preThanksgiving

Three Items:

1. Email me if you wish to participate in Amigo Invisible, whether you can pronounce it or not.
2. TWAHRF – I will NOT be sending out an edition this week, due to the brevity of the week, but save your accomplishments for a holiday bonus edition next week. (And to tide you over, a lovely FM cover of a Beach Boys song, Farmer’s Daughter.)
3. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving! It is a weird and nationalist holiday with false and brutal history, but also very nice! Travel safely!

The Judee Sill of Asylum Training?

This week, I attended a training seminar surrounding asylum claims based on membership in a particular social group, and it was truly a pleasure to hear Anwen speak. I now totally cannot wait for the training on the material support bar. Does being someone who enjoys asylum trainings make me part of a social group?

So, this guy Matt Ridgway has, in 1950, essentially taken over command of the troops in Korea from that hubris-ridden Douglas MacArthur. He’s restored all kinds of confidence and morale in the Eighth Army. I think David Halberstam had a little bit of a crush on Matt Ridgway. And why not? “All lives on a battlefield are equal,” he once said, “and a dead rifleman is as great a loss in the eyes of God as a dead General. The dignity which attaches to the individual is the basis of Western Civilization, and this fact should be remembered by every Commander.” (For more Korean War, The Coldest Winter.)

Autumn Songs: Another Christine McVie hit, Spare Me a Little. Hers is a voice to keep you warm this weekend. And you know what else? Not every song featured here has to be a hidden gem. Here’s an obvious gem, much beloved and rightfully so: Go Your Own Way. Most rousing break up song ever, but it’ll still make you cry if it hits you right (wrong?). Whichever.

Come a Little Bit Closer, David Halberstam

I am (still) reading The Coldest Winter, which is David Halberstam’s history of the Korean War. It’s available now in paperback, which I would recommend because it is a billion pages long, and the hardcover copy I am reading is so heavy that I only carry it with me about half the time. The heft of it is making it as hard to get through as the mountainous terrain of North Korea in the dead of winter! Almost! But seriously, it’s a pleasure and I really love it. Some familiar things that happened during that war: underestimation of the enemy because they weren’t white; allowing domestic politics to determine national security policy; and the folly, sometimes tragic, that comes when your leaders refuse to hear news that contradicts their plans. I’m looking at you, Korean War-era General Macarthur. A passage that rings especially true given ETN’s emphasis on the President’s role as Commander-in-Chief, and thus the importance of clear strong anti-torture directives coming from him:

“The very same men who will fight bravely under one commander will cut and run under another who projects his own fear. Great commanders are not just men gifted in making wise tactical moves, they are men who give out a sense of confidence, that it can be done, that it is their duty and their privilege to fight on that given day. Thus does the strength of any unit ideally feed down, from top to bottom. The commander generates strength in the officers immediately underneath him, and it works all the way down the chain of command.”

Autumn Song: I only discovered this song this week, and yet I cannot imagine my life (or yours) without it. Christine McVie, I wish YOU would come a little bit closer. Seriously, I never thought there’d be a better song called “Come a Little Bit Closer” than that by the venerable Jay and the Americans but this is better than, like, any song, ever, of any title. Really, I don’t even know how to write a bad song, let alone a beautiful one like this.

Autumn Song: I’ve been listening to Neil Young’s 1969 LP “Everybody Knows This is Nowhere” all week, which would be perfect to listen to in someone’s 1969 wood-paneled basement, and while there are many songs I wish to and will share from it, I’ll pick the eponymous one today.

Armistice Day & Entangling Alliances

The United States of America elected Barack Obama for President. You may have heard.

Even though the “elect” part of our work is done, we now must turn our attention to the “ending torture” part – and there’s plenty to be done. Now that you no longer have a historic election to follow in agonizing microscopic detail, you may wish to direct your attention to our blog.

Next Tuesday is Armistice Day, as I like to call Veterans Day, because I am a dork and luddite. And because Mr. Hines, my 11th grade history teacher, made me fall in love with the long term causes of WWI. What a long fuse! Remember Otto von Bismarck? Avoid entangling alliances, he always said but didn’t do. 11/11/2008 (at 11:00 a.m.) is the 90th Anniversary of the armistice between the Germans and Allies at the ‘end’ of WWI. Just don’t call it that in front of the Ottoman Empire or the Russians.

Don’t miss the 19th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall this Sunday, November 9. I remember watching the wall being torn down as a seven-year-old on our small kitchen TV and beholding it with an uncomprehending sense of wonder and hope, not unfamiliar this week as far as shared watershed moments go. No false historical analogy is implied, just feelings. You may wish to start a lively discussion with your family this weekend about the complexities of German Unification (or is it RE-unification? discuss), the symbolic power of walls, the legacy of the “Mauer im Kopf” (wall in the head), and for fun, the failure of the Weimar Republic, which was founded also on November 9.

Autumn Songs: It’s supposed to be 67 degrees today, which is only unsettling if you think about it. Personally, it’s kind of nice to be wearing a t-shirt outside in November. Anyway, like most kinds of weather, this is perfect for listening to FM. Maybe something a little upbeat, like I Don’t Want to Know. And its grammatical counterpart, I know I’m Not Wrong. Willful ignorance and utter self confidence together as usual.