The crime of george mCgovern

Tonight, there’s going to be a Republican presidential debate. It’s the middle of September of the previous year, and there’s been something like six of these things already. People tune out, are bored, and generally become more cynical as somehow presidential politics becomes more and more a kabuki dance nobody really cares about and is becoming more and more poisonous. I blame George McGovern. After all, it was his idea.

In 1968, or so the story goes, Hubert Humphrey won the nomination without winning a single primary. That isn’t exactly true, as two “favorite son” candidates who had endorsed Hubert won the Florida and Ohio primaries. However, the myth that Robert Kennedy, who had only won four primaries (three of which were small, Midwestern states), had won far more and was the rightful nominee, was widespread, and the DNC, which felt that the primary system needed reforming.

Now during the first two thirds of the 20^th century, primaries didn’t count for much. Parties were parties back then. The local Democratic and Republican parties were clubs. You had to join, there were activities to go to, and every year or so, there would be a state convention, which would be something like Comic-Con or the National Hardware show rather than a major deliberative body.

These were designed to be fun, social events, and as people who went to these things were more in the know than the general public, they would nominate candidates in an informed basis.

Going to the quadrennial national convention was a bit different. More people would want to go to these things than could actually be accommodated, so they would have elections, or in some cases the local leadership would pick and choose who they wanted to go with them.

However, there were also primaries, where the people could run for delegate slots without being personally humiliated at a local meeting. Also on the ballot, were presidential straw polls, which nobody really cared all that much about, but gained publicity for the national candidates, sort of like the one in Iowa last month, which showed that while Michelle Bachmann wouldn’t necessarily win the nomination, Tim Pawlenty COULDN’T.

But back to the 1960s, were the RFK myth was weighing down upon the DNC. The powers that be appointed a commission on primary reform headed by South Dakota Senator George McGovern. McGovern had decided to take over the Kennedy delegates as a symbolic gesture in 1968, and had some clout. So, in order to aggrandize himself, and make the party more politically correct, he pretty much destroyed the internal organization of the Democratic party, before turning the commission over to Representative Donald M. Fraser of Minnesota, and began his own campaign for president.

McGovern’s system worked like this: There would be a steeplechase of primaries, which would take candidates a lot of time to organize by themselves. McGovern declared his candidacy in January of 1971, a full year and more before the first primary in New Hampshire. The only other candidate that was doing this, and he already had an organization in place, was George Wallace of Alabama, who swept the south on a third-party ticket. Had he not been shot, it’s quite possible that Wallace would have won, however, as we know, McGovern did, with only 23% of the vote.

The 1976 primaries were even more confusing, Jimmy Carter gamed the system by moving to Iowa, and even though he came in second to Uncommitted, he managed to get enough publicity out of it to sweep a whole bunch of states before the voters started getting buyers’ remorse, and Frank Church and Jerry Brown began to beat him. The Republicans were forced into the new system, but their rules were far more restrictive, with lots of states doing winner take all, and thus a candidate was able to steamroll his way to the nomination after losing Iowa or New Hampshire.

The system didn’t work very well, with presidential candidates replacing local political bosses, and the social milieu of local politics began to deteriorate.

Extremists began to take over the Republican Party, and Democratic moderates, with the exception of Bill Clinton, didn’t know how to deal with that, the primary became longer, vapid and more chaotic. By 1988 the American people were SICK of presidential politics. But we still had to elect presidents every four years, and here we are today, with something like the fifth formal presidential debate four months before the first formal vote in the nominating system. Everybody’s bored stiff already.

George McGovern’s got a lot to answer for…..

Coffee vs. Tequila

UNESCO; the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization; is having the annual meeting of it’s World Heritage committee this week, and, as always there will be a heated private debate to decided which tourist traps will be designated “World Heritage Sites.”

These “inscriptions” have been called the “Oscars of the Environment,” mainly because a good number of the nearly one thousand sites are natural wonders, such as Ayer’s Rock in Australia and The Grand Canyon in Arizona. The Committee also designates important architectural and archeological sites, such as Stonehenge in Great Britain and the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor.

These are more controversial; for example, the Gibraltar defenses, carved out of the famous rock in the 18^th century and submitted in 1996, were never “inscribed” primarily because of Spanish opposition. Spain has considered the British occupation an open sore for over 300 years, and the designation would be a slap in the face, and so, it remains on the tentative list for the time.

Size isn’t a consideration, these things range from a single small building, in the case of Independence Hall in Philadelphia, to a huge swath of land in subarctic Alaska and the Yukon comprising three large mountain ranges.

Then there are just some that are inexplicable. Take Tequila for example: Now the noxious beverage has it’s fans, I know, but do the blue Agave fields from which the ingredients are grown and the distilleries in the area really deserve the designation they got five years ago?

NO! Now this little travesty has spawned other attempts to “sanctify” one of their country’s major products. Colombia’s attempting to designate its Coffee plantations this year, and so is Jamaica. Now whether or not Jamaica or Colombia grows better coffee than the other is neither here nor there, but France has never had the gall to submit the vineyards of Bordeaux or Champagne for World Heritage Status, and Kazakstan hasn’t tried to get it for the fruit forest in the Zailijskei Alatau mountains (where apples and walnuts, among other things, evolved).

If coffee does indeed get two World Heritage designations, what then? Germany recently tried to get an ethereal “List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity” listing for the 1516 Beer Purity Law, and while French cooking and the Tango have made the list, I don’t think a law that was repealed ages ago belongs. Maybe an ancient brewery, like the one in Budweis, Czech Republic, might do.

While Colombian coffee or Tequila might be intangible cultural treasures, the places where their ingredients are grown aren’t really worthy.

Libya before the war: part one

Sometime last October I got an email from a company I've never heard of called Bestway Tours. I had met them at a trade fair and had complained that the Libyan government was discriminating against American tourists since we had reestablished relations in 2003.

Well, after seven years, the State Department had finally gotten the then supreme leader Colonel Mommar Gaddafi to issue visas to American tourists and Bestway was going to be one of the first to send a group over there... Would I like to go?

Of course I would! One thing on my bucket list was to circumnavigate the Mediterranean, and you can't do that without going through Libya. Besides, the lure of the forbidden called to me. This trip was going to be really expensive, but dammit, it might be my only chance. Looking back, it very well might have been for a long time to come.

So I took it.

From the start, there were problems. First there was the visa. On a number of occasions in previous years, Libya had announced that they were going to start issuing visas and then reneged at the last minute. It was even more troubling when I was told that we wouldn't know whether or not we would get them until three days before we were due to take off. This spooked quite a few of the group. The large number of people who originally expressed interest began to drop out. I didn't know how many until I got there.

I got the visa over the Internet. It wasn't like those you usually get from other countries that was pasted or stamped on your passport. No, it was a large document in closely spaced Arabic (they provided a translation), that I had to show again and again to various airline people to prove I actually was going to get into the country legally.

After a stopover that was just short enough that I couldn't get out of the airport, I finally got to the Libyan capital of Tripoli. I flattered myself into thinking I was going to be the first American tourist to get in after seven years. Nope. Two people were ahead of me on line. I got through customs with little trouble, and met my guide, an elderly gentleman named Mohammed. Then I found out how big my tour group was.

There was me and this other guy. That was it. Of the 15 people who were going to go, 13 chickened out. Fortunately, they didn't charge me extra for the single supplement.

So there were four of us: Me, Mohammed, the other guy, Bobby, and our driver. It was going to be a surreal experience.

Libya has had a surprisingly large tourist industry. Once you're there it's not hard to see why. The southern coast of the Mediterranean was the nicest place in the Roman world, and the Greeks and Phoenicians before them had done a humongous amount of building before the great tsunami of 365 AD turned everything to rubble.

Then the Vandals came, then the Byzantines took it, and finally, the Arabs. The tribal Berbers gave up on civilization, and no one really cared about the ruins enough to use them as a quarry. So you have some of the best-preserved Roman cities there in Libya. Gadaffi's sons had decided that luxury tourism can be profitable and gives the country a good image. So except for Americans, rich archeology fans were welcomed with open arms. Ports were built nearby so that cruise ships could dock and dump lots of money on the Gaddafi family, which would trickle down to the locals.

Bobby and I would take the standard, authorized tour of the archeological sites, most of which were approved by UNESCO as official World Heritage Properties. Who knew that the timing would be so perfect?

Notes on the Newark Piece summit

The Newark Peace Education Summit was a three-day conference focusing on peacemaking practices from around the world. It featured three Nobel Peace Prize winners, and was, for the most part a total failure.

Now there's a reason for that, there was really no agreed definition of what peace was. Is it a mere lack of war, is it spiritual enlightenment, or personal or domestic tranquility? Is it a separated part of a lemon meringue pie? The only thing that was agreed upon is that it was not the last of these, and as such it was an amorphous discussion of conflict resolution that for the most part had nothing to do with anything, especially personal relationships.

This would have been one of those touchy-feely things that would have gone completely unnoticed by the outside world had not a certain Lhamo Dondrub, also known as the Dalai Lama, been the main attraction. He is the de facto Buddhist Pope, and as such gets lots and lots of attention. He also get's Secret Service protection, which made the entrance to the New Jersey Performing Arts Center and the hotel across the street a pain in the ass.

But there we are, a mega celebrity, and a bunch of lefties, new agers and local politicians trying to sell their wares to an audience who was more then willing to buy. This included two other Nobel Peace Laureates, Jody Williams and Shirin Ebadi, the former of which was actually entertaining and may have actually deserved the thing, and the latter, a humorless ideologue (and former junior member of the Shah's regime) who was given it to give the Iranian regime a black eye.

There were Six panel discussions, four of which were presided over by the Dali Lama (did you know that he was on the CIA payroll for years?), and for the most part they had little to do with what they were advertised about. The first was about "inner peace" and although I missed much of it, what I did see had absolutely nothing to do with personal tranquility. Rabbi Michael Lerner spent an inordinate amount of time promoting a massive wealth transfer to the third world, and Dennis Kuchinich's sick joke of a constitutional amendment, H.Res.156, which would force all businesses to become nonprofit charities. This got applause.

The second panel was even worse. This was supposed to be about "peace in the home" and while one or two of the panelists had a tiny bit to say about the subject, most did not. For the vast majority, who ran NGOs and charities that had to do with halfway houses for prisoners and the homeless. The Dalai Lama said he had no idea what to say because he had no experience! It was worse than useless! Yeesh!

Dr. James R Doty MD practices neurosurgery in Mountain View, California and Stanford, California. He has the unique distinction of being the only graduate of Tulane University Medical School who never managed to get his bachelor's degree first. While googling his name shows that he's a genuine surgeon, much of what he said about his biography didn't make much sense (getting into medical school without a degree, giving his vast fortune away just after he went broke, etc.), he led a major "workshop" on "peace through compassion," which frankly was total BS. I don't remember most of it, because he was so smooth and charming. Another workshop was about interfaith dialogue, but no one sad anything germain to the topic.

The next two grand panels, on education, and within communities, were more germane to what was supposed to be discussed, although like the term "peace" they acted as if they had no idea what the term meant, after all, going around saying "the whole world is a community" really just doesn't cut it. Peace in schools is actually easy to talk about, as tweens and teenagers are for the most part barbarians and conflict is part of the general experience. They didn't give any decent answers to that question either.
The panel on World Peace the next day (the DL had left and the security was gone) was a bash the US session, which showed that they could solve nothing. I didn't attend ecology panel, so I cannot comment.

The main thing I learned is that winning the Nobel Peace Prize doesn't give you moral authority, it just means that you are annoying to tyrants. That might be enough.

Philadelphis

In the spring of 1799, the city of Philadelphia, PA was bureaucrat heaven. The State, Local and Federal governments were for the most part sharing the same space, and the their constituent parts were lodged in every nook and cranny of downtown Philly. Politicians from every conceivable level were walking the streets and 18^th century lobbyists were waiting behind every corner waiting to pounce.

But then, almost suddenly, the city was abandoned. First the Pennsylvania government decided they needed more space and they moved to Lancaster in the middle of the summer. Then, in 1800, the Feds moved to Washington, and Philadelphia was left with only its local pols, and a pressing need with some other industry to fuel its economy.

That the city did, but the few blocks around Chestnut street continued to hold the remains of what was at one time the center of the American universe.

It was here at the old State House, on the first floor, that the Second Continental Congress, decided to declare themselves a thing called the United States of America in 1776. Then ten years later, the same Congress, now located in New York, endorsed the creation of a heretofore-illegal convention to replace the ramshackle constitution that had been in effect since 1781, and suggested holding it in the empty lower floor of the Pennsylvania State House.

But in 1801 no one really cared all that much about historic preservation, and the place became a warehouse, then an art school, then Charles Wilson Peale’s museum, which was meant to be Philly’s answer to P. T. Barnum’s in New York.

Peale’s Museum was thrown out when it was decided the building was too venerable, and became a more dignified public space, before being turned into a shrine in 1876.

Today, while it’s been restored to it’s 1787 glory; one cannot help but be a bit sad that the top floor, which is where the rangers give their talks, couldn’t have been redone to be a restoration of Peale’s museum. An ancient freak show would be a perfect antidote to the solemnity of the assembly hall on the ground floor.

While independence Hall itself, and Congress Hall next door, which was where the first few Congresses under the constitution met, are well done museums, much of which surrounds it is not.

The shrine to the Liberty Bell is downright vulgar, and a number of private museums in the immediate area, most notably the Museum of Liberty, are total rip-offs. The National Constitution Center is hideously expensive, and when I was there, the place was full of advertisements for an exhibit that had already closed.

On the other hand, the visitor’s center has a couple of nice movie theaters and a couple of decent exhibits, and the Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson impersonators are relatively entertaining.

One thing that they’re currently doing is rebuilding the mansion that was where the Presidential residence was. When I was a kid, the site was a public toilet. I thought then as now that the President living in a toilet was hilarious.

Independence Park is a UNESCO Would Heritage site, and deservedly so. The two seminal events that happened here are is why it’s essential.

The Vatican

One of the coolest things that a tourist can do is to see an entire foreign country…All of it…From one end of the other.

This is activity that can literally take a lifetime in some cases, and for most of us, that’s just too damn long. So how to choose?

Size matters. It has to be small, real small. So the best place is to start in Rome. The record books state that the City of Rome is home to three countries: Italy, of which it is the capitol, The State of Vatican City, and the embassy of The Sovereign Military Order of St. John of Jerusalem of Rhodes and of Malta,

The Knights of Malta’s embassy at Via dei Condotti 68, has official extraterritoriality, which means that, it’s the territory, not of Italy, but of the Knights, which don’t have a country back home like Belize or Monaco and thus, the small palace and it’s courtyard are the whole shebang. They don’t let tourists in, and there’s nothing to actually see except a couple of trees and boring office space.

So that’s why the Vatican’s a must. It’s an official country, and at 0.2 square miles, much of which is dedicated to one of the best museums in the world, is doable, and thanks to the internet, now more than ever.

It used to be that getting a ticket to the garden tour, where you get to hike all the way to the helicopter pad on the western end of the country and back, was impossible. You had to send a fax to some monsignor somewhere, and wait a few weeks, and if the pope decided to take a jog or something, it could be cancelled. Then you’d be stuck.

But today, it’s different. Go to http://www.rome-museum.com/vatican-gardens-booking-step-1.php, apply, then pay the 35€ when they reply, and when the time comes, go. It’s worth the trouble.

The first thing you notice when you get off at the Ottaviano metro station is that the reason the Vatican still exists is that it’s surrounded by a very high and thick wall. Across the street are literally hundreds of souvenir shops, at least on the side close to St. Peter’s basilica, and these sell religious articles and pope stuff, and it’s best to ignore these for now. So look for the huge line and find where it begins. You don’t need to wait because you’ve already got a ticket. You enter the museum entrance and go through customs, which resembles airport security. You will then notices the first of many official souvenir shops, which dot the museum. After presenting you’re ticket to the people at the guided tour they give you a little radio receiver. That way the guide doesn’t have to yell and disturb the priests who hang out in the gardens to shirk their hard spiritual labors.

What’s there is almost unexpected. Aside from the formal gardens, there’s areas of lush subtropical splendor palm trees and banana bushes with parrots screeching from here and there. There’s Pope Pius IV’s pleasure dome, which dates from the early 16^th century, which is a sight to behold, a small temple to the Madonna and John Paul II’s jubilee bell from ten years ago.

The priests and Swiss guards don’t like tourists mucking up their private park, and after about two hours of hiking, we’re sent back to the grounds of the museum and relieved of our radios. The tour covers about 75% of the country, and the rest is the museum and the office buildings. While the offices are of no real interest to anybody who doesn’t have business there, the museums are.

The Popes didn’t live in the Vatican until 1870. That’s because they controlled all of central Italy until then, and would only use it as glorified panic room when the Romans would revolt, or the Saracens or Germans for French would invade or something like that, and since these things would happen far more frequently than one might assume, what is now the museum was a rather large palace.

This palace now contains literally centuries of plunder and collections, Rome being almost three thousand years old and all, every time someone found a sculpture, his holiness would get first dibs on it, and if he was generous would actually pay for it.

The amount of ancient Roman sculpture on display is mind boggling there are tens of thousands of busts of anyone and everyone between emperors and slaves, some of which are rather famous, such as Laocoön and his Sons by Agesander, Athenodoros, and Polydorus, and the iconic image of the Emperor Augustus.

But the Sistine Chapel beckons, and while the art is spectacular, the place is as crowded as a subway car during rush hour, and the conservators keep the room dark, and it’s difficult to take it in.

Then once you’re finished with that, there’s the long trek back to the exit, and on the way, there’s dozens of official souvenir stands selling Michaelangelo reproductions and Pope stuff. There’s also a pizzaria, which isn’t bad.

Then you have to leave the country, return to Italy, and follow the walls to St. Peter’s basilica, which is a trip in itself. There’s the huge works of art, and at least three dead popes in glass cases (John XXIII, Clement XI, and Pius X) and a souvenir shops in the treasury area and near the statue of Constantine. The huge church is in fact built over a graveyard, and you can see that too, but aside from the graves of the two John Pauls, it’s difficult to find any of the more interesting ones.

The area around the entrance to the basilica has a dozen or so official Tchotchke places, so it qualifies as a tourist trap. It is essential.

Fisherman's wharf, San Francisco

It is said that San Franciscans hate Fisherman’s wharf. To some extent that’s probably true. The reason is simple. Too many tourists! San Franciscans HATE tourists, those who aren’t in the tourist/hospitality industry at least. It reminds them that the hospitality/ tourist industry is in fact the largest in the city and that it’s possible that the city’s best days are behind it. Granted, gentrification has improved much of the burg, but be that as it may, whether the locals like it or not, Fisherman’s wharf is an essential tourist trap.

If it wasn’t so, then how do you explain the fact that it has three (count’em THREE) National parks, decent food, a sizable percentage of the world’s sea lions, good fishing, and really good views of the bay. What more do you want? A cheesy shopping mall? They got that too.

The reason most San Franciscans rarely go there (or admit that they do) is the main reason it’s essential. It’s too famous. This is why most people don’t go to their area’s famous attractions. It’s also arrogance. After all, the area stinks with tourists, and unless they work there, the locals are better than that, thumbing their noses at us fat visitors who come to see the city by the bay. This is just something you have to see…

Starting with the National Parks…

The three NP’s, Alcatraz, San Francisco Maritime, and Golden Gate/Miller Field aren’t exactly in the Wharf, they frame it, Alcatraz, on Pier 33, is the eastern boarder of the area, the other two on the west. As far as Alcatraz goes, trip is definitely worth it, however you just can’t walk up to the ticket kiosk and get on the next boat. Everything’s booked up for at least a day in advance, so go to the website first: http://www.alcatrazcruises.com/website/pyt-transportation.aspx and get a reservation. The whole thing takes about a day, which means that Fisherman’s Wharf is a two-day operation.

If you forgot to make a reservation for Alcatraz, then find out when the first available boat is and head west to Pier 39, which is where the carousel, aquarium and the notorious hoard of sea lions are. This is the little bit of Disneyland that the shishi San Franciscans so love to hate. Unless you’re looking for high culture or a quiet bucolic setting (in which case what the hell are you doing in San Francisco?), this is the best spot for people watching (Union Square is a close second). The prices for souvenir tchotchies are high, but not THAT high, and the street performers are for the most part entertaining. This is San Francisco the theme park, and as such is pretty successful.

West of Pier 39 is the Wharf proper, bordered by the bay to the north and North Point St. to the south, and Hyde St., where the cable cars and Maritime National Park are, to the west Here you will find a huge number of souvenir stands and seafood restaurants, just what a tourist wants and a local doesn’t. After all, except for the occasional patriotic tee shirt and baseball caps during the season, who really goes around with stuff festooned with one’s hometown’s logo on it?

But behind the all the kitsch, you will discover that Fisherman’s Wharf is a real wharf with real fisherman. Go ahead, have an expensive bowl of chowder or crab cakes. It’s part of the experience. Finally, there are the two national parks. Maritime has an interesting museum and for a small fee you get to see some interesting old ships. Then there’s a place to rest and look at the bay, which is owned by the US government and is absolutely free. Further to the west, you’ll see a cliff. That’s the Fort Mason Unit of the Golden Gate National Parks, and is technically part of the Marina district.

Fisherman’s Wharf is an essential tourist trap….and why do you think they call them that?

New Orleans

Sometime back in the early ‘90s, some congresscritter got it into his head that the Department of the Interior should promote music.

A few years earlier, in 1987, Congress passed one of those symbolic resolutions, somewhat akin to “National Turnip Day,” declaring “Jazz is hereby designated as a rare and valuable national American treasure to which we should devote our attention, support, and resources to make sure it is preserved, understood and promulgated.” This was harmless enough in itself, but how exactly does it go from there to one of the more misbegotten parks in the National Park System?

Well, in 1993, Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA), the guy who would eventually wind up in jail for having all that cash in his freezer, introduced H.R.3408, a classic piece of pork designating something in New Orleans to be a National Park celebrating the history of Jazz. It had no boundaries, no land, no nothing. Just funding for some rangers based in the offices of Jean Lefitte National Park trying to promote what the city of New Orleans was doing very nicely on it’s own.

Today, it has a few very modest venues around the French quarter and is getting some more, but that’s why not why it’s essential. The reason it’s essential is that Jazz National Historic Park, and its sibling Jean Lefitte, cover the entire French Quarter of New Orleans.

So get this: The two Hustler Clubs on Bourbon Street, of which I’ve only seen the outside of, are inside a National Park, so’s the rest of Bourbon Street, and if there ever was a tourist trap, it’s Bourbon street.

The French Quarter, unlike, say Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco, is a source of pride for New Orleanians, and while the place is as touristy as Hell, the locals not only admit to frequenting the place, they can outnumber the tourists on occasion, and the area of Bourbon St. between Canal and St. Phillip, is Disneyland for Drunks.

The drinks are extremely expensive, although you can take them outside and go to another bar for a refill, paying $16 for a shot is a little much. But if you do it right, you can manage to hear some pretty good music, which is what the National Park is all about. While it’s not always Marti Gras, they try to keep up the pretense.

One block south of Bourbon is Royal, which is full of art galleries and restaurants, all three levels of government, Federal, State, and Local, have strict laws regarding the preservation of buildings, and as the Quarter was one of the few areas that were totally unscathed by Katrina, and unlike the Ninth ward, the powers that be want this area to continue to thrive, and it does.

Most people in the Quarter don’t know that they’re simultaneously in two National Parks. Tour Guides Association of Greater New Orleans, Inc., who’s membership doesn’t appreciate the Federal Government taking over their jobs, has an agreement limiting the NPS to one fifteen minute tour a day. With tourism the areas largest industry, that makes sense.

The architecture is beautiful, the people are mostly friendly, and while everything is damn expensive, but you just HAVE to see it.

Washington's Mall.

Washington, DC is a company town all right. It has one industry, the government, and everything derives from that. People go there to see the government and said government’s tributes to itself, nothing else. Sure there are restaurants and museums. Sure there are three major universities, and some pretty nice parks, but aside from the Universities, all are either run by the government or by private interests to maintain it.

A bar frequented by bureaucrats and journalists helps maintain the government as much as the official office buildings. While it would be wrong to say the entire District of Columbia is a tourist trap, few would want to go see the SouthEast Quadrant, the area called the National Mall most certainly is. In an earlier installment of this series, someone complained that The Statue of Liberty was a “tourist attraction” not a ”tourist trap”. Well, consider this:

Take a look at the Lincoln memorial. Walk up those famous stairs and when you are on the same level as the base of the statue, go right. There you will find a souvenir shop. That’s right, built right into the edifice.

Remember Jesus tried to start a riot about something like that.

It wasn’t always like that. A century ago, the mall had only one major memorial, that to George Washington, and a much smaller Smithsonian institution. Today, we’ve got something for every war we ever fought, and then some. The Mall is beginning to run out of room, what with the Dwight Eisenhower and Martin Luther King memorials due to begin construction soon and at least a dozen others in the works.

Most of the ones that are already there aren’t the least bit objectionable, but do they each deserve a souvenir stand? No. The problem is that special interests have gotten a hold of them and for the most part made them worse. Look at the Vietnam memorial for example:

Maya Lin’s original design was perfect. It was simple, stark, and moving. It honored those who served and died in the war, but not the war itself. It was totally complete and did it’s job perfectly As such it stood as is for a number of years, and then a veteran’s group demanded to be included, and two groups of sculptures were added cluttering up the space. Not to disrespect those brave people who served and demanded to be honored there, but they pretty much ruined the serenity and the artistic unity of the space. It looks a bit cluttered, and the souvenir shed nearby doesn’t help all that much either.

Another example is the Franklin Roosevelt Memorial, which has FDR depicted in a way that would have horrified him. Pride is considered a deadly sin for a reason.

With the John Stewart rally less than a week away, going all the way to DC without strolling around and seeing some of these monuments would be a tragedy.

There are too many memorials to see than can be done in a day, but most are essential. Most also have souvenir stands. This makes them tourist traps.

Summing up the Trip

The trip is over. The killer jet lag, three days of 14-18 hours of sleep a night, has abated at last. I've ticked another country off the list and am getting ready for a cross-country jaunt from San Francisco to Boston by bus.
But before I do that, there are a few loose ends to tie up.

For one thing, Iran ain't Persia. Persia is a nation with a thousands-year-old history that's fully capable of integrating itself into the modern world. It's got the technology to do it; it's full of intelligent people with a zest for life and a love of culture. It's a nation that wants to be a friend of ours and that should be.

Iran is a corrupt, terrorist state that enjoys hurting people. Look what it's done to Iraq and Lebanon. The theocracy has managed to have a toothless toy democracy as a loincloth to cover its privates.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the puppet president of Iran, has announced that he's going to address the UN, and that's his right. He's an annoying buffoon, but we can't and shouldn't stop him. The question is not what we're going to have to do about HIM, but what we're going to have to do with his master, über-fürer Ali Khamenei, who had appointed himself to the job and threatens to remain there for life (He's been there almost twenty years). He's part of the group of thugs in antique clothing that defrauded Persia when the people demanded democracy and overthrew a tyrant.

We can't get rid of him, of course. In 1953, the CIA sent Teddy Roosevelt's grandson Kim with a suitcase full of cash to get rid of a semi-democratically elected prime minister, and he did, but only because the powers that be in Iran, including that prime minister being deposed permitted it. Mohammed Reza Shah fled in 1979 because Jimmy Carter refused to support him, and that caused all the trouble.

The Russians and the Brits have really good relations with Iran. The Russians helped install Reza Khan and the Brits got rid of him. Eisenhower sent Kim Roosevelt to Tehran as a favor to Winston Churchill. Stalin occupied much of Northern Iran during the 1940s, but they have very good relations with the Iranian government. The Soviets were the main backers of Israel during its first five years of existence.

So why is it just US who's picked out as the Great Satan? Diversion, mostly. If they refuse to talk to us, and go around shooting missiles and enriching uranium, they can go around saying..."Those bastard Americans are picking on us for no reason!" and all the problems like inflation, energy and the environment (to be fair, they've been pretty good on that) and feel like a righteous victim. But the Persians, Azeris, Kurds, Jews and others know what the real deal is. Unfortunately, the Mullahs haven’t agreed to go, and unlike the Shah, don’t care if a Jimmy Carter is going to withhold his support or nor.

Iran’s like Burma in that way. Myanmar goes under the wrong name as well.

Well, that’s it for now. I hoped you liked the series.. Now it’s back to important
things, like the cover of this week’s New Yorker…

Iran and the global community, my experiences.

I've collected coins since I was a kid. I've been all over the world, and the loose change has gotten so heavy my bookshelf needs reinforcement. There are lots of coins that are worth nothing. I've got a Turkish million Lira piece, an Italian one lira coin, and a few other weird things, but one thing I think is completely unique is the souvenir set I got in Shiraz. What makes it unique is one particular coin, a one-ryal piece that is worth one 9000th of a dollar. It was dated this year, and it's thus the most worthless coin ever minted by anyone. Sure there are plenty of coins that are worth less than nothing, but they were all minted before catastrophic inflation rendered them so (I've seen people with wheelbarrows filled with money, it's not pretty). But this was different. This was made AFTER it was worthless.

Having a national currency worth "less than nothing" is embarrassing. So the Persians invented the Thumm. Sure it's not worth all that much, but it's still respectable in a way. Inflation is beginning to ravage the Thumm the way it ravaged the Ryal. Land is up, food is up, fuel is up, and it's not just because of western sanctions, either. Our friend Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s power may be mostly fictional, but he has some control over the economy, and he's been doing a really bad job of it, and it was this in mind that on the last full day of my trip, I left Persia and entered Iran.

The village of Natanz is not one of those places that it's necessary to visit. It's a tiny place in the middle of nowhere where the locals wear colorful traditional clothes, have red adobe houses (iron-rich soil) and sell the few tourists that go there CDs featuring their picturesque lives. The nine of us (seven tourists, the bus driver and the guide) had the same lunch as always (I hope to eat chicken kebab again, but not any time soon) and after getting back on the bus, someone mentioned the nuclear facility.

The guide shrugged. "It's about twenty miles from here, on the other side of the mountains."
"Do you think we'll sit it?" someone said.
"I don't know."

We saw it, all right.

The damn thing was right on the highway. We first began to notice some antiaircraft batteries, and then more, then we saw a modest smokestack and finally the nuke plant itself. There was military everywhere, and a number of signs warning us not to take pictures.

"Someone stopped a bus here and confiscated all the cameras.,” the guide warned. A couple of my compatriots managed to surreptitiously snapped a few pictures.Talk of wars and rumors of wars pervaded the bus. We were home free, or so we thought. As we approached the holy city of Qom on of the group announced that his bladder was about to burst. So we stopped at the mosque right next to the toll booth.

It was about a hundred degrees outside, but everyone got out of the air conditioning and headed to make waste. Normally, this is something that shouldn't be mentioned, for obvious reasons, but on the way back, something happened. A cop got on the bus and and told the driver that someone had passed a brand new law the day before and that he needed an assistant driver in order to be allowed to make it back to Tehran.

Now the reason for the new law was actually pretty reasonable. A bus driver fell asleep a few days before and got into an accident (I'd been in a similer accident in Zimbabwe some years back). the law was fine, but it seems that they hadn't bothered to tell anyone until they had started issuing tickets.

So we hung around for over an hour while the guide and driver tried desperately to find another driver. They couldn't find one, and the cops said that they'd let us go with a warning, but they lied. A trap was set, and about two miles north of the toll gate, the bus was stopped and the driver arrested.

After another half hour of quiet panic, the two returned with some semi-bad news. We were going to be aboe to make it to the hotel, and from there the airport, but the driver had his license revoked, and was issued a temporary one good only until midnight. As the owner of the bus who still had a huge loan to pay off, he faced bankruptcy. This with a wife and two kids to support.

We found out a bit later that the new law wasn't supposed to actually go into effect until later in the week, and that the driver could appeal and would probably get his license back. The cops in Qom were just having some fun with some drivers. That, my friends, is Iran.

When we arrived at last in Tehran, there was a blackout. The manager blamed sanctions. They didn't get the lights back on in our rooms until well after I had gone to sleep.

Tomorrow, I'll sum up.

Isfahan and the art of Painting

From the West, Persian is difficult to invade, it has only been successfully done twice (Alexander the Great and the Ummayad caliphs a millennium later). From the east it was a different story, Mongols, Turks, Tajiks (who were the only actual Iranians to rule Iran until modern times) and Pashduns, would regularly invade, raping and pilliging and burning everything to the ground again and again until there was nothing left except crumbling adobe houses and that amazing national underground plumbing system.

The only group of foreigners to have the remotest claim tp "nativeness" were the The Samanids (819–999), who were the first in centuries to use Farsi as an official language in centuries and they hired the poet Ferdowsi to write the Persian national epic, "Shahnama: The Epic of the KIngs" which has been the core of Persian education ever since. They may have been forced to become Muslims, but Ins'shallah, they weren't going to give up their language like the Berbers or Syrians.

It's the poets who have kept the Persian people alive. Ferdowsi, Haifez, Omar Kayyam, and Rumi, all of whom lived at the end of the first millennium AD or beginning of the second, are treasured by citizens of the Islamic Republic far more than modern Brits do Keats or Shelly. Only William Shakespeare has such prestige.

In the city of Shiraz, people would go to the tomb of the poet Haifez in the evening and recite 800 year old poetry, before saluting the master with a Coke® (US trade with Iran is greater now than at any time since the Shah's fall). Could you imagine that with at the grave of Robert Frost? I don't think so.

In Isfahan, hundreds of miles to the north (eight hours by bus, and it feels it), people go under the pol-e Khadu bridge and sing tales from Ferdowsi (dig that crazy echo!) while later in the evening when it's actually cool, bring some of the family's more worn rugs and have a picnic on the banks of the Zayande river, where if it's possible to avoid notice by the morality police (which, from what I can tell, is the national sport), one can snuggle up with one's honey. The river at this time is filled with paddleboats. There is poetry is the vision.

The Mongols and Turks who ruled Persia for most of the second Millennium AD began to stop tearing down palaces of previous dynasties around the time of Henry VIII of England, and as these are primarily secular buildings, one can see a tradition of figurative fresco which looks like something out of Japan. However, the people in charge of restoration have done a horrible job in some places. In fact, except for a very few mosques, there's very little architecture that seems to be older than the 16th century, and what there is, is mostly adobe that doesn't look all that impressive from the outside. That is except for caravansaries, which are a cross between castles and hotels designed to protect merchants on the silk road.

It's at this point that a kind of weariness begins to creep in. We could feel the end of the trip creeping up on us, and not a moment too soon....

Persia, Chapter four: Persepolis

According to Islamic lore, in the year 610 of the Christian Era, a certain Abu l-Qasim Muhammad ibn ‘Abd Allāh al-Hashimi al-Qurashi was ordered by the Archangel Jabril to read out loud from a book that didn't yet exist. Prior to that, the world was in the "age of ignorance" and what was produced didn't matter all that much.

For the next 1,189 years, most of what was built by the hands of man prior to that was either ignored or destroyed. True, the works of certain Greek and Jewish philosophers were preserved and studied. Euclid and Galen were very useful, after all, but what was left of the great library at Alexandria was burned to the ground (although some Moslems blame that on Christians) and much of everything else was left to rot. then the Turks and Mongols came raping and pillaging their way west...and then in 1799 Napolean Bonaparte came to Egypt to restock the Louvre museum. The "Age of Ignorance" is what brings many tourists to the Middle East, and that doesn't sit well with everyone living there.

Persepolis is the jewel of Persia and the number one tourist attraction in all of Iran. Going all the way to Iran and not seeing it for yourself is a minor crime, and innumerable Achaemenid sculptures on the reconstructed walls are breathtaking. There are also the rock cut tombs of Achaemenids Artaxerxes 2nd and 3rd, one of whom was the husband of Queen Esther. (we'll never be sure which it was).

Going from the parking lot to the ruins, you pass the ticket office, a souvenier shopping center, and a theater showing a filmed introduction to the site, which is, sadly, only in Farsi. Then you pass through teh various gates, which are decorated in motifs from various parts of the Achaemenid Empire. Babylonian sphinxes, Griffins from Central Asia, bulls and horses, and lines and line of people carved in bas relief on walls showing every nation in the then known world bringing gifts to the Shah. Imagine a mural in the national headquarters of the IRS showing happy people waiting on line holding cash and checks....you get the idea. They also show Ahura Mazda fighting his nemisis Arhiman, and Darius, Xerxes, and various Artaxerxeses worshiping AM. There is also a little museum there which is actually a reconstructed palace, which shows all sorts of small goodies

Now why would anyone want to wipe this Unesco World Heritage site off the face of the Earth? Well, on the one hand Alexander the Great, who burned the place down in around 330 BC, had an excuse, he and his men were completely blotto and didn't know what they were doing. But what about that Mullah thousands of years later?

From what I was told, and the two sources could be wrong, the guy and his followers wanted to erase any traces of Mohammed Reza Shah, who had fled the country earlier in the year. The Shah had decided to mark the 2500th anniversary of Cyrus the Great with a huge party at Persepolis, and forgetting that the soiree had actually made a substantial profit in subsequent tourist revenue in the following two years, the mullahs, armed with bulldozers and pickaxes headed to the site to cleanse it of preislamic foulness.

The locals from the surrounding villages and the city of Shiraz met them with greater numbers and almost lynched them. Persepolis was saved!..and so were the many bas-reliefs made in the area by Sassanian Shahs from the first half of the First millennium CE, Some of which were defaced by Moslems in the age of the Abbisd Caliphs. For that you cannot blame the current regime.

A few days later, on our way from Shiraz to Istfahan, we stopped at the tomb of Cyrus in Parsagad. there were some bas reliefs of a guy in a fish suit and a few other minor things, the city Cyrus built there was mostly made of wood, and that all rotted away ages ago. But the tomb itself was made of stone, and because the locals claimed that it was the tomb of Solomon's mother, it had survived the vandals. I noticed that someone had left a bouquet of flowers on the stairs leading up to the entrance in tribute.

At lunch afterwards, we debated whether or not it was a statement against the current regime or just a loving tribute to a great man.

Persia, chapter three: Yazd.

When we were finished looking at the Qajar and Pahlavi palaces, we headed for the "domestic" airport and boarded an Iran Air 737 and headed south to the city of Yazd. Yazd is an old city, named after the Sassanian shah Yazdegerd I (c. 400 CE) and is allegedly one of the oldest cities in the world. It's here that most of the remaining Zoroastrians live, living relics of the Lost World, that Achaemenid empire that stretched from the Danube to the Indus and was the bane of the Greeks.(It is said that the reason Tehran didn't get the '84 Olympics is that they wanted to cancel the Marathon, as it brought back painful memories of the Persian loss there 2400 years ago).

We were to consider the heritage of this relict people, but first we were to consider something more important, and a much more impressive feat than conquering the world. it's the Iranian pride and joy: a great network of qanats, or underground canals, which bring water from the mountains to wherever it is needed. for thousands of years, people have been building and maintaining these things, allowing cities to flourish in the desert and do things like grow rice in arid wastelands. The first museum we went to, and it wasn't a particularly good one, was dedicated to the brave men who risked their lives to mine water (the minors would wear a modified burial shroud in case they didn't make it back.) The next one we saw was dedicated to something almost as important, air conditioning...

Before the invention of electronics in the late 19th century, air conditioning was a difficult nut to crack, and how they did it was with what is called a wind tower. The tower was designed to channel the winds through a chamber filled with wet leaves and from there into the living area of the house, where it would be nice and cool, or at least in theory, and if you were rich. The poor had to just take a siesta in the heat or the public access atechamber to the local qanat. (If you were rich, you'd be able to build your house over it and have private access to all the water you wanted). The towers resembled ancient greek temples.

But the highlight of the segment, aside from the rug shop, were the two Zoroastrian Fire temples. There are about 40 thousand Zoroastrians left in Iran, and as a persecuted minority have gone from the vast majority of a world empire to a mere 22 thousand hangers on. Yazd has two fire temples (named after the fire which is kept burning eternally as a "statue" of the god Ohrmazd. One contains the Sassanid's official flame, which has been allegedly burning since before the Prophet Mohammed was born, and a derelict one next to the banned "towers of Silence" where the dead used to be fed to the vultures until the 1970s. We climbed up one and looked at the view.

The one that's still functioning is as much an official tourist trap as anything else. There's the eternal flame, a cheezy picture of Zoroaster, and a small park. How Ohrmazd is actually worshipped at the temple is a bit of a mystery. I asked and they weren't all that forthcoming, all they wanted to do was sell postcards.

There wasn't any room to do very much inside, although it's possible that it's all done outside on th front lawn. I guess it doesn't really matter. What does is that all of the Zoroastrians I've met have the religous symbol around their necks. and soon I'd seen them all over the place. As there are so few Zoroastrians left, it might be Muslims making a political statement...more on that later.

Persia, Chapter two: Tehran

A quarter millennium ago, Tehran was a large village of around fifteen thousand people. All that changed in 1798, when Aqa Muhammad, the first Qajar [pronounced: Ka-JAR] Shah, moved the capitol there from Shiraz several hundred miles to the south. The reason that he didn't like Shraz, which, as we shall see, is a pretty nice place, is actually quite understandable. Years before, the Afsharid Shah Rukh had cut his balls off, and then the Zand hereditary Prime Minister Karim Khan had him locked up in a dungeon for years. Who wouldn't have wanted a new start?

Since the Qajars moved in, Tehran has changed long beyond recognition. The village has become a city, and the city a megalopolis. The city grew like wildfire under the Qajar and Palhavi Shahs, then even more under the Islamic republic.

Driving in from the airport, which is over an hour away from the city, one can see the sprawl. Even at four thirty in the morning, the traffic is heavy, and there are almost no traffic lights. We are two people short. United Airlines has fucked up yet again, but that's par for the course. Getting up after three hours sleep, we have breakfast introduce ourselves to each other ['Hi, I'm a famous actress, don't you remember me in..." Holy shit! I do—cool] and go get on the bus to see the officially authorized sites, which means palaces and museums.

One must always remember that Iran was always also Persia, and the small national archeological museum, where we see relics Persepolis and a few pots and pans, plus statues of long dead pagan princes. Interesting stuff, then we head out to the Qajar palaces, which are in the old part of town.

The Qajars, who ruled from 1795 to 1925, are the fount of all Persia/Iran's troubles. They had heard stories of the great wealth and beauty of the European west, and later on, Shah Nasir Al-Din actually went there and was thunderstruck with the pomp and circumstance of European courts. So he raised taxes to crippling levels, even among muslims, and later started selling off the country's natural resources in order to build more splendiforous palaces and plant more formal gardens and parks.

These people weren't as dumb as they seemed. They weren't babies being bamboozled out of inheritance. They were thrilled with the income that the future BP was sending them for the oil that was drilled and refined at the company's expense.

The result was a bit on the kitchy side. The paintings on the walls look like a cross between Russian Icons and the tops of old cigar boxes. They also used lots of broken glass.

The Pahlavis, Riza Khan and his son, THE Shah, abandoned these and built more modern digs. These are much nicer to the modern eye, although that autographed photo of Adolph Hitler prominently displayed in the foyer near the Shah's office is a bit disconcerting. Outside, of course there's a park, with lots of people hanging out in the shade, and it's here that I first heard the first dissenting declaration by the local citizenry, "I want the SHAH BACK!" said an old woman.

Palace museums aside, everything is up to date in Tehran. McDonalds is nowhere to be seen, but Nokia is, and a trip to a typical shopping mall shows that underneath the officially required outerwear, women like sexy. There's lots of heavy makeup and evidence of nose-jobs. I also noticed people wearing necklaces with the zoroastrian Ormizad symbol on it.

Shi'a Moslems are more laid back on some things than Sunnis, especially in the arts, where the human form is not taboo as it is in some Arab countries (Iran is NOT Arab). Art is heroic, both poetry and pictures are treasured even more than in the west.

After three days, two of which were partly dedicated to recovering from jet-lag, we went to the "domestic" airport and boarded a plane to our next destination, Shriaz.

My trip to Persia part one: Introduction

Few countries are as historically important as Persia. Not Iran, Persia. True, the area was to some extent called "Aryan" or "iran" on and off for millenia for the last two and a half thousand years, it's been Persia, and that's what most of the people consider themselves, Persian. They speak Farsi (Persian), not Irani, but that's a discussion for later. For now, let's discuss why anyone in their right mind would travel half way around the world and back and spend a quarter-year's salary (minimum wage) to go there for two weeks.

Before the 9/11 attacks, there was a company called "Now Voyager" which specialized in what were then called "courier flights." Back in those days, it was cheaper for a company to buy a plane ticket and use the luggage space than to just ship the packages. So they would sell the seat to some poor fool who just needed a change of underwear and a small napsack that fit in the overhead bin for up to 90% off, and viola! You could spend a week in Hong Kong, or London, Paris or Rome, for almost no money. Then there were other ways to get across the atlantic cheap, and for a thousand bucks, you could go clear around the world...and I did.

I became an invenerate tourist, and still am. It gets me mad when someone says "I"m not a tourist, I'm a traveller, as if something was crass about the idea of seeing someplace for the first time with one's eyes and mouth open in wonderment. Tourism is an honorable activity, going back thousands of years. Hell, the Crusades were fought to protect tourists for crying out loud. Allah himself, through the prophet Mohammed (allegedly) demanded that his followers go to Mecca to see the sights there at least once in their lives.

God himself, you can't get a better endorsement than that!

Some countries are harder to get to than others. Take Cuba for example. It's illegal under most circumstances, and I went there under a special license just before the Bush administration decided to suspend them. Other places have "State department advisories" against them, but that doesn't mean that you're not allowed to go there, however there are some countries that just won't let you in. Libya for example refuses to issue visas, and even when they do, they don't always honor them. That's a very hard nut to crack, and I'll do it some day.

Global Exchange is a lefty group promoting things like "fair trade" and Hugo Chavez. One of the things they do is tours of places who's governments hate our guts, or have a leftist bent, Venuzuela, for example. Propaganda tourism. (the late Spalding Grey did a brilliant description of this in his Monster in a Box)They're pretty much the only people who've managed to get regular tours of NORTH Korea, and one of the few who organize jaunts to Iran, although one of their "delegations" was too loud in her advocacy, and they got banned for a year. So poor people bitching is not on the agenda for this trip, which is fine and dandy with me. The main problem was the expense and that you had to be accepted.

I obviously WAS accepted, and after about six weeks of waiting, the Iranian interest section gave the okay. The visa was expensive, and because it took so long we had to pay the special overnight fee as well (the Iranians took three days anyway), and there were lots and lots of dos and don'ts, especially when it came to dress. The Chador and all that. Global Exchange spend a lot of time and money getting off the blacklist, and they didn't want to get back one, which is completely understandable.

Even with the isolation of luxury hotels and a bus tour, we seven tourists managed to make contact with quite a few ordinary Persians, as well as Azeris, Turkomen and indogenes. (I also got two small rugs, it's friggen' PERSIA for crying out loud). My knowledge of the people is cursory at best, but it's far better than what we get out of the media. I'm not going to talk about the dynamics of the group or anything like that because that's mostly irrelevant (Mexican lawyers, college sophomore marxists and minor movie stars) just what I saw and read about while I was there.

I love Persia and hate Iran, by the time I"m finished, I hope you know why.