Yesterday I met ''E'' in Heidelberg. She lives in Budapest, but came here for a conference. I will likely see her again tonight with I and S. It was sheer luck that she is here. We did coffee, and had some Turkish food (lahamajud?). It was really good. I wandered around a lot. I got lost a bit, but fortunately Heidelberg is not so big, so it is easy to find stuff. the people are generally also quick to help a lost foreigner.

Today it is raining in Heidelberg, so I am not sure what I will be doing.

My university-supplied email has now been down for about 24 hours. I cannot get in touch with anyone. About a month ago the same thing happened, and the problem was not reslved for 3 days and they simply lost all the email. They ought to fire whoever is responsible for the email in the City University of New York. He is an incompetent person, and would not last 2 minutes in a company where he was accountable to someone. Unfortunately, it is as simple as having power. If there is no one you have to answer to to keep your job, then there is little incentive to do the job well, and he does not. I wonder if the president of the university uses email.

Yesterday I finished reading R. J. Rummel's Death by Government. The book is eye-opening as hell, boring as shit, fucking scary, and a damned good survey of twhat the author calls ''democide'', or government sponsered murder. Rummel analyzes all the mega-murderers of this century (1900-1987) including Mao, Stalin, Chiang Kai-shek, Hitler, Pol Pot, Tito, the Japanese in the Phillipenes, Turkey's genocidal purges of the Armenians, the Vietnamese and Korean communist regimes, Poland's anti-German purges, Pakistan's genocide in East Pakistan. . .

The main thesis that Rummel argues or is that Powre kills. Concentrade power in the hands of a few (such as you have under communism) and you inevitably get a murderous regime. This is not an apriori fact, rather an empirical finding. Rummel documents all this meticulously.

One shortcoming of the book however is the analysis it offers of the mechanism of how power kills. After all it is the main thesis and it would be nice to see the hows and whys too. Each chapter dedicates about a paragraph to it, and this is worth more time. It would make for a more interesting and valuable book. As it stands, the analysis is simplistic. (Though I do see why Rummel might want to avoid that and just stick to the acts.)

A personal note I want to add is that I am pleased to have not seen anyone who could posibly be an ancestor of mine mentioned in the book (at least not ont he bad list). I have no idea how people live knowing that their genetic heritage accommodates various genocides, and mass murders. Maybe that is why liberals tend to not believe in genetics playing any role in how we are, because their genes are full of violent and crazy tendencies, and they would never want to believe that they might be the way deep down.

''I'' rides a bicycle a lot. so do many many people here in Heidelberg. So I got one too. We borrowed it from ''H''. He has tons of stuff lying around, including a bike or two. My butt really hurts, though. It has been at least 10 years since I last rode one, and I barely remember how. It took me a few minutes to get back in to it. I hope the butt thing goes away soon though.

So today I am in the Judishe Hochschule in Heidelberg. I have been here before, and I got to meet some of the people again. I and S attend courses here.

Heidelberg is a very plesant city. There is little to do, but it is plesant. The people in Germans seem quite sterile. They are, for the most part, boring and robotic. (My friends excepted, of course.) So far the people in Frankfurt seem to be the worst. Everyone is plesant and will answer your questions well, but that's it. There seems to be little life. I am not sure I have put my finger on the real problem yet, but I am sure I see that there is a problem. I wonder what Germans who come to New York think of us. Do they think there is too much life there? It has been the worst in Frankfurt. They seem to be complete robots. Heidelberg is a bit better. I'll let you all kow about Berlin.

(I hate these European keyboards. the Y and the Z kezs are reversed ;) so are a lot of other things)

Maybe Germans are just too polite and reserved and restrained to be any fun. Who knows.

Yesterday I went to the Heidelberg Synagogue. Average age there was about 70, and the only language anyone spoke was Russian. I had dinner with the rabbi of the synagogue. It was quite nice.

I went with H and I out for coffee and beer at night. Lots of fun. H always is.

Today I and R and myself went to the Schloß. That is the only real tourist thing here in Heidelberg. So we did it.

New York was beautiful taking off. I was able to see hundreds of tiny fireworks displas all over the city, and of course over the east river. To bad it was so short.

Air Iceland had in-flight excersiyes during the flight. At some point I went to the bathroom, and discovered an old lady fast asleep in my seat.

I have been in Heidelberg for all of five minutes, and I can already see how different the people here are. It is amazing how different Heidelbergers are from Frankfurters. I will explain soon.

I am now in JFK airport. All is well. My flight is on time. No worries. No traffic. I got here like an idiot over 2 1/2 hours before take-off. Ticketing and check in took 10 minutes. Hung out with "L" and "S".

British Airways has complimentry internet access in the airport for laptops. You just plug in and it works. Bless them. My flight has just started boarding, and I think I will get going in a minute.

The airplane stuff in LA has not had any impact on us here.

I have to switch flights in Reykjavik. I requested a seat next to a supermodel, but they gave me an aisle and no promises about my neighbor. It should work out fine. I'll let you know how it went.

Shit. I leave for the airport in 2 hours, and I am now hearing reports of a shooting at LAX at the El Al terminal.

Happy fourth everyone.

For as long as it mattered to me, I always had these fantasies that - come summer, I wanted to be in love, or at least have a real crush on someone who was there and around. It never really happened, but it was always really important for some reason. But I have had my share of summer flings. In the summer of '91 it was "K", 92, it was "L", 93 it was "A", 94 was "J". . ., in the summer of '01 was "Z". But the summer of '02 looks fairly unpromising. That so sucks. So I will be around Germany mostly. I'll be in Berlin all of August and I suspect that the summer of '02 will be depressing.

There will be people, but I really won't be anywhere for too long to be with anyone for too long.

Oh well, at least I have my health, right?

OK, so I leave tomorrow. Yes, on the 4th of July. Yes, I really do still love this country, and I am wearing my boxer shorts with the little American flags on it.

I am taking advantage of the low demand due to the holiday and terrorism warnings, so I can get a flight, and cheaply. I think it is particularly important for Americans to be defiant in the face of these "threats" and warnings. We are Americans, and we didn't come this far to cower and hide in our rooms at every rumor of a threat.

Supply and demand - a most American enterprise - dictated the time of my flight. American can-do spirit, dictated the motive.

I seem to have most everything worked out. I arrive in Frankfurt and "I" will pick me up. We get my tickets from my German travel agent, and drive off to Heidelberg, where I remain somewhere for about 10 days, where "E" might visit. I am not sure where I will be staying, but I hear it is being taken care of. Then off to Beirut. about 6 days there, where I stay in some hotel with an Arabic name in the Hamra District.

"B", a friend in Beirut, is starting to worry me. The picture she is painting of Beirut is not as rosy as the one she has been painting till now. I think I might be confusing her personal life with her descriptions of the city. Mind you that everything I know about Beirut comes from the movie "Delta Force" with Chuck Norris, "Spy Games" with Brad Pitt and Robert Redford, and a bunch of books I read about wars in Lebanon, and some Lebanese people I know. And of course "B". So, knowing what I know, I naturally think that Beirut is a scary place to be. So naturally I am scared. I just don't know what to expect. I really need to be reassured.

Then I fly off to Jordan, and stay there overnight, and take the bus across the Allenby bridge, and hope to end up in Jerusalem before the Sabbath there. I am glad I am not superstitious. If I was I would realize that my stay in Beirut coincides almost exactly with the 9 days.

Then it is 10 days in Jerusalem where I meet some friends and academics, and return to Berlin for a month to hunker down and write my dissertation.

I just want to take a moment to say "thanks" to the women of New York who have been so supportive of my new look (and some of the men and children too).

So for those of you who want a travel update, I now have all my tickets arranged, and "I" will be picking me up from the airport in Frankfurt when I get there. Then he will drive me to Heidelberg, where I will spend a good 10 days or so, mostly courtesy of "H". "H" is the nicest guy, though he scared the hell out of me when I was in Heidelberg last summer. He is like huge, and I first encountered him shouuting is the angriest possible tone at me and "I" when we were walking down the street on a tour of the ritzy section of Heidelberg. "I" immediately recognized him and cracked up, but I did not and it took me a minute to realize that he was speaking German (which I barely understand) and kidding with "I". But it really turns out that he is the nicest most friendly guy you could ever meet. We had lunch and shmoozed for a while. I look forward to seeing him again. I am actually looking forward to seeing "S" again too. I think I had a crush on her once, but she had (and still has) a boyfriend (same guy). I am also looking forward to seeing "N" again. We met my last time there, but I never stayed in touch becauseI am just too shy that way.

So the international court goes in to effect today. Fuck them.

Any real country would have to be stupid to join that thing, and feel bound by it. As it is, the UN is a forum for a lot of little insignificant countries to join together and get this - outvote the US. Yes, fellows, they can simply think that they are stronger because they can say whatever they want about the US and it becomes an international statement. The US did not become the strongest and most powerful military, social, cultural, and economic power in the history of the planet so that we can have a bunch of banana republics headed by the Sudan and Cambodia drag some US general in to court for War crimes, while they sit around and protect each others' crazy despots from well deserved charges of genocide and the like.

In general, countries with nothing to loose should not have power. One should get power (and legitimately be able to exercise it responsibly) by having something to loose. The US, and her government, for example has a lot to loose by screwing up. Any administration that wants to stay in power here can't afford a fiasco. They cannot afford a mass murder (and no, by this I do not mean 4 dead, and even then . . .), and they cannot afford a nuclear confrontation.

Governments like Pakistan, Syria, Iraq, North Korea, and the Sudan have nothing to loose by wiping out a neighboring country. Why? Because the government is not accountable. Power is not diffuse, it is not in the hands of the people. Whenever power is centralized with no checks or balances, the government can do whatever it wills, and retain power, because there is no one to take it away. What incentive does it have to be civil? To the extent that a government is by the people it is for the people. To the extent it is for the people, it can only do things that the people approve of, and in general, that excludes nuclear war, genocide, killing it enemies en masse, killing its own citizens en masse, killing its own citizens period. . . .

Unfortunately most of the world's governments are not for the people. They are for themselves and those in power, and would really think of themselves of having lost little if say, one of their cities were erased from the map, either by them or someone else. Things like this have happened. That is how many governments stay in power. They destroy a few thousand people when their people are not behaving. (Hama, Syria, for example.)

So when these governments get together and decide that they will, for some twisted reason show their political strength against "American imperialism", a real country like the US will have little recourse. We would not invade them, for they are doing something legal, and even if we did, the government would not care, so the US kills a few hundred or thousand of its citizens, that is a price well worth it to the average despot, to show the world that he can get America, using their own "western" system of justice against them. It is a twisted game these people play, and if we can't play by their rules - which we certainly cannot if we want to stay a civilized power - we should just not play at all.

In this case, not playing means not joining this kangaroo court of international (read anti-America) "justice". America is not stupid. We cannot be bound by the rules of despots, czars, Psychotic Islamic fundamentalists, dictators, lunatics, terrorists, communists, Mafia leaders, or fascists. We cannot afford to play the game that one side can afford to loose, and the other side can't. When the stakes are that uneven, when we value life the way we do, and when they don't, we will loose. In a game of tit-for-tat with equal casualties (not the Akselrod type game) the side that loses is the side that values its members more. When a suicide bomber kills one other person he is ahead of the game. He won because, by his action, he claims that his life is worth less than the one he kills. Otherwise it is a bad trade, and he would not do it. If your average Palestinian thought that their lives wore worth living, they would not trade them for an Israeli life.

If your average dictator in the third world thought that they ran a country where anyone had a life worth living, they wouldn't sacrifice it for the sake of telling off the US, like Iraq does.

The US embargo effects the people, not the government. The government of Iraq (read Saddam) thinks it is well worth the Iraqi human blood, to slaughter as many of his people as necessary, to maintain an anti-US stance. Saddam stays in power no matter how many of his people die of inadequate medical supplies. So there is little the US can do to get at him short of a real invason. This economic this seems humane to us, and it keeps our own citizens believing that we are exerting humane pressure on the government, when in reality we are hurting the Iraqi people, and giving Saddam more incentive to get his people to hate the US. The conundrum is that we cannot hurt the Iraqi government without a military confrontation, and that will have severe direct civilian casualties, and we cannot get at the Iraqi government via economic warfare, as that will have indirect sever civilian casualties. Saddam is using his civilians like a human shield to protect himself. And he is doing a good job. He is still in power, and his people hate him, and the US, and everyone suffers except Saddam. (Why are we having such a problem killing the SOB? Anyone from the Pentagon with an answer?)

Now if people like this thought that they could get even one US general in to court on phony-trumped-up imaginary charges, and the price would be that all their top brass would one day legitimately be hung for war crimes, then so be it. That is a price the US should not have to pay. Every American tourist in say, France (who will comply with anything stupid), who was once a mechanic in the US army should not have to worry that one day Kazakhstan will demand his extradition him for war crimes. Every American tourist should not have to worry about ending up in a nightmare of diseased south-east Asian politics or some other God-forsaken morass of charges for compliancy with America while the top America-hater de jure, has a good laugh.

It is bad enough we have to put up with these countries sponsoring terrorism and other such crap, we do not need to grant them legal licence to ruin our lives, and our way of life as well.

Someone is brave when they can calmly face difficult facts.