Are They Kidding?

by Morgan Dash

I came across two "news" items---that is, items apparently purporting to be factually true, reported by reputable outlets--- that are causing some family dissension. Brother Chris, the family dramatist, claims that if he allowed himself to believe these items, they would be evidence that the world had now gone so far beyond the credible that the already dubious occupation of trying to make dramatic sense of this existence would be rendered futile beyond redemption. (I hope I'm not overdramatizing his position.)

Brother Theron of course believes them with all the roaring absurdity of his simultaneous love-hate relationship with humanity, not to mention the apparent laws of the universe.

I can't settle the argument---maybe you can. Here are the two items. Truth? Fiction? You decide.

1. There is a best-selling book in America called Who Moved My Cheese? by Spencer Johnson. It's a slim volume containing a fable which some have found revelatory, about adapting to change. The premise, apparently presented without irony, is that the reader is expected to identify with rats who run the rat race maze, but who are confounded when their expected reward (i.e.”the cheese”) is not in the same place it always had been. (As nuts as that sounds, that's at least a verifiable part of the story.)

It seems that this book has also caught on in China, where it has inspired a number of follow-ups (or "imitators" as stated in the Times Literary Supplement column that is the source for this tale) . These tomes published in the erstwhile land of Confucius include: Can I Move Your Cheese? by Chen Tong; Who Dares to Move My Cheese by Kang Yanning; Make the Cheese Yourself by Dong Huangfu; Whose Cheese Should I Move? by Wu Yizhou, and No More Cheese! by Lin Zhanxian.

The column (signed by "J.C.") concludes the item by observing that "most Chinese people have never eaten cheese."

2. This story involves the Klingon language and the United States National Security Agency. As you may or may not know, Klingons are a race of aliens invented for an episode of Star Trek some 37 years ago. Klingons were somewhat reinvented for the Star Trek motion picture series and became important in subsequent Star Trek TV series. (Worf being the most famous Klingon.) In the first Star Trek movie, a few words of a language meant to be Klingon were heard. These were invented by the ace linguist and master of voices of the Enterprise crew, James Doohan, who played Scotty. (He invented the first Vulcan language dialogue for that film as well.) When Klingons talking in their own language became more elaborate later in the film series, linguist Marc Okrand invented a Klingon vocabulary and rules for a basic language. There's a Klingon dictionary of some 2,000 words; some Shakespeare and parts of the Bible have been translated into this language, and some young fans, who probably would not be caught dead taking Russian or Spanish, learn and converse in conversational Klingon.

You may have guessed a little of where this story is going if you've recently seen the film Code Talkers or if you know that Navajos used a code based on their language--a language, like all Native languages, that the U.S. government tried long and hard to suppress and destroy---for the U.S. armed forces in World War II. The Japanese were never able to break it (although if it had only been used as it was in the Code Talkers movie-to radio back the firing coordinates for fixed enemy positions--- it would have been irrelevant. Presumably the Japanese already knew the position of their own artillery, and whether they knew that the U.S. had a fix or them or not hardly mattered, since they couldn't move them.)

So finally, here is the story: Lawrence Schoen, founder of the Klingon Language Institute, recently gave a presentation to the National Security Agency on the Klingon language, as the "government was curious about the potential for al-Qaeda operatives" to communicate using Klingon.

First we mourn

by Morgan, Christopher and Theron Dash

First we mourn those who died, who suffer lost limbs and deep wounds of the body and the psyche. We mourn the peace of mind of soldiers who will carry with them the consequences of these weeks, these days, and what they saw or did in a single moment. We mourn the future of children estranged by violence. We mourn the continuing suffering of people without adequate water and food, without light.

We are grateful that more life was not lost, that more lives were not rent apart. We are grateful for the acts of courage and restraint, the acts of charity and compassion. We are grateful for those who return to their families, and hope for the best for all in the future that is bound to be influenced by the violence in Iraq.

Now on the level of consequence some things seem to come clearer. There is still much we do not know about why this war really was fought, and why it happened the way it did. We do know that while there was no adequate plan for protecting hospitals or saving artifacts of the cultural memory of many centuries, there was attention paid to securing anything to do with oil production.

While much attention is focused on how long a general occupation of Iraq will go on, and the U.S. insists there will be an Iraqi government run by Iraqis, it has also been more quietly reported that whatever the timetable or eventual form of governance, the U.S. plans to maintain military bases in Iraq for the long term.

That very well could have been a chief purpose of this war. It represents an enormous strategic advantage. The U.S. doesn't even have a real presence in Israel, let alone Arab countries. But with military presence, the U.S. can let the Iraqis have whatever government they want-they can still always protect the oil, which is mostly what "America's vital interests in the region" means, and they can intimidate the entire region, including current "allies" like Saudi Arabia.

So the U.S. doesn't have to ensure domestic order in Iraq---let them squabble and slaughter each other over the spoils, let the factions within the factions have their intrigue, and let criminals run their rackets-none of it will matter except to Iraqis, and the U.S. can claim it has done what it promised to do: liberate Iraq from Saddam and turn over the country to "the Iraqi people," after getting rid of the weapons of mass destruction (made much easier in that so far none have been found, although some will surely show up, and just as surely, many in the Arab world and elsewhere will suspect Americans planted them after they took over.)


In the U.S., the current wave of approval for the war is as predictable as the dead children once the bombs fell. A large portion of the American public got its news about the war from the cable news channels, who had every possible incentive to sell the war and very few to cover it soberly. American commercial television is about only one thing: Adrenalin sells. The audience must be excited, because excited people buy things. Positive people buy things. The only contrast that's allowed is some wallowing in sentimentality with affirmation at the end, so the catharsis leads to that positive buying. Sure, people go shopping when they're depressed, but when they are really sad, or chastened, or fearful, or worst of all, thoughtful, they might stay home. They might feel alienated. They might think, what's the point of buying that gas guzzling SUV? So my grandson as well as my son can be sent over to shoot at children grasping after fallen grenade launchers? So my granddaughter as well as my daughter can live with the nightmares of having dropped bombs on sleeping cities?

Being mad at somebody is good, because it's adrenalin. But it's better that they're mad at weenie peacenik Frog-loving appeasers than piggish CEOs or businesses that ignore global heating and the final solution for the planet's forests, rivers, air and oceans. You want them to admire the stalwart cliché-spouting flag-wrapped president, not be afraid of a fundamentalist fanatic who disdains Darwin as a fuzzy thinking liberal. Basically, though, you want them to feel good about America, the TV series. You want them to tune in, and absorb the commercials. Buy a flag. Better yet, buy a big car and a flag decal for the windshield. You'll probably be paying the interest on the loan for the rest of your life, unless you are a CEO, but that's not a ratings problem, that's not going to be on this quarter's report.

That's the name of this tune. The piper gets paid later.

This just in: later is on the way.