they had that data in the second week of August, according to their own misrememberings. And yes, I know that is not a word, but what the hell, I'll use it anyway. Mr. David Leigh of the Guardian was looking at them during his vacation in August. Ooops. Lie Number One. Question is only, did the Guardian lie to you back then, Mr. Keller? Or are you lying now? You really don't want somebody to take apart your ridiculous little article, for while it may take me two or three days, even a perfunctory glance at it shows at best shoddy journalism, at worst a willingness to spin the truth in ways that would Peter Mendelsohn get a boner of Downing Street-like proportions.

But content analysis has never been the strong suit of media pundits, and never will be. Why? Because it takes time and effort, and pundits all like to hear themselves talk.

As for libel, gosh, the media would never do such a thing, right? I mean, make up stuff? Us? Why, we never! Ask Kate Winslet, then, who won her libel suit in 2009 against the Daily Mail. Ask the many celebrities (other than Gwyneth Platrow, she may give you some kind of "I am sooooo poor" crap) how many times they had to deal with libelous "journalistic pieces". And how many times they have won their court cases.

Ask why every article focuses on Assange, despite the fact that other people on the WikiLeaks side were involved. They get a mention. Once. As if they weren't even there. As if they didn't say anything in meetings like the ones described by the Guardian and the Times and Spiegel and Vanity Fair.

Ask yourself that. In this week. On this day. And on any other day. Why. And who benefits. Who benefits by making Assange the story? Is it him? I mean, really? No, it isn't. The guy couldn't keep his zipper straight and faces the possibility of a trial (not yet, though). No, the media idiots did what they always do. They turned a politically relevant story into a three-ring circus. Because they think that you - the reader - is more interested in whether Assange had shaven or how he smelled instead of truly important information, the kind WikiLeaks relased on its own during the days of the Egypt protests. Information that shows close links between Egypt's current No. 2, Omar Suleiman, with the CIA. Cables that name Suleiman the point man for the CIA's torture program. Cables that make you wonder why the hell exactly Hillary Clinton can claim that he is the right man for Egyptian change. What, Hilalry? Because he is already your bitch?

And then ask yourselves why none of the aforementioned big media outlets, not the NYT, not the Guardian and not the Spiegel were capable or willing to publish this kind of information... in November. They had all the cables. Were they not looking for relevant stuff? And by relevant I mean things that would show criminal behaviour by governments?

No. No, they weren't. They were interested in gossip. Because that is all they are good for now. Beltway or Berlin gossip. Gosh, Germany's Guido Westerwelle is a loudmouth and a moron? Oh, why I never! There were unflattering reports on Putin? Give it to me now!

Ask yourself. What was important to them.

And you will find that the "professionals" in this scenario were not working for the media.

EGYPT'S COLOUR OF CHANGE

When I listen in, every now and then, on the Western news, there's always that rumble. There is always that tremble, the dark threat in the voices of those "experts" who for years have backed Mubarak, not in person but in spirit, spitting their venom in political shows in my country and so many others.

And they are warning again. They are threatening again. If this comes to pass, this Egyptian (r)evolution, just you wait! There will be a theocratical regime in power in no time! There will be stonings! And women will be subjugated! And in beekeper suits! 

Even the most "liberal" of American commentators and comedians (not you, Jon Stewart, you may go home) like Bill Maher are fueling the distrust, the mistrust against those who are protesting, for every revolution that we are not controlling must be one that turns against us.

It is a notion that some want us to believe.

And Bill Maher and others have wholeheartedly bought into, interrupting an Egyptian journalist with "facts", and by "facts" I mean a "poll". Dear Mr. Maher, a poll is not a fact. A fact is verifiable. A fact is a singular moment in time that doesn't change even as others attempt to re-interpret it.

That is a fact.

A poll is just something that is put together by people, usually hired, and its outcome can be changed, altered and manipulated. It means nothing, but is often, if not most of the time used as a weapon of choice in a debate, like quotes are. See? See? A poll states what I believe! See? It is a fact!

No. No, it isn't, you stupid, little school girl. Oh, I am sorry, Bill. Am I using your own material against you? Good! Because you have become a prime example of the notion that too much weed can indeed affect your ability to think. Or maybe you were always a hypocrite.

Maher has done this before. When arguing for health care reform (which I believe in), he used a poll to support his claim that "most Americans want what I want, see?" But when a poll claiming that most Americans would support the notion of not building the Muslim community center in Manhattan, he said that "this only shows Americans are stupid".

Well, the one who is stupid is Bill Maher, for he has not the ability of reflection. You cannot use a tool if it supports your prejudices and then dismiss it if it goes against what you believe. You know who else does that? Religious bigots, Bill, and you should know about them, because you have been kissing up to the Republican establishment throughout your entire season now.

In the documentary OutFoxed, a scientific study (and by the way, Bill, a scientific study is not the same as a poll, in this case it was a content study) showed that Fox - way back when - had a margin of 2-1 of Republican guests vs. Democratic guests in a 1-1 interview with Brit Hume. And those Democratic guests were mostly DINOs, i.e. Democrats in name only.

But back then, this was at the height of the Bush years, and they didn't announce it at the beginning of each show! Look! We are bipartisan! We are trying to have two Republicans on each show! I am so sorry you have to face a democrat and an analytical filmmaker! I am so sorry, but I will suck your dick!

This is the man who criticises Black Barry. The man who only does sharp criticism when he doesn't have to face the ones he criticises. This guy who pretends to get an Egyptian journalist on his show for one reason, and one reason only. To attack her with "facts".

A poll... really.

Where is this extremist Islamist revolution, Bill?

I am not seeing it. I am not seing any martyrs on the street. I am not seeing how they scream for an Islamist country. I have not even yet seen "Death to America" or "Death to Israel", although the former - considering that they have been oppressed for 30 years with your help and your support, that your government and mine were perfectly okay with trading the Egyptian human rights, the Egyptian freedom for "stability" with Israel - would be perfectly justified.

Let me say that again. Hatred against the government of the United States, each and every government since Ronald Reagan would be perfectly justified.

But these people don't even do that. Welcome to the new world worder, dear American pundits and governmental spokespeople. It's a world where Egyptians don't dress in blood-soaked headbands and scream for the prophet. No.

It's a world in which these people are going out on the street...

... with the flag of their country painted on their faces. In which these people want what you folks a long time ago (you know, those white, rich slave owners) put into a constitution. The right to determine their own fate. The right to pursue liberty and happiness. And man, that must really annoy the American elite, media and otherwise. How dare they? How dare they not ask us for what is best for them? Don't they know we are the good people?

Welcome to the new world order, where America - due to its own hypocrisy - is a nation no longer taken by its word. A world in which your government is judged by its actions. A world in which WikiLeaks has shown you to be arrogant, breaking international law and breaking your promises. In which the facts are that you employed thugs, that you paid off murderers, that you used Mubarak's regime to torture. What gives you the right to even speak up?

What the hell gives you that right?

I am not Egypt. I cannot speak for them.

But I know this. They are not children. They have been treated as such for a long time, with our societies' support and the implicit consent of our governments.

We have no right to tell them what to do.

It is up to them. And I have faith in them.

Why? Because until Mubarak's murderers started to attack, these people were peaceful. They still are. They protest in prayer, and their prayer is their protest. And that is not so different from another (r)evolution, but that is one we tend to forget or only remember in the wrong way.

In 1989, the source of the protest that put hundreds of thousands on the streets of Leipzig, in Communist Germany, was not the intellectual base. It was not the atheist base, of which I consider myself a member of. It was the church. Yes, that is right. It was the churches in Leipzig that cooridnated the Monday demonstrations that ended with the resounding chant "we are the people" and would soon bring down the Berlin Wall.

And they waved the German flag and they sang and they marched and they told their own dictators that they would not go. That this was their country and not the country of those who ruled.

And here?

Here we see the Egyptians. Waving their flag. Wearing their flag. Telling Mubarak that it is over. That he has stolen their country. That he has had it long enough.

That they are here to take it back.

It is up to them. But it is up to us to say, we are with you. We are not our governments, just as you are not your government. We are better than them, all of them. We, the people. And it will be hard, it is hard, and those who sit at keyboards, in rooms far, far away, we have it easy.

We have it too easy to pass judgement. And I have and I will.

Wherever somebody dresses righteously in the cloak of religion or ideology to supress human rights, wherever a majority, Christian, Hindu , Muslim or atheist uses its numbers, its power to suppress the rights of a minority, of women, of other races, of other faiths or those of other sexuality, I will shout at the top of my lungs.

And I will fight you, then.

And the worst excesses in the name of the prophet sicken me.

But this is not about me. This about them.

And I cannot and will not pass judgement on them.

Not now. Not here. Not on them.

On those who are in the streets every day, on those who sleep on those streets every night, young and old, men and women, Christians and Muslim, they are all Egypt. We have no right to pass judgement, not now, for if we do, they have the right to pass judgement on us, too.

And we wouldn't look very good if they do.

REMEMBERING THE DEAD OF EGYPT

[UPDATE] I have been contacted today through my email and am reminded once more how fleeting and sometimes wrong one can be.

And by "one" I mean me.

It appears the information I took from the linked list seems to have been in error, and I must apologise. That is why this update is on top of the original post. The name is wrong (which is bad enough), but it appears that the story is not quite correct. I will not delete the original post, because one should not only own up to one's mistakes, but also not let it disappear and pretend that such mistake never happened in the first place.

Dear Mr. Hart
In your latest blog entry you were discussing those who recently died in the events of Jan 25th in Egypt and used my cousin Ahmed as an example, thank you for remembering Ahmed with us but there are a few corrections that you should consider. First Ahmed's full name is Ahmed Ahab Abbas, since his father is deceased it fell upon my father to carry out the formal proceedings with the hospital report, burial and so on, my father testifies first hand, with no coercion or other causes that the people at the hospital cooperated with him fully, however they gave them the option of going to the coroners for an autopsy with the true cause of death announced in the death certificate, or taking him from the hospital as is but writing it as an accident, when my dad decided that he will go to the coroners, they fully cooperated and sent an ambulance with him and at the coroners office they fully cooperated to the extent that the lady responsible with issuing the death certificate had a hard time writing it as she was crying so much. The false info you reported was published on several pages on facebook and am having a hard time tracking all the groups correcting this info as its the right of the hospital not to spread false info about them.
Best Regards
Radwa Ossama Abbas

[UPDATE 2] I would also like to express my gratitude to Joanne Michele, from whose admirable effort in providing a list of those who died I took the original information, and who - upon being contacted - was quick to respond and add and amend the updated information provided by Mr. Abbas' family. 

It is hard to obtain proper and verifiable information in a time of chaos, and the best we can do is to respond as quickly as we can and remember our responsibilities, and those responsibilities include to correct ourselves as quickly as we can. I cannot claim to know the pain that Mr. Abbas' family must be going through right now, but it does pain me that I may have contributed it, however well my (and others') intentions have been.

And here is the original post.
---------------------------------

It is one name. One of many. So, so many. Too many. And we cannot remember them, not all of them, for we are not their friends, we are not their family, most of us are not even their countrymen, but they are just like us. They want a better life. They want to have a life. Somebody to love. A home.

It is too easy to forget. How much we are alike. And how little separates us.

But we cannot forget. And we cannot stay silent. It is not much that we can do, it is shockingly little. All that we can do, that we all have to do... is to spread the signal. To let others know. To let the world know. To give those who fight for their lives a name. A face. And tell their stories. To do all that Mubarak and his murderous thugs try to prevent.

The name is Ahmed Ahab Mostafa.

I do not claim to know him. I picked him from a list of names of the ones that were killed in Egypt during the last eleven days. I picked him, because his death is a symbol. Because others were killed in the same way. And because his family stood up for him. According to Egyptian journalist and blogger Wael Abbas, Ahmed Abba Mostafa...

....was shot on Friday 28 Jan in Tahrir Square. Of 6 rubber bullets that hit him, 3 hit him in the face including 1 in the eye. He went into a coma died 3 Feb at El Hossein University hospital. When Ahmed first entered the hospital, they tried to record his death as an accident, but the family refused and forced the truth to be known.

There are so many of them. So many stories. So many that each single one of them, each single name should be remembered. But we have to start somewhere. And I look at this photo, and I see me. And I see you. It's not a good photo. It is one of those snapshots that was maybe made by a friend. Or a girlfriend. I see a photo that could have been taken in Munich. In London. In Paris. In Düsseldorf. In New York. In Los Angeles. In Moscow. How little the differences are. I see a young man who is not angry. Who is not shouting. I see a young man on a night out. With his friends. I see a man that could be anyone of us.

I see a ghost.

Frozen in time now, never again allowed to move forward.

There are so many of them. Amr Garib. Hussein Taha. Mustafa El-Sawi. So many names. So many lives. All of them, not lost, but taken. Their futures, stolen. Their hopes, now only living on in the struggle that their friends, their families, their countrymen cannot, will not abandon.


To all of you in Egypt, peace be with you.

RETIRED: IN PROGESS

I'm going to give you a bit more of Retired, my I really don't care, this is pulp serial project that I am working on. And that will be it for me and the Internet for this week. Here's the beginning fo the frist book, introducing us to... oh, well, you'll see.

BOOK ONE

YOU CAN NEVER LEAVE 

1.

“Not a place I would have picked.”
“For a meeting?”
“For anything.”
“You didn’t pick it.”
“Just saying that I wouldn’t have.”
The suit blocks my view. The suit is tall, black, looks expensive, and comes with a smile made for board rooms. The suit has a name.
I don’t care what it is. It’s a suit.
He sits down in the seat next to me. Looks at the view. Doesn’t appreciate it. Nobody does. Not unless they are somebody like me.
“Going somewhere?”
“Not in a long time.”
“Planning to?”
“All the time.”
The view. Long stretches of tarmac. Blue skies. Me, on the inside, looking out. Separated from it all by glass. The view, through panorama windows. Panels of glass that shake every time, tremble enough so I can feel it underneath my fingertips. Every time it happens. Airplanes, taking off and landing. Going somewhere. Coming from somewhere else. Arrivals. Depatures. LAX. As far as I was going to go. As far as they allow me to go. Watching the birds. Flying free. Punishment. A life sentence.
“Who sent you?”
“Somebody who recommended you.”
“Somebody with a name?”
“Of course.”
“A name you willing to share?”
“No.”
I sigh.
The suit, a board room smile.
“You know how it goes.”
“Yeah.”
“You been around long enough.”
“Yeah.”
Both of us, sitting. Not looking at each other. That’s how these things work. Two guys. In an airport. Strangers. No names. No past. No future.
Arrivals. Departures.
“Did you really know him?” the suit asks.
“Hitler?”
“Yes. How did you know?”
“Because everybody asks me. May not be the first question. Not even the second, maybe, but eventually, all of you ask the same thing.”
“And? Did you?”
“Know him?”
“Yes.”
“No.”
The suit, disappointed. I smile.
“Didn’t think they’d send somebody from DC to ask about ancient history.”
“What makes you think somebody send me?”
“Your suit.”
“My suit?”
“Not made for Los Angeles weather. Too dark. Too heavy. So you can’t be one of the local boys. Then there’s your shoes. White rims on black leather. Snow marks. Recent. City shoes. Not made for walking, at least not for more than a quick distance, say, from a car to an office and back.”
I nod up at the Arrivals.
Flights delayed. Flights cancelled. Flights landing. East Coast. East Coast. East Coast. Snow storms, slowly shutting down the Eastern Seaboard.
“Or from the Los Angeles airport’s baggage claims to a cab. Seven flights that landed in the past hour. Only one from Washington, DC.”
I nod at the suit.
“No suitcase, meaning that you have no intention to stay too long. Not even long enough to leave the airport, maybe.”
I smile again.
“Oh, and yes,” I said. “You knew who I am.”
“A lot of people do.”
“A lot of people know my name. Doesn’t mean they know who I am. You’d need top secret clearance to know that. That narrows it down, just a little.”
The suit laughs.
“These days in DC? Top secret would only narrow it down to about 800,000 people.”
“What you call them then, these days? The people who know who I am?”
“Dead, mostly.”
Me, quiet, then – “Yeah.”
I get out a smoke from my jacket. The suit nods at a NO SMOKING sign. I nod at him. Fire from an old gas lighter. The tip of a small cigar, burning up. Smoke that drifts into my mouth, washes over my tongue before going down into my lungs. Some of the people around give me stares. Some give me shit. Some give threats to call airport security.
I give them the finger.
“You’re not what I expected,” the suit said.
The smoke, leaving my body through my nostrils. Words, coming out with it.
“Yeah. That’s what he said, too.”
“Who?”
“Hitler.”
“So you did meet him?”
“If you would like to call it that, yeah.”
“What was he like?”
“Surprised.”
Silence. This time it’s him. He waits. Wants to know more. All of them do. After they have read the files. The ones the people I had served in a war still fought in black and white buried in long file cabinets at undisclosed locations, together with all the other things nobody is supposed to know.
They had hoped to bury me as well, these people, decades ago, an unmarked grave, maybe, no service, no medals, no gun salute.
No such luck.
“You haven’t changed,” the suit says.
I smoke.
“Since then, I mean. Except for the hair.”
“Yeah.”
The hair had been the first thing that had changed., of course. By the time they had finished with me, in their laboratories and secret facilities, it had become white. The difference between then and now? I no longer color it. Now it’s a wild gush that comes out from my scalp, its skin just as white.
“They never been able to do it again, you know.”
“I know.”
“Really?”
The suit is suprised. First time for everything.
I have seen that look before. This here isn’t the first of these conversations, not for me, and they all more or less follow the same path. “Thought you were no longer in the game.”
“I’m not.”
“Thought they retired you.”
“Long time ago.”
“Before I was born.”
“Long time before you were born, kid. Looking at you, I’d guess a long time before your parents were born, too.”
“1969,” the suit says.
On the other side of the panorama window, an Airbus 800 slowly rolls onto the tarmac, engines  minutes away from howling for their freedom.
Growling against gravity.
“When my parents were born,” the suit says. “One small step for man, one giant leap for humanity.”
I flick the rest of my cigar. A mother glares at me. I wave at her daughter. The mother glares. Drags the child along.
“It wasn’t Armstrong, you know.”
“Who said it?”
“Who was the first man on the moon.”
“You telling me you believe we had them locked down in a television studio somewhere in Arizona?”
“Not what I’m saying. What I’m saying is that Neil Armstrong wasn’t the first man on the moon. We were there in 1954.”
Another sign of surprise. Good.
“You’re shitting me.”
“Had to do it before the Russians had their Sputnik up there, had to do it in secret, three men crew, that much they got right when they did the remake for the civilians.”
“1954? You’re shitting me.”
“I look like I do?”
“No. Just... well, shit, I never would have thought something like this, something this big could have been kept a secret.”
“You’d be surprised.” He looks at me. One of these secrets that should have been too big to be kept. “Last year, it’s been seventy years. And how many would have had to know about me?”
“You were different,” the suit said.
“Was I?”
“It was the war. Easier to keep secrets in a war. Especially the one back then.”
“Nothing’s easy in a war, kid.”
“You were the fourth man.”
“I was the fourth, yeah.”
“The one who survived.”
“Experiment IV.”
“They’ve never been able to do it again.”
“So you keep telling me.”
“It’s true.”
“If it were, you wouldn’t be here.”
The suit grins. Muscles, under his white shirt. Moving. Flexing. Enhanced. Pumped up. Waiting.
“What gave it away?”
“You’re not the first, kid.”
“Want to take it outside?”
The suit puts on sunglasses. In them, I look at my own reflection. White. Pale. Tired and retired. The suit’s grin. White. Perfect and All-American.
“Think we should,” I say. “Don’t want to cause a scene, do we?”
“Think you still could?”
“Cause a scene?”
“Yeah.”
“What do you think, kid?”
“I think you’re almost a century old.”
“And yet, I’m still here. Should give you cause to consider what you’re about to do. Why they sent you to me. Should give you a reason to think.”
That grin, continuing to split his face.
“I know why they sent me. So do you.”
“Yeah.”
Silence.
LAX airport, all around us, still busy. Civilians. Collateral damage, waiting to happen. I get up from my seat. The suit follows.
“You think I can go to the restroom first?”
“Already pissing your pants?”
“You get my age –”
Through the crowds, I let him follow me. Breathing down my neck. Noisy. These kids they send these days, they all are so damn noisy.
The restroom. At the end of the corridor. Urinals, stalls and Muzak. Pissing to elevator music and soft lights. Despite the crowds outside, empty. Lucky.
Lucky old man.
“You want a helping hand?”

2.

The thing about restrooms. Modern ones, like this one here at LAX, they have mirrors over their urinals. Piss and watch, boys and girls.
Behind me, the suit. In front of me, his reflection. Three steps behind, two steps to the side. Trained. Weight on both feet. Military. The suit, just another uniform. Waiting for me to finish.
Young. Arrogant. Stupid.
The restroom. Close quarters. Close combat. The kind that wouldn’t allow for any major enhancements to be useful. Drugs, maybe. They had him probably pumped up on them. Would explain the twitching muscles. Neural feed, most likely. Easiest way to enhance an operative. Cheapest way, too. All about cutting down budgets, these days.
It took them three years and more than two billion dollars to build me. 1941 dollars, not the cheap paper shit of today. Still, less than to build Fat Man and Little Boy. Then again, if they had dropped me down on Hiroshima or Nagasaki, all I would have been able to do? Kill Japs one by one.
Too expensive to be a weapon, even back then. And too dangerous to be a symbol, especially when the American public became aware of what the Germans had done. In their laboratories.
And what we had done. In ours.
To men like me.
“You know why they started up the program again? Why people like you even exist?” I ask. “Publicity. The bad kind. See, that was the problem with the atom bomb, the moment we decided to drop it. Bad publicity. Don’t get me wrong, you drop it on somebody, you do a lot of damage. Can end a war. Can end the world, even. But it makes you look bad. Makes you look like a coward, not like a cowboy, even if the press, they called it cowboy politics for most of the Sixties, some of the Eighties, too.”
Me, taking a piss in the urinal. And on that kind of thinking. Watch for that metaphor, boys and girls. Shake it loose, shake it, squeeze it to the last drop. And don’t forget to wash your hands after.
“Wars today, they get fought in cities. building by building, street by street. That’s what they were building me for. What they hoped they were building you for. I was your age, boy, they dropped me on Berlin. Single plane. Single man. Couldn’t allow the Russians to take the man alive, now, could we? Not with all the shit he knew. Same with their scientists. You know how we managed to get all the way up to the moon by ‘54? Nazi technology. Not something you’d like to advertise, no. Not even if it would have made the Russian piss in their pants.”
“You done?” the suit asks.
A tone that told me to zip it.
I do.
“Yeah.”
Not as fast as I used to be. Still, fast enough. My elbow, connecting with the suit’s face, now no longer just a grin splitting it. The suit’s nose breaks. Two steps to the side, but now tumbling back against the stalls. His blood a streak of deep red, following him. His voice is an angry gurgle, his hands reaching up, instinctively, to stop the bleeding.
One second. Two. Three. Spinning. Moving. Close combat. That’s what it’s about. Movement. It’s what these kids today don’t know. Don’t understand.
These kids, they have buttons to push, screens to watch, drones to fly. Decisions, made thousands of miles away from their targets, pixelated realities.
No stress.
No blood.
No movement.
The suit drops against the stalls.
Wiping the blood from his face. Looking at me through a red haze or rage. Pumped up muscles. Neural charges releasing adrenaline.
The suit gets his fists up. Rushes me. Stupid. Angry. Stupid. No way to fight. A fist streaks past my cheek, breaking nothing but the speed of sound.
Got to give them that.
They are fast, these days. Faster than I ever was.
And a lot more stupid.
I spin around into the zone between arm and chest. There’s no cover there. My second blow goes to his chest. It should have crushed his ribcage.
I hit something hard and flexible. Poly-carbonated bones, most likely.  Read about that.
Got to keep up with the times, if you’re like me. You want to keep on living, you better do like a good little nerd and google your balls out.
Tech porn, war porn, science porn.
Survival, all in the details.
Poly-carbonated shit, they tried that on some of the mutants in the 1960s. Somewhere in Canada, I thought, tried to pump them full with it, hoped that their genetics would make their bodies swallow it up without killing them first. Way folks told me, most of them died with black goo coming out of every pore of their bodies.
Looks like they had finally gotten it right.
That’s progress for you.
It stops my fingers reaching into the suit’s body and rip through his heart. It doesn’t stop the impact. The shock makes the suit exhale.
Lucky old man.
Still needs to breathe, the bastard.
Good. Lucky. Good.
A second thrust, this time again to his face.
Open hand, palm against his chin.
Snapping back his head.
Still breathing. Shit.
He gets his first punch in. Not good. Blind and angry, still, but close enough that a punch at the right spot might do me some damage.
The next punch. I feel it,
That’s what you get when you’re getting old. You get to live long enough to fight Americans.
I never liked fighting Americans.
It was easier with the Nazis.
You didn’t feel bad about killing them.
All around him and me, security cameras. Digital feeds pick up blurs, two shapes out of sync with the rest of the world.
Feeds tapped into by the ones who have sent the suit. Sitting in a bunker. Secure. Scientists and suits. Gathered around monitors and fast food.
Enjoying the show.
This is us, in slow motion.
Play. Fast Forward. Rewind.
Muzak, played for fists hitting flesh and bone.
Watch. Watch and learn.
That’s what they’re doing. Would be doing for the following days, weeks and months, down there in their bunker, breathing in filtered air and thinking filtered thoughts. Watch and learn, boys and girls.
The suit’s fist passes me. Hits the tiled marble wall. Cracks and craters it. Concrete rain, spat out around his knuckles, drifting into the air-conditioned room.
I take it into my lungs with my next breath.
So does he. Useless. This is useless.
Breathing heavily, both of us.
Freeze frame it. Look at it. Look at me. The old man and the suit. Standing. Both still standing. Breathing. Look at him. That’s right. Breathing.
For all his enhancements, the bastard still needs to breathe. Think about it. Act on it. Snap out of it. Out of the moment. Take him out. Take him down. Don’t play defense. They are still bits of him not protected, still bits that are human.
I take out his eyes. They are wet and soft, and burst underneath my fingertips. Another scream follows,  no longer filled with rage, only pain.
The throat comes next.
The scream ends. The suit drops to the floor. On his knees. His hands rising up. Prayer, in progress. God isn’t listening. The suit dies quietly.
Lucky old man.
It takes me minutes teaching myself how to breathe again without wishing to throw up whatever is left of my breakfast.
It takes me even longer to twist and turn my body, trying to get everything back into the right places. All of which is very painful. All of which is good. It tells me I am still alive.
I look at the suit, not quite a Pez dispenser now, his empty eye sockets staring at the ceiling. I get his cell phone out. They all have one. I call them. Look at the cameras. Hear them pick up.
Silence.
“Better luck next time,” I tell them.
Silence.
They never reply. They never talk. They just listen. They just watch. They watch me drop the cell phone. They watch me spit out blood. They watch me light up. They watch me leave.
They watch me.
All the time. And one of these days, they will send somebody again. To see if they got it right that time.
They haven’t, so far.
I’m still breathing.
Outside the restroom, people see me. People point at me. The cleaners are already in place. Suits, all of them. They know me. I don’t know them.
We pass each other. We nod at each other.
I don’t look back.

3.

Outside LAX, california.
Where nobody has a past, and everybody a future in a sunburnt reality. Harsh and bright, like a modern television show, overexposed and in need of a good public relations manager.
Outside LAX, celebrities.
Caught in lenses of the paparazzis. Look over here, give us a smile, baby, yeah, just like that, look, look at us. I pass through a crowd of them, starlets and stars, busy and buzzing, three, four, five clicks away from the tabloids, on their way to stardom, on their way out, but always on their way.
Outside LAX, cars.
Coming and going, on parking lots, on streets, on highways, on triple fast lanes that grind them to a halt, with me driving on them, returning to my cage. My free range prison. The city of angels.
Google earth it, boys and girls, that yellow brick road from LAX, heading back to LA, cutting through a sea of cancerous concrete, where everything is always a thirty minute’s drive away.
My car, a dinosaur, like me.
A 1958 Plymouth, top down, red and white, the American Dream on wheels, with a V8 engine that roars against climate change.
Me, giving the finger to the rest of the planet.
I call my handler.
He picks up.
He is not happy.
Bad vibes, bouncing off satellites, and reaching me before he says something. I give my code clearance. He doesn’t need it. I give my name. He knows it. I give him small talk. He doesn’t care for it.
Skip forward, get to the part that matters.
“They’re not happy,” he says. “Know how much money they spent on that guy?”
“I don’t care.”
“The GDP of a couple of small countries.”
“Any of them countries that matter?”
A voice shrug through the phone line.
“Eh. Probably not.”
“They should have thought of putting the money to better use, you ask me.”
“I didn’t.”
“You should have,” I say. “How much?”
“Not including my cut?”
“The usual ten?”
“That’s right.”
“You should have been an agent.”
“Used to be.”
“Not that kind of agent.” He gives me Las Vegas laughter, a city hopper flight and a couple of casinos away. Calculating the spread, giving me numbers. Good numbers, too. The kind you can live on.
“It’s roughly 500 k,” he tells me.
“Not bad for three minutes work,” I say.
“Longest fight I ever seen you do.”
“They get better.”
“Yeah, right.”
“One of these days –”
Unspoken, the understanding that my time would be running out, sooner rather than later. One of these days, they would create a better, faster and stronger version of me, wrap him in the flag like they did with me, and have him kill me as his final test. There are moments when I wish for that day.
“But not today,” he says.
“No,” I say. “Not today.”
Today, I made a killing. It’s not quite like wrestling. Not quite like the bets you can place on baseball and football teams, but you can bet on anything in Vegas, even on an old war horse like me.
 People in my community, they get bored. People in my community, they get their kicks out of things like this. Betting on fights like this. Win, lose, it’s all about the kick. That much we still have in common with the rest of the world.
We like to get entertained.
“I’ll have the money wired to your account.”
“Thanks.”
“Not a problem.”
He hangs up. He doesn’t say goodbye. I drive down the 105 and think about ways to spend the money. I plan to spend a lot of it on getting drunk and pity myself. I look at the sky, through mirrored shades.
It is a not perfect blue.
I’m thankful it isn’t.

BLOG OF THE DAY: ECLECTIC MIND

It's a relatively new blog, so not many posts yet, but the woman, Olga Kaetziro, who runs it is dreadfully smart, writes much longer sentences than me and should be applauded for her very insightful posts on the nature of man, on the difficulty of fitting in and... hell, there is something in there about the perfect cognac, if you know enough French to understand it.

If it weren't for the intelligent articles, that alone would make Miss Kaetziro's blog worthwhile. Because while I rarely ever drink alcohol, a great cognac and a cigar is the closest thing to heaven that doesn't involve god or a woman. Or a goddess and a man. Something like that.

Check it out here.

But be warned. The cognac is all mine.

PICTURE OF THE DAY: CHRISTIANS PROTECTING MUSLIMS DURING PRAYER ON THE STREETS OF CAIRO

There is nothing more heart-breaking than waking up to the sound of freedom being gunned down. Except being there to be gunned down yourself, obviously. Sooner or later, all dictators show their true face. But there are those things that should give us hope as our thoughts, our hopes and prayers (if you have them) go out to Egypt.

Because there is goodness in people.

Because there are photos like this one. That should be spread throughout the digital wastelands. That should remind us, all of us, that we are the same, that we can and have to stand up for each other, that we can and should have each other's back.

It was taken by Nevine Zaki in Cairo, yesterday and uploaded onto her Twitter stream. Stuck in a place that is appearing to drown into violence, hers is on of those voices that were attempted to be silenced when Mubarak took down the internet. But she is still there.

And the truth is still there.

And the truth is simple and this. Look at it. It is Egyptian Christians holding hands to protect, if in name, if in symbolism only, their Muslim countrymen during prayer as the protests continue.

There is goodness in people. We just have to to show it. And not let it drown. In these digital wastelands. And in the speeches of politicians who never speak up, until it is too late.

THE NIGHT IS MY COMPANION

In the summer of 1994, I was in Philadelphia. And had the great fortune of attending a folk festival there, which introduced me to the music of a singer I had not yet heard of. Her name was Sarah McLachlan. Yes. I talked about her before. And I love all of her music, but this piece here has always been my favourite. And yes, once more, I know what the song is meant to be about. And I don't care, because of this line, this one right here...

Into this night I wander/ it's morning that I dread/ another day of knowing of/ the path I fear to tread

Good night, everyone. And to the people of Egypt, good luck.

WONDER WOMAN: BECAUSE WHAT THE WORLD OF ENTERTAINMENT REALLY NEEDS IS MORE SUPER-POWERED EXECUTIVE BATTLES!

When I read stuff like this on the "new" Wonder Woman television series, then i just want to shake my head and go vomit for a while. Because, yes, Diana is now an executive, she has a basement full of nerds, a fleet of colored jets (G5s, probably), her arch nemesis is... another executive, oh, and there will be many pop songs, because, like, it is a David Kelley show.

This already is shaping up to be the biggest executive circle jerk in Hollywood history, and again, the disconnect to the reality of the situation couldn't be worse. Of course executives love it. They can see it, right here. That they are battling for good in the never-ending struggle!

The others? The normal people? They are there to be tools (and are in a basement, where those nerds belong), and what fun could crime-fighting be, if it weren't for a fleet of jets? Really?

Here's a word of advice to David Kelley.

Dude, stick to the lawyer shows.

TRUTH OF THE DAY: YES, VIRGINIA, AMERICA IS STILL SEGREGATED

Facts are such a pesky thing. Fact is that the United States of America has never been really united. And them white folks (I consider myself a proud white person, and I can make such claim, trust me, there ain't nobody whiter than me, I am so white that when I was in front of the camera, they had to slap on an enormous amount of make-up to stop me from becoming Caspar the Ghost) and them black, folks they don't mingle. Why not?

I don't know. Well, actually, I do have a few ideas based on research into history and things, but I'm trying to be sarcastic here, okay? Work with me, people. Work with me. Don't let me die on the stage here. If you look at the massive red flood in the Midwestern states, you'll understand where them Glen Beck viewers live.

I never understood racism. Not emotionally. See, I grew up in a tiny town. Smallville, like. And as I said before, I never met myself a black person. Nor did I ever meet a gay person when I grew up. Or a Jewish person. True, that. All of them, in the mind of teenage me, an abstract. I understood slavery. I understood the Holocaust. I read about both when I was eight. I saw the liberation photos of the concentration camps when I was nine. I had to sneak into the adult non-fiction section of our public library to do that. It was in the basement of an old house, and looking back on that, with its single, simple wooden table and chair and only artificial light, harsh and almost blue-ish, that seemed to have been an appropriate environment to learn about these things.

I grew up with only a Yugoslavian and a Greek kid at my school at that time. And that was it. Smallville, Germany. And so I can somewhat understand how folks in them red areas might think about people they never really truly met outside of television.

And why Sarah Palin and the others have such a big following there.

But being who I am, I also never had the social skills to carry around the prejudices one may have picked up from television. I loved the fact that at my German university, at my journalism school, we had a Kurdish refugee studying there. I loved the fact that when I went to the University of Missouri, I had the chance to meet folks from Russia and Bulgaria and Palastine. And I met me my first two Jewish people. The first one was... not so good. I didn't get past the whole "Hi, I'm Thomas and" thing before I was greeted by a rant of extraordinary proportions that boiled down to a guy of my own age telling me that I had killed his people, that I was a bad person, that everybody in Germany was a bad person and...

... I believe it was at that point that I tuned out, emotionally. While I could understand that guy's greivances, I couldn't really do anything about them, personally. And I refuse to take responsibility for something I didn't do, nor do I take responsibility for the fortune or misfortune of having been born where I was born. Not really anything I could have done about it, eh? I mean, I am a quarter British, a quarter Russian and half German. That makes me a cultural schizophrenic already.

The second Jewish person was a guy named Adam Holland. Former US soldier, nicest guy you could think of. We didn't run in the same circles, but whenever I did talk to him - with the learned trepidation that comes from being German and knowing what had happened - it was wonderfully normal. I owe Adam Holland a lot. I owe him an emotional connection to what to this point was an abstract concept.

And that abstract concept is that people are people.

A lot of them are assholes. The ones that are not, you remember.

Race. Religion. Heritage. All of these things are unimportant. At least when you are sitting at a coffee shop named Osama's and complain about the Missouri weather.

PICTURE OF THE DAY: YASI

If I were the praying kind, I'd pray for those in Northern Australia as giant cyclone Yasi is about to make landfall. But I am not the praying kind. And so I can only offer my best wishes to them as they get ready to be blasted by winds that are up to 320 clicks per hour.

Be safe, I wish them. And good luck.

BECAUSE THERE IS A BIG DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SEXUAL AND SEXUALIZED

For some reason or another, somebody mailed me the latest Rihanna video, S&M, which I presume stands for Small & Male or maybe Sucks to be Me.

No, actually, a friend mailed it to me, because she knows I have a great liking of things that are somewhat out of the ordinary or perhaps extraordinary, whatever, at least it isn't ordinary.

And so I watched it. And wondered once again how far we have fallen in our pop culture. Groundbreaking, this video isn't. It is an amalgam of sexualized imagery, but there is no love in it, not even lust. It is... predictably plastic, not rubber, not latex, no, just plastic, a 1950s Beaver-style atrocity, you know, like a lot of Kate Perry's videos. And perhaps that is how suburban whites understand S&M to be like. Oh, it's a whip! Isn't that groundbreaking? Oh, it's a suburban mistress wife with a little male doggie. In pink. In Barbie pink.

And here I thought I had seen scary before.

There is nothing sexual here, but everything is sexualised. The difference is that sexuality is something to be cherished, that something sexual is its own reward, it is both the means and end of the action. To sexualise something is to weaponise sexuality.

To sexualise is to use and abuse sex in order to sell something else, and in this case here, it used to sell a record. Now, now... that has been done many times before and will indubitably be done in the months and years to come, but is it just me who has a problem with that?

Not with being sexual, but with this rather silly, PG-rated way of dealing with it? Sex is dangerous (and I grew up when Freddie Mercury died and AIDS was all around and in such a way that you'd go, "I really would like to, but I can die", because in those days, AIDS was a death sentence. Try becoming sexually aware in that era, the Mid- to Late Eighties), sex is good, sex is an expression of your heart and soul, manifested physically.

And yes, it can be kinky, sometimes should be kinky, because it is you letting go and your lover letting go, while you merge in ways that leave you both breathless and sweaty. It can be kinky as hell, but this here? This is a Barbie doll playing dress-up in the rather pathetic attempt to look edgy. And it isn't And she isn't. There's the pout, there's the strut, there's the wiggle and jiggle, but it all feels staged, feels unreal and without a deeper understanding of what sex is, can and should be.

And no, I am not on the side of the religious folks, who think that sex is something you do to procreate. Sex is something you do to celebrate. And it can be quick and rough and with the right amount of perversion that tickles the last gasps of lust out of your lover, and it can be long and sweet and sensual and light as a feather that moves slowly across your skin, letting your hairs rise to the touch and heart flutter to the kiss.

Because it is just that, a celebration.

And so I look at this video, and I wonder where that is. Where that celebratory aspect went. I just can't find it. It is all superficial here, without depth, without danger, without darkness, and trust me, sex is dark, it roars and it bites and screams into your lover's soul. As she screams into yours.

And this? This here?

It looks like a commercial. For something. Maybe a shampoo.

If you compare that to Madonna's Justify My Love, there is sexuality there. It's feverish. It's dream-like. It is the thoughts we have, those dirty thoughts that are best lfet in black and white. And more than that, there is love there, because note how she is not singing about herself, she is singing (and showing) what she is going to do to you, how deep she will touch you. The ends is the means, the means are to that end.

To please and be pleased.

To celebrate. Yourself and your lover.

[UPDATE] Now this is the last damn time that I am re-linking that damn video. You know, if you don't want videos to be seen anywhere but.. where exactly? MTV? You know, that channel doesn't air music videos anymore, in case you haven't noticed. If you don't want people to discuss your videos, don't make them in the first place. And yes, I am aware that you can somehow rip the song from the video with some gadget-doo-dah, but you know what, you morons? We could do that back in our day, too! With cassettes! From the radio! No, really. We even made mix tapes. There was an entire movie about that! Based on a book! By Nick Hornby!

GOOD NEWS, EVERYONE! A BUSH COMES OUT OF THE CLOSET, LOOKING GOOD AS SHE SUPPORTS MARRIAGE EQUALITY

Because this is the 500th post, and it should be something positive, and what could be more positive than one of Dubya's daughters to make a stand for something she believes in, which is kind of against everything her father believes in. Marriage equality? Supported by a Bush? Hell, I'll take any Bush supporting that. Also, is it just me, or is she not looking like a Bush? She doesn't look like a Bush. She doesn't talk like a Bush. Her and Meghan McCain, boy, the whole "family values" thing didn't quite take on this particular issue, did it?