Can You Name the Country?

 

As bit while ago as, I was pondering what to post, an email popped onto my screen from one of my best friends.  His plane had just landed in the United States and he couldn’t wait to tell me what had happened at the airport in his country of embarkation.

Knowing my friend as well as I did I couldn’t help but laugh, because I knew he was never concerned for his safety and most likely playing the other characters in his tale along until the ultimate moment of enlightenment showed them the error of their ways.  But then it hit me: if he hadn’t mentioned the name of the place where it all went down I’d never have known, because it could have happened in any number of countries—and does.  So, my question to you is, what’s your best guess on the scene of the (attempted) crime?

Here’s the story as told in the first person by a tall, fit, fifty-year-old man who looks like the quintessential American businessman, flag in the lapel and all.  The only changes I made were to references that would give away the country…in order to protect the non-innocent and make this piece a mystery (of sorts). 

Just arrived at the Charlotte airport.

It was a crazy trip. Going through [the foreign country’s] departure process they checked my briefcase and saw a lot of cash (I won the tournament and a bunch of $$$).

My [foreign language] was about as good as their English so it wasn't easy to communicate.  After going through my briefcase three times I wound up in a back room with five agents. 

They took turns going through my bag another couple of times stopping each time to finger the cash that was in a travelers checks plastic wallet. Then they asked me to count it.  I was then frisked and when they touched my cargo pants front pocket they asked what was in there. 

I told them it was my wallet.  They told me to take it out.  I did and flipped it open.  “Police!” they said [in their language] when they saw my badge.  Then they laughed, gave me back my stuff, had me sign a release that my stuff had been inspected and that I had in no way been intimidated. 

They then escorted me through the VIP line, gave me a big handshake, and wished me a great trip. 

Lucky that I'm a sworn officer of the law or at best I'd be a few dollars lighter today. 

Sent from my iPad.

Perhaps the moral to this story is that we all should make a stop at a toy store before taking off for certain parts of the globe.  But, frankly, the part of the message I found most significant was that my long time PC buddy had gone over to the other side.  Yes, Mr. Microsoft was traveling with an iPad!  Almost makes this long time Mac-man want to get a new one before leaving for Greece.  But then again, I didn’t win the tournament. 

Yiasou, ya’ll.

Jeff—Saturday

Truth Tellers of Two Eras: Maddow and Murrow

Sujata Massey

Even though my fiction is set in the past, what makes it tick for me is whether the issues are relevant. Sadly, gender discrimination, political unrest, religious violence and oppressive government are not a problem anyone's solved yet. 

These days, I have been watching The Rachel Maddow Show quite a bit. I feel it gives me a suspenseful, truthful analysis of the day’s political news. In my opinion, Rachel Maddow has become the bravest voice in television. The veteran MSNBC journalist doesn't hesitate to call out corruption or talk about the deaths in the immigrant detainment camps established by the Trump administration. Rachel Maddow reports all of this without bombast or name calling, although she is not afraid to show her indignation and grief, and at times, uses black humor . Watching her, I often have the bizarre feeling she has focused her attention so it really feels she's speaking directly through the screen. It is a rare gift and makes my connection with her different than when I watch other news programs.

This Stanford public policy graduate and Oxford PH.D. in politics is also a powerful writer. Her current nonfiction book, Blowout, was written over the course of four years and paints a chilling long-term picture of the fight to control oil with an emphasis on Russia’s role as a rogue state. The book is carefully researched and was written over the last four years, so It is an astonishing coincidence that its publication around occurred shortly after a whistleblower reported on Trump’s phone call with the President of Ukraine requesting that he investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, who Trump fears could beat him in the 2020 election. 

The Rachel Maddow Show (TRMS) has become the most popular news program in the country, although CNN’s News and Fox’s Sean Hannity news talk show are also close behind. During early October, as the impeachment inquiry began, TRMS viewership rose from 2.2 million average to 3.3 million per night. 

No matter what side of the political spectrum one favors, it is generally agreed that Americans (and people around the world) have had had a very hard time since the 2016 election. The family divides that began at the Thanksgiving tables that year have morphed into people simply not eating together or speaking anymore. One of the things I really appreciate about Maddow is that she doesn’t mock or demonize Trump supporters. And she presents the news with a mini-recap of things came to be, which makes it accessible to someone who might not have absorbed honest information about the government until that moment.

And she also offers hope. “When this is over,” Rachel says after she’s concluded talking about something that seems impossibly bad. When this is over. Please.

Maddow’s success as a truth-teller reminds me of the another important radio and TV personality: Edward R. Murrow. Their surnames are eerily similar, for a start. Both journalists  are both tall, dark and good-looking and partial to tailored dark suits. They are known for their furrowed brows. Loads of people became fixated on them, making them the most-watched newscasters of certain intense political eras.

These are big claims, but if you also were were not alive when Murrow was a star, I'll share a little about what I've learned. This longtime CBS news host became famous in the 1930s, when he was in charge of CBS’s European Bureau and reported on Hitler’s annexation of Austria. Murrow stayed vigilant in Europe, bringing America reports of Hitler’s danger at a time that most lawmakers were urging non-involvement in Europe’s troubles. Murrow warned he could not be ignored, and his reports were instrumental in changing America’s emotional opinion of the faraway crisis.

Edward Murrow stayed in Europe through the war, never entering a bomb shelter once to protect himself, and doing such things as flying on bombing raids and interviewing everyday people rather than the elite. He hired a small group of intrepid reporters nicknamed “Murrow’s Boys” who went all over Europe to bring the human cost of Hitler’s aggression home to America. 

Murrow had a television show on CBS called See It Now during a time that the country faced a similarly dark time. Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy hated Communists, and with the race to build deadly nuclear weapons in the 1950s, people lost sleep fearing attack from the USSR. McCarthy took advantage of this paranoia by speaking constantly of a Communist menace. He conducted hearings designed to expose secret Communists, charging many people who had no relation whatsoever with the political party. 

Murrow was friends with CBS head Bill Paley, who admired the newsman so much he allowed him to report on any topic he wished. Murrow wanted to address Sen. McCarthy from the beginning of his reign of terror, but he knew if he jumped the gun, he would not have enough material to make the show succeed, nor would the public be receptive to it. If McCarthy successfully fought him, Murrow might even find himself and his colleagues at the network blacklisted. In the end, Morrow went to Michigan and interviewed a young air force officer fired because his father and sister had been accused of reading a book considered suspicious. Many viewers were horrified by what happened to this family and wrote to CBS in support of Murrow’s reporting. A second See It Now program used clips of the senator’s own speeches and testimony to paint a picture of his real motivations. The national outrage stirred up against McCarthy by that program may have been an important factor in leading the senate to formally censure him,  which brought the destructive hearings to an end. Yet because of the controversial show, a major advertiser left CBS, and See It Now was shifted to another time slot to avoid further damage to corporate coffers. 

When Murrow signed off at night, he always said, “Good night, and good luck.”

Rachel Maddow doesn’t have a stock phrase like that. Instead, she greets Chris Hayes, the host of MSNBC’s following news program. MSNBC’s wish must be that readers will not recognize a clear ending to her show and will continue watching the network for many more hours. 

But at ten o’clock, I am usually off to bed, sometimes extremely charged up, and other times a bit more reassured as I dream of, when this is over. 

Who's Sorry Now?

Annamaria on Monday

In mid-2015, I posted about corruption and perceptions of corruption, a blog that included the following diatribe:

My ire about this subject began to reach continental proportions as the Northern European ire over Greece got splashed across the world media.  “We are tired,” a friend reported his Scandinavian friends complaining,  “of people wanting a handout.  Their country is rife with corruption.  We want them to pay their debts.”  No admission was given that the poor of Greece will suffer while the corrupt sail off in their yachts.  In fact, as far as I can see, the EU powerbase does not care how many people are starving, how many young lives are ruined, as long as they get “their” money back.

Just about everywhere one goes, one hears a lot of distain from the well-off for all those corrupt, darker-skinned folks south of Alps all the way down to the Cape of Good Hope.  In my hemisphere, it’s from the Alamo all the way down to Tierra Del Fuego.  I have heard a lot of this same drivel within Italy: The northerners “tired” of the meridianali, and blaming them for their poverty.

But where did this susceptibility toward corruption come from?  Is it a genetic propensity linked somehow how to skin color?

Now, for the past ten days or so, I have been giggling when listening to the news about the Panama Papers and the ensuing scandals about off-shore tax avoidance schemes.   Last year's sanctimonious condemners of the darker folks to their south have now found out that they have gazillions of goniffs of their own.

I know I shouldn't gloat, but I hate it when any group claims that "We're all good, and they are all bad."  That sentiment is usually followed by giving "us" the right to make (or at least let) "them" suffer.

If you have missed the news, I would not blame you for avoiding it.  But here is a select list of the items that caught my attention when it comes to this story:

Iceland: the Prime Minister and his wife's financial diddling is bringing him down.

Norway: On the lists of the Panamanian tax brigands, they found thirty companies owned by Norwegians

Sweden: Nordea, one of the largest financial institutions in Scandanavia has set up almost four hundred off-shore companies to help its clients avoid paying taxes.

Great Britain:  The Guardian reports that 31,000 (Yes! Thirty-one thousand) off-shore companies own property in Britain.  More than 180 million British pounds invested just in 2015 are thought to be the proceeds of corruption.  Six members of the House of Lords were on the Panamanian scandal list.

To be fair, I have to admit that no continent is free of these doers of miserable deeds.  But I have always believed in equal opportunity.  Perhaps that is why I am happy to hear that the finger-pointers of last year are on this year's mud-slinger target list.

I leave you with the words of Woody Guthrie:

Yes, as through this world I've wandered
I've seen lots of funny men;
Some will rob you with a six-gun,
And some with a fountain pen.

Thanks for this final image to Carlos Dews, co-author with SJ Rozan of the
wonderful BLOOD OF THE LAMB!

July 2015: #PONTIFEX morphs into #POTUSINKENYA

The high and the mighty continue this month to stalk my characters.  Now that the Buenos Aires-born Pope Francis has left Bolivia and Paraguay, President Obama has made his way to the land of his ancestry, which also happens to be the setting for Strange Gods, my fourth novel.  I have to tell you, I am loving this!

The POTUS is getting a great reception in the land of his forebears.  If I had a wish for him, it would be to be able to go to the places I went when I was there last August.  He deserves a break from the slings and arrows of his job.  He needs to watch the elephants mommies nursing their babies.

So do I, as you are about to see.  I am feeling my cranky side grumbling in the background as I type.  Here’s why.

The Prez made a pointed reference to corruption in his speech to the Kenyan people.  I could not agree with him more about the hatefulness, the destructiveness of corruption on the part of politicians and businessmen.  It is the height of selfishness.  It harms only the innocent and benefits only the guilty.  I despise it.  Wherever it thrives poor people will not.

But I also have had it up to my neck hearing the sanctimonious diatribes about corruption from the holier than thou whose ancestors spent a lot of their time, and earned a lot of their wealth, sowing its seeds.  (Needles to say I am not talking about Obama here.)

PLEASE notice this is about perceptions.  It does not
include a question about the way the people near the
top of the chart behaved when they invaded the countries
at the bottom of the chart.

My ire about this subject began to reach continental proportions as the Northern European ire over Greece got splashed across the world media.  “We are tired,” a friend reported his Scandinavian friends complaining,  “of people wanting a handout.  Their country is rife with corruption.  We want them to pay their debts.”  No admission was given that the poor of Greece will suffer while the corrupt sail off in their yachts.  In fact, as far as I can see, the EU powerbase does not care how many people are starving, how many young lives are ruined, as long as they get “their” money back.

Just about everywhere one goes, one hears a lot of distain from the well-off for all those corrupt, darker-skinned folks south of Alps all the way down to the Cape of Good Hope.  In my hemisphere, it’s from the Alamo all the way down to Tierra Del Fuego.  I have heard a lot of this same drivel within the Italy: The northerners “tired” of the meridianali, blaming them for their poverty.

But where did this susceptibility toward corruption come from?  Is it a genetic propensity linked somehow how to skin color?

As it happens, I have spent the past couple of decades researching the history of Latin America and Africa and most recently, Sicily.  Here is what I know.  None of these places were sinks of depravity before more powerful and technologically advance people invaded their borders, destroyed their indigenous cultures, and grabbed whatever they could get to make themselves rich.  Almost invariably, the technological superiority involved ways of killing people.  And almost without exception the invaders came from the north.

The Brits, for example, found many clever ways to impoverish the African tribal people and then turned the word “beggar” into a pejorative when describing them.  Hey, Jack, they weren’t beggars before you got there.

And by the way, Jack, do want to give back the “Elgin Marbles” so the Greeks can use them to pay down their debt?

A small sample of the Elgin Marbles in the British Museum

The scene of the crime when they were stolen

The cleverest beggars imitate their outsider overlords—they grab whatever wealth they can.  They see getting rich as the only way to a satisfying life.  Usually they take the lucre under the table.

President Obama is trying to help the people of Africa find ways to develop their legitimate economies.  I pray his efforts succeed.  I do not pray that the self-satisfied people of the north will stop calling the Africans (or the Greeks, or the Italians, or the Spanish) nasty names, and labeling them all as corrupt.  People have been praying for that for centuries.  God is not listening to those prayers.  The powerful may be right when they tell themselves that God is on their side.

Maybe the Pope can change God’s mind.  I sure hope so.

Annamaria - Monday