Illogical affection

On an Asperger's Syndrome message board, someone recently posted about the problem that he called "illogical affection." He was referring to feelings that people with AS can develop toward others who may not be true friends, but are just being polite and socially friendly. The problem we face is that we usually can't tell the difference. I know that, for a while, I became so closed off to any sign of affection that I was totally alone, because I had just learned that not everyone who was nice to my face was really my friend. It's still something I struggle with. For a long time I latched onto any guy I liked who showed a bit of interest, and, even when he made it clear that he just wanted a casual relationship, if I liked him and he gave me an indication that he also liked me, I got very attached very fast. It took a long period of reflection for me to realize that, not only did these guys not want to be with me in the long term, I probably wouldn't have liked them at all if my head hadn't been sent in a haze at the first show of affection. But now that I have Anthony, I don't worry about that as much anymore. However, since I still can't always tell who's being genuinely nice and who's just being polite, and what guys are just trying to get my pants off (although that one can be painfully obvious), it's still hard for me to trust people. It's so easy for me to get swept up by someone being friendly, after years of being alone and an inability to understand social cues, that I don't always recognize who is a true friend and who might be talking about me behind my back. Of course, as a result, middle school and high school, where false friendship and backstabbing are common practices, were when I fell into my deepest depressions and developed a severe mistrust of others that bordered on paranoia. Luckily, due to some good recent experiences, my social barrier is starting to fall down.
In other social craziness news, Rapture got shut down by the cops last night. One of the officers told us that it wasn't because of our activities, but because of regulations for residential areas. In my conspiratorial mind, I tend to think that one of the more squeamish neighbors got wind of what was going on (or has an overactive imagination) and called in with a bogus complaint. Because we've never had anything like this happen before. But I'm not about to go all Timothy McVeigh and start bombing government buildings because I feel this is an infringement of my privacy, though it does seem a bit silly. And it didn't help that one idiot at the party was following an officer around, asking questions. Like that wouldn't make things worse. But all in all, it wasn't too bad. No one got arrested, we weren't rushed out of the building, and only the owner of the property will be charged. The lead officer joked that he and the other cops were just "hired muscle" and that, if he took out his handcuffs, he'd be there all night. At least now I can say that I was at a party that got busted by the cops.
With Halloween coming up, very few things can dampen my spirits. Still, I don't know what my costume will be yet. And with Anthony accompanying me to the Halloween festivities, I need a costume that will include him. Bound will be having their annual Hell Ball on Halloween night, with a haunted fun house beforehand. I hope I can make it to both, but I will be at Bound that night to see all the crazy outfits, including Maverick's Charles Manson costume. Halloween: the greatest time of the year.

Nick Cave, the once and future king

Despite my financial troubles and career identity crisis, one part of my life is now complete: I have seen Nick Cave live. Now in his fifties (older than my father), Cave is better than ever. The tracks from his latest album, including the epic title track "Dig Lazarus Dig," were performed at high energy by Cave and the Bad Seeds at the 9:30 Club on Monday. The opening band, whose name I didn't catch, was decent, a melodic and 60s garage rock-influenced version of Cave's early band The Birthday Party (at least that's what I thought), but the audience came to see a legend, and he didn't disappoint. The live performance of "The Mercy Seat," which I was anticipating all night, was almost too intense to bear. Cave's baritone voice is as strong as ever, on classics like "Your Funeral My Trial" and "The Weeping Song" and newer tracks. On "God is in the House," while not one of my favorites, Cave told his audience of the importance of one line, "Moral sneaks in the White House," and asked the crowd, "What do you want to hear?" The show closed with a hard-rocking rendition of "Stagger Lee," a sick update of a traditional song, from "Murder Ballads." A brilliant songwriter as well as a charismatic performer, Nick Cave will always be the king of my music collection and of the dark music scene.
I saw a headline on Yahoo News for a video of Vladimir Putin doing judo (I think that's what it said). Apparently the "Prime Minister" of Russia is a black belt. Like the world needed another reason to be afraid of him.

Another school shooting in Finland

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080925/ap_on_re_eu/eu_finland_what_s_wrong;_ylt=Ak8Zq5uYyuympZKlE.xUDAZ0bBAF

The Scandinavian country suffered another attack on a school from a lone gunman. Both shooters posted videos on YouTube, both were obsessed with Columbine, and both ended their rampages by shooting themselves in the head. The last detail is a common occurrance in mass murders, and the Virginia Tech shooter shared these traits, although he sent his video to NBC News instead of posting it on YouTube. Finland officials are unsure if the latest attacker had a history of mental illness, but the shooter in the 2007 massacre had been treated for depression.
Finland has the second highest teen suicide rate in the European Union (behind Lithuania), and alcoholism is rampant. It is also one of the few European nations where civilian gun ownership rivals that of the US, although the recent shootings have caused some lawmakers to reexamine their gun policies. After the 2007 shooting, the goverment pledged to raise the legal age for buying a gun from 15 to 18, but never did. A 15-year-old in Finland can legally buy a gun. That doesn't seem right, but I'm sure rural Finns, as well as rural and Republican Americans, would disagree. The Finnish tradition of hunting is sure to be a spoke in the wheel of joining the rest of the EU in tighter gun control. Still, guns are not the only problem here. Compared to the US and the rest of Europe, Finland still has a relatively low violent crime rate. Maybe it's because Finland is an empty, cold country, but why is the teen suicide rate so high? As I've said before, mass murders are essentially suicides with a higher body count, and the two students who turned their rage on the schools were two more teen suicides in Finland, with innocent victims.

Sinclair Lewis: forgotten prophet

Before I get to the main body of today's post, some quick comments on the big political news. If I was the paranoid type, I'd think that John McCain's out of left field VP nominee, female Alaska governor Palin, was a ploy to bring disenfranchised Clinton supporters over to the Republicans. But, knowing almost nothing about Palin, I really can't comment at this time. Another note about McCain: I know he's a war hero, but does that mean he can run a country? He's a popular Republican senator, but it seems everything I read about him mentions his military service and little else. I don't want to diminish how much he and many other soldiers suffered in Vietnam, but a war hero does not necessarily make an effective political leader. That was the point of Beowulf. Also, having fought in a futile war, shouldn't McCain know another futile war effort when he sees one? Yet he continues to justify the mess that is Iraq. Onto Obama/Biden. While I wish the two names were reversed, and still think that Obama should have waited and gotten more experience before running for President, I think the two will balance each other out, with Biden's solid Washington experience and foreign policy knowledge will counter Obama's freshness in the political arena. Also, I hope that Biden will prove a sobering influence on the optimistic but often hollow rhetoric of Obama.
Speaking of American politics, the book I'm currently reading, It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis, describes an alternate dystopian history where, in the wake of the Great Depression, America elects a president who becomes a fascist dictator, stomping on free speech, the rights of women and minorities (with particularly venemous rhetoric toward Jews), and the checks and balances system. The major tenet of this fictional president's platform is taking power away from Congress and giving it to the Executive branch. His other platform promises economic security to millions of impoverished citizens, which fails to materialize. Instead, he sends unemployed citizens to labor camps. Doremus Jessup, the book's protagonist, is imprisoned for publishing a disparaging editorial against the regime. Even the Fox News crowd could appreciate this book, because President Windrip is a Democrat who starts out offering support to labor unions and the poor, and the Republican candidate who runs against him is an honest, upstanding politician (an oxymoron, I know). But, as Jessup concludes, the promised government aid to the poor is just a way for Windrip to gain more solitary power over the American people, and he instead gives the money he promised for economic aid to the big businesses that supported his campaign. Colleges in Windrip's America become little more than military training grounds, full of young men whose only aim is to prove how tough they are. Academics become marked men, and women. Christianity becomes the country's official religion, with the expression of any other faith grounds for imprisonment. Women are gradually driven out of the workplace, forced to assume what Windrip considers their "natural" function, as wives and mothers. In terms of artistry, this is hardly one of Lewis' better works, but the America it describes, its anti-intellectualism, politicans saying one thing then doing another upon election, the strangely reversible process of women and minorities gaining then losing rights, the urge to prove its dominance on the world stage, is still resonant today. Jessup, examining American war efforts, reflects on the Phillipines, which he recalls as a war to help a society that didn't want America's help. That sounds all too familiar. The gradual, unnoticed slide into fascism makes me think of something I once heard. A frog, when thrown into a pot of boiling water, will immediately leap out, but, if placed in a pot of warm or cool water, will allow itself to be boiled alive if the temperature is gradually increased. That's why all fascist governments, from Hitler to Stalin to Mugabe, start out slow, gain the trust of the citizens, tell them exactly what they want to hear, then, one by one, taking away their rights, coating it in justification that the citizens often believe. I can't say for certain if things will improve when Bush leaves office, no matter who takes his place, but after the Patriot Act, the shift of power from Congress to the President, and the tragedy of Iraq, are we being boiled alive?

Solzhenitsyn's comments on violence

Aleksander Solzhenitsyn, recently deceased Russian writer and thorn in Stalin's oversized paw, once said, "How can a man who is warm understand a man who is cold?" This is exactly why so many so-called examinations of the criminal mind fall short. Most members of the human race feel some level of empathy toward others, in varying degrees from person to person. But a murderer, serial killer or any other violent criminal does not. Like Dexter Morgan, protagonist of the greatest TV show in history (and I have learned that Season 2 will be out on DVD this Tuesday), says about himself, they feel nothing. Like Patrick Bateman in American Psycho, they're not "fully there." Bateman is conscious that he's putting on an act in his daily life, and the shallowness of his personality just happens to go unnoticed in 1980s era Wall Street. The question is, visible in the film but lost in the book among Brett Easton Ellis' heavy-handed writing style, is whether Bateman was driven to violence in the course of his empty materialistic life as a primal escape, or if he was born or made in childhood into a monster, and he found the shallow world of Wall Street an inconspicuous hiding spot for his superficial disguise. The rest of us, with our emotions and empathy, cannot fully understand what goes on in the heads of someone who can easily kill another person just for the thrill of it. When police interviewed Gary Ridgeway, the Green River Killer, and asked him why he killed, they were unsatisfied with his unsubstantial answer. Ridgeway said that he couldn't explain why he killed 49 women, and the best he could come up with was that he did it "because I wanted to kill them." The police wanted a more concrete response, because they couldn't understand that someone could kill so many innocent people without having thought about it. But to someone like Ridgeway, it may have been as natural an impulse as hunger or libido. And that is, fortunately, an incomprehensible impulse to the rest of us.
A side note: I was watching American Psycho last night, and found myself getting turned on. Either Christian Bale is so fucking hot that he can turn me on no matter what he's doing on screen, or there is something seriously wrong with me. Or maybe it's because I won't see Anthony again until next weekend; with our vacation schedules overlapping he will be returning from his 10-day trip to Kansas City the same day I leave for a week in Cape Cod with my family. I hope to be out at Rapture next Saturday, or seeing Dharmata 101 at Midnight.

What's worse than a violent sociopath?

A violent sociopath with power: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080723/ts_afp/warcrimesictyserbiabosnia

Serbian-Bosnian military man Karadzic, who hid for years in plain sight as a self-styled "alternative health" guru, is going on trial for war crimes, stemming from attacks of ethnic cleansing that left hundreds of thousands dead. And, like the late Yugoslavian tyrant Milosevic, he will be serving as his own attorney. There is an old saying, "A man who acts as his own attorney has a fool for a client." In the past, infamous criminals like Ted Bundy (who dropped out of a Washington State law school before his first prison term), Beltway Sniper John Muhammed, and Long Island Railway shooter Colin Ferguson have represented themselves at trial. And all walked away with long prison terms or death sentences. Why do they do it? I'm sure there are several reasons, but the one overwhelming motivation is most likely egomania, a trait common among sadistic serial killers, mass murderers, military criminals and bloodthirsty dictators. These men (usually) consider themselves so superior to others that they think the rules of the past, like the bad luck of defendants who have represented themselves, don't apply to them. Maybe they don't trust an outside lawyer to properly speak for them and their often complex and incomprehensible motives. Maybe they're just so full of themselves that they think they can do it all. Colin Ferguson, while questioning witnesses at his trial, referred to himself in the third person, an added touch of grandiosity. John Muhammed's opening and closing statements were barely coherent. I'm not familiar with Milosevic's trial or the defense he presented, but I know how it ended; he was convicted. And I'm sure the same is in store for Karadzic. Ferguson and Muhammed killed around a dozen people between them, but Milosevic and Karadzic, or those acting on their orders, murdered hundreds of thousands. These are men with a serial killer mindset who wormed their way into powerful positions, and the result was devastating.
In the case of Ted Bundy, although there was substantial forensic evidence against him in the Chi Omega murders, it was one statement to a witness that sealed his fate at trial, according to the attorney helping with his case. While questioning a police officer about the crime scene, Bundy asked for specific details and a thorough account of what the police found at the sorority house. To the jury, and others watching, this question appeared to be designed to allow Bundy to relive his crime, and the jury later sentenced him to death. This wouldn't have happened if Bundy could have let a professional handle his case, but a narcissist like him would not have accepted that. The judge at Bundy's trial remarked that this notorious murderer could have become a great lawyer, but he "went another way." But even the best attorneys, should they find themselves on the other side of the law, shouldn't defend themselves. They have the right, but that doesn't mean they should do it.

Review of The Dark Knight

Anthony desperately wanted to see the latest Batman movie, and while I'm not usually into the superhero/comic book genre, I had heard enough good things and wanted to see what Christopher Nolan's take on the story would be. While the movie was a bit long, which I felt acutely since I saw it late at night, I did enjoy it. I thought that the praise heaped on Heath Ledger's Joker was just posthumous ass-kissing, and though I still doubt it would have received the same rave reviews if the actor was still alive, Ledger created a memorably sinister character. Using a voice that switches at will from a high-pitched taunt to an evil growl, this Joker is far creepier than Jack Nicholson's. The makeup is less clownlike and more faded and grotesque, with the scars around the mouth visible under the painted smile. Of course, after John Wayne Gacy, anyone in clown makeup assumes an evil stance. The Joker appears from behind masks and from the shadows to surprise and torment his victims. His only goal, he says, is to create chaos. When Batman (when did Christian Bale get so fucking hot?) is at a loss at how to capture the Joker, Alfred the butler (what a perfect role for veteran upper-crusty Brit Michael Caine), recalling a mission to Burma searching for a criminal, says "Some men just want to watch the world burn." The Joker, in the climactic scene, daring two boats of evacuated citizens to blow the other boat up to avoid both boats being destroyed, wants the world to burn. But when the passengers are unable to cause harm to the other boatload, he's left with the surprising (to him) fact that not everyone is as destructive and callous as him. While he tells several different stories of how he got his smile scars, the first one alludes to a drunk, abusive father torturing the young Joker's mother. Though I haven't seen Batman Begins, and I don't know if the Joker's identity is revealed there, I liked that the true identity of the Joker was left unknown. It added to his personification of evil, a nameless man whose only role is to bring misery, the man we wish all our criminals were. The Joker, with an abusive childhood and an urge to create destruction, is a cartoonish embodiment of violent criminal behavior, a miserable nonentity who, through the creation of a sinister alter ego that won't be ignored, aims to make the rest of the world suffer with him. He laughs while others are in pain, giving him the power he likely never had, turning life into a cruel game where he thinks he will be the sole winner. And it's a character Heath Ledger portrays brilliantly. He deserves the praise, although I wish Aaron Eckhart received more notice for his portrayal of Harvey "Two-Face" Dent, a crusading District Attorney with a lust for power and, as revealed in one scene, a tendency to violent behavior long before a trick of the Joker turns him into Two-Face. The Two-Face makeup, with burned flesh and exposed bone and tendon, is enough to make anyone wretch. Christian Bale's Batman/Bruce Wayne is more complex than previous incarnations, a vigilante, not a traditional hero, driven by a personal mission to right wrongs in his own way, which sometimes includes breaking the law. As Alfred notes, Bruce is unwilling to face his human limitations when the superhuman alter ego overtakes him. He's arrogant and insecure, lovesick for Dent's girlfriend but unable to let go of his power as Batman. The brilliant acting, combined with spectacular stunts and battles, and evocative camera work, make the latest Batman installment worthy of the hype.

http://mediamatters.org/items/200807170005?f=h_top
Michael Savage, apparently a syndicated radio show host, claims autism is just another outpost of the supposed "sissyfying" of American men. Naturally, he neglects to mention that women can also have autism spectrum disorders. He claims all autism symptoms can be cleared up by stern fatherly discipline and appears woefully unaware of neurological breakthroughs that have occurred since the 1950s. He's not worth a lot of space, but I had to point out that this type of disgusting ignorance is out there, and that we desperately need to combat it to advance as a society.

Commitmentphobia

When Anthony and I first started dating, the concept of a commitment was terrifying. What if I wanted to be with someone else and screwed it all up for a quick meaningless fling? What if I got annoyed by being with him all the time? But now, it's been almost eight months, we've spent entire days together, he's met my family (and now hopefully my mom will shut up about it), he's teaching me martial arts, he's started taking time off of work to be with me (and he's a total workaholic) and I can't imagine my life without him. I will still need my space, but at least he seems to understand that. I can talk to him about how I feel without worrying about how he will react, because I know he will at least make an effort to understand. A healthy, satisfying relationship, with the great job interview I had this morning, and I'm dangerously close to being content with my life.
Now for the crime story of the moment. John and Patsy Ramsay have been cleared by DNA evidence in the death of their daughter, JonBenet. This was a muddled mess of an investigation from the start, with many law enforcement officials so fixated on implicating the Ramsays that they may have ignored crucial evidence. True, when a child is killed, particularly in his or her own home, the parents are the first suspects, but that the police in this case seemed determined to arrest the Ramsays. Former FBI profiler John Douglas, after interviewing the Ramsays and studying the evidence, came to the conclusion that John and Patsy did not murder their daughter. But Boulder officials continued to think they did, and some crime watchers, despite the DNA, still think the Ramsays were involved. The reason for this? John and Patsy's "demeanor." Few things annoy me more than when someone is implicated in a crime because their reaction doesn't "seem right" for someone whose loved one has been killed. Not everyone wears their grief on their sleeve. John Douglas described John Ramsay as a proud and stoic man, not the type to cry in public. That doesn't mean he killed his daughter, just that he could be dealing with his pain in a more private manner. While those who have studied crime and police procedure know that family members are intensly investigated when a murder has taken place, the Ramsays may not have known that, and felt offended when police questioned them, stonewalling the investigation for the worse in the process. It wasn't a smart move, but understandable. In a TV show about Arthur Shawcross, who terrorized prostitutes in Rochester in the 1980s, a sister of one of the victims did an interview next to her dead sister's grave. I found this far more disturbing than the behavior of John and Patsy Ramsay, almost like she was advertising her sister's death and her own grief. Clearly, John and Patsy Ramsay were not perfect parents, since they put their daughter in those very creepy child beauty pageants. But that doesn't mean they killed her. The killer of JonBenet Ramsay is still out there, if he isn't dead or in prison for another crime.

Two crime stories

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080619/ap_on_re_us/lansing_killings;_ylt=Am.DG83fS4AbgFP9HNUc2ONbIwgF

A Michigan man on trial for murdering two women, and suspected of many more, claims to be innocent. A line in the article alludes to DNA evidence, but doesn't go into detail about the case. One family member of a victim says they hoped to see remorse from the killer, which, to anyone who has studied these types of offenders, is asking way too much. It's understandable for someone grieving to want the killer to grieve too, but these killers have no sense of empathy for their victims. That's how they're able to kill again and again. Most of us, who do feel at least a shred of empathy for others, could never do what killers like this do. The suspect reportedly stabbed one woman and beat another to death with a toilet tank lid. That's a new one. It could indicate an impulse killing; the suspect didn't intend to kill the victim, but got angry and used whatever was available in a fit of rage.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080620/ap_on_re_us/horse_farm_murder;_ylt=AtrG9MnEF6QE0lJDAYoVE7FbIwgF

Over in New Hampshire, a woman who killed two boyfriends has pleaded insanity, a plea rejected by the jury. The defense claimed that their client had a delusion where she judged all men to be pedophiles, and was told by God to kill them. If that's true, why did she date them before killing them? Insanity pleas are rarely successful, especially since the defendant was seen burning the remains of her victims, indicating an awareness of the possible consequences. But even Richard Trenton Chase, the so-called "Vampire of Sacramento," a confirmed paranoid schizophrenic, was judged sane and fit for the electric chair. One victim's mother went off on a tirade, calling the woman "evil" and other victims' rights buzzwords, saying she "took advantage" of a poor, innocent man. I know it's considered poor form to speak ill of the dead, but why are the victims of violent crimes always the nicest, greatest people in the world, according to those who knew them? Why aren't bitches and assholes ever the victims of serial killers? Maybe the deaths, and the often gruesome circumstances, make the family members feel they have to show the victim in the best possible light, for whatever reason.

Artomatic

Bound's DJ Panic was among the performers at Artomatic's goth/fetish show last night, as well as Wormcult (whose set I unfortunately missed), Madame Klawdya Rothschild and Dharmata101. One of the best parts of the show was, since the only bathrooms on the first floor were at the Electric Stage, tourists and other yuppie types coming through and witnessing something they hadn't expected. It almost could have been part of the show. Klawdya and two cohorts did a piece that could only be described as bondage ballet, a representation of a wedding ceremony with literal knots. Panic kept the atmosphere going between acts, and Dharmata101 sounded better than ever. One of their best shows, at least of the few that I've seen. It's a shame more people weren't there to see it. Klawdya will be at the Erotic Art showcase in Baltimore July 18-19, along with Julie Simone and the legendary Annie Sprinkle, and I hope to be there.
I also had time to go to some of the other exhibits at Artomatic. Adrienne Lynee Harris' series of quiet moments captured in photographs stood out, as did Vincent M. Faravharson's paintings and photography exhibits by Serge Batyrshin and Kate McGovern. Other artists that made an impression were MJ Volpe, Brett Davis, Kelly Guerrero, Pat Flynn, Paul Seegars, Bryanna Millis, Gregory Watson, Ericca Riccardelli, the "Tiny Ghosts," Paivi Salonen, Scott Speck, Angela Kleis and Jack Whitsitt. And there's so much more there that I have yet to explore. And it's closing after this weekend.

Stalin's Russia seen from two sides

Two recent books, Martin Amis' novel House of Meetings and Pete Early's account of conversations with a former KGB spy Comrade J, tell two very different stories from inside the Soviet Union. The central character of Amis' novel is a gulag prisoner, forced into a labor camp for "fascist" views, or dissent from the Communist party line. Amis describes the excruciatingly cruel conditions in which these prisoners were forced to live for many years of their lives. Many of the prisoners were there because of "Western sympathies" or other forms of challenges to the Communist state. But I read House of Meetings while also reading Comrade J, where Sergei Tretakov (the name is probably misspelled since I don't currently have the book in front of me) details his life as an elite member of the KGB and SVR, the new name given to the KGB after the fall of Communism. Tretakov describes the living and working conditions of KGB operatives, which were much better that those of ordinary Russians and included access to Western luxury goods, a blatant hypocrisy that was never questioned. While reading about the suffering of gulag inmates under Stalinism, I also read about the special treatment given to the spies and secret police dedicated to keeping conditions dour for the Russian people. It's hardly surprising that Soviet officials were such self-serving hypocrites, but reading about it next to accounts of the gulags makes it all the more glaring and unforgiveable.
Tretakov also reveals the duplicitous and often cruel training that every KGB hopeful had to endure. In several interviews, his loyalty to the Soviet Union is tested, as well as his personal conduct. One interviewer tries to engage him in friendly discussion about "French girls" (make of that what you want) and mocks Sergei when he says he's married and has no experience in that area. Sergei also, in keeping with his loyalty to the state, backs up a recent controversial diplomatic move and is again mocked by his superior. Thinking he has blown the interview, Sergei later hears that the superiors were actually very happy with his performance. This is only a minor example of what KGB spies had to go through, including meticulous background checks and covert missions that potentially involved turning over friends and family to Soviet officials. Sergei was praised for lying to colleagues and ratting them out, which Amis' Russian protagonist describes as a characteristic unique to Russian criminals, in that they don't see betrayal as a crime. The fact that Amis includes future president Vladimir Putin with "Russian criminals" is likely why Amis joked that if he went to Russia, he'd end up getting a dose of polonium like the unfortunate Alexander Litvenenko.
As a member of the SVR, Sergei was sent to America to find state secrets to send back to Russia. During this time, Sergei became a double agent, also giving Russian secrets to the US government. After his retirement, he contacted true crime writer Pete Early to tell his story. Early was skeptical about Sergei's motives, but since the US government had taken care of him and his family financially, it wasn't about money. Sergei said that the reason he came forward, knowing that it could lead to his death, was to warn Americans that just because the Soviet Union has fallen doesn't mean that Russia is now their friend. The KGB still exists under a different name, and has infiltrated American soil. Sergei Tretakov is a skilled liar and double agent, so his motives may not be entirely honorable. But still, he tells an intriguing and often frightening story.
One of Sergei's best stories is his shock at discovering that Vladimir Putin had become president of Russia. Putin was a low-ranking member of the KGB who had never distinguished himself in a remarkable way. Even after serving as a member of Boris Yeltsin's cabinet, he was not a favorite to win the upcoming election. Until an attack on a Russian state building that was blamed on Chechan rebels (I really need to look into this story further, so it's not as complete in this post as I'd like). Putin vowed swift justice on the perpetrators, which made his popularity among Russian voters skyrocket. It's all a bit suspicious, and would set the course for more suspicious acts to come. Included in Comrade J is a collection of photos, such as one of Sergei Tretakov with other Russian spies, one who would later become Vladimir Putin's chief of private security.
In House of Meetings, the protagonist, looking back on his time in the gulags, has one wish: an apology for how he and millions of other prisoners were treated by Stalin and his minions. The damage can't be undone, but for the officials to acknowledge their wrongdoing might make his suffering a little easier to take. In the mess that the Bush administration has made, again the damage has already been done, but somehow I feel that an admission of guilt, an acknowledgment that mistakes had been made, might make it slightly easier to forgive them. But the League of Evil has refused to admit any mistakes in Iraq, the economy, 9/11, or anything. Condeleeza Rice tried, during a visit to England when she said that the administration had made "thousands" of mistakes in Iraq, but she and/or her co-conspirators promptly ate her words and tried to convince the world and themselves that they had been right all along. Backing down and admitting defeat isn't always a sign of weakness. Sometimes that's what takes true strength. I've learned that myself, that it's often hardest, but best in the long run, to admit that I've made a mistake and to learn how to fix it and avoid the same behavior in the future.
In a side note to my last post: Sirhan Sirhan, who assassinated Robert Kennedy, was a Palestinian radical who objected to the US's support of Israel and thought that he could somehow start a revolution (or something) by shooting an American politician. It may not have mattered to Sirhan who he shot, as long as it was an American public figure.

Remembering Bobby Kennedy

Forty years ago today, Robert F. Kennedy died after being hit with an assassin's bullet. He didn't have the opportunity to fulfill his political promise, but he won many admirers for his stance against the Vietnam War, against poverty and the imbalance of wealth, and for equal rights for all Americans. That Kennedy, a popular figure in the black community for his support of the civil rights movement, was killed shortly after Martin Luther King illustrates the status of black Americans forty years ago. Back then, a politician saying he or she supported civil rights for blacks was like a politician today coming out in favor of gay rights; it was a very polarizing issue. I can only hope that in another forty years, rights for gays will have reached the status of civil rights for blacks, as a right that no hopeful leader would dare question without committing political suicide. Robert Kennedy was ahead of the curve, aligning himself with the civil rights movement and the efforts of leaders like Martin Luther King, and he was killed for it. Kennedy was only human, and he was far from perfect, but at least he tried to make a difference.
On the subject of assassinating political figures, it always seems to have the opposite effect the assassin intended. With the exception of John Hinckley, who had no personal beef with Ronald Reagan and would have shot anyone who happened to be President at that time, Sirhan Sirhan, James Earl Ray, John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald (or whoever you happen to think killed JFK) and anyone else who killed or attempted to kill a public figure probably hoped to enact a counter-revolution by killing the revolutionary figure of their choosing. But that's never what happens. All the assassins do is turn their victims into martyrs for the cause, giving them an aura of near-saintliness that they may not have been able to hold had they lived out their lives in full. Assassinating the perceived enemy doesn't achieve anything but giving the murderer a brief feeling of satisfaction, and public notoriety. It rarely, if ever, helps the assassin's cause.

Scott McClellan and the psychology of dissent

There was nothing in former White House press secretary Scott McClellan's comments about the Bush administration and the war in Iraq that didn't just confirm suspicions I already had. They were lying to the American people about the reasons to go to war, Karl Rove is an amoral opportunist (honestly, who didn't already know that?) and the whole administration is a corrupt mess. But now the Bushites are left to do damage control, and their first instinct was to call McClellan a bitter former employee. I don't know the circumstances of McClellan's exit from Bush's league of evil, but since I already had an inkling of what he said happened behind the league's closed doors, I'm inclined to at least listen to what he says.
The "he's just bitter" argument was also leveled against Mark Felt, the former Number Two in the FBI recently revealed as Woodward and Bernstein's informer Deep Throat. Supposedly, according to the Nixon faithful, Felt had a grudge against Nixon for passing him over as head of the FBI, and wanted to take him down. With both Felt and McClellan, I feel that while they had personal conflicts with the powers that they spoke out against, they ultimately broke their silences because of a crisis of conscience. Having that information about the powers that be screwing the people they're supposed to serve grated on their minds. McClellan could have spoken out sooner, but at least he did. McClellan and Felt may or may not have been trying to exact revenge on their former bosses, but their personal problems with them probably made their decisions to come forward easier, that any thought that they might be hurting those they accused vanished with the knowledge that the bosses had committed terrible wrongs, and that they they themselves had felt betrayed.
As illustrated in Putin's Russia, dissent sometimes comes with a heavy price. Alexander Litvenenko, a former KGB spy who had accused other KGB officials, including future president Vladimir Putin, of corruption, was poisoned with polonium, and the top suspect, another former KGB spy named along with Putin in Litvenenko's testimony, has been hiding out under the protection of the Kremlin ever since.

Does being ethical pay?

That's the headline on the paper someone's reading in this coffeeshop, and in my experience, I'm inclined to say that no, being ethical does not pay. Particularly in the fields of business and politics, even those who go in with the best intentions often find that in order to succeed, they have to sell their principles to the highest bidder. There are exceptions, as there are to every rule, but I personally have found that sticking to my ethical tenets has had mostly unfavorable consequences. By ethics, I don't mean the religious right's definition of a "virtuous lifestyle," I mean basic human decency: don't lie, don't cheat, don't steal. And as much as I believe in this way of life, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who wants to make a name for themselves or a lot of money. Someone with strong morals would have second thoughts about serving their own self-interest at the expense of another, or compromising their beliefs in order to succeed. But a psychopath, one who by definition has no sense of ethics or empathy, would have no problem doing whatever it took to help themselves, and those are the people who rise to power and flourish in life. I left a well-paying job because I couldn't reconcile my principles with those of my employer. Then I went into debt. And now that I'm doing something I like, I'm still in debt, even though I feel ethically sound. Sticking to my principles might be good for my overall well-being, but it hasn't been good for my career.

Gaining perspective

Good news, at least for me: I'm very slowly crawling out of debt. I have a second job, doing boring clerical work for a nonprofit, nothing I'd want to do long term, but it'll help. And it's quiet, so I have time to think. And what I was thinking about today was how my current relationship has helped me gain a new perspective on the brief wastes of time that I once called relationships. I used to fall apart and vow revenge on a guy who dumped me after two or three dates, or who just stopped talking to me after we hooked up a few times. I used to be very alone, and these were the closest things to relationships that I'd ever had. But now that Anthony is in my life, I know what a real boyfriend is supposed to be; someone who calls while he's out of town because he misses me, someone who makes plans to see me, someone who I can introduce to my friends without having first to analyze what to introduce him as, and someone I can be honest with when he does something that annoys me. There are things about Anthony that annoy me, which happens in any relationship, but this time, unlike the other guys I used to think were my whole world, I felt comfortable talking to him about it, because I actually thought he would listen. And he did. Now I see my former relationships for what they were, guy try-outs to prepare me for meeting someone special, but, I now see, nothing special themselves. Now I wonder why I made myself crazy over people who were so obviously not worth the trouble, but I guess I didn't know any better at the time.
And now for more good news: Bound is coming back on May 30th. Anthony and I saw the new space for both Bound and Entre Nous last Saturday, and it's a very cool spot for Bound. There's a glassed-off area that's perfect for both playing and voyeurism, a decent dance floor, great deconstructed atmosphere, although the bar leaves a little something to be desired. I do not want Bound to have to move again, so I'm urging everyone in the DC area interested in the goth/fetish subculture to come out on Fridays for the only dark alternative club event that night.

Pope tries to atone for priest sex crimes

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080417/ap_on_re_us/pope_abuse

On his visit to America, Pope Benedict has met with victims of molestation by priests, attempting to heal wounds that had been inflicted repeatedly for years. While it's refreshing to see that the church has finally formally acknowledged the wrongdoing of its priests, the prescription of prayer and trying to keep pedophiles and homosexuals out of the priesthood doesn't feel like enough. First, homosexual does not equal pedophile. Second, prayer is not a proven method to prevent problems. Third, pedophiles are by necessity crafty and duplicitous, and are rarely filtered out through a preemptive strike. There's a reason so many pedophiles become teachers, clergymen, or marry into other families, because they know that in those positions, they will be trusted by children and parents. The Catholic Church has just about as much hope as the rest of the world of rooting out pedophiles in their community, and prayer and their "holy" status will not help.
The sex abuse scandal that the church claims has ruined their reputation could have been prevented. It all started in Boston back in the 1960s, with Father John Geoghan. The despicable way his case was handled singlehandedly opened the vault on how the church responds to scandal. When parents told church officials about Geoghan, instead of turning him over to the police, Bishop (later Cardinal) Bernard Law sent Geoghan to another parish after undergoing church-approved "counseling," where, of course, Geoghan victimized more children. This time, when parents voiced their outrage, Law sent the priest in for another round of counseling and moved him to another parish. This continued for 30 years, until the Boston Globe broke the story, and Geoghan and later Cardinal Law were forced out of the church. Still, with all the evidence, although Geoghan was eventually put in prison on a dubious charge which had apologists rallying to his side despite what he had done in the past, another priest interviewed for an American Justice episode about Geoghan said he preferred to remember Geoghan as a "saint" and martyr. Geoghan was not sent to prison and defrocked just because of his beliefs, he was a pedophile who used his status to prey on innocent children entrusted to his care. If Geoghan had gone through the proper justice channels the first time around, many children would have been spared, the Catholic Church would have been applauded for appropriately dealing with a criminal who had snaked into their ranks, lifelong Catholics wouldn't have had crises of faith and formed their own factions or abandoned the church altogether, and the church's attitude toward the sex crimes of priests would not be called into question as they are now. Of course, this is assuming the church and Geoghan didn't try to circumvent the rules, and there would be repercussions from something like this no matter how it was handled. One thing probably would have happened whenever Geoghan went to prison; he was murdered by an inmate who didn't want to be in the presence of a child molester.
As everyone in DC knows, the pope had a mass in Nationals Stadium today. That meant crowds of the faithful, curiosity seekers who just want to see an iconic presence without thinking about what it means, and men of the cloth clogged the metro, and probably will until the end of the day. I saw a monk, in a brown robe, getting off at the Takoma station. When do you ever see monks, except around old churches in Europe? As far as I know, there aren't any monasteries in the Takoma/Silver Spring area. And on my way to work, for two stops, I was surrounded by six priests. I was tempted to take out the copy of Bertrand Russell's Why I Am Not a Christian, but, after thinking about it, I decided I didn't want to create an incident or, worse, cause a descent of priests desperate to "save" another immortal soul.

The faith race

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080330/ap_on_re_eu/vatican_muslims

One outdated, misogynistic faith, Catholicism, has been surpassed in worldwide followers by another outdated, misogynistic faith, Islam. The Vatican spokesperson lamented that Muslims have been having more children in recent years than Christians, not including the fact that the children are no more Catholic or Muslim than their parents tell them to be, and should not be counted among the faithful. The spokesman (and of course it's a man) made it all sound like a competition, which it clearly is. Every religion wants to take over the world and force the entire earth's population to their knees, and now Catholicism's alpha-male position has been usurped by Islam. As the likes of Jim Bakker, Peter Popoff and their fictional counterpart, Elmer Gantry, have made clear, faith is a business, and a highly profitable one, and each sect wants to have the most customers to gain headway in the world faith economy.
Now for a personal disappointment. In addition to still sinking in debt, I just found out that the job I recently applied for that I very much wanted will not be given to me because I don't have enough experience. It was for a teaching assistant at Ivymount School's Model Asperger Program. Along with teaching being the only job I've ever had that I can tolerate, I felt that my own experiences with Asperger Syndrome would be of special benefit to the children in the program. I never heard that I needed any kind of certification for this job, and I got my current teaching assistant job with the same amount of experience, so I stupidly thought that it might be enough. But, as the vicious circle of employment continues, I need more experience to get the job I would be great at, and to get the other jobs that would qualify, I'll need yet more experience, and so on. This isn't just another job and paycheck that I feel I've lost, but I really thought I could make an impact in this program. But I guess my tutoring sometimes very difficult kids and my 25 years of living with, and overcoming, Asperger's Syndrome don't make me qualified for anything more that a pseudo-polite form letter telling me I'm not experienced enough to be a teaching assistant for the type of child I once was. With one golden opportunity passing me by, I'll have to go back to finding a way to sell my soul for rent money.

The brilliant disguises of serial killers

One thing I've always found interesting about Dennis "BTK" Rader is just how well he managed to blend into his community while hiding his murderous impulses. He isn't the first figure in criminal history to have a double life, but Rader never even got arrested before his crimes as BTK were linked to him, unlike another vaunted pillar of the community, John Wayne Gacy, who spent time in prison on a child molestation charge before he began burying the bodies of his teenage victims in his crawlspace. Some experts have credited Rader's ability to carry on his double life to an ability to compartmentalize his environment. One forensic psychiatrist who spent time with Rader believes that he was capable of genuine affection for his wife and children, who by all accounts he never mistreated, but anyone else, those who would become his victims or "projects," was not seen as human, but an object for him to achieve his goals of murderous fantasies. Rader's cold tone during his court confession shocked the members of his community, who had previously known him as a friend, church council member and Boy Scout troop leader.
Still, even Rader's facade started to crack before he was linked to the BTK murders. While working as a community "compliance officer," patrolling the community to make sure everyone's pets were on leashes and enforcing other community policies, he made several enemies with his lust for power and arrogance. Most often, as with BTK, the victims of Rader's arbitrary flexing of power were women. One woman says that Rader filed a report that her dog was off her leash, then had the dog put to sleep, just because the woman wouldn't get rid of her boyfriend, which Rader had told her would solve the problem. While Rader was working as a compliance officer, the BTK murders stopped. The forensic psychiatrist believes that since Rader was able to exercise his need for power and control as a compliance officer, he didn't feel the need to exercise control over life and death. A non-entity like Rader, who a former classmate said was remarkable in how unremarkable he was, with a need for power simmering under the surface had to make a name for himself in some way, to show the dominance he felt he had. Like many other serial killers, Rader was undone by his arrogance. After eluding capture for almost 30 years, a book written about the murders named someone other than Rader as the prime suspect, something that Rader clearly could not stand. He wrote a letter to a local TV station on a computer in his church. When forensic investigators linked the letter to the computer, and surveillance cameras placed Rader at that computer at the time the letter was written, BTK was captured.
Herb Baumeister was another midwestern serial killer who expertly kept his murders a secret from his wife and children. When his wife Julie thought Herb was out of town on business, he was trolling Indianapolis' gay bars, searching for victims. But Herb made the fatal mistake of leaving a surviving victim, who helped police identify the man responsible for the murders of several gay men around Indianapolis. After Julie found bones in their backyard, Herb gave a convincing, though false, explanation that they were animal bones one of the children had found. When police actively searched for Herb after finding human remains on his property, Herb fled, and eventually committed suicide. With the killer himself dead, the families of the victims, still desperate to blame someone, turned their rage on Julie, claiming she must have known what was happening in her house. But in an interview, Julie indicates that she was just as ignorant of Herb's true nature as their friends and community. And she probably was. Dennis Rader's wife didn't know her husband was BTK before the rest of the world found out. But because Dennis Rader was taken alive, his wife didn't face the accusations that Julie Baumeister did. The families and surviving victims of BTK could face the man who had terrorized them, but Herb Baumeister killed himself before the police could capture him, so the grieving families had to turn their need for revenge on the one who was closest to the killer, his wife, who must have known something living in the same house as the now dead killer. If Herb Baumeister was as convincing a liar as Dennis Rader or any other Jekyll and Hyde serial killer, Julie probably didn't know anything about her husband's true nature until the police told her, and was left with the knowledge that a man she trusted and built a life with was responsible for the deaths of innocents.
A similar situation happened when Wayne Henley, the accomplice of Houston serial killer Dean Corll, shot Dean to protect his friends. With Corll, the Svengali, dead, Henley and David Brooks, Corll's other accomplice, were left to answer for the crimes. Both Henley and Brooks received multiple life sentences for their roles in the murders, but, as one investigator noted, if Corll had been alive, he would have taken the brunt of the punishment, and Brooks and Henley would have only been tried as accomplices. But with their ringleader already dead, and questions arising as to how strong Henley's role was in the murders, Henley and Brooks were tried as the killers, with only their stories about Corll to defend them, although they both confessed readily to their roles in finding victims for Corll. An investigator in the case said that shooting Corll was either a smart move in self-defense, or the stupidest thing Wayne Henley could have done.

New bodies at Barker ranch?

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/03/15/america/CSI-Manson-Ranch.php?page=1

An investigation of the former home of Charles Manson's "family" could turn up evidence of other victims of Manson and his followers. There are reports of hitchhikers who came by the ranch and were never seen again, and one of two women who came to the ranch and fled in the night to go to the police, claiming Manson had threatened them.
It is entirely likely that Charles Manson and the Family had more victims than the Tate-LaBianca murders indicated, but, as a former investigator says, those were the only murders they could solidly link to the Family. A criminal enterprise like the Family would have readily killed outsiders to keep them quiet, or the other victims could have been early casualties of "Helter Skelter."
Serial killers are frequently only charged with a portion of their crimes. Ted Bundy was charged with one murder in Utah, an abduction in Colorado, and five murders in Florida, for which he was executed. But according to other victims discovered and Bundy's own confession, he likely murdered at least 20 women. Gary Ridgeway, the Green River Killer, is believed to have killed 49 prostitutes and runaways, but he said, "I've killed so many women I've lost count." Russia's Andrei Chikatilo has one of the highest confirmed body counts in the history of serial killers, at 53 known victims, but his count could also be higher. As we all know, serial killers are known liars. The reverse of this is also sometimes true. The hundreds of victims Henry Lee Lucas once claimed has since been scaled to a confirmed three; his mother, his girlfriend, and his former landlady. And there's no way to know how many of his patients Dr. Harold Shipman murdered, although some estimates place the number in the hundreds.
Happy belated Saint Patrick's Day. I hope you spent the evening like I did, getting drunk with my significant other while listening to a classic Irish rock band at an American version of an Irish pub. I also hope your hangovers are gone.

Missouri serial killer faces charges

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080312/ap_on_re_us/cape_girardeau_killings;_ylt=Aie2maeLIvsaVnH8Yn7cyUdbIwgF

A man who has confessed to murdering nine women in the 1970s and 80s is scheduled to go on trial for five of the murders. The murderer is described as frail-looking, now in his 60s. When he wasn't out killing women, he spent most of his adult life in prison on sex crime charges. The county sherriff views him as an "animal." But he's not an animal. Despite what he's done, he's human, which makes him and those like him even more frightening. When Richard Speck, murderer of eight student nurses, was captured after days on the run, as one journalist said, "We expected him to have horns growing out of his head." But all the public got to see was a poor alcoholic who had just attempted suicide. It's what's commonly called the "banality of evil." The monstrous deeds committed in a society are not committed by supernatural evil beings, but by those who look just like us. Who could have picked former law student and Republican party insider Ted Bundy or church council member and loyal family man Dennis Rader out of a crowd as vicious murderers? In the book I'm currently reading, The Human Stain by Phillip Roth, the narrator talks about the wish of societies to "put one face" on evil. But that's impossible. Evil comes in many faces, often those we trust. One of the most dangerous people in the world is a man whose wife has just asked for a divorce, at least if crime statistics are taken into consideration.
On the same topic, it's also almost impossible to predict whether a child is a future serial killer. Even if they come from an abusive family or enjoy hurting animals, this isn't a guarantee that the child will be violent as an adult. Most little boys grow out of burning ants with magnifying glasses and don't escalate to human targets. At the learning center where I work, there's an eight-year-old boy who appears to have many signs seen in the childhoods of violent criminals. I can't say for certain if his parents are abusive, but my boss told me that the kid's father dropped the f-bomb several times during a conference, and the mother seems to keep him on a short leash. He's unruly, often disruptive, makes threats (which we don't take too seriously) and appears to be obsessed with fire. If he also tortures animals and wets his bed, he would have the violence preindicator trifecta mentioned by John Douglas and Roy Hazelwood of the FBI's Behavioral Sciences Unit. Still, none of this means that this little boy will grow into a serial killer. As my boss and my coworkers have told me, this kid can sometimes be nice and quite charming, which also calls to mind the more cunning of serial murderers. Supposedly, he has a manipulative streak, which could just mean he'll turn into another clever narcissist, often found in the otherwise prestigious law, political and business fields.
More sad news for my favorite club Bound; Felix has kicked us out. The exact reason isn't clear, but according to some reliable sources, one of the owners got freaked out by the gay/lesbian vibe he saw the last time Bound was there. If they were hosting a fetish club, they should have known what to expect. Or maybe they expected some glamorized porno version of a fetish club, hot girls getting spanked with their boobs hanging out. Of course that can be seen, but it's not at all representative of the diverse Bound crowd, which includes gay, bi, lesbian, transgender, and many others that defy categorization. If that's too much for the owners of Felix, we can't force them to change, but we can let the DC club-going public know what happened, and let them decide if they want to support a venue run by this philosophy.