THE FIRE

THANKS SASHA - The lamb was delish !








"This is the part I like the best;
This is the wettest part
of the quest..."

Samhain '06

What may we wish for now as the autumn light ebbs and with the passing of Samhain the ensuing darkness of another encroaching winter threatens. What more exists to light and enlighten? Yeats wrote that the grey morning melancholy runs through all the legends of the Celtic people, and so it is there I shall seek. It is there where, on our isolated isle at least, fallen angles too good to be lost and too bad to be saved work out there time; where all life past and present walk unknowingly side by side: where souls seek solace. Waning light gives way to a waxing soul, and the grey dawn gives life and hope to any who will open their hearts to it. They are the magic hours on this rock and it is in the waters that hold the grey dawn up where I shall bathe my Celtic soul in search of repose from the infinite Celtic melancholy.

On SAMHAIN'S Eve

Tis the night before Samhain and all through the house,
All the creaures are stirring, while Sasha dresses the grouse.
The pentagrams are hung from the tree-limbs with care,
In the hopes that Carnunnos soon will be there.
The initiates are fretting all freaked-out and more,
While visions of terror into their brains bore;
And Asbill in his sporran, and Wolfe in his kilt,
Have just come to terms with the blood that they spill't.
When out in the forest there arises such a clatter,
That I flee from the graveyard to avoid the whole matter.
On towards the firelight I fly like a flash,
Tear open the mullien leaf and start humming The Clash.

The moon through the gaps of the boughs ever shifting ,
Gave an eerie dull glow to the headstones I'm lifting.
When what to my bloodshot eyes should appear,
But the hulk of a man with the head of a deer.
With a pack of hellhounds from regions afar,
I recall in a flash that its Féile na Marbh.

More dreadful than Balor onward he comes,
In a low gutteral voice, a kind of keening he hums.
"To Alban, and Breacan, and Cairneach, and Damhan,
To Eochai, and Failbhe, and Iarlugh and Garbhan.
As the veil slowly lifts and the two worlds combine,
I command you to rise and get behind me in line."

And then, from the dead-wood, I hear a low wail
And the scratching and clawing of each fingernail.
As I suck in my breath, and start turning around,
The Cailleach Bheur rises up from the ground.
She is dressed in dark blankets from head to the feet
And carried with her an odor that smelled faintly of peat.

A magical hammer, the Blue Hag carries by her side,
And her arms when held out stretch nearly 15 feet wide!
Her eyesockets hollow, she's long lost the eyes,
And the vegetation as she passes simply shrivels up an dies.
She speaks not a word, but goes straight down the drive,
And after her passing I doublecheck that I'm alive.

The dark side and I on Samhain are one.
What's left when its over is the devastation she's done.
The Tree of Life till Beltane sleeps
And this is the tradition, this Hibernian keeps.

GOOD LUCK TO ALL HIBEE INITIATES '06 -- YOU'LL NEED IT!

Oh My!

Notre Dame wide receiver Jeff Samardzija leaps into the the end zone in front of UCLA cornerback Trey Brown and Chris Horton to score the game-winning touchdown in the closing seconds of the game during college football action in South Bend, Ind., Saturday, Oct. 21, 2006. Notre Dames defeated UCLA 20-17. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)

I Reproduce This Article For All Who Think The War Does Not Touch Us Directly

http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/alessandro-carbonaro.htm

In Marine's Death, Clues to a Son's LifeMother Finds Answers In Effort to Understand Sergeant Killed in Iraq
By Dan MorseWashington Post Staff WriterWednesday, October 11, 2006; A01

Gilda Carbonaro pulled her car to a stop inside Arlington National Cemetery, stepping out to visit the freshly dug grave of her only child, Alex.
With her was a broad-shouldered Marine, limping from a leg shattered in battle, who towered a foot over Gilda. The Marine hadn't known Alex well but held precious clues about the person he had become.
Gilda had many questions. She and her husband had raised Alex in a world different from the military's -- the protected streets of Bethesda. Alex graduated from a Quaker high school, then stunned them by enlisting in the Marine Corps.
Gilda trusted he would serve out his initial five-year commitment, come home and go to college. Instead, he reenlisted, earning a spot in one of the Marines' elite reconnaissance units, called Recon, which operate deep inside enemy territory. That took Alex on two tours in Iraq, a war Gilda had spent two years trying to end.
On May 1, a roadside bomb tore through Alex's Humvee, setting him and two of his men on fire. He died 10 days later in a military hospital in Germany in the arms of his mom, his dad, his wife of not quite 12 months and his mother-in-law.
Alex remains the only service member listed from Bethesda killed in Iraq or Afghanistan. He was 28.
His grave in sight, Gilda -- a 56-year-old school teacher -- wrestled with unyielding grief, and with a mother's need to understand her son. The Marine walking with Gilda was a sergeant, like Alex. They placed flowers on Alex's grave, doing the same at the nearby grave of one of Alex's men. They walked to a big tree and sat down.
"Have you read the Recon Creed?" the Marine asked. "We live by that."
The Corps Over College
Alex was a tough read, even as a kid. Private and headstrong, he tended to reveal big decisions only after he had made them.
The world around him couldn't have been more focused on college. In 2000, according to U.S. Census data, Bethesda held more degrees per capita than any place in the country with more than 50,000 people.
Gilda held a master's in linguistics from Georgetown University. She taught Spanish at two of the area's top prep schools, first Holton-Arms, then St. Albans. Alex's father, Fulvio, a native of Italy with a master's in computer science, consulted at financial institutions in developing nations around the world.
The couple tried not to smother their only child. When he was 12, Gilda walked him through their neighborhood, helping line up friends who needed lawns mowed. Alex spent $300 of his earnings on a watch for his dad.
Alex spelled poorly, shaking his confidence as he advanced in school. Seeking smaller classes, his parents enrolled him at Sandy Spring Friends School, an eclectic prep school where students call teachers by their first names and are exposed to the Quaker tenets of peace and pacifism.
Alex applied himself to only what interested him -- Russian history, Brazilian history, creative writing -- and posted erratic grades reflecting that. He came to see college as a place others headed simply to get a degree. Without studying, he posted an SAT score high enough to give him a good shot at Georgetown.
Gilda handed him an application. "You'll have the most fun you've had in your life," she said.
Alex began to fill it out but halted at a section he viewed as phony. "This is when the person applying to college writes these essays saying what wonderful people they are," Gilda recalled him saying. "I'm not doing that."
Alex stood a wafer-thin 5 feet 7 inches tall, making it that much more shocking when he told his parents that he had enlisted after high school. The three drove to the Marine recruiting office in Rockville. "You can live a year of your life wasting time," the recruiter told them. "Or you can live it, planning every minute of it, and living it well."
To Gilda, it sounded like a standard spiel for parents. But part of it reflected her beliefs. "The unexamined life is not worth living," she thought.
Alex's decision stunned friends. He was the kid playing Dungeons & Dragons, the garage-band guitarist, the high-schooler squeezed into a booth at TGI Friday's, sucking down cigarettes and endless cups of coffee. He told them that he wanted to be financially free, to travel, to become stronger. "You know what," he told buddy Jon Codell, cutting off his concerns, "I think it's honorable."
Alex shipped off for boot camp at Parris Island in summer 1998. His parents soaked up his letters.
"My first shot was in the 2-ring center and to the left," Alex wrote. He had to nail seven bull's-eyes from 500 yards in his final seven shots. He did, "and so now I can move on in boot camp."
After graduating, Alex was sent to Japan to maintain electronic components of Marine aircraft.
"Hi Bug," Gilda e-mailed, addressing him by a nickname she had coined when he was a baby. "Well, so it's Lance Corporal now. Fantastic! What is the rank that follows it? Some sort of sergeant?"
"What follows lance Corporal is Corporal," Alex responded. "A lance Corporal is just a Corporal without a horse. I learned that yesterday. From the sound of it, most LCPL's don't get their horse for about three years in this particular occupation."
The Marines sent him to an Air National Guard base in New York. Then terrorists struck the Pentagon and World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. The world seemed to be going to hell, Alex told a high school friend, and he wanted to get in the middle of it. Apart from that, he had never become the Marine he envisioned. He reenlisted, setting his sights on Recon. Fewer than one in five make it.
Gilda suggested having the Marines send him to college so he would come out an officer: "Doesn't it make sense to seek a commission?"
"So I can be stacking papers and signing things while my men are in the field?" Alex responded. "I don't think so."
'I Struggle With Myself'
Gilda and Fulvio fully supported removing Afghanistan's Taliban government. Given time, Fulvio thought, the United States would lead poorer nations toward democracy. "I am now convinced I was wrong," he e-mailed friends a month after the Iraq invasion.
A year later, Gilda and Fulvio thought the United States shouldn't pull out. Then, for Gilda, came a growing sense that staying was doing more harm. In spring 2004, she joined Military Families Speak Out.
She placed a sign in her living room window: "Bring The Troops Home Now." She kept postcards in her purse calling for withdrawal and slipped them onto windshields in downtown Bethesda. She went to rallies, visited members of Congress. She sent Alex articles on such topics as the challenges of reconstructing Iraq.
"I struggle with myself in deciding whether or not to send you these things," she wrote. "Obviously I want you to have total conviction in what you are doing. To me, this conviction translates to your safety. But another part of me is convinced the more knowledge you have, the better off, the safer you'll be.''
Alex kept training for Recon. At home one weekend, he and Bethesda friend Andy Huff jogged to Bradley Hills Elementary School. Alex reached for a chin-up bar, knocking out 20. He took a quick break and did nearly 20 more. "Whoa," Huff remembers telling him. "That's pretty crazy."
In September 2004, as part of a Recon battalion with the motto "Swift, Silent, Deadly," Alex shipped off to Iraq.
'Enough of the Politics'
Two months later, Gilda heard from Alex's fiancee. A bomb had blown up under Alex's Humvee, sending shrapnel into his foot and laying him up in a field hospital outside Fallujah.
"Mom, Mom, Mom," he said over the phone. "I don't want you to make a big deal out of this. I don't want anybody out there thinking, 'Oh, poor Alex, poor Alex.' "
He asked his parents to visit a wounded buddy at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda. While there, they met other Marines, too, including one blinded by a gunshot who asked what Alex did.
"He's Recon," Gilda said.
"Recon. They're crazy, ma'am."
She asked what he meant.
"They have no fear," he said.
Gilda and Fulvio also met Frank Delgado, the tall Recon Marine who two years later would go with Gilda to Alex's grave. Three metal rings surrounded Delgado's lower left leg, and rods descended into his bones. He told the Carbonaros that he had just seen Alex. He was okay, and Delgado told them how lucky he was: Alex soon would be fighting alongside his buddies, not laid up worrying about them.
Gilda began visiting the hospital weekly. She also learned of Marines in boot camp who didn't get mail. She wrote them, trying to lift their spirits.
She sent Alex cookies, cakes, books, articles. She tried to engage him in campaign discussions.
"Enough of the politics," Alex e-mailed her from Iraq.
A month later, a red bouquet arrived for Gilda. "Happy Birthday," the card read. "Just know that I am doing OK. I love you. Alex."
Joining in Protests
May 28, 2005, was his wedding day.
At 11:30 a.m. he walked downstairs in his dress-blue uniform, a row of five medals, including a purple heart, hanging on his chest.
"Wait a minute," Gilda said. "The wedding is at 3, Alex."
He wanted to join six other Marines at the church to practice a ceremony in which he and his bride would walk under an arch of swords.
The newlyweds settled outside a Recon base in North Carolina. Selected as team leader, Alex was in charge of five younger Marines. It was down there, between his deployments, that Alex searched the Internet for his mom's name.
At the rallies, Gilda hadn't mentioned Alex's name. She had rarely mentioned hers. Still, as Alex could see, she had certainly been active. At a rally in Washington, a speaker saw Gilda, calling out her name. She spoke in Philadelphia. And just before Alex had left on his first tour, she spoke by phone to a reporter with Radio Free Europe.
"I can't let my son see how upset I am," she said in an online version of the story. "How do you turn around and tell your son: 'Your president, he made a mistake. You need to abandon your men.' You don't tell your child that."
Alex didn't like it. "Keep a low profile," he told Gilda.
She did. As Gilda wrote senators and friends, she stacked copies in a box, hoping one day to give them to Alex.
"How did the pistol shooting go? . . . What's the mood like in the country at least as far as Marines are concerned about the way things are going in Iraq?" she e-mailed from Italy.
"Political-wise marines are marines," he wrote back, "and will always just talk about the last time they went over there or the next time they may have to go."
Part of the Family
By April this year, Alex was back in Iraq for his second tour. "Hi guys," he wrote to his parents April 28. "I'm doing fine. I really haven't been in [camp] a lot. Maybe five days since I've been here. . . . I will get a hold of you soon. Alex."
Four days later, Gilda heard a knock on her classroom door. The chaplain asked her to her office. "It's Alex, isn't it?" Gilda asked.
Within days, she stood outside Alex's hospital room in Germany, being asked to put on a gown, rubber gloves, a mask and a hair cap. She walked in. Alex was hooked to a respirator. Bandages covered all but small patches of his darkened face.
"Don't worry," Gilda told him. "Everyone says you've been such a fighter, how tough you are. You have the best doctors, baby. You're going to be just fine."
Alex couldn't respond. "You've had more Masses than the pope," his wife told him, forcing a smile in her voice. Alex's mom broke for the door, screaming as she reached the hall.
Two weeks later, Alex's parents, his widow and his in-laws sat in a front row at Washington National Cathedral. More than 700 mourners sat behind them -- relatives, friends, Marines, St. Albans boys in their coats and ties.
Jeff Corwon, a Marine, walked to the lectern, his lower lip quivering, his back ramrod straight. He spoke of Alex's dedication. He turned to Alex's parents.
"Mr. and Mrs. Carbonaro, in your eyes Alex may have been an only child," he said, his voice halting. "But through your eyes, you may not have seen how good of a brother he was of mine."
It was the kind of language they had heard for weeks -- over the phone from North Carolina, in Germany, in Washington setting up the funeral: You are part of our family.
That evening, friends and relatives gathered at the Carbonaros'. Carloads of Marines pulled up, parking near Gilda's Bring The Troops Home sign. Inside, they stood in clumps, telling stories about Alex and smiling. Gilda kept approaching. They offered to do anything for her -- now, 20 years from now. "We're going to get together again, right?" she asked.
Absolutely, they said.
Online, she found tributes: "Many times, I went to Alex for ideas and advice on how to accomplish a task," wrote his platoon commander, Lt. Tommy Waller, "never walking away without a better plan than the one I had started with."
Gilda also found the Recon Creed, which offers its own tenets for life: Sacrifice comfort. Complete the mission. "A Recon Marine can speak without saying a word," it closes, "and achieve what others can only imagine."
Alex's widow, who is also named Gilda, told his parents of her final phone conversation with Alex in late April. She told him that people were praying for him. He told her to thank them. "Tell them to pray for my team, too," he said, adding that if something happened to them, it would be as bad or worse than if it happened to him. Alex also asked his wife to round up information on the veteran's college scholarships they had discussed. He planned to leave the Corps next year.
Alex's mom read the book "One Bullet Away," written by a Recon officer. In battle, he wrote, Recon operated in such small units that its team leaders were "the battalion's backbone."
The Bombing
Closer to home, two Marine veterans of the Iraq war check on Gilda and Fulvio. Sometimes they bring Italian wine, staying for dinner. "There's a bit of Alex in all of us," Delgado, who just retired from the Corps, told them last month.
Alex's full unit is due home this month, with members planning to visit Arlington. Gilda has invited many of them over. She and Fulvio want to meet Marines such as David Drexler, the last known person to hear Alex speak.
After the blast, he wrestled Alex to the ground, damping out flames with his gloved hands. He wrapped Alex in a gel-lined blanket, laid him on his back and propped Alex's head on his leg as they waited for the helicopter. Alex cursed roadside bombs, joking that they had gotten him again. He asked for water.
"Where's Elmo?" Alex asked. "Where's Moss?"
"Doc's working on them now," Drexler said.
"How's Palmer? How's Fulks?"
"Everybody's fine," Drexler said.
Twenty minutes passed. Alex kept asking about his team. Finally, he said his arms felt like they were burning, and his face hurt.
"Okay," Drexler said, knowing he needed morphine. "I'm going to call for Doc."

A Blog dedicated to Alex can be found here: http://alessandrocarbonaro.blogspot.com/

Another "Paddy" has been invited...

I just wanted everyone to know that I have invited another irishman to pull up a "stool" with us and write away. He should make for interesting company and great conversation. The "Wop" is going to have to get active to counterbalance all of the Celtic rant and I promise that I will. I know, I know, you have heard that promise before.

On another note, I went to a railroad show in timonium over the weekend and it was outstanding. I enjoyed it a great deal.

And remember, get ready to sock them in the nose on election day. We drove out "those British soldiers" so we could vote....now lets do it.

Stay tuned!

Message From Cernunnos?

So I had a bit of a creepy pre-Samhain experience this morning while I was in my office. After writing that long posting last night about Cernunnos, the Horned One, Lord of the Hunt, ect., I experienced a rather strange visitation. While not exactly sure what this means, I wonder bout such connections. Bit odd isn't it that the first time anything like this appears, and was rather intent upon getting into the Common Room at that, is on the morning after extolling the various aspects of the Stag Lord Himself? Methinks perhaps that this bodes well for a good summoning on Samhain and a particularly powerful experience (good or ill?) with Cernunnos.

Quinn, Walker shine as Notre Dame cruises past Stanford 31-10

SOUTH BEND, Indiana -- Brady Quinn and Darius Walker have Notre Dame off to its best start in eight years.Quinn threw for three touchdowns and Walker ran for more than100 yards and a TD as the 12th-ranked Fighting Irish rolled to a31-10 victory over Stanford.Quinn completed 27-of-37 passes for 232 yards for Notre Dame,which is 5-1 for the first time since 1998 after its sixthstraight victory over Stanford."There aren't many quarterbacks who can play the game the way heplays the game," Notre Dame coach Charlie Weis said of Quinn."Most quarterbacks want to lay up to a couple good guys theyhave and throw it over and over again. This offense doesn'twork like that and I thought he was pretty well on today." [espn.com]

Samhain Nears

Many of you know that the Hibees are in preparation for the first of the four great fire festivals, Samhain, or the festival of Celtic New Year, so I thought it may be instructive to throw out periodically some of the lore behind the event. Samhain Lesson #1: We are entering the season of death, the end of yet another cycle and the beginning of another, the end of a time of light, warmth, and abundance and the beginning of a time of darkness, cold, and dearth. During the ritual fire of Samhain we will summon to our circle the god Cernunnos, or Herne, the Horned One, the Stag Lord, Lord of the Animals, shape-shifting Lord of the Hunt and Lord of the Forest. Cernunnos, the powerful spirit of the Sacred Grove, connector of the visible and invisible, guardian of the gateway between the worlds of the living and the dead, reveals himself at that time of the year when the veil between worlds is lifted and the dead once again walk with us.

All around Him subtle movements of the leaves in melodious, singing air. Everywhere the pulsing, gleaming Green awash in drifts of gold and shimmering mist. Beneath Him soft moss creeping over the dark, deep, moist of spawning earth. At His feet the great Cauldron from which the Five Rivers Flow. Through the forest stillness they come, whispering wings and secret glide, rustling leaves, and silent step, the first Ancestors, the Oldest Animals, to gather around Him: Blackbird, Keeper of the Gate; Stag of Seven Tines, Master of Time; Ancient Owl, Crone of the Night; Eagle, Lord of the Air, Eye of the Sun; and Salmon, Oldest of the Old, Wisest of the Wise leaping from the juncture of the Five Springs. He welcomes them and blesses them, and they honor Him, Cernnunos of the nut brown skin and lustrous curling hair. The god whose eyes flash star-fire, whose flesh is a reservoir of ancient waters, His cells alive with Mystery, original primeval essence. He wears a crown of antlers limned in green fire and twined with ivy. In his right hand the Torq of gold, testament of his nobility and his sacred pledge. In his left hand the horned serpent symbol of his power sacred to the Goddess. Cernnunos in His Ancient Forest, His Sacred Temple, His Holy Grove, Cernnunos and His children dream the Worlds. In his Underworld aspect Cernunnos is the Dark Man, he god who dwells in the House Beneath the Hill, the Underword. He is th eone who comforts and sings the souls of th dead to their rest in the Othrworld.

Though he is depicted as human or half-human with an antler crown, his concerns are mostly non-human. Protector of the animals, Cernunnos governs the hunt and the harvest and presides over our own deeply buried, dimly recalled, animal instincts. As master of the Sacrificial Hunt and Lord of Initiation, his is the life that is given in service to the new; his wisdom is understanding that the old must pass in order to make way or the new, and, therefore, it is to him that we call on to oversee our Samhain festival. Cernunnos has also been associated, most famously by Shakespeare, with demonic energy and protection in times of national emergency and crisis, the embodiment of uncorrupted masculine energy, fully developed and in balance with the natural world. Even earlier Irish stories describe Cernunnos, or Uindos, as the son of the high god Lugh, and he is called a great hunter, warrior, and poet. In all these regards he is the perfect accompaniment to the initiation rites of the Hibernians during Samhain, our celebration of death, new life, new membership, and the beginning of what promises to be a year of personal trials, discovery, significant transformation, and overall good fellowship amongst brothers.

THE PATH TO CERNNUNOS
The path to Cernnunos is both through the natural world: seeking out the wild places and a deep understanding of the processes of growth, bounty, decay, rest, and rebirth, and through Otherworld journeys to the Middleworld forest of which he is guardian. One may experience this both actually and symbolically by following the path that disappears over the horizon into the distance and moves away from the "civilized" world and into the heart of the Wild Wood. Often experienced as traveling away from the centre to the perimeter, this is in actuality a return to the Centre. When the seeker reaches the god's forest the track ends, and her/his pathways are found by other means. After entering the Wildwood the seeker cannot be followed, nor can s/he follow another. Whatever pathways are discovered disappear in passing, and the Wood is trackless once again, for each one's way is different. In the Forest of Cernnunos there is a stillness, an otherworldly feeling, as if one has passed out of time. Here the mind is not supreme. It is instinct, the innate wisdom of the body that guides us to Him. [acknowledgements to www.druidry.org]

The Old God sleeps
down in the dark, moist,
odorous underfoot,
Waiting for us
To put down our roots.

Now to all of you non-Hibees out there who are thoroughly convinced that I've gone off the deep-end, I reply in the word's of General McAuliffe at Bastogne: NUTS! oh, and 'a pox upon your house' just for good measure. We can't be scared of being different if we wish to make a difference!

All Over That Indie

For those out there looking for real indie rock (or anything), check out this site: https://secure.amie.st/home.php You just might find some great stuff. AND, it's run by our own Hibernian brother Peter. So if you want some decent music for like 10 cents a download, give it a look.

Homecoming

3000 miles seems a long way to travel to share in the company, craic and stories that are part and parcel of the fringe alumni associations’ homecoming. I cannot however think of any other laborious journey being so worthwhile than a visit to the world renowned Nanny O’Briens and a chance to catch up with Paddy and Wop. Like all things though the night was over all too quickly and I was forced to contemplate the finite nature of all that we do, as well as our struggle against it. I read recently, and unfortunately I forget the author, ‘We subconsciously know that existing is all there is and so we strive to achieve things to perpetuate an invisible existence long after our body is gone.’ And so we write, talk and communicate in the hope that by doing so we will be remembered for longer than just the duration of our interactions. Finite is the nature of our lives but a life of shared words belongs to the realms of infinity. Over the weekend I had the absolute pleasure of listening to stories that arose from moments in people’s lives that, in being shared, broke the bonds of our finite existence. It is now an everlasting moment because it was shared; slainte to Paddy, slainte to Wop, slainte to PaddyWop. We are all capable of summoning eternity through the expression of moments in our lives and so let us embrace life, listen attentively, express emotionally, live moments, share moments and live forever. And so finally thanks to all to took part in the fringe alumni associations homecoming – the night shall be committed to memory and remembered for years to come. Fittingly though I would like to end with the real Yeats who can express it better than any of us could ever wish to:

Think where mans glory most begins and ends
And say my glory was I had such friends.

Nanny's Plays Host to First Annual 'Fringe Homecoming'

AS Hogwarts packs up the rental chairs and distributes the leftovers to the dorm, I'd like to send out a special thanks to the folks at Nanny's who unwittingly put on the most special of this weekend's festivities. The fringe alumni association is proud to announce that attendance this year was up 300% (I'm not sure Hansen would pass that statistic as technically accurate since last year's attendance was zero, but hell, i'm a historian not a mathematician. GOTT SEI DANK!) Friday night's festivities included Guiness, of course, Harp (for WOP), and Irish whisky all around. Unfortunately there was no b-day party in the back or crazy Californian parolees, so we had to forego with the cheeseplate option; we were sustained, however, by the good company, the craic, and the beautiful memories of Nanny-burgers and club sandwiches (for those who haven't been at Nanny's lately you'll be creatfallen to hear that the poor girl lost its stove durng the summer to be followed last month by Marie, the cook, so..umm yeah, it's just nachos now). Music was provided courtesy of Nanny's and we all swayed on our barstools to Snakehead's soulful performance. Of course there were plenty of visits to the magic urinals and Pam the Butcher even made a cameo appearance (yes, Paddy still has his earlobe).


[LEFT: YITS provides a theatrical performance during 'Go on Home British Soldiers' - Up the RA!



We raised a grand total of $74 for the Society of St. Jude, which was promply used to cover the bar bill. Included in this year's festivities was a 2am tour of Chevy Chase. We all look forward to continuing the tradition and expading the Fringe Homecoming next year (hopefully we can expand the development department so they can get right on that).


[RIGHT: Of course Mat always gets sentimental when pullingpints for alumni.]






Thanks to all of those who attended and helped to make this year's homecoming quite memorable and a smashng success. Though we failed to kickoff our capital campaign to save Nannys (we're still looking to raise a grand total of $86, but there's rumors of a certain leader of the senate pledging $15 for the cause if we make his wife chairman of the next Fringe Night), we did manageto keep YITS off the street for a night.



Special Awards Handed Out Duing the Night: YITS - traveled furthest to attend; Paddy - most scared of Pam the Butcher at any given moment; WOP - most gratuitous use of false teeth and garage doors.




[Brought to you in loving memory of this guy, who apparently is alive and doing well.]





Anyway, the tme went by too quickly and YITS is already on a flight back to Belfast as I write. Until next year my friends - maybe we can get another 300% increase in participation in 2007 (but then we might need a table).

Irish Use Huge Fourth Quarter to Top Spartans 40 - 37: Quinn sparks improbable Irish rally

EAST LANSING, Mich. -- Forget flag plantings. Forget game trophies. And forget alleged summertime guarantees.
None of that fodder mattered Saturday night.
In fact, all of it paled in comparison to the improbable, unbelievable (you-pick-the-adjective) game that unfolded in Spartan Stadium. It was billed as the 40th anniversary of the 1966 "Game of the Century" -- a tie that eventually helped Notre Dame win the national championship -- but truth be told, the 2006 version deserves its own special one-of-a-kind billing.
The Fighting Irish, left for dead entering the final quarter, somehow erased a 16-point deficit and turned it into a 40-37 win that saved their season just before it went hurtling off the tracks and into the surrounding Michigan farmland.
"There's a lot of crazy things that can happen out there, especially with last year's game and how that all worked out," said Notre Dame quarterback Brady Quinn, who ended up with 319 passing yards and five touchdowns. "Until it hits all zeroes on the scoreboard, then it really sets in.
"Once we got in our two-minute mode, we kind of found a rhythm and really realized we could move the ball on them. It kind of got our confidence back. Coming off of last week's game, you can't build that confidence until you get in a game situation and start moving the ball."
The bottom line: One team showed up and one team was shown up again. Then they flipped the script and reversed roles in this game for the ages.
By David AlbrightESPN.com

Some Thoughts About Language

So I've been thinking a lot about language this weekend for a variety of reasons, not least of which because I've been trying to finish my chapter on Edinburgh. Sobes and I both agreed that we'd give up Hogwarts dorm breakfast to be able to write as well as E.P. Thompson, who not only wrote beautifully but also possessed a commanding knowledge of British history. Most people simply dismiss contemporary criticism of language (criticism of language NOT, mind you, literary criticism) usage with a head shake and a shrug, usually claiming that language is organic, always changing, and shouldn't be critiqued by 'outmoded' standards. As if this excuses current misuse, abuse, and outright butchery of the English language. Now I won't pretend to be a particularly accomplished writer or the most eloquent when it comes to oratory, but I'm going to make the suggestion that there is a very real connection between poor language skills and the current disaster called American politics. Read what George Orwell had to say on the subject back in 1945 after suffering a generation of fucked-up oratory, propaganda, and 'foolish thought:'

"Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it. Our civilization is decadent and our language -- so the argument runs -- must inevitably share in the general collapse. It follows that any struggle against the abuse of language is a sentimental archaism, like preferring candles to electric light or hansom cabs to aeroplanes. Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes.
Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible. Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers." From George Orwell's essay 'Politics and the English Language' (1945)

One wonders what Orwell might have to say, or write, about current 'journalism' in the age of Ann Coulter and Bush-speak. Talk about foolish thought! I'd suggest that a reason men are dying in Iraq today, well in addition to the warped world-view of freaks such as Rove and Cheney, and why we might actually end up bombing Iran as well, is the fact that our leaders generally and George W. particularly simply lack the clarity of language to make sense of the situation or communicate effectively. Essentially the've lost the ability to negotiate or formulate any but the most simplistic of policies and, therefore, can only threaten and resort to the use of force. It's like the teenage football player who, only having spent his time focused on the sport, finds that he has no resevoir to draw on in any emotionally charged situation except the violence he has learned through 'the game.' When language fails him, violence becomes his only response. I have to wonder whether the United States would be a partially radiated cinder today if we had sent George Bush to negotiate with Kruschev in 1962.

Anyway, I've prattled on long enough. While talking with YITS a bit the other day about writing on PW he had expressed a reluctance to write much becuse 'it wouldn't be that good' and he 'didn't have anything to write about.' Well, I just wanted to let all of you out there know that effective communication, both writing and speech, requires practice. We all need as much of it as we an get. We also need to practice thinking and as Orwell says 'slovenly langauge makes for folish thought.' My point is: use this forum of friends and fellow thinkers to practice both writng and thought. That's an open invitation to take a risk and throw it out here on Paddy Wop. Of course I could just be full of shit myself, but hey, what the hell, it was a profitable hour of thought for me anyway.

Good To See Ya Out There YITS

Well I'm doing the unthinkable and skipping a Hogwarts football game, but of course that gives me time to read and write on PW. I figured I dredge up some memories here with a blast froom the past: ah yes, we all remember that day when C, Darby O'Gill-like, stumbled upon his wee pot...of gold that is. {By the way, fabulous shoe buckles there Mr. YITS! Now we know where your brother gets his fashion sense. And who said glam rock was dead?!}

Cead Mile Faltie

Every word that was ever sung or spoken hangs in the sky above us until such times as someone decides to commit them to whatever fate the deem worthy. Luckily, and not unusually here in Belfast, the sky is falling and the words fall with it. Nothing inspirational or expressive but rather a simple and warm welcome, a cead mile faltie and an invitation to, in the days, weeks and months ahead, read the words fall on a wet west Belfast.

A Fish Squish

PaddyWop

Since we won't be getting an entry on a Notre Dame win this week, I thought I would add a Buffalo Bills victory to keep the football tradition going.


Buffalo 16 Miami 6

No. 4 Irish Triumph Over Nittany Lions

Brady Quinn throws 25-for-36 for 287 yards, three touchdowns in 41-17 victory

The Season Is Once Again Upon US

No. 2 Notre Dame holds off Georgia Tech 14-10

This One's For WOP

Well it's that time of year again and many of our faithful readers and contributors are heading off to their respective campi across the county, or running up mountains in Vermont, or kicking around footballs (or fotbols) for 8 hours a day, etc. Unfortunately WOP couldn't join us for a bit of a farewell dinner last week, so I have an unused XXL chef's shirt still hanging in the closet -- perhaps he was just too frightened of the prospect of an Irishman cooking up an Italian feast. I gotta tell ya though WOP, you would have loved the Italian market , 'A Latteri,' I visited to get the cheese and a rather tasty soprasatta (probably would have loved the cheese and soprasatta too for that matter). Anyway, a good time was had by all as they say, and your presence was certainly missed WOP. We even had ol' Dino on the stereo, and of course a tanantella or two. Anyway, good luck to all of you headin' out there. Remember why you're attending university, and don't let your studies get in the way of your education. There' ll always be Burnin Man. HUZZAH!

Magdalene and Hart Crane

There has been a lot of speculation about Mary Magdalene and Jesus Christ. For some reason we so often forget that Jesus was both God and Man, according to Catholic theology. He is always perfect like God. I say Jesus has to answer to the biological imperative just like every other living human being. If he didn't then the idea of the dual nature of Jesus may be an untruth. Rather than argue about this I want to think about Magdalene the way I always do....in terms of the poetry of Hart Crane.

Southern Cross

I wanted you, nameless Woman of the South,
No wraith, but utterly--as still more alone
The Southern Cross takes night
And lifts her girdles from her, one by one--
High, Cool,

wide from the slowly smoldering fire
Of lower heavens,--

vaporous scars!

Eve! Magdalene!

or Mary, you?

Whatever call--falls vainly on the wave.
O simian Venus, homeless Eve,
Unwedded, stumbling gardenless to grieve
Windswept guitars on lonely decks forever;
Finally to answer all within one grave!

And this long wake of phosphor,

iridescent
Furrow of all our travel--trailed derision!
Eyes crumble at its last kiss. Its long-drawn spell
Incites a yell. Slid on that backward vision
The mind is churned to spittle, whispering hell.

I wanted you...the embers of the Cross
Climbed by aslant and hubbling aromatically.
It is blood to remember; it is fire
To stammer back...It is
God--your namelessness. And the wash--

All night the water combed you with black
Insolence. You crept out simmering, accomplished.
Water rattled that tinging coil, your

Rehearsed hair--docile, alas, from many arms.
Yes, Eve--wraith of my unloved seed!

The Cross, a phantom, buckled--dropped below the dawn.
Light drowned the lithic trillions of your spawn.

--Hart Crane

Let's Forget About All This Terrorism and War and Drink Historic Water

Obviously I've found the fortitude to go through some of my China pics. This one was taken on the highway outside of Xi'an - where I got dreadfully sick (maybe too much historic water drinking).

On the implausibility of the explosives plot

This is too good to miss:

Wow.

Make It So Number One

PADDY'S MORNING THOUGHTS:
Why does Mr. Bush think that simply because he says something that it necessarily makes it so? What sort of upbringing and 'education' leads to such a warped understanding of reality that Captain Bush of the Starship Amerika can utter such statements as:
"Hezbollah started the crisis. And Hezbollah suffered a defeat in this crisis."

Why then is all of the Arab world celebrating today Hezbollah's victory and declaring a major shift in Mid-East power following Israel's forced withdrawal from Lebannon? Only hours ago President Assad of Syria remarked that a new Middle-East has emerged in the wake of Hezbollah's victory and the US vision of the region has become an illusion. Israeli victory? Who knows - I'm not prone to believing the likes of Assad either. But there are still two missing Israeli soldiers - Oh, do we even remember them?

Perhaps the only bit of intellectual history ever glanced at by Captain Bush is Leo Strauss, who taught him that it is ok to lie and deceive if it furthers your own political agenda. (Though I seriously doubt ol Dubya could handle Strauss' intellectualism, and since George has publicly laughed about never having finished a book....). Even though a self-proclaimed 'born again Christian,' Captain Bush acts like an old school Jesuit, and I mean old school as in the 16th century. "Thirteenth Rule. To be right in everything, we ought always to hold that the white which I see, is black, if the Hierarchical Church [or Cap'n Bush] so decides it." (from the Spiritual Exercises)

Two years ago I sat in the Johnson Room of the US Senate listening to a rather prominent majority party senator paint a rosy picture of reconstruction and 'democracy-building' in Iraq. According to him, it was the media (ah yes, that monolithic, Clinton-loving bugbear blamed for hating the maverick Captain Bush and repeatedly 'getting it wrong' when it comes to Iraq), by focusing only on the problems in Iraq, that was shaping the public dialogue and obfuscating all the good and positive developments in our little fledging democratic brother Iraq. Well, I have to say I was relieved to get the senator's assurances that everything is going just fine in Iraq. Phew! And I thought it looked grim. Silly me. Good thing I wasn't allowed to see any of the over 2500 coffins returning to US military bases as those whiley, left-wing, agitator journalists wanted; I might have gotten the wrong idea about what was happening in that wonderful new Mid-East democracy. I only wished that the senator would have assured me that we won Vietnam too, but time was limited. http://www.unknownnews.net/casualties.html

I won't go so far as to say either side 'won' in this the latest war in the Middle-East, but it's clear to me that American policy has once again lost. And, by the way, what the hell type of 'diplomacy' simply dictates from the sidelines such drivel as "Syria knows what it must do"?


"Only a great fool would call the new political science diabolic: it has no attributes peculiar to fallen angels. It is not even Machiavellian, for Machiavelli's teaching was graceful, subtle, and colorful. Nor is it Neronian. Nevertheless one may say of it that it fiddles while Rome burns. It is excused by two facts: it does not know that it fiddles, and it does not know that Rome burns."
— Leo Strauss, Liberalism Ancient and Modern

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article1219241.ece

"The only security of all is in a free press. The force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to be expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to. It is necessary, to keep the waters pure." --Thomas Jefferson to Lafayette, 1823

I recently finished reading Ernst Junger's Storm of Steel and Holbrooke's reference to August 1914 should make us all stand up and give a shit about what Bush, Rice, Rove et al. have done to the world.

Two full-blown crises, in Lebanon and Iraq, are merging into a single emergency. A chain reaction could spread quickly almost anywhere between Cairo and Bombay. Turkey is talking openly of invading northern Iraq to deal with Kurdish terrorists based there. Syria could easily get pulled into the war in southern Lebanon. Egypt and Saudi Arabia are under pressure from jihadists to support Hezbollah, even though the governments in Cairo and Riyadh hate that organization. Afghanistan accuses Pakistan of giving shelter to al-Qaeda and the Taliban; there is constant fighting on both sides of that border. NATO's own war in Afghanistan is not going well. India talks of taking punitive action against Pakistan for allegedly being behind the Bombay bombings. Uzbekistan is a repressive dictatorship with a growing Islamic resistance.

The only beneficiaries of this chaos are Iran, Hezbollah, al-Qaeda and the Iraqi Shiite leader Moqtada al-Sadr, who last week held the largest anti-American, anti-Israel demonstration in the world in the very heart of Baghdad, even as 6,000 additional U.S. troops were rushing into the city to "prevent" a civil war that has already begun.

This combination of combustible elements poses the greatest threat to global stability since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, history's only nuclear superpower confrontation. The Cuba crisis, although immensely dangerous, was comparatively simple: It came down to two leaders and no war. In 13 days of brilliant diplomacy, John F. Kennedy induced Nikita Khrushchev to remove Soviet missiles from Cuba.

Kennedy was deeply influenced by Barbara Tuchman's classic, "The Guns of August," which recounted how a seemingly isolated event 92 summers ago -- an assassination in Sarajevo by a Serb terrorist -- set off a chain reaction that led in just a few weeks to World War I. There are vast differences between that August and this one. But Tuchman ended her book with a sentence that resonates in this summer of crisis: "The nations were caught in a trap, a trap made during the first thirty days out of battles that failed to be decisive, a trap from which there was, and has been, no exit."

Preventing just such a trap must be the highest priority of American policy. Unfortunately, there is little public sign that the president and his top advisers recognize how close we are to a chain reaction, or that they have any larger strategy beyond tactical actions.

excerpt from: The Guns Of August
By Richard Holbrooke
Washington Post, 10 Aug 2006

Criminal Administration

Sorry for just posting articles, but... well, some things just have to get out there.

Jennifer Van Bergen
August 11, 2006
Jennifer Van Bergen is a journalist with a law degree. Her book, The Twilight of Democracy: The Bush Plan for America has been called a “primer for citizenship.” She can be reached at jvbxyz@earthlink.net.
A few months from now, after midterm elections, if Democrats regain a majority in Congress—or if Democrats regain the Executive office in three years—almost the entire Bush administration could be standing trial.
That’s if Michigan Congressman John Conyers has his way. Conyers issued a scathing, nearly 400-page report detailing crimes that Conyers’ staff found were committed by members of the Bush administration.
Recently I wrote on TomPaine.com about White House liability for war crimes. The Conyers report is both a larger inquiry—looking into crimes committed other than only war crimes—and a smaller one, because it considers largely crimes related to the invasion of Iraq.
The report notes:
If the present administration is willing to misstate the facts in order to achieve its political objectives in Iraq, and Congress is unwilling to confront or challenge their hegemony, many of our cherished democratic principles are in jeopardy. This is true not only with respect to the Iraq War, but also in regard to other areas of foreign policy, privacy and civil liberties, and matters of economic and social justice.
Included in the report are such acts as Bush’s determination to go to war before obtaining congressional authorization; misstating and manipulating the intelligence to justify that war; encouraging and countenancing torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of detainees; and cover-ups and retribution.
The report has not gotten much media attention, which is shocking given the serious and far-reaching allegations contained in it. The violations of 26 different federal laws and regulations range from committing fraud against the U.S., making false statements to Congress, misuse of government funds, obstructing Congress, retaliating against witnesses, and violations of the War Powers Resolution, the Whistleblower Protection Act, and war crimes and torture statutes and treaties. Conyers further details violations of laws relating to leaking and misuse of classified and other government information.
All in all, the picture painted is of an executive gone awry. It is an administration that has no qualms about lying either to its own Congress or to the public that voted it into office. Actively conspiring to interfere with and obstruct proper government functioning, decision-making, or oversight is not beneath this crew. What about going to war preemptively without authorization by Congress or the War Powers Resolution? No problem for this crowd: if there is no intelligence and no justification to support the decision to send our servicemen and women into battle, make it up. If someone stands up and tells the truth—reveals the lies—get back at him by leaking to the press that his wife is an undercover CIA agent. That puts her and her colleagues in danger and harms national security? So what? Nothing is going to stop these guys from carrying out their mission of aggression. It has nothing to do with preserving American values, democracy, or peace.
There is hardly a subject area relating to Iraq where the administration did not engage in some dirty tricks. The administration, according to the report, knowingly or recklessly made false statements about links between Saddam and al-Qaida and 9/11, Saddam’s alleged efforts to acquire nuclear weapons or his acquisition of uranium from Niger or possession of chemical or biological weapons, the Niger forgeries, and the “sliming” of Ambassador Joseph Wilson and outing of his CIA wife, Valerie Plame. Nor did they tell the public the truth about what was being done to detainees: unlawful deportations, “ghosting” detainees, authorizing torture and more.
The extent of the criminal enterprise is breathtakingly upsetting. Why? Because we all know every piece of it but not until the list is all put together and the laws are set forth in front of us do we see what we already knew. This is a criminal administration.
There are few stones unturned in the Conyers Report, but two important laws which Conyers does not cite are the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act and the general conspiracy law.
(The report actually does cite another part of the conspiracy statute, conspiracy to defraud the government, but it doesn’t cite the general conspiracy clause. Conyers does not try to pull together the substantive offenses—the actual criminal acts. However, he doesn’t need to: Any prosecutor worth his salt would jump at RICO and conspiracy charges with these sets of facts.)
Either RICO or conspiracy are appropriate where there is evidence of an agreement by more than one person (conspiracy) to commit a crime, or where there is evidence of a “pattern of racketeering activity”—which can be any act from a long list of criminal enterprise behaviors, including obstruction of justice, obstruction of criminal investigations, traveling interstate to promote a criminal enterprise, transactions involving chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons, international terrorism, and many others.
Either RICO or general conspiracy are used when many separate, otherwise unconnected acts may be viewed as part of a larger plan by more than one person. Indeed, when one considers the acts engaged in by the Bush administration which the report claims violate the law, it is hard to avoid the impression that they constitute a criminal plan or enterprise.
While Byron York commented in the conservative National Review that the Conyers Report is the “Democrats’ Impeachment Map,” the Democrats have taken no action and do not seem inclined to do so. But the report is both less and more than an impeachment map. Impeachment does not put criminals in jail. Conyers’ report could.

A Case Study in How the Feds Want to Destroy the Foundations of the Republic

Should journalist Josh Wolf be afraid?
By Ryan Blitstein
Article Published Apr 19, 2006

At times, Josh Wolf is a journalist. At others, he's a blogger, an activist, or an anarchist. At this particular time, one thing's for certain: He's got a videotape the federal government wants.
The 23-year-old San Franciscan possesses a tape that Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Finigan deems essential to a grand jury investigation of a protest last July that resulted in injuries to two San Francisco Police Department officers.
To Wolf, the government subpoena of his tape represents a threat to his ability to gather news as an independent reporter. He believes it's yet another reel cast in a Justice Department fishing expedition that will stop at nothing to put his activist compatriots behind bars.
To the government, however, Wolf is a misguided, self-important young radical withholding evidence without legal justification. Regardless of the outcome, Wolf's predicament raises questions about how much information journalists should turn over to the federal government, and how the legal system handles those who draw little distinction between citizen journalism and citizen activism.
Though many facts are disputed, all parties agree that Wolf videotaped a July 8, 2006, protest march in San Francisco against the G8 Summit taking place in Scotland. At previous protests, Wolf had attended as an advocate for a cause, but this time he went as a journalist, gathering footage for his videoblog, "The Revolution Will Be Televised" (www.joshwolf.net).
"Most of the time I go out, I feel like I'm a fly on the wall," Wolf says. "Whether or not I agree with what they're doing, my role is to document it."
On the portion of Wolf's video that he released publicly, dozens of protesters, some dressed in black and wearing face masks, marched down the street in the Mission carrying signs and placards with anticapitalist, anti-government slogans or bearing the logo of the group Anarchist Action. Around dusk, things went awry; the tape shows marchers setting off fireworks and dragging metal newsstand boxes into the street to block traffic.
SFPD Officers Michael Wolf (no relation to Josh) and Pete Shields were among those called to the scene to quell what was fast becoming a small riot, with protesters allegedly breaking windows of businesses with baseball bats. When their patrol car was blocked by a very large foam sign under the chassis, the cops exited the vehicle near the corner of Valencia and 23rd. Wolf chased after a man he suspected of placing the sign under the car. In Josh's video, Officer Wolf is shown struggling to cuff the suspect amid shouts of: "Get off him, you're choking him!" and "Hey cop, you're going to jail for police brutality!" Above the din, Officer Wolf heard the sound of fireworks and saw smoke coming from the direction of his patrol vehicle.
Back at the car, Shields attempted to arrest someone lighting fireworks under the vehicle, igniting the foam underneath. Another protester then struck Shields from behind. By the time Officer Wolf returned to the vehicle, his partner was bleeding profusely from the head, the victim of a fractured skull.
Local law enforcement has charged three protesters with misdemeanors. The federal government now seeks justice on behalf of Shields, as well as investigating the damage to his vehicle.
Because he was videotaping Officer Wolf at the time, it's improbable that Josh Wolf's tape also contains footage of Shields being hit on the head or of fireworks being placed under the patrol vehicle. The Justice Department is likely looking for something else that may be on his tape, though they won't divulge what that something is.
Wolf doesn't want to give up the complete, unedited version of the tape. He believes the federal government is indiscriminately monitoring antiwar groups under suspicion of terrorism, and as a journalist he shouldn't be forced to surrender unused footage in support of that investigation. He won't say, though, what's on the 15 or more minutes of the confidential portion of video.
Josh Wolf doesn't look like much of a revolutionary. With slicked, wavy hair, long sideburns, and the heels of his jeans fraying over Eurotrash sneakers, he seems more like a college kid (which he is — he'll graduate from San Francisco State this May). Yet Wolf believes that the "corporate media" will collapse within a decade, and, as co-founder of various indie media-related projects, he hopes to help create the alternative that replaces it. But that future hasn't arrived, so Wolf works as outreach director of a community college television station. When he realized his July protest video was worth something, he sold an edited version to local TV stations.
A few days after the protest march, trouble arrived at his door, in the form of a geeky man carrying a briefcase. "Can I ask you a few questions?"
Wolf thought the guy was a reporter. So he opened the entrance gate of the building and let him in.
Then the man flashed his badge: FBI.
The agent, his partner, and two SFPD investigators interrogated Wolf for an hour and a half about the protest. He doesn't remember much of what they asked, other than their wanting to know who struck Shields. Eventually, the investigators asked for his videotape, and Wolf told them he had to speak with his (at the time, nonexistent) lawyer. Wolf dialed the phone number ingrained in his head for years — 205-1011 — the local chapter of the National Lawyers Guild. He learned that the authorities needed a subpoena to force him to give up the tape. In February, FBI agents served him with one.
Two weeks ago, Wolf's pro-bono lawyers argued a motion in federal court to quash the subpoena before Judge Maria-Elena James. They claimed that Wolf is protected by California's shield law, which allows journalists to maintain confidential unpublished information obtained during newsgathering. The law lets journalists cast a wide net in reporting, even though they may end up seeing or hearing actions that are illegal. Granting the government widespread power to request unused recordings, Wolf's lawyers argued, would turn journalists into an arm of the Justice Department, creating a chilling effect among citizens, thereby violating their First Amendment rights of free speech and assembly.
Of course, this contention assumed that Wolf, a self-appointed citizen-journalist, is every bit as much a "professional" as the men and women with years of experience and an editor reviewing their copy — something that's still a matter of debate among the media. Nevertheless, as more Americans become self-appointed citizen journalists, with camera phones and digital cameras and even cheap handheld video cameras, more "news" will come from people like Wolf.
Federal privilege law, which offers fewer protections for journalists than California law, applies in federal court. But it's unclear which federal crimes took place on July 8 and the government has made very little of the investigation public, although its court filing argued that protesters damaging a police vehicle, paid for partly with federal funds, was enough to rouse suspicion of federal crimes. Wolf's lawyers contended that the subpoena was an unreasonable use of federal power to aid local and state investigations.
Wolf called the investigation an FBI witch hunt of anarchists, pointing out that the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force has monitored many antiwar groups since 9/11, including Indymedia.
To demonstrate that the subpoena was an unreasonable violation of his rights as a journalist, Wolf had to prove that the grand jury was overreaching. He'd been visited by members of the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force and the SFPD together, and he cited other recent indiscriminate monitoring and prosecution of suspected anarchists by the Justice Department. However, without access to details of the grand jury investigation, there was little he could prove.
On April 5, Judge James denied Wolf's motion to quash, partly based on an in camera (non-public) review of some portions of the grand jury investigation, which weren't shown to Wolf. It's likely that the government will now re-subpoena the tape.
Wolf doesn't have many options. If he refuses to turn over the tape, he could wait for an arrest warrant, which might lead to jail time if he doesn't cooperate. Or he could wait until the government obtains a warrant to search his apartment, and make it very hard for them to find the video. There's also a slight chance of working out a deal to show the government only a portion of the tape.
In her ruling, the judge noted that the protest took place in public, rendering Wolf's argument of reporter confidentiality "meaningless." Taken to its logical extreme, that reasoning means any recording or reporting done by anyone in public is not confidential, and is the equivalent of transforming the commons into a Big Brother-esque monitored zone. Yet as long as the Justice Department suspects that some federal crime may have been committed, they can subpoena anything that might be applicable to the investigation.
"The Assistant U.S. Attorney said the government has the duty to see if anything suspicious occurred, and then determine if there's a crime," Wolf says. "That's not a world I want to live in."

Don't kid yourselves fellas. The Bush Imperium has damaged the republic far more than the Saudi goons of 9/11. Oh...and China delenda est!

Check out Josh's blog at http://www.joshwolf.net/blog/

The Laptop Teacher

I have been wondering if there is any way to get this blog out of the long tail. If you have any ideas please comment.

The Laptop Teacher

August 3, 2006

An interesting perspective on the relationship between education and big business. Education and Industry

Opening Salvos

PaddyWop

“Education is not filling a bucket but lighting a fire” William B. Yeats.




Jean Piaget

1896-1980
“A teacher should not be seen as a transmitter of knowledge but as a guide to a child’s exploration and discovery of the world.”



“The principal goal of education is to create men who are capable of doing new things, not simply of repeating what other generations have done.”

Penelope of Ithaca

That's who WOP, MP and I felt like at Nanny's -- gazing longingly at that door, waiting for our dear Odysseus to return. To no avail... Ah well, this just means we'll have to have twice a good a time at Nanny's tomorrow.

FOR CHRIST'S SAKE! Now I'm told my flight is not until 6pm tomorrow. I swear I think I'm trapped here by some evil sadistic Hong-Kong freak. (Not you Duc.) This means trouble for the Nanny's gathering. From my calculations this flight schedule means I won't reach DC until at least 9pm or so, that's with no delays. I'd still love to catch a pint at Nanny's, but I have no clue what time I'll crawl in.

Fairly Evident, But They Insisted On The Sign Anyway

I noticed that a certain 'Mully C' slipped himself rather surreptitiously onto PaddyWop so I thought I'd let him know that I'm showing the colours in China. Good to see you moving about out there my friend. You need to get some of your own writing up here. I'll have WOP add you to the contributor list.

H Hour Minus 12

It's gettin tight here fellas. The commies have now shut down Hotmail, so I can't get e-mail out.

At right a seemingly appropriate pic from my travels.