States Tonight

I’m out of here!

My Sudan Tour is over. Tonight I board a Lufthansa flight that will take me to Cairo, Frankfort, Chicago, and finally Portland. The “Truck Shop” will pick me up for the final leg by van to McMinnville. I leave a little after midnight and will arrive in McMinnville some where around 21:00 PDT. With time zone changes it will be over 30 hours standing around waiting to board something or having something strapped to my ass. I expect to be dead but not know it once the Truck Shop drops me at my home. My only hope is that there is room for an up-grade out of steerage for one or more of the legs.

That is the good news, the bad is I left in such a hurry because of the lost passport and visa that my house is a mess. I doubt it will make much difference tonight but once I recover I have to face trying to pick up and organize the mess I left plus deal with 6 weeks of mail and who knows what else.

Skype

If you travel internationally this is a must. Once on your computer you can talk via the Internet to other Skype computers or call traditional phones i.e. landline or cell. Calls to phones are charged at rates determined by the country the call is to. I have spent the last 6 weeks in Khartoum, Sudan my total phone costs for this tour was less than 20 Euro. I paid AT&T over $4500 US for my last 6 week tour in The Sudan.

BTW Skype will work with dial-up, not as well as with hi-speed but it will work. There will be dropped calls and some distortion on many of your calls when using slow connections. Broadband computer to computer is the best, better than either phone to phone or computer to phone.

http://www.skype.com/helloagain.html

Flour Tortillas

I’m in The Sudan with a South African and a Zimbabwean as flat mates. Neither had eaten tortillas of any kind before last night. I can’t find Masa Harina to make corn tortillas but flour ones are almost as good and better for some things such as Tacos al Carbon. The meat and fresh chilies are available and we even found some avocados, they are still too hard to eat but at least there is hope. Damn I miss Texas. As backward, crazy, mean and reactionary as it is there is something about the place that holds you tight like a first love.

worst president ever

Google bomb time;

worst president ever

Slow week in Khartoum

One of the advantages of the Khartoum base is the almost daily flight schedule. It make the time pass quickly. You get up in the morning, shower, put on the monkey suit, go to the airport, fly your legs, go back to the flat, check email, have dinner, go to bed, get up the next morning and do it all over once more. Before you know it the tour is over and you are standing at the airline counter trying to upgrade out of steerage and paying for your overweight bags. The last two weeks haven’t worked that way…flights have cancelled or not booked and we have been sitting around the flat staring at the walls. Not a good way to pass the time.

Computer Woes

Sorry for the long delay...My computer crashed while I was in Abuja. Talk about being helpless, in Africa without a working cell phone, a dead computer and not a clue how you are going to get it, the computer, fixed.

The good news, I found a guy just down the street from our flat in Khartoum that worked on HP computers. Three days and $200 US later I'm on line. He didn't know how much he could have charged me...Can you say priceless.

Life as an ExPat

When living in the third world small things make a big difference. Meat, except for pork, is no problem in Khartoum. It is cheap and very good, whole beef back straps run less than $20 US, I bought a couple of dozen lamb rib chops for a little over $10 US the other night. Grilled lamb ribs, rice, and some cucumbers in yogurt make a great meal. There are a couple of things missing...vegs and cheese. Today I found cheese, wonderful, beautiful cheese. cheddar, blue, swiss, even a couple of soft ones. Life is good.

BTW one of the local cheeses would make great enchiladas if only I could find some masa.

Now all I need is a source for some good tomatoes, asparagus, or lettuce. I would kill for green beans :-) .

James Wolcott

Damn he is good.

For a tuff-talkin' Texas, President Bush is awfully punctilious about reporters' trying to double-dip questions during press conferences. During the one wrapped up a bit earlier today, he took a sarcastic swipe at a foreign reporter for picking up the "American trick" of asking two questions when the quota is one per customer. He's a stickler about that. Before the war Bujsh didn't know the crucial dif between the Sunnis and the Shiites, according to a NY Times magazine piece (on the eve of invasion he had to have it explained to him by an Iraqi exile), but this sort of infraction he pounces on like John Simon affronted by a dangling modifier. The press con itself was mostly a familiar reiteration of his War on Terror halftime pep talk; more interesting was the byplay between Bill Kristol on Fox News and the shiny host, whose name escapes me....

http://jameswolcott.com/archives/2005/06/kristol_ball.php

COMMON SENSE

Max Sawicky has some very good Dutch-uncle advice for those of us who care primarily about the substance of government policy:

MaxSpeak, You Listen!: COMMON SENSE: Determine the major policy challenges to come, fasten on the best solutions, and hammer away in the confidence that time will validate your message.... Three examples:

• The U.S. has to get out of Iraq, ASAP.
• The U.S. must have national health insurance.
• The Federal Gov will need to increase taxes -- over the next 75 years -- by about ten percentage points of GDP.

I think the arguments supporting these are very solid. If nobody makes them, we'll never get there. I don't have to run for public office, so I can make them. Politics is beyond me...

Khartoum, Sudan

I’m in Khartoum. What a zoo this last week has been...UPS lost my passport with my Sudan visa. Our Washington office shipped it UPS "next day air" last Thursday to McMinnville, it made it as far as Louisville and no farther. Long story somewhat short...after working with UPS Monday and Tuesday I decided to go for a new passport and visa. I flew the company’s C-206 to Seattle Wed. morning and got a replacement passport then flew back to McMinnville to get on a redeye flight to Washington D.C. Wed. evening. I was on the Sudan Embassy’s doorstep Thursday AM. After 30 straight hours of go, go, go I had a passport and visa in hand. Needless to say once I made it back to my hotel and had some food, other than airline peanuts, and a couple of beers in my belly I crashed.

After resting most of Friday I started another 24 hours of travel on Saturday. This time on Lufthansa, the good news I was able to use our airline ID to upgrade. What a difference it is between the front and the back of today’s airlines. The seats did everything from making a bed to rubbing your back, all at the touch of a button. The food was eatable and the booze flowed. I’m still rummy from lack of sleep but all in all the trip over wasn’t too bad.

The C-206 flight was interesting...it was the first time I had flown a 206 in over 30 years and almost that long between single engine cross-countries. Two things stood out...first: damn it was slow, second: it was a lot of work and this was a pretty well equipped 206. We forget how hard it is to do everything solo with equipment that is not top of the line.

UPS Sucks

I'm pissed...The Washington DC office overnighted my passport and Sudan Visa last Thursday (09 June 2005). I have not received the package...It is lost. I'm busting ass to finish closing the house down tonight so I can fly the C 206 to Seattle in the morning. I have to file for a replacement passport. Then I need to make it back to Portland in time to catch the red-eye to Washington D.C. at 21:15. I will arrive in D.C. early Thursday morning...Just in time (I hope) to go to the Sudan Embassy and, cross my fingers, have a replacement Visa issued. Then who knows what kind of connections I can get to Sudan.

I had a good flight to Sudan booked out of Portland...Most likely First Class and with only a 2 hour layover in Frankfort. What do you bet it will be the middle seat of a 5 seat row with at least a 9 or more hour layover somewhere...I'm Pissed.

Brass: 'we won't solve this with bullets'

by kos
Mon Jun 13th, 2005 at 14:06:21 PDT

Military commanders on the ground in Iraq must speak the obvious truths our civilian or Pentagon leadership is incapable of saying.

A growing number of senior American military officers in Iraq have concluded that there is no long-term military solution to an insurgency that has killed thousands of Iraqis and taken a heavy toll on U.S. troops during the past two years.

Instead, officers say, the only way to end the guerrilla war is through Iraqi politics -- an arena that so far has been crippled by divisions between Shi'a Muslims, whose coalition dominated the January elections, and Sunni Muslims, who are a minority in Iraq but form the base of support for the insurgency.

"I think the more accurate way to approach this right now is to concede that ... this insurgency is not going to be settled, the terrorists and the terrorism in Iraq is not going to be settled, through military options or military operations," Brig. Gen. Donald Alston, the chief U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, said last week, in a comment that echoes what other senior officers say. "It's going to be settled in the political process." [...]

Gen. George W. Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, expressed similar sentiments, calling the military's efforts "the Pillsbury Doughboy idea" -- pressing the insurgency in one area only causes it to rise elsewhere.

"Like in Baghdad," Casey said during an interview with two newspaper reporters, including one from Knight Ridder, last week. "We push in Baghdad -- they're down to about less than a car bomb a day in Baghdad over the last week -- but in north-center (Iraq) ... they've gone up," he said. "The political process will be the decisive element."

Permalink

Fall of 2001 Continued

After leaving the River Oaks Men’s Grill I returned to my office on Hobby Airport. I truly did not know what to do. I made a few phone calls, one was to Darrel Stewart, Darrel had an old and ugly Lear 25B he was operating and he needed someone to fly it. The only problem I did not have a current PPE in the Lear. I was typed but had not flown a Lear in at least 10 years. Darrel could give me a PPE but I had been out of the Lear so long I doubt the insurance company would have insured me with out my going to simulator based recurrent training.

Flight Safety has a wonderful program, if you are a full service customer you can go to recurrent on any other aircraft that costs the same or less than your primary aircraft. When I called FSI I still had just over a month left on my Fairchild SA 227 contract and the Lear program cost was the same. If I could make it to Flight Safety in the next month I could go through the Lear recurrent and have a fresh PPE. Even better if I could find a FAR 135 operator to let me use their program I could also get a fresh FAR 293a & b, a 297 and then all I would need is a 299 to fly Lears on charter. Darrel’s operation used Flight Safety Wichita for training. It was all working out, I could do some contract work with Darrel until I could find something full time. All I had to do was convince the downtown suits that it was to their advantage to send me to FSI Wichita. I did some fancy tap dancing and I don’t know if I caught Nick off guard or if he has a heart (if he does he hides it well) but long story short he said go ahead and go.

The first open slot was the end of December.

More to come,

Out of Here

I'm leaving for a TDY in Khartoum, Sudan next week. It had been touch and go, for a while I didn't know if I would receive my new visa in time. My Afghanistan visa was still good and there was a chance I would be sent to Kabul instead of Khartoum. I must say the weather in Kabul would be better this time of the year but from what I'm reading people are being blown up in Afghanistan and so far that is not a problem in Sudan (unless you are black). It will be good to see my Sudanese friends and be in Africa for a few weeks.

From the Whiskey Bar

www.billmon.org/

Scenes We'd Like to See

(click here for full-size image.)

Defendants in the dock at the Ango-American War Crimes Trial of 2010, held at The Hague under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court.

Of the 20 defendants shown here -- the so-called "Republican Guard" -- only one (Alan Greenspan, second row, second from right) was found not guilty, on the grounds that the destruction of the American economy and the global financial crash of 2008, while regrettable, did not constitute war crimes as defined by the Geneva Convention.

Another defendant (Ari Fleischer, front row, extreme right) received only a light sentence, as the court determined that lying to the American people was too common a crime to merit more severe punishment.

In a more controversial decision, former Secretary of State Colin Powell was spared any prison time at all, after the judges ruled that being seated between former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Richard Myers for the entire eight-month trial constituted "punishment enough."

Former Vice President Richard Cheney (second row, extreme left), who feigned narcolepsy throughout most of the trial, was committed to the newly established United Nations Hospital for the Criminally Insane, as was former National Security Advisor and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (next to Cheney), who insisted on being addressed as "Mrs. Bush" during the the trial.

The remaining defendants were sentenced to life terms at the Guantanamo War Crimes Penitentiary -- the same facility used to imprison the remaining leaders of the Al Qaeda terrrorist organization, whose own war crimes trial began shortly after this picture was taken.

Posted by billmon at 06:15 PM

Lance Mannion

A damn good rant

Dog Shit and Shrub 

Shrub Flags and Dog Shit

From www.indybay.org

Police in Germany are hunting pranksters who have been sticking
miniature flag portraits of US President George W. Bush into piles of
dog poo in public parks. Josef Oettl, parks administrator for Bayreuth,
said: "This has been going on for about a year now, and there must be
2,000 to 3,000 piles of excrement that have been claimed during that
time."

The series of incidents was originally thought to be some sort of
protest against the US-led invasion ofIraq. And then when it continued
it was thought to be a protest against President George W. Bush's
campaign for re-election. But it is still going on and the police say
they are completely baffled as to who is to blame. "We have sent out
extra patrols to try to catch whoever is doing this in the act," said
police spokesman Reiner Kuechler. "But frankly, we don't know what we
would do if we caught them red handed." Legal experts say there is no
law against using feces as a flag stand and the federal legal experts
say there is no law against using feces as a flag stand and the federal
constitution is vague on the issue.

Fall of 2001

I’m working for an Investment Banking firm in Houston, Texas. Our airplane is approaching 20 years old and is need of upgrades plus our travel needs are changing. For several months I have been looking at the market trying to decide what would be the “perfect” airplane for our needs, something that would do 85% of our missions yet wouldn’t blow the aviation budget too bad. I had picked several, from small and slow to mid-sized and reasonably fast. I was ready for the call.

The first sign of trouble was when the call came; it was to meet with Nick at the River Oaks Country Club Men’s Grill. It was never a good sign to meet somewhere other than “downtown” (my guess is they believe if we were at ROCC that I wouldn’t go postal) but I was so sure we were meeting to talk about a new aircraft I ignored the warning signs. I put on my monkey suit, showed up on time, ate a really bad hamburger, showed my research on the used aircraft market and then set like pole axed mule as Nick told me they no longer needed my services, they were going with a “Quartershare”. I walked out of the Men’s Grill without a clue how I was going to survive. The Job market was as bad as it had been in more that 20 years, I had just turned 60, and the only airplanes I could fly were no longer being made and had not been in production for many years. It looked grim.

I Like Ike

"Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are [a] few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid."

- President Dwight D. Eisenhower, 11/8/54