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AN OCCUPYING ARMY

10/31/2011

An Occupying Army
    “Officers Unleash Vitriol as Peers are Charged in Ticket Fixing” Headline, NY Times, page 1, October 29, 2011. Quotes from article in Italics]
    I’ve been in an occupying army and know how it cuts you off from the population, even in Italy with charming friendly people. It must be hard in a country whose people hate you like in Iraq, Afghanistan... and the Bronx.
    “As 16 police officers were arraigned... incensed colleagues organized by their union cursed and tormented prosecutors... chanting ‘Down with the D.A.’...a swarm of officers formed a cordon in the hallway...Members of the news media were prevented... from walking down the hallway...blocked cameras......grabbing lenses and shoving camera operators backward.” [Photo: police demonstrating in the Bronx]     Police in the Bronx have taken on the mind-set of an occupying army, and believe they are exempt from local laws
    "The case, troubling to many New Yorkers because of its implication the police officers believed they deserved special treatment... The indictments may jeopardize thousands of other cases in which implicated officers are important witnesses and may be seen as untrustworthy by Bronx juries.”
    That police lie on the witness stand is not exactly a surprise. And from ticket fixing to much worse is evidently not so big a leap.
    “...accusations that officers brought illegal firearms, slot machines, and black market cigarettes into New York City... that Officer [name withheld] allowed a friend... to sell drugs... .an officer caught in a sting transporting...heroin and stealing $20,000 from a hotel room.”
    Professor Eugene J. O’Donnell, John Jay College if Criminal Justice: “The Police Department is a very angry work force.... it translates into hostile interactions with people.”
    Mob-like behavior in the courthouse was rationalized by Chief Raymond W. Kelly, “I think it’s understandable that officers rally round when there’s a time of trouble.” He did not tell it like it is. It’s a crisis for which he is responsible. Police training evidently does not prepare them for their heavy responsibilities.
    “All the officers charged... are either current or past union [Patrolmen’s Benevolent Asso] delegates or trustees... Prosecutors found ticket fixing to be so extensive that they considered charging the union under the state racketeering law as a criminal enterprise.”
    To have a part of the U.S. policed by an occupying army makes it worse off than Iraq, for at least Iraq can look forward to the day when the occupying army leaves. The Bronx cannot.
    To read the NY Times article: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/29/nyregion/

MARIA

10/29/2011

BILL, ROY, and GENE

   Today's post is by Gene Cowen, tent mate in Foggia, Italy, editor of the Foggia Occupator, now retired and living in Chevy Chase, MD. (Photo, l-r Bill, Roy, and Gene)
Maria
     During World War II, I was a combat navigator, We flew out of Foggia, Italy, took leave in Rome. The first time I was there, I went to my room—one of the watering holes for Army Air Corps officers on leave in Rome was the Excelsior Hotel—changed into a clean shirt and went down to the bar. It was crowded with young men drinking steadily with pretty young girls. It could have been a college fraternity party, except that all the men were in uniform and all the girls were Italian.
     I asked a buddy where the girls came from and how these guys managed to line up dates so fast. He said, "Take your pick. They're all for rent."
     The price was usually quoted in cigarettes. We paid fifty cents for a carton of a major U.S. brand at the PX, but were rationed to one carton per week. The same carton sold for twenty-five dollars on the black market. A night with one of these young girls usually cost a carton of cigarettes. During the evening, couples would pair off and leave. Toward the end of the evening, there was often a raucous, drunken auction, and if you were not too choosy about taking leftovers, you could often get a night for less than a carton.
     Roy, my ascetic pilot, avoided this kind of ribaldry, but Bill, our feisty co-pilot, got involved with several girls. One day, I was scheduled for some leave time in Rome, looking forward to the rest, a little sight-seeing, maybe a little drinking, but especially to calling Phyllis, my girl friend, in New York. Rome was the onlyplace where we could place international telephone calls.
     Before I left, Bill took me aside and asked for a favor. "Gene," he said, "Can you help me out with a whore in Rome?"
     "Help you out how?"
     "Well, I've seen her a couple of times and I think she's in love with me."
     "Congratulations!"
     "Cut that out. She's expecting to see me at the Excelsior Hotel tonight, and I just don't want to get involved. Would you tell her that I'm not going to be there, that I've been reassigned, that I've died? Tell her anything, but just get her off my hands."
     Her name was Maria, and I remembered her from the last time Bill had introduced me to her. She was an attractive young girl with a shy smile and arms and legs that were painfully thin, but she could keep up with my exuberant co-pilot's dancing. So I agreed, not really knowing exactly what I was going to do. But you don't turn down your co-pilot in his time of need.
     When I checked into the hotel I searched the bar, but no Maria. So I went to the dining room, ate a dinner that cost all of fifty cents for men in uniform, and went to the bar and nursed a drink for about an hour before we spotted each other.
     Where's Bill?," she said. She pronounced it "Beel."
     Maria had dark curly hair, bright dark eyes and a face that looked as if it had seen a lot of lousy things in this loser of a country. She couldn't have been any older than nineteen.
     I was embarrassed, told her Bill wasn't here yet. Her face fell, and she asked me if I knew when he was going to come. I said I didn't and asked her if she'd like a drink. She said she would and, as she drank, occasionally looked around the room.
     After another hour, I screwed up my courage and finally told her that Bill wasn't going to be there at all. She looked at me with a resignation that spoke of having been brushed off before. As she slowly got up from the table, I said on impulse, "Have you eaten?"
     "No," and started to leave.
     "Hey, come join me."
     After a pause, she did and we went back to the dining room. When she ordered her meal, I told the waiter I had already eaten, and Maria turned to look at me. When the food arrived, she began to eat hungrily.
     "You are very gen-ti-le [kind]"she said, when she had finished, "to give me a meal because your friend is a bastard."
     "Well, I figured you were planning to eat with him, and didn't want you to go away hungry," This whole thing was beginning to sound pretty maudlin, but I didn't know what else to say.
     "You come sleep with me tonight?"
     "No," I said, "I really can’t."
     "You so gen-ti-le, I won't charge anything."
     I got up to go, taking her by an arm. God, it was thin. I wondered how much she ate in a day. I wondered if she was supporting anyone else. Many of the young prostitutes had children and occasionally one would bring a child around to meet her "friends." What a hell of a way to make a living, I thought. Then we walked out of the Excelsior. I never saw Maria again.

"THERE IS NO HONOR IN THIS!"

10/28/2011

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Sgt. Shamar Thomas speaking to school children

There’s No Honor In This!
    Occupy is different in each city. It’s turned violent in Oakland, California, a city with a history of police violence. In 2009, an officer shot and killed unarmed 22-year old Oscar Grant in the back. Yesterday on TV, Oakland’s mayor, Jean Quan, read a statement, eerily bland, as though reporting on school district management or bus routes.
    At most Occupy locations the police were restrained, which I attribute to the pervasive presence of video. Anything can go quickly onto the Internet and then viral, like the sadistic mace attack by NYPD’s Anthony Bologna on defenseless women in NYC’s Zuccotti Park. It seemed as if nothing had changed since Herbert Hoover ordered General Douglas MacArthur to boot the World War I Bonus Army vets put of Anacostia Flats, which he did with brutal efficiency, then burned their tents and pitiful possessions. But Bologna’s mace attack was caught on video, went viral, and spurred an investigation. He was punished by losing 10 vacation days. That’ll larn him.
    When I was five, I was taught to say my address, “710 Meridian Avenue,” and if I ever got lost, walk up to the first policeman I saw and say it. My mother said, “Policemen are kind, like daddy, and will take you home.” It left me with a lifelong feeling that the police are my friends, and despite the ugly side, much has confirmed that. I know a professional entertainer who was genuinely drawn to police work, became an officer, and I know that I’ll never hear of Mike attacking kids in a park.
    Yet not all can resist the obvious stresses of a job that puts them in close daily contact with criminals and crime. Is that what makes it so easy for an Anthony Bologna to fire mace into the face of a young woman, for a policman in Oakland to shoot a tear-gas cannister at a retreating crowd instead of up into the air, hitting and seriously injuring ex-marine and Iraq war veteran, Scott Olsen, in the head with a gas cannister? Police behavior outraged another war vet, Marine Sgt. Shamar Thomas, who confronted police in Time Square: "This is not war! This is America! How do you sleep at night? There is no honor in this! There is no honor in this! None!"
    To see Sgt. Thomas on video, click the link. Sgt. Shamar Thomas

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BLACK MARKET DAYS

10/27/2011

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Black Market Days
    Stationed in Italy after Victory-in-Europe Day, I fell in love with the country, but as part of an occupying army, was insulated from Italian life. We lived apart and were paid in Allied Military Currency—scrip—bills of 2 to 1,000 lire, 100 lire to the dollar. Scrip was soft money, but 10,000 lire in scrip bought a
one hundred dollar postal money order. Sent home and deposited in an American bank, it was one hundred hard American dollars.
    You could go to any PX, buy a pair of army shoes for $5, walk a block, sell them to any street black marketer for $35. A Waltham wristwatch cost $20, sold for 100. You could take R&R in Switzerland, for five bucks each buy what looked like watches and back in Italy when a black marketer sidled up, “Hey, Joe, sell watch?” get fifty. But the big money was in cigarettes. The PX sold cartons for 50 cents, resold for $10 to $15. You could buy only one carton at a time so GIs would write home, have twenty cartons sent. At mail call: “Schultz! Here’s your cigarettes,” and a bulky package flew through the air.
    There was money-changing in Cairo. You borrowed enough to arrive with $1,000 in scrip. At the base exchange you changed it into hard Egyptian pounds. Outside the base were horse drawn carriages on which were painted white X’s, meaning “Off Limits.” You got in and changed your Egyptian pounds for scrip at 2½ to one. Now you had $2,500 in scrip. You went back to the base, did it a second time ending with over $5,000. The base exchange knew but let you get away with it unless you tried it a third time. Some made the Cairo trip weekly.
    There were things that crossed the line: selling gasoline, food from army mess, military supplies like parachutes, out of which beautiful dresses could be made. One lieutenant signed out a weapons-carrier (like today’s Humvee), drove twenty miles near the coastal town of Manfredonia where salt was harvested from the Adriatic Sea, filled up the carrier, drove sixty miles into the mountains, sold it for ten times what he’d paid. He was your basic entrepreneur, taking a product from where it was surplus to where it was scarce, but using an army vehicle for private business was illegal, he was nailed, and dishonorably discharged.
    One night, we were waked at 3 AM, told to take every lire and go to the pay line where it was exchanged for new Italian notes at a rate of 400 lire to the dollar. The new notes were hard currency. In the PX, a carton of American cigarettes still cost fifty cents, now 200 lire, and the black market markup was a quarter what it had been. The G.I. piñata was empty.

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HERMAN CAIN, DECODED

10/26/2011

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Herman Cain, Decoded
    I’ve decoded Herman Cain! He’s a prankster, and he’s pulling the leg of the whole U.S.A. I was slow on the uptake, but after all, he’s a master at the top of his game, a living, sweet-talking example of
Extended Murphy’s Law. (Post, July 14, 2011.) He even adds a new extension: “No matter how unfit you are for public office, if you
run, some people will vote for you.”
    Like all who saw the TV ad in which his chief of staff, Mark Block, makes a pitch and smokes a cigarette, I was bewildered until it hit me: a put-on! And don’t you love the parodies, someone mumbling a pitch, then eating spaghetti, slugging whiskey, passing out, shooting himself in the head. And he got the parodies free and now leads in the polls. The guy is brilliant!
    Did you see Eddie Murphy in The Distinguished Gentleman? By mistaken identity, he finds himself in Congress and does just fine. I can see Herman Caine at a summit meeting with Angela Merkel, Vladimir Putin, Silvio Berlusconi, Wen Jiabao. He’s at his best talking off the top of his head and will have a great advantage because he knows absolutely nothing! Talk about a survivor! He’s a ping pong ball in a hurricane blowing with the wind while everything weighty is smashed.
    When asked if he’d support a constitutional amendment to ban abortion he smiled (and what a smile!) saying, “If it comes to my desk, I’ll sign it.” If you think he doesn’t know that presidents don’t sign amendments to the Constitution, you don’t recognize a punch line when you hear one.
    As for knowing who is president of “Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan,” his rejoinder: “How’s that going to create one job?” blew everyone away.
    The burning question is, who will he choose as his running mate. Ann Coulter? Bill O’Reilly? Newt Gingrich? Rush Limbaugh? Michele Bachmann? John Boehnor? Mitt Romney? Oliver Norquist? Sarah Palin? Glenn Beck? I've got it! Eddie Murphy in his Nutty Professor costume!
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WW2, LARSEN and FILOMENA, A TRUE STORY

10/25/2011

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Larsen and Filomena, a True Love Story.
    The trouble began when Lt. Larsen’s bunkmates discovered that he intended to marry a whore.
    “Larson’s smart,” said Lt. Taffe. “She’s the best piece of tail in Foggia. Ask any G.I. who’s pronged her.”
    Larsen, small and slight, face set in stone, packed a barracks bag and moved out. No one knew exactly where, although there were plenty of spare billets. He’d told only the chaplain, but no soldier could marry a local without the Major’s signature, so the chaplain had had to tell the Major, and now his bunk mates knew.
    First the Major had tried to talk Larsen out of it and after he'd failed, summoned the bunkmates. “For Lt. Larsen’s own good, you have to nip this thing. He’s from Wisconsin. Imagine how his folks will feel if he arrives home with an Italian whore.”
    Larsen was a navigator and with WW2 over, had no official duties. He’d been assigned some made up duty, continued to do it, and showed up at officer’s mess, but ate alone and never looked anyone in the eye. It was said that he’d told the chaplain he intended to marry Filomena with or without permission. If forced, he’d desert, marry in some village church and disappear into the mountains of Italy never to be seen again. Larsen’s bunkmates told the Major that Larsen didn’t bluff, even in poker. So the Major went on to Plan B.
    He had the PX give Filomena a job behind the counter where she’d see dozens of GIs every day. And once a month, when the liquor ration was passed out, she’d hand each soldier his fifth. That was the closest I ever got to her. I paid my money, got a receipt, stepped up and handed it to her. She took it from my hand, passed me a fifth of Old Crow, and never once caught my eye.
    She couldn't have been older than seventeen, fair for a Southern Italian, glowing skin, soft brown hair, large brown eyes, heart-shaped face, slender in a modest brown dress. Now she was always with an older woman, maybe a relative, maybe not. It was said that most of her family had been killed in the war. Every Sunday she and Larsen and the older woman went to services in Foggia’s basilica. Not long after that I got my orders and shipped out for home.
    We had an unofficial army newspaper, the Foggia Occupator, which I asked to have mailed to me back in Brooklyn. About a month after discharge, a copy arrived and on page one was a photo of Larsen and Filomena coming out of the basilica, he in dress uniform, she in a white wedding gown, officers tossing rice as the newly married couple passed beneath an arch of crossed swords.

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ONE-MAN-ONE-WOMAN and VARIATIONS

10/24/2011

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One-Man-One-Woman, and Variations
    Beavers, bald eagles, and gibbons mate for life, among the few animal species that do. Others vary from males with harems, to queen bees who mate in midair with any male she encounters. Humano Sapiens run the gamut: monogamy, polygamy, polyandry, promiscuity, hetrosexaulty, homosexuality, bisexuality, transexuality, autosexuality, orgies, and quickies.
    In some societies, men are expected to have several wives. There’s a reality TV show called Sister Wives based on a real American family of one man, four women, and sixteen kids. Will there soon be one titled, Brother Husbands? I’d say no because polyandry, which is practiced in Tibet, Nigeria, Kenya, parts of China, and a few other places, is not as attractive to male audiences.
    Despite this ebullient diversity, people like presidential candidate Michele Bachmann, go ballistic over anything but one-man-one-woman, dictated, they say, by the Judeo-Christian Bible. The Bible has many polygamous figures, but opponents can always “prove” that that doesn’t mean a thing. Since religion is often the basis for family structure, one can argue that decreeing one kind of family limits freedom of religion. One-man-one-woman works for me, and if it works for you, why fret about others? Maybe the protesters are trying to shift attention away from their own flaming libidos.
     America had a frontier for some 300 years. Those needing to live by their own rules could always find room, allowing Mormons, Amish, Oneida Community and others to make and live by their own rules. Now the frontier is gone. and the Michele Bachmanns of the world seek to impose their own myopic rules on everyone.
    How liberating it would be to have a society as riotously diverse as nature itself, with families that are straight, gay, polygamous, polyandrous, Christian, Jew, Islam, Hindu, Buddist, Sikh, Shinto, Animist, Atheist, and all others living in harmony and mutual respect, a glorious Edenic garden of diversity, every new bloom greeted with joy. If Humano Sapiens manages not to destroy itself, that can be its glorious destiny.

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ZUCCOTTI PARK III - THE FIRING LINE

10/23/2011

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Zuccotti Park III - The Firing Line
    The night after my subway trip to Zuccotti Park it rained, and I thought about those kids, not allowed to have tents, huddled under tarps in their sleeping bags. But the next day, NY One television showed them still there, some under umbrellas, some wearing plastic rain coats, some just wet and bedraggled. But there.
    Early this morning on local radio I heard interviews with Occupy St. Louis and Occupy Los Angeles, and on line, “Occupy.org” brought up: Columbus, Topeka, Bend, Germany, and Australia. Nobody can quite define “Occupy,” but whatever it is, it is spreading.
    I’m surprised, also surprised that I was surprised. What made me think that the outrage I felt at the rampant greed eating this nation, was felt by me alone? What made me think that the flagrant primitivism of the Tea Party, the supine pandering of their presidential candidates, the ominous threat they are to American traditions and to the American way of life, was recognized by me alone?
    Having had my “turn” on the firing line, I’m okay with being a has-been in today’s world. All I can do is throw up this blog. But all those whose world this is, ready, willing, and able to hurl themselves into the fine frenzied fray of their lives but barred from doing so, are the ones now on the firing line.
    In the 1940s, the threat was Hitler’s Germany and Tojo’s Japan. The firing line was Europe and the Pacific. Today the threat is scattered and dispersed among those who hide from the light, out of sight, and until now, out of mind, stealthily amassing wealth, evading taxes, buying influence, gnawing at regulations like rats at food containers, now grabbing for raw power, luring the innocent into their so- called Tea Party, co-opting Congress, and waging class war—rich against middle class—the class war they perfidiously accuse the middle class of waging against them.
    The firing line for this generation is in New York, St. Louis, Denver, Bend, Topeka, Columbus, and also Germany, Australia, and— you name it. Valiant young warriors are out there on the firing line and they are not going away.

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GREAT TO BE ALIVE

10/22/2011

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Great to be Alive
    Evel Knievel jumped motorcycles across gorges and over parked cars. He’s in the Guinness Book of Records for having broken more bones than any other stunt person. He succumbed to lung disease at 69, but courted danger all his life. No way can I comprehend him, yet I’d say he’s an example of something everybody has which he just carried to extremes. If Humano Sapiens didn’t rise to danger, it could never have become the planet’s top predator. A six-hour drive through a blizzard—Portland, Maine to New York, NY— generated white knuckles, but I felt good afterward.
    When I met my bomber crew in Plant Park, Florida, September, 1944, my first words: “Our objective is not to win the war single-handedly, but to survive it. So we will become the best crew ever trained at McDill Field.”
    One day I heard another crew bragging about having buzzed a herd of sheep. My guys needed bragging rights too, so when we flew over Rock Hill, South Carolina, home town of two crew members, I dove down and skimmed the roof tops, not that dangerous, just stupid and illegal, but great for bragging rights.
    Bombing missions were dangerous of course, and although no one liked them, it felt good afterwards. A complete tour was 25 combat missions, but Robert “Rosy” Rosenthal flew 53, was shot down twice, both times making it back to England. He and Evel Knievel both had guts, but Knievel simply needed to tempt death. Rosenthal had passion.
    I enjoyed a modicum of danger when crossing the Atlantic—Goose Bay, Labrador, to the Azores. We had to fly through a squall line going up 40,000 feet. (The photo heading this blog is of a squall line.) I climbed as high as I could, about 28,000 feet, picked a “saddle,” a low place between thunderheads, and plunged in. We bucked like a jeep in a plowed field surrounded by gray darkness rent by lightning. My radio and magnetic compasses went crazy, ice built up on the wings so I turned on the ice boots to crack it off. In ten, maybe fifteen minutes—it seemed longer—we were through, relishing the sunshine, calm clear air, clouds receding, blue ocean beneath. It was great to be alive.
    When it is vividly clear that life can end suddenly, you really appreciate being alive. It’s why amusement park thrill rides will always have customers.
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HOW TO WAGE WAR IN THE 21ST CENTURY

10/21/2011

How to Wage War in the 21st Century
    President Obama did not hang “Mission Accomplished” over Libya although he has more right to than Bush on the bridge of an aircraft carrier after
his disastrous adventure in Iraq where there was no mission in the first place, and if there had been, it is still not accomplished. After horrible loss of life and treasure, the U.S. is still stuck in that sorry backwater.
    In Libya, a revolution has been won and a monstrous dictator is dead. The tough job of building a nation lies ahead, but the Libyan people can build it with pride and after their own victory, unlike the shamed defeated Iraqis, who have an occupying army still on their backs, and a population split between Sunni losers and vengeful Shiiites, both murderously resentful of the U.S., whom they believe had come to plunder their oil, proved by the fact that two oil men, Bush and Cheney, had led the invasion.
    Libya had no American boots on the ground and not one American life was lost there. When an American F-15 had mechanical trouble, its crew forced to eject near Benghazi, they were greeted with, “We are your friends!” and given fruit juice. The most trouble NBC reporter Richard Engle reports is being able to pay for his own coffee, since every Libyan in earshot tries to pick up his tab. Americans in Iraq face hostility to this day.
    Accustomed to leaders who flaunt and posture, many are puzzled by Obama’s cool. Yet he has achieved the deaths of Muammar Qaddafi, Osama bin Laden, and the murderous cleric Anwar Al-Awlaki in Yemen, and relentlessly pursues Al Qaeda in the lawless border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Balancing power and diplomacy, he shows how trust brings actionable intelligence, with results vastly superior to the “shock and awe” of George W.
Bush, and its legacy of hate.
    The road ahead in Libya will be long, and no one believes it will be easy, but Libyans can travel it confidently and on their own. The U.S.A. will be on the sidelines, a trusted mediator, and one day American business will be welcome there.
    Future historians evaluating America’s greatest war presidents, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Roosevelt, will inevitably add Barack Obama.
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Author (Yuma, AZ, 1944)

Being 90 years in this world, with great kids, great grandkids, great wives (two, one at a time) and great memories, I wonder why some people seem to have stopped loving the U.S.A.? I will wonder in print right here. If you wonder too, or can provide some answers, please comment.
Stuart Hodes

       With my friend, Nero.
             April, 2012.
    Photo by Ray Madrigal