Experts
David Maine
Author
Recent Activity
So, Uzee is going to Karachi for a couple weeks, and I have drummed up a modest list of things to keep me busy in the interim:1. Finish my book. (You know, the one I've "finished" several times already in the past year.2. Get up at 6:00am and go swimming. (We'll see.)3. Go to Costco and buy paper goods. This can take most of the day.4. Go to the dentist.5. Read the Flannery O'Connor biography Flannery by brad Gooch, which I bought a few weeks ago and haven't gotten to yet. 6. Watch a few choice morsels of classic-movie fame, to wit: I Married a Monster from Outer Space (1958), The Land Unknown (1968), Revenge of Frankenstein (1958), and others.7. Not do any more grocery shopping until everything in the fridge, freezer and cupboards has either been consumed or thrown away. Wish me luck. Milk is exempted.I'll let you know how I do.Currently reading: Theft by Peter Carey (Great book.)Currently listening to: Focus Level by Endless Boogie (the perfect name for, maybe, the perfect band) and Some Sweet Relief by Speck Mountain. (Very mellow and dreamy, also habit-forming.)
July 17, 2009, 9:56 PM
My new favorite band... again.
I know I'm typical, but geez, these guys really are good. Go hear and hit the "Listen" or "Watch" link. http://www.kcrw.com/music/programs/mb/mb090515the_decemberistsAlso, does anyone know why I can't pick my font on this blog anymore? ...
July 5, 2009, 10:08 PM
Uzee and I saw Koko Taylor in Tucson in the fall of 1992 or spring 1993. We walked there from Uzee's House because we didn't have a car and we saw an enormous shooting star flash across the night sky. Then we heard Koko sing and it was like nothing I'd ever heard before.If you never heard her (or even if you have), check out this clip. It's two songs and the first is good-timey kind of blues, but jump ahead to the 3:30 mark or so and prepare to shiver.
June 3, 2009, 9:52 PM
"They Made A Desert, and Called It Peace"
That's Tacitus, by the way, discussing the Romans. But he might as well have been talking about the Americans.Any lingering doubts that Obama is just sanother shithead war-mongering fuck should be dispelled by a careful review of his policy speech regarding Pakistan and Afghanistan. Here's a transcript:http://www.truthout.org/032709RPeel away all the flowery diplomatic language and you're left with a few highlights.1. 17,000 more troops are going to Afghanistan. The purpose of the troops is to kill all the bad people, i.e., Taliban and al-Qaeda. These are the same people who were supposedly killed when Bush sent troops there in 2002. Instead, they got stronger and spread into Pakistan.But this time will be different! Apparently. It is not clear why, but whatever.2. 4,000 US "trainers" will go to Afghanistan to train the army there. This is essentially a replay of Vietnam policy, which, as we all know,worked out perfectly. Because nobody understands the local situation as well as us 'Mericans, and nobody has that expert-eese as much as we do.3. The US will pay $1.5bn per year to Pakistan over the next few years. This will serve to a.) buy the corrupt government's collusion, and b.) salve the consciences of the very tiny number of Americans who actually feel kind of bad about killing all those dumb niggers with our ongoing drone and rocket attacks. Oh and they can build schools or something too, when they aren't being bombed by the States. Nice!Now, infrastructure aid and so on can be perfectly helpful, and maybe a few roads actually will get built. But it sticks in the craw to hear him say that the money will go to create "opportunity zones in the border region to develop the economy and bring hope to places plagued by violence," when, after all, it is the US missile attacks in those regions (ongoing since 2004) that have killed more people than anything else.4. By the way, the justification for all this is that al-Qaeda carried out 9/11. Of course, the Taliban government offered, at the time, to turn over OBL to the US--if the US could provide any evidence of his involvement in the attacks. The US refused to do so, preferring intead to start another war. Obama is continuing this fine tradition.5. Laugh until you cry: "The return in force of al Qaeda terrorists who would accompany the core Taliban leadership would cast Afghanistan under the shadow of perpetual violence. "What, exactly, has Afghanistan been living under for the past eight years (longer than that, if you include the US/Soviet proxy war dating back to 1980), you stupid fuck?Q. How do you say "Vietnam" in Arabic?A. "Iraq."Q. How do you say it in Pushto?A. "Afghanistan."
March 29, 2009, 6:39 PM
During all the celebrating of O-bomb-ya's victory last November, I felt left out. It was depressing. I felt like I was missing out on some big generational shift or soemthing--at least, that's what TV kept telling me. There was a party going on all around me and I wasn't invited. or more properly, I was invited, but I refused to go, because the guy hosting the party had said some murderously stupid things that all the other guests seemed intent on ignoring. I couldn't feel celebratory about somebody like that, and I didn't vote for the guy because I didn't like what he'd been saying for months vis-a-vis Afghanistan (that he would expand the war there) and Pakistan (that he would expand the war there). My misgivings were ignored by the Obama supporters I talked to. Typical of the repsonses was that of my sister, who said something to the effect that Obama was just "talking tough" in order to get elected, but he was really peace-loving at heart.Well, now we all know that's a pile of shit, right? According to the NY Times, Obama is weighing plans to attack the Pakistani city of Quetta, the provincial capitol of Balunchistan and one of the largest cities after Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad and Peshawar. This is a pretty huge fucking deal and the resultant silence from the "liberal left" is staggering. If W. had announced this plan, or McCain, then all those good lefty-thinking northeastern liberals would be out there protesting, but since the plan is emanating from a supposedly progressive (huh?) politician, anything goes.http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/18/world/asia/18terror.html?ref=worldThe theory, by the way, is that he will destroy Al-Qadea and Taliban targets there, and so the world will be safe for everybody. It's the same flawed logic that spurred W.'s Afghan war in 2002, and the Iraq war in 2003, not to mention the ongoing missile strikes into Pakistan since 2004. Lest we forget, Al-Qaeda and the Taliban were created by the US in the 1980s to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan, at which point, they were going to make the world safe for everybody. (Ronald Reagan called them the "moral equivalent to the Founding Fathers.")What gets left out of the thinking when people talk about bombs and drones and missile strikes, is:a. the strategy hasn't worked yet,which is why the war keeps creeping from place to place (Afghanistan to the tribal areas to Baluchistan to who knows where); andb. lots and lots and lots of innocent people die.Admittedly, US policy doesn't give a fuck about that, and nor do US politicians, Obama included, and nor do (from what I can see) the majority of US citizens. Please remember, three days after Obama's inauguration, he authorized the continuation of missile strikes into Pakistan. 15 people were killed that day in a village in Waziristan, mostly women and children. The strikes continues on a weekly-or-more-often basis. Raise your hand if you give a fuck. I mean, really.On the other hand, if even one such strike occurred on US territory, the hounds would be baying for blood...Expanding the war into Baluchistan will have any number of negative consequences, all of them dire. It could easily split Pakistan into pieces, which is at least one potential goal of the policy. It will radicalize a segment of the citizenry which, until now, has been relatively moderate. It will swell numbers of Taliban and Al-Qaeda recruits. It will further weaken the already-weak and corrupt federal government. Any of these results can and will be used as further justification for more military action in which more people who have never done a damn thing to the US or its citizenry will die.But who cares, right? They're just niggers, right?Oh wait, we can't say that anymore, now that Obama's president. I'm glad I voted for Nader.Suckers.
March 22, 2009, 5:17 PM
David Maine was born in 1963 and grew up in Farmington, Connecticut. He attended Oberlin College and the University of Arizona and has worked in the mental-health systems of Massachusetts and Arizona. He has taught English in Morocco and Pakistan, and since 1998 has lived in Lahore, Pakistan, with his wife, novelist Uzma Aslam Khan.
