Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

John le Carre  writes in British English and uses a lot of slang and vernacular, speaking in the language of spies. He also interjects wayward little sub-stories in mid-plot, then pieces them together during subsequent chapters, adding the beginning or end. I found the first reading rather frustrating because I could not remember all the characters and couldn't fit all the pieces together. The ending was tense with a fine surprise, but I got there knowing I had missed a lot and didn't quite understand who it was that was sneaking about in the shadows trailing our fat, dumpy hero Smiley.

So as soon as I finished, I started reading the book again.

"Ah!", I can say now. THAT is who Prideaux is and I understand why he got shot in the back. And why he lays low in remote rural England in a camping trailer hidden down in a dead swimming pool teaching at an obscure school.

Interesting that he speaks with a military voice.

The reading is more fun the second time through because I get it. And I understand the slang better.

Elegant. Superbly elegant. Wonderfully mysterious. And what a great bunch of characters, described with such clarity that you feel you know these people. You certainly choose favorites, even though one or two of them are killers for a patriotic cause.

Of course it means a 422 page novel has become 844 pages long. But hey, no one said reading was easy.

I could read the following line a hundred times and never tire of it.

"Behind the desk, Control himself, a carcass of a man by then, with his lank grey forelock and his smile as warm as a skull."

Control is never named. He is the aging head spy, pushed out by a gang of four up-and-comers. They are Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, for one of them is suspected of being a mole. Spy networks across Europe and Russia have been rolled up, most dispatched to the grave. Secret agent Tarr figures out there is a rat in the bird's nest, and Smiley is brought back from retirement to find out who it is.

Only pick up this book if you are willing to work at reading. It is almost in a foreign language. Spy-speak and Brit-speak.

Which reminds me. I need to finish Don Quixote. I got to about page 950 of 1,100 before I went on a year's leave from that monster. The only thing that kept me going was Sancho Panza's endless supply of platitudes. And eventually even he could not pull me along.

It's rather like reading in mud . . .

Still, I have learned that those who tilt at windmills are often more entertaining and honest than those who don't.

The Day Uncle Sam Went Looney

The founders of the modern democratic republic of America were, as one, very precise and rational in what they wished to accomplish. They wanted a society free of government oppression and overly burdensome taxation, one that advanced safety and well-being of individual citizens: the right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness".

Later, when the country was wrapped up in military conflict all around the planet, America, the institution, was humanized under the stern but fatherly projection of "Uncle Sam", who impelled a great many young men to enlist in the military to express American unity and patriotic goodness through power in the battlefields. Back home, women were also enlisted to build the guns and bombs that were the tools of might for the fighting men.

Today, Uncle Sam, as the humanized institution America, is going bonkers. If we take the workings of Congress as the brainpower that articulates how this giant creature behaves, with the Presidency as the cerebral cortex, then we see that the creature is foaming at the mouth and spitting a great deal of anger.

No longer is the drive of "citizen well-being" a foundational moral value.

Rather, it has been supplanted with a kind of mean spirited, manipulative, power-grabbing partisanship that sees public officials acting, not for the public good, but for personal persistence in office. They work to win. Personally.

They don't use the sum and substance of their acts as the basis for gaining re-election. They use deceit and spin and smoke and mirrors.

I've written numerous times about how governance in the US has become dysfunctional because of the ease of sound bite manipulations in the modern world of news as entertainment and social networks as a medium of nonsense as profound wisdom.

The following article published by Associated Press calls the dysfunction "gridlock" and expands upon the reasons for the contentious workings of Congress: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_CONGRESS_GRIDLOCK_WHY?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

The writers identify the following four contributors to gridlock, reframed in my words:

• In 1994 there was a Republican revolution (under the directorship of Newt Gingrich) that placed prominence of the party ahead of public good. Efforts to compromise ended; efforts to win intensified.

• Cultural change. Legislators spend less time in Washington and more time locally. The media have changed, too. Opinionated news and blogging "inflame partisanship."

• Unrestrained use of partisan tools. The filibuster and other techniques of achieving dominance became the operational standard within Congress. Each side pulls the tricks the other side did when they were running things; each side criticizes the other's use of these tricks.

• New campaign laws have encouraged a flow of money to extreme elements of the respective parties and the radicals have used that money to buy influence.

In the interest of being succinct, I condense these four qualities to characterize Uncle Sam today as contentious, irrational, hypocritical and greedy.

That is the New America. Contentious, irrational, hypocritical and greedy.

The collegial old boy network of congressional wheeling and dealing has dissolved into an angry pack of back-biting, self-serving hyenas.

The notion of giving, of civic responsibility, of the honor of being truthful, the courage of candor . . . history.

I don't know how else to characterize it.

And I don't know how it will cure itself given that anger is like a snowball rolling downhill. It grows until it hits something and explodes. It nearly pushed the world off the economic cliff during the recent debt negotiation.

The next national election in 2012 will be down and dirty, bloody. It ought to do a lot to build ratings at Fox and MSNBC.

It's bad, folks. It's really, really bad.

Forget pursuit of happiness.

Go to survival mode.

Move to the Philippines and hunker down. Bask in the typhoons and suck on coconut juice whilst Washington rots.

Stuffed Shifts

The Philippines falls behind modern international standards in many fields, from pollution to health care to human rights.

Today I'd like to focus on one that really fries my bacon. Toasts my frenchies, so to speak.

The government believes, in its grand faux democratic tradition, that freedom of expression means giving media corporations complete freedom to do what they like.

Uh, yo official dudes and dudettes. That is not what free expression OUGHT to mean, that any oligarch with his hands on a television station or newspaper can publish whatever he wants.

I awoke this morning and was very interested in how the nation is dealing with the second of two huge typhoons drowning Luzon this past week. I flipped from channel to channel to find updates. What do I get on the two main Philippine stations, ABS-CBN and the GMA Network? Sunday morning mass. Yesterday evening, nothing. Sappy dramas and lots of commercials. NOTHING about the typhoon. I have to go to international news (CNN) and Australia (ABC) to find reports about the havoc being wreaked the Philippines. There is no broadcast of where emergency shelters can be found, or warnings not to drink the water, or what the forecast is for rainfall or dam breaks. There is nothing but money-making greed. Lazy, self-interested bloated stupid money making greed.

And the mind-numbing prayers, pretending a goodness of heart that isn't really there.

While millions wade and worry and suffer and lose their homes.

The oligarchs who own these stations have no public service conscience. They are free to make money while the nation washes away.

Indeed, I researched media regulation in the Philippines, and THERE IS NONE. The airwaves are considered private property, except the string of under-funded amateurish stations owned by the state and managed by the national press unit. There is absolutely no legal imperative that the two big stations operate their valued franchises in the public interest, for the safety and welfare of the public.

They can ignore it. Ignore public safety. Ignore public welfare.

Oh, there was an uptick of congressional indignation after the botched bus massacre that was aided and abetted by live television coverage a while back. The media moguls were hauled before congressional committees. The humbled giants promised they would do a better job at self regulation.

But evidently that was just another untrustworthy Filipino statement. And after the SHOW of concern by congress, the matter was forgotten.

Trust in this place is hard to develop, you know? All the Ego-bound dickheads who have no interest in anyone but themselves. The elected officials who preen and posture for effect, then walk away . . .

Put the media oligarchs at the top of this pile. The "purchased" legislators right under them.

The media owners are the un-classy barons who raise the volume of commercials and, when they have a hot show like a Pacquiao fight, fill an hour with 40 minutes of commercial and 20 minutes of boxing.

They are the un-classy barons who hype the news with bloody bodies and mothers weeping over their dead sons. They evidently can't distinguish between the tension of fictional drama and the tastelessness of using real sorrow to hype ratings. "Nothing too salacious to broadcast.".

And because the oligarchs own everything, including the electability of government officials, there is no interest among legislative yahoos or the President of this fine nation to do anything to advance the PUBLIC's well-being. Never mind that oath of office they swore or the Constitutional mandate that they serve the public TRUST.

Trust is so hard to gin up on these volcanic piles of favor mongering manipulation.

And being informed is impossible.

Why do you citizens stand for this? Why do you accept this?

I can do nothing as a non-citizen, other than report on the absurd situation I see before me.

What part of the concept of television and radio frequencies as a precious part of the PUBLIC domain do you blind opinion leaders and lackadaisical public not grasp?

What part of being an integral part of the nation's effort to fend off natural disasters do you overstuffed shirts fail to comprehend?

If President Aquino were serious about the goal of "Zero fatalities" from typhoons he would make sure the two national television networks  - - - the only channels of television many receive - - - are an integral part of the response plan, broadcasting event news commercial free 24 hours per day before, during and immediately after impending disasters.

From his failure to do this, I conclude that he is merely blowing smoke with this "zero fatality" goal.

The hope that he would also do something about the greedy manipulations that characterize television ethics hereabouts is also somewhere between nil and really really slim.

Rioting for Peace

It seems the entire world is angry.

• Greeks protest government spending cutbacks aimed at saving the country; the masses would have their nation fail rather than pay more taxes.

• Tunisians, Egyptians,  Libyans, Syrians, Jordanians, Bahrainians, Iranians, Yeminis, Israelis, and Palestinians protest the authorities who are suffocating their liberty; most are likely to emerge as an intolerant Islamic society; the US backs the democratic movements, neatly snipping off Uncle Sam's nose to spite his face.

• Chileans riot in the streets because of perceived economic unfairness; never mind that their nation has done more during the last 30 than any other South American country to move from underdeveloped to modern.

• Americans guzzle their ideological tea or rumble through Wall Street protesting the institutions of (1) national government and (2) big business; never mind that it is the government that keeps them free and the corporations that keep them wealthy.

My personal view is that modern media, and especially the internet, are rather like the coal shoveler on an old steam engine, jamming shovel after shovel of angst into the hoppers of indignation.

Even on the floor of the US Senate and House we see a kind of venom that is best left with gangsters and malcontents. The personalization of debate ("President Obama is a force of destruction") supplants discussion of issues. It is as if the juvenile chat community has moved lock, stock and barrel into the public service arena. Or else people have lost the ability to be analytical, diplomatic and factually or intellectually forceful. Too much TV watching, I'm sure. Turns the brain to mush.

Two Pit Bulls

We are emotional beings and we are rational beings. Some cultures such as Asian and Middle Eastern lands are tilted toward emotional reactions to problems. Western Europe and America tilt more toward introspection and analysis. The Philippines dances around.

None is capable of coming to grips with the seeds of unrest that are spreading like a flesh eating virus across the blue orb.

I'm not sure where we are headed. Perhaps into collapse of the Western economic model and the rise of China as the dominant economic power in the world. Failing free markets are likely to open the doors to China's saving purchase of their failing institutions.

I can imagine the scenario. Greece continues to struggle. China buys Greek bonds and failing European banks. Greece fails. China demands restitution from the EU. China owns Greece. China owns banks. China requires that Mandarin be the official language of Greece. China buys Italy. China buys Germany. China flips off the United States and moves aggressively into resource rich South America.

"Oh, you say they are already there?"

Oops. My bad.

When God gave out heroes, America thought he said Neros and asked for  300 million fiddles.

I will go onto Amazon.com later today, not to buy a Kindle Fire, but to buy "Mandarin for Dummies".

American Courage, American Whiners

The Atlantic has run several photo series of World War II. The full range of photos and identifying captions from which the following selections were clipped can be found at: http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2011/09/world-war-ii-the-pacific-islands/100155/?google_editors_picks=true

This is a silent tribute to American strength, courage and honor. I don't see the same thing in the US Congress where the well-being of the nation too often takes a back seat to political posturing. The privileged legislators who work there do not grasp that their jobs are as important as that of a private with a 50 pound pack slogging up the beach under a rain of metal. They need to suck it up and do what is right for America. Not whine for votes.