Saturday, January 01, 2022

Starting Over

 News for the New Year:

Friday, December 31, 2021

Goodbye, Hello

The most dramatic news story of the year for me was not Covid but the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban, following the U.S. withdrawal, and the subsequent emergence of a young friend in Helmand Province as an eloquent witness to the consequences of those changes.

My friend is trapped, literally and figuratively. As an educated, thoughtful member of Afghan society, working for a government agency, supporting his family members, trying to aid the poorest people in his region, he is by any measure an upstanding human being.

He also is an emerging writer, increasingly able to articulate in English for the larger world what he sees happening day to day in his devastated country.

Western powers, led by the U.S., have dominated Afghanistan for decades, most recently since the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001. There was some good and a lot of bad about the U.S. presence.

The war waged by the U.S. military killed and injured thousands of people. But foreign aid also led to the education of millions of young Afghans, including my friend. Girls received advanced educations when they almost never had previously.

But now the educated urban population of Afghanistan suffers under the domination of the illiterate, xenophobic, ignorant, violent, religious extremists whose only claim to power is the successful guerrilla warfare they waged from the mountains against the foreign invaders.

They are not suitable leaders and have little idea how to run the country.

A new year begins tomorrow but there is not any real sense of hope at present that the situation in Afghanistan will improve during 2022.

But my friend and I will continue to publish our “conversations” in the hope that enough people will listen to eventually turn the tide and bring relief and freedom to the millions of trapped Afghan people.

In that regard, the top news story today (below) is terribly discouraging. The AP reports that the U.S. is denying humanitarian entry to hundreds of Afghans who wish to come here.

That needs to change. And that is my wish for the new year.

***

Since this is my last essay of the year, it would be nice if it were a good one, memorable even. But the truth is the end of December just slithered into sight at the last moment in silence; I somehow didn’t see it coming.

So here it is. And there it goes.

The truth is that overall 2021 was an extremely disappointing year on a personal level. While I’m grateful for my good health, which is never a given, and the love of my family, I can’t say I’m all that happy with myself.

Since it was my second full year of “retirement,” I’d hoped to discover a better work/life rhythm and have more positive impacts from my writing, especially about Afghanistan. That did not occur. I had other disappointments in my personal life as well. I’ll grade myself as a C- for the year.

That means there is plenty of room for improvement.

***

p.s. I am deeply grateful to the small group of people who have been trying to find ways of helping my friend in Afghanistan. He is too.

TODAY:

LYRICS:

“Hello, Goodbye”

The Beatles

You say, "Yes", I say, "No"
You say, "Stop" and I say, "Go, go, go"
Oh no

You say, "Goodbye" and I say, "Hello, hello, hello"
I don't know why you say, "Goodbye", I say, "Hello, hello, hello"
I don't know why you say, "Goodbye", I say, "Hello"

I say, "High", you say, "Low"
You say, "Why?" And I say, "I don't know"
Oh no

You say, "Goodbye" and I say, "Hello, hello, hello"
I don't know why you say, "Goodbye", I say, "Hello, hello, hello"
I don't know why you say, "Goodbye", I say, "Hello"

Why, why, why, why, why, why, do you
Say, "Goodbye, goodbye, bye, bye"?
Oh no

You say, "Goodbye" and I say, "Hello, hello, hello"
I don't know why you say, "Goodbye", I say, "Hello, hello, hello"
I don't know why you say, "Goodbye", I say, "Hello"

Thursday, December 30, 2021

Funny About That

Since I’ve been posting clips about the mental health impacts of Covid, and how we are all probably traumatized, it’s only fair that I also mention those entertainment options that might make us feel happier, at least for a while.

For example, “Emily in Paris” is fun. Lily Collins, the incredibly cute British actress with a size XS waist, is dressed like a model in every scene, and is the perfect example of why marketing campaigns work when they do.

This show’s many episodes are upbeat and made me smile.

But a few days later my bingeing hit bottom when I found myself watching “The Last Samurai” in Spanish with “live closed captioning” that read, and I quote: “Just buttons is perfect… so yeah…Toggle militar laser not DNA…there the location…I don’t want that Avistas Muchas.”

That’s one of those real-time technologies that still has a ways to go, but it did make me smile.

And I’ve spent just enough time working on films in Hollywood and as a guest on TV shows to know that it’s hard to be funny intentionally. By contrast, it’s incredibly easy to make mistakes, and they’re almost always funny.

In fact, our lives are filled with bloopers, and some of the best occur when we’re trying our hardest to appear serious and significant. 

Some 40 years ago, after the publication of our book, Circle of Poison, which was as serious and significant as anything I’ve done, my co-author Mark Schapiro and I were waiting to go on the NBC’s “Today” set at Rockefeller Center with Tom Brokaw and Jane Pauley.

Mark and I were very nervous. We were told that Brokaw was supposed to interview us alone, so Pauley got up to exit the set. But as she did so, she tripped over some wires and fell directly across my lap.

The director was already counting down to the moment we would be live, “five-four-three…” when she barely scrambled up off my lap and out of the camera’s view.

Seconds later we were “live” from New York for all the world to see. I’ve never viewed that clip myself and have always wondered just which facial expression I wore as I tried not to watch Pauley out of the corner of my eye. I’m sure my smile was frozen, as I tried to concentrate on Brokaw’s first question.

Frankly, I’m surprised I didn’t break into hysterical heaving right there on national TV. But before I knew it, the whole thing was over, and Schapiro and I retired to a nearby Irish bar.

That’s when we both started laughing.

TODAY:

 

Wednesday, December 29, 2021

Money

“If all the economists were laid end to end, they’d never reach a conclusion.” --George Bernard Shaw

______________

The end of each year is traditionally a time for “taking stock,” which is a curious phrase if you think about it. It must have originated around the 1500s, when the most moveable property in an agricultural society was its livestock.

That was then. 

In the next few days, when I hope to reclaim my many decades of old hand-written paper journals from storage, I know I’ll discover that I wrote to myself copious notes each year’s end taking stock — which in my case did not involve cows or sheep but how much money I’d earned that year as opposed how much I’d spent.

I always tried to keep track. The difference in revenue vs. expense, of course, was my annual loss or gain. Since I did not live a stable, predictable existence for most of those years, my financial outcomes varied tremendously from very very good to very very bad.

Net net I was quite good at saving money, and I never coveted stuff very much so I didn’t end up bankrupt like some of my colleagues. But I didn’t end up rich either. Few journalists do.

That brings me to what I think of the current craze for crypto-currency.

But even before that, we must deal with the subject of non-crypto cash. 

Good old cold cash almost seems like a relic in the digital age. You can’t pay for your online purchases with cash and pretty much every transaction in the physical world also seems to require one kind of plastic card or another.

As an investment, in recent years cash has been considered a hedge against downturns in a volatile market, but now inflation has returned, at least in the short term, that is no longer the case.

Holding cash reserves is a sure way to lose money right now. So to speak.

Of course, the whole idea of money is one of those human fictions that makes our civilization function as well as it does. At the same time, money or the lack of it causes unending misery as well.

It’s one big messy conundrum and crypto only makes it messier.

So what about bitcoin and the other crypto-currencies as investments? In case you’ve ignored it until now, bitcoin is a decentralized digital currency, without a central bank or single administrator. It can be sent from user to user on the peer-to-peer network without the need for intermediaries like banks. Some investors will be getting rich as it gains acceptance.

But not you or me. I’d have to be roughly half of my current age to make investing in bitcoin a potentially wise move. And if you’re within shouting distance of my stage of life, I’d advise letting that train leave the station without you as well. The risk is too high.

Anyway, if you didn’t make money on the original web or Web 2.0, you won’t be making money on web.3 either.

Still, it’s too bad the Beatles are not still recording songs. Then they could release a crypto-version of “Money” sometime early in 2022 that would sound great.

C’mon. Doesn’t “bit-coin (that’s what I want)” have a certain fresh-fishy ring to it?

TODAY:

LYRICS:

“Money (That's What I Want)”

Song by the Beatles

Songwriters: Berry Gordy Jr / William Robinson Jr.

The best things in life are free
But you can keep them for the birds and bees
Now give me money, (That's what I want)
That's what I want
(That's what I want)
That's what I want, (That's what I want), yeah
(That's what I want)
You're lovin' gives me a thrill
But you're lovin' don't pay my bills

Now give me money, (That's what I want)
That's what I want
(That's what I want)
That's what I want, (That's what I want), oh, yeah
(That's what I want)
Money don't get everything, it's true
What it don't get, I can't use
Now give me money, (That's what I want)
That's what I want

That's what I want, (That's what I want), yeah
(That's what I want)
Waaa

Money don't get everything, it's true
What it don't get, I can't use
Now give me money, (That's what I want)
That's what I want

That's what I want, (That's what I want), yeah
(That's what I want)
Well now give me money
(That's what I want)
A whole lotta money
(That's what I want), whoa yeah, I wanna be free
(That's what I want)

Oh, a lotta money, (That's what I want) 

Tuesday, December 28, 2021

Happy Endings, or Not

As the year winds down, it’s probably a good time to catch up on the entertainment options, but I wouldn’t know about that. Whenever I find myself lurching from Netflix to Amazon Prime and YouTube TV, I’m usually looking for something elusive — something to deflect the loneliness and despair, the unwanted solitude.

So when I spotted a new disaster film the other night, it seemed like a good bet. 

“Don’t Look Up” with Jennifer Lawrence, Leonardo DiCaprio, Meryl Streep and friends is a Netflix film about the end of the world, in this case from a collision with a meteor. 

Such stories follow one of two tracks — either disaster is averted, presumably by a hero, or not. Often, impending disaster arrives from space, as opposed to bat viruses. In the space kind of world-ending scenarios, only so many options exist and “Star Trek” explored most of them decades ago. 

Thus, there is one scene in “Don’t Look Up” reminiscent of another of Lawrence’s films, “Passengers,” where space travelers from Earth wake up in space pods traveling to a distant world; otherwise the two films share little in common.

That life as we know it can end due to a meteor is, of course, a relatively recent realization for most of humanity, but astronomers have known this for ages. Plus, in 2013 NASA told Congress it would need at least five years to prepare for such an event by developing the capacity to blow the offending boulder off-track with nukes.

But in this movie, by the time the post-doc student Jennifer detects the asteroid, NASA has just six months to defend civilization from total and complete destruction.

Actually, this cinematic tale is not about the asteroid so much as about how badly distracted our society has become, starting at the top with President Streep. People are focused on any number of other matters, such as celebrity breakups, rather than the asteroid.

Then again, the brilliant Yuval Noah Harani in his book“Sapiens” contends that the ability to gossip about each other is one of the key factors that set us apart from and above the the other creatures on our planet.

Back to the movie. Television talkshow culture is roundly satirized, but we’ve been watching versions of that almost as long as there have been talkshows, so nothing new there.

DiCaprio plays a rumpled professor from Lansing and is believable in the role. Honestly, thanks to him and Lawrence, the film is rather entertaining at times.

It definitely is diverting. I forgot my own misery for a minute as I contemplated what I would do if one of the stories I collated tomorrow was that the next comet was going to hit Chicago.

IDK that I can really recommend “Don’t Look Up” unconditionally, despite the stellar cast, but it’s certainly worth viewing once, I suppose. By contrast, “Passengers” (2016) is a film you can watch several times, partially because Michael Sheen is so memorable as a robot working on the spaceship as a bartender.

And I imagine more than one bartender out there knows something about what it’s like to act like a robot. Certainly his or her customers do.

But before I forget, both of these Jennifer Lawrence movies feature a getaway attempt, in the new film led by some sort of a sick billionaire with all of the charm of a Zuckerberg, or a Musk or a Bezos, which is to say none.

And in the end, humanity somehow or another, does find a way to escape reality once again.

HEADLINES:

 

Monday, December 27, 2021

Seasonal Reflections

The top story today is one we’ve touched on before — evidence that we have been collectively traumatized by the pandemic that has been dominating our lives for most of the past two years. If traumatized is too strong a word, we at least have been affected in ways we may not yet fully appreciate.

Speaking for myself, I know that Covid has had an enormous impact on my overall outlook on life as well as the specific conditions of my living situation and mobility.

The beginning of the lockdown in March 2020 coincided not only with my recovery from a series of grave illnesses but my forced retirement from a 50-year career. Suddenly I found myself with nothing to do and nowhere to go. I couldn’t see friends or even visit the cafes where I had been a regular for many years.

My life as a journalist seemed over.

Because I had retired sooner than I’d intended, I was neither in as strong a financial position as I’d hoped to be, nor prepared for a life of “leisure.”

Essentially, I was at loose ends.

So, I suppose I did what any poorly adjusted retiree would do under such circumstances. I just kept working, but now without pay or anyone making any demands of my time or story choices.

Thus, these daily news summaries and my commentaries have been appearing for something like 700 days now. I’m not really certain how useful they are to anybody but I keep doing them in the hope some good comes of it all.

And I hope that this is more than a case of one traumatized person speaking to a bunch of traumatized others. Because I truly believe that through communicating and connecting with each other, we can search for answers to the problems that dominate the news and our daily lives.

For me, that is what this continues to be all about.

***

The stream of news stories is steady but lighter over Christmas weekend than at other times of the year, of course, not because there is less happening, but because fewer reporters are at work.

At least a few are taking a break.

If tradition holds, the volume of stories will remain relatively low over the coming week as well. Then, with the arrival of the new year, major media outlets will prioritize a flood of stories looking back over the past year and forward to the next.

In this way, much of the current media coverage is predictable, seasonal and redundant. That makes this a good time to reflect on our news consumption habits generally.

One of the reasons I try to write daily commentaries on the news is to be proactive as opposed to reactive. The coverage itself is by necessity reactive. Events occur, those of us who are editors assign reporters to cover them, and as quickly as possible, we publish their stories.

The main purpose we believe we are serving is to inform our audiences. But simply consuming the daily news is like a steady diet of junk food — it’s not all that good for your long-term health.

So my goal is to mix in any good analytical pieces I can find, plus add in my own thinking, to contextualize the headlines that follow below.

***

TODAY’S NEWS:

 

Sunday, December 26, 2021

Afghan Conversation 21: Chaos in the Courtyard

"No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark. You only run for the border when you see the whole city running as well" – Warsan Shire (British writer)

____________________

[NOTE: The following is the latest in a series of exchanges I’ve been having with a young Afghan friend since the Taliban took over his country. I’m withholding his identity out of concern for his safety.]

Dear David:

It's 4 PM, and about 500 tired, desperate, and angry people are waiting to submit their applications to get passports at the government office in the city of Helmand. The temperature is below zero, and all of us have been waiting since 3 am. Four or five Taliban guards are standing at the entrance with guns and hoses in their hands. If any males try to enter the courtyard of the passport office, they beat them and prevent them from entering. 

But they do  allow the women to enter the yard because they want to separate them from men. I asked one woman to please take me with her into the yard as her son; otherwise I cannot enter. The yard is full of forlorn people running from one station to another. There is no one who can process their applications or tell them what to do. Only the  Taliban guards with weapons and they know nothing. 

One applicant named Khalid says that he’s been coming every day for a week without results. Working under the rules of the Taliban is a silly thing, he says, because they are all illiterate. It's Insulting to educated people to have a group of fighters that has come from the mountains saying what we must do. 

While waiting to deliver my application I speak with another man who is 40, a teacher and father of four children. He complains that the Taliban have not paid his salary for five months now, and he has to struggle to feed his family. He is also concerned about the worsening security situation as it's predicted that ISIS is growing. He says he doesn't have any alternative but to leave Afghanistan. 

No one at all can get a passport in the provinces but here in the cities and in Kabul there are a lucky few who can get their applications processed by bribing the Taliban passport officers. Every day, there is a huge group of people arguing with the Taliban guards in front of the passport office. We  are told we should apply for passports online, but that site is so crowded that no one can get in.

There is a Facebook group with 55,000 Afghan members who  share information about passport issues. One applicant posted "Please sleep tonight, the site will not open." Another said that the site opened briefly for 20 minutes. Another said he stood in line for four days and four nights and finally got in.

This is the scene for those of us who wish to leave Afghanistan legally. The only word for it is chaos.

***

[Postscript: My friend has received his passport.]

THE NEWS: