Adventures in Global Finance [Part I]

Understanding Global Finance:
An Introduction.


"You, in your personal lives ... will need to make decisions. These decisions will be affected by the price of commodities, every day of your lives. And all of that happens right here." -- Chairman of the New York Mercantile Exchange

Most people -- until about last week, myself included -- are not very interested in reading about global finance. I know about two people who even understand it. However, what happens in the markets affects all of our lives... and will probably do so even more in the future.

Therefore, it's worth educating ourselves on it. But where to begin?

I began at the nearest node of it, for strangely enough, something as nebulous as global finance does have certain centers, certain geographic locales where it takes place. Yes, this week I paid a visit to Wall Street, where I learned many strange and interesting things. In this four-part series, which attempts to explain some basic history of global finance, I will share with you what I learned from Wall Street.

Please keep in mind that I am thoroughly underqualified to write about this topic, so please help out by posting comments to correct any errors-- and don't believe anything written here unless it corresponds to your own research & conclusions.

That disclaimer given: Let's go downtown & attempt to understand what's going on inside these implacable monolithic buildings . . .






COUNTERING COMMON ASSUMPTIONS.

-- We tend to think that the financial system is kind of a fixed thing that has certain rules that it has always operated with.

-- We think that it is a technological, rational system, taken care of by economists who know a lot more math than we do.

At least, this is what I thought, until I began looking at what actually goes on. I knew that markets could behave erratically, but I considered finance something that is generally looked-after by experts who have been doing this for a really long time.

However, my impression now is of a vast improvisation, a grand experiment that you and me and everyone on the planet is a part of. But this is no science experiment -- there is no experimental design no control, no stated hypothesis or goal. Rather, it is an uncontrolled venture into the unknown, with all our futures at stake.

Dramatic? Maybe, but let's look at some key points.

Most of the financial instruments that are now in use are very new.

Trading in derivatives was up to 681 trillion USD at the end of Dec. 2007 [citation].
(I will explain more about derivatives in the third part of this series -- for now, understand that "a derivative product is a contract, the value of which depends on the price of some underlying asset. You can buy and sell all the risk of an asset without trading the asset itself."-- The Globalization of Finance: A Citizen's Guide, Kavalijit Singh)

So we have this huge amount of trading going on in things that don't actually exist.
What's being traded is contracts to buy things; what's being traded is risk.


To put that 681 trillion in perspective:

• U.S. annual gross domestic product is about $15 trillion
• U.S. money supply is also about $15 trillion
• Current proposed U.S. federal budget is $3 trillion

The GDP for the whole world is just 50 trillion.

So, the value of derivative trading is now 13 times the value of the world's actual production. And this has happened only in the last few years.

(See this article on MarketWatch for more information; citations.)


In the 1980s, most of the "private capital flows" took the form of investors lending to foreign governments, through banks. Now, we have private capital going to the private sector through these financial insturemnts (paraphrased from Citizen's Guide). Stock-index futures began to be traded in 1982; interest-rate futures in 1988; but this trading only exploded in the 2000's.

Also, institutional investors (like investment banks, mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds) only really emerged in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Instead of investing money themselves, people have these institutions invest their money for them. These institutions now control about 50% of U.S. stocks.

There is thus a fundamental change in financial structure: savings are being shifted away from regulated and insured
banking institutions to entities that are sometimes not insured, and that operate in different regulatory regimes and
have different investment objectives. This rising institutionalisation of savings has a profound impact on the structure
and functioning of the world's capital markets.
-- Hans Blommestein, "The Rise of the Institutional Investor", OECD journal

I'm not really qualified to comment on the consequences of these two developments -- derivatives trading and the increase in institutional investors -- my point is simply that these are radically new developments.

*

What I'm trying to explain is: we don't have a tried-and-tested financial system that manages things; we have a very new, very untested system-- and nobody really knows what the consequences will be.

It is not a game whose rules are fixed:
it is a game where they make the rules up as they go along.

As for the second assumption -- we think that it is a technological, rational system, taken care of by economists who know a lot more math than we do -- I would paint a picture of a system run on emotion, hype, and primitive human impulses as much as mathematics and rationality. The financial system seems shockingly human.

This claim is hard to substantiate, given that not too many people really understand the hows & whys of the markets-- so I offer not evidence, but impressions.

a stock trader, on video at the New York Stock Exchange:

"there's a lot of gut decisions that we make down here ... decisions not only technical or fundamental....

"at the end of the day people want to trade here
they feel comfortable
It's New York
It's the New York Stock Exchange"

The Myth & Mystique. Not just of the places, but of the legendary players. J.P. Morgan. George Soros. Jeffrey Sachs. Alan Greenspan.

"Remember that the stock market is manic depressive" -- Warren Buffet

"The market's judgment is often colored by irrational swings instead of realisitc , measured thought." -- display, Museum of Finance, 48 Wall Street


The look in the eye of the bull as it is beaten by the bear, in the famous sculpture that stood in the NYSE. The primal struggle. Somewhere, this primal struggle, this battle, lies in the human heart of the market.

"it's very primitive
you scream and yell to make yourself heard
It's all about eye contact" -- oil trader on the NYMEX

Global finance from one angle: computer transactions darting across the borderless globe.
Global finance from another angle: Men in a room, a room in New York, a room in physical geographic space, sweating and yelling, high on adrenaline, primitive biochemicals coursing through their blood.

Both these impressions are true, I think.

Egypt's Facebook Rebellion

[Continuing to think about the role of technology in political activism...]

The Washington Post ran this article about the "Facebook Activist" in Cairo.

Ahmed Maher was a 27-year-old activist who created a Facebook site which got 74,000 registrants in the past 2 months.

Even some of Egypt's older, more disillusioned proponents of democracy had let themselves hope that a social networking Web site created by American college students could become an electronic rallying point for protest against President Hosni Mubarak's 27-year rule.

But the experience of the Facebook activists showed the limits of technology as a means of organizing dissent against a repressive government. Maher would end up among what rights groups said were 500 Egyptians arrested during two months of political activism in Egypt -- and find himself stripped and beaten in a Cairo police station, he said.

The group had run a successful protest in April against rising food prices, and they were planning for another strike on May 4, which would mark Mubarak's birthday.

But the protest was a failure: the government had taken actions to calm the people beforehand, and few people turned up for a general strike.

Poor people, even more than the middle class, knew what the strike was about, Hibba Imam, 22, said in the decayed and crowded quarter of Imbaba. "The connected people, they don't feel the suffering. They don't see the bread lines," she said, adding that she had stayed indoors until Sunday afternoon. Imam had heard of Facebook, she said. Many others in the neighborhood said they never had.

...

Afterwards, Maher was arrested and beaten for hours by police demanding more information about the Facebook groups.

I would recommend to read the Post article, because it's very well-written. It provokes a lot of questions: How much of online activism is just talk that won't translate into action? What role does technology have in creating real-world change? Is a technology-based revolution going to be working with the right people? What does it take to get people to actually protest; what kinds of injustices must we face before we are ready to shatter the known reality?

The general strikes in France, '68, were successful (in getting people to strike, I mean) because the affluent students managed to bridge that gap to the workers.... I have the same feeling when I read this article as I do when I think about '68. It is a feeling of sadness, the sadness that comes when these realities collide -- the young hope for change colliding with the gravity of the boot & the gun. Something about the sound a revolutionary dream makes when it bursts. You have to listen closely to hear it, but it does make a sound ...

Portugal

What country has the newest, smoothest roads and the cleanest, most futuristic subway in Europe?

I think it is PORTUGAL.

Portugal is blue, green, and white. You might think of falling-apart whitewashed houses and fishermen and endless crashing waves; you might think of the colonial empire that didn't make out so well as its neighbors, the economic bastard child; but this is only a part of Portugal. And a passing part...

Portugal today is gorgeous tiny tiles and palm trees, but also renewable energy plants and gleaming toll roads; it is up-and-coming, Portugal.

A wikipedia cut-and-paste:

In 2006 the world's largest solar power plant began operating in the nation's sunny south while the world's first commercial wave power farm opened in October 2006 in the Norte region. As of 2006, 55% of electricity production was from coal and fuel power plants. The other 40% was produced by hydroelectrics and 5% by wind energy. The government is channeling $38,000,000,000 into developing renewable energy sources over the next five years.

Portugal wants renewable energy sources like solar, wind and wave power to account for nearly half of the electricity consumed in the country by 2010. "This new goal will place Portugal in the frontline of renewable energy and make it, along with Austria and Sweden, one of the three nations that most invest in this sector", Prime Minister José Sócrates said.

I felt like I learned something about Portugal
from this mosaic on a seemingly-abandoned building
though I could not tell you what, exactly--
it just seemed to contain some essential Portugese truth.

How do you sell an electric tram?

Here is a little story about the ways in which we conceive of the future.

It involves an anecdote about this town I'm spending this month in, but the story actually has to do with all of us... scroll to the bottom to find out why.


Recently, a plan by General Growth officials was released that involves building a road bridge across a beautiful lake in downtown Columbia, Maryland.

[See this article in the Columbia Flier for details].

In an early design of downtown Columbia, there was a street linking Town Center to the east Columbia neighborhood of Oakland Mills by way of a bridge across Lake Kittamaqundi.

Columbia's original developer never built the connection, but now, 40 years later, the town's current developer hopes to make the bridge a reality.

The proposed bridge is one aspect of a traffic plan intended to complement developer General Growth Properties Inc.'s larger 30-year master plan to redevelop downtown Columbia by adding 5,500 residences, 4.79 million square feet of office space, 1.05 million square feet of retail and a 550-room hotel.


***

So, this bridge and road network is being planned to ease congestion in the downtown.

However, traffic studies have shown that building more roads doesn't actually decrease traffic -- it simply encourages people to drive more. See this
excerpt from the book Suburban Nation for an excellent explanation of why this is the case.


The brief letter I wrote to the Flier in response, "Look Forward to the Future", is below:


The solution to our future traffic woes is not to increase the amount of pavement, but to decrease the amount of cars.

Contrary to popular perception, traffic studies have shown that building new roads does not decrease traffic congestion. Rather, it encourages people to drive more-- this phenomenon is what people in the transportation industry call "induced traffic".

Why, in an era where burning gasoline is increasing expensive (and climate-changing), would we consider inducing more traffic? Looking "back to the future" is a grave mistake. We need to be thinking of long-term, progressive solutions for the future that we see now-- not the future that we saw forty years ago. Smart planners should be doing everything they can to make the urban landscape more walkable and mass-transit friendly. We should be developing the infrastructure for this now.

Consider trams. Seriously. Most small cities in Europe have tram systems: quiet, electric streetcars integrated into the traffic flow of existing streets. Modern trams don't necessarily require overhead lines. They are safe, comfortable, and elegant. And they're not just for Europe-- the city of Kenosha, Wisconsin (population 90,000), opened their tram line in 2000 for a cost of just 5 million.

Jim Rouse possessed great imagination when he envisioned this patchwork of farmland as a thriving city. Can we possess the same kind of risk-taking imagination, and envision a future Columbia which can be a model city again?

***


This letter is insufficient, though. What I wanted to say would be something like:

Baby-boomers and thirtysomethings, how are you going to explain this to your children and grandchildren?

They will be stuck in this place with a bunch of roads, but nobody can afford to fill their gas tanks. Their economy will already suck because of the debt you ran up, they will have paid twice as much taxes as you do now to support you in your old age, and their climate will be screwed. They will look across the ocean and think: how come the Europeans have trains and paths and trams and buses to get to where they have to go, but we don't? They will think: we are left with these huge spaced-out homes that are in the middle of nowhere, with miles of roads to travel to get to the store to to work... while people in Europe or in real cities can use the infrastructure provided to get around cheaply, quickly, and cleanly. They will probably live in a second-world country because they had all this car-dependent infrastructure that they couldn't afford to support any more.

Are you going to tell them-- well, we didn't know that automobiles polluted and that oil supplies were going to run low? They'll say: how could you not know, the evidence was right there. Are you going to tell them: we couldn't afford to build new infrastructure? They'll say: you were the richest country on the planet; that's like saying you can't afford to give your citizens health coverage like any other developed nation. Are you going to tell them: we just couldn't think of a better idea than to build more roads... back when we had the money and time and resources to build lasting, future-sighted infrastructure? That's what you'll have to tell them, unless you act now to build a world they can actually live in. But it doesn't look like you'll do that. You'll act out of some misguided idea about what the future will look like in 10 years, instead of thinking for the next 100 or 200, and continue wasting resources and time while spending credit that future generations could live on.

***

I mean, I'm really shocked by the planning that goes on in this country. I would even argue that people should start seeing planning as a moral issue. It's immoral to use precious resources to build infrastructure that future generations won't be able to use, when you could be actually making the world more liveable for them.

I would be really surprised if Columbia, Maryland decided to build a tram system. But here's the shocking thing [for those of you unfamiliar with the area]: this city, with a population of 100,000 and two major metropolises on either side, has no rail link with either Baltimore or Washington DC. The tens of thousands of people who work in either city have to drive, or they have to drive to a parking lot where they can catch a commuter bus: they have no other option. It's mindblowing that a major megalopolis does not have rail infrastructure.

Do you know why? I think it's out of fear. My understanding is that Columbia didn't want a rail link because it would make it too accessible. They want to maintain exclusivity and keep the urban riffraff out.

Thankfully, I don't actually live in this town: I couldn't deal with the mentalities of the people on a long-term basis. Unfortunately, I am not yet graceful enough to try and educate people who make decisions out of fear for their own property values. But if I did live in this town, I would be instituting a Tram Education program and printing out lots of pamphlets about mass transit. I would also be going to planning meetings and discussing it. Really I would be selling it: trams are sexy, they are sleek and elegant and comfortable, they are the future, so is rail; I would be passing out loads of pictures of sleek German trains.

But I would be discussing it on the friendly, positive level of the first letter... not in terms of the moral indictment of the second piece. It would be too much for people, and my message would be lost. Yet I do think we need to transition to thinking of these things as moral issues, for they are.

Of Weddings and Dictators

As we know, disaster aid in Myanmar is slowly trickling in, though often-confounded by the oppressive regime's efforts to control it.

Listening to the CBC this morning, I came across something interesting: the daughter of the dictator, Than Shwe, was married in a lavish ceremony in late 2006 -- and videos from the wedding were posted on YouTube... enraging the people, who caught a rare look at how their dictator actually lives.

Technology to the people! Nobody would have been able to glimpse this side of his life, years ago...


It strikes me how many of the images are the same as in an American wedding -- the bride's nervous smile as the jewels are being put upon her... Trying to be delicate while cutting the towering cake.

And how different; all the troops present.




from the YouTube comments:

---

i fucking hate these fucking assholes there enjoying while my peope are dieng and suffering from hunger and millions of other issues........fuck do they not ssee that there country is a fourth world country not even a third world country anymore.

---

Watch closely and you may see the entrapped souls of starved children twinkle in those diamonds. You may see the blood of countless monks pour of the silky drapes, and the eyes of a thousand dead men stare wateringly from the white of her wedding dress. Watch and you may know that if there is a place of reckoning, then the fires will burn gingerly on the flesh of those who've fattened themselves on the suffering of others.


---

wow....is ur country that bad?sorry to interupt but i went clueless with what's happening in u guys' country...what that dictator did?erm does ur country practice diplomation?anybody wana tell something?i really wana know

---

Ew! They're going to sleep together? Dude...I think I just lost some of my youth

---

...why is everyone disgusted?

--
[response]

becoz the freaking bride looks like FIONA!!! oh wait..i'd say 'fiona' is more beautiful than her...so let's just say she looks like a fat bitch fulled with shit!!!!

--
[response]

Because that government has a strangle hold over the country. Lets just say it isn't a democracy.

Bolivia, Spain, and "Balkanization": imagining "countries" in the 21st century

Do you know how many countries are in the world?
By many accounts, the number today is about 195.

How long have there been this many countries in the world?
Well, 100 years ago, we didn't have such staples as Finland, either Korea, Vietnam, Turkey, India, Morocco, etc.
50 years ago, we didn't have Jamaica, Kuwait, Singapore, and other household names.

Most of these thoughtforms we call countries evolved very recently, even though we somehow think of them as fairly solid institutions right now.

How many countries will the planet have in 20 or 50 or 100 years?
What is a country, anyway? (Is it the same thing as a nation or a state?) (What does it mean to have one?)
Is it even a good idea to have countries?


Let's leave the hard questions for a minute, and turn to the news of the moment.


*

Is Bolivia about to become "balkanized"? This week, Bolivia has come to a "state of crisis", as the department of Santa Cruz declared autonomy. The referendum on autonomy was declared illegal by the president, Evo Morales, and widespread protesting and riots have broken out, as the declaration of autonomy threatens to split the country.

Anxious eyes in Spain are watching the situation closely, much as they did when Kosovo went independent in February of this year. In Spain, anything that speaks of autonomy or independence provokes concerns that it will provide a precedent for the Spanish provinces that desire more autonomy.

From an article in Deutsche Welle, written prior to Kosova's independence:

If Kosovo declares independence from Serbia, it will set a powerful precedent for movements from Spain to Scotland, all wanting to rewrite the map of Europe and form their own independent states, according to experts. "There is a real risk that the quasi-dogma of the intangibility of borders which has existed since the end of the World War II will fall," French political scientist Jean-Yves Camus of the Paris-based IRIS institute told AFP. "This would benefit movements which seek to rewrite the map of Europe based on ethnic, linguistic or cultural criteria," added Camus, a specialist on separatist movements in Europe.


Why is it that the breakup of a country seems inherently scary somehow?

Do we have a basic, unquestioned bias that a large country is a good thing?

Why does every situation in which a region is seeking more autonomy from a federal government produce fears of "balkanization"?

I'll start by addressing the latter of these questions. One thing I would emphasize is that in reality, none of these situations -- in Spain, Bolivia, or Kosova -- bear much resemblance to each other at all. I don't find them comparable, and I'll explain why. While I'm certainly not a political expert, I have personally been to all these places, so what follows is my informal, travelers' understanding of the respective situations:


Kosova

In Kosova, we have a group of people who have been violently persecuted by the state they were claiming independence from, and quite recently. The ethnic Albanian Kosovars remember having to flee their homes from Serbian violence and hide in the mountains, for this happened less than a decade ago; these are fresh memories of oppression. Imagine being a young person growing up in Kosova, having your school closed to you because you are not Serbian, and then having your parents lose their jobs because they are not Serbian, and then having violence and warfare come to your neighborhood.

Imagine being a university student, and having most of the students expelled by being from a certain ethnic group ... then having a church from some other religion being erected in the university quad, right next to the library, smack in the open middle of your campus. This is what I saw at the University of Pristina: a church which never ended up being used, and stood empty with barbed wire around it, since the war began before the church was fully finished... in 2003 it stood trash-laden, surrounded by Roma camps; maybe it is put to use now, or transformed into somethng else.

Tolerance Campaign: UN-sponsored billboards picturing ethnic Albanians, Serbs, and Roma, with the caption - We are all Kosovars.

Spain

Spain, however, could demonstrate that the de-unification of a country does not have to end in the kind of warfare and violence experienced in the Bakans. There are several regions which flirt with the idea of autonomy, to differing degrees, including Catalonia, the Basque country, Navarre, and Galicia. While Franco was repressive towards the regional differences in Spain -- banning the Basque and Catalan languages up to 1975 -- these regions, aside from the occasional ETA attack, now get along quite civilly. You will see independence-related slogans on the streets, and protests and rallies, but for the most part, things are peaceful: Catalunya and the Basque country simply want to determine what to do with their own tax revenues and be able to speak their languages. They are not racist or hostile towards their neighbors; they get along as all nations in the European community do. These regions get along mostly-harmoniously with greater Spain, and enrich it.

Peaceful Basque independence rally and concert, in a village outside San Sebastian

And polls have shown that the majority of people in the Basque country don't even favor independence -- just one third are pro-independence, and only a small minority agree with ETA's terrorist tactics.

The central government has dealt with the regional challenges maturely, all in all: "Zapatero's Socialists ... believe increasing decentralization creates a modern, tolerant country where an understanding of each region's special characteristics helps keep separatism at bay."[citation]


Bolivia


So: why can't Bolivia have a model of government like Spain, where the regional departments have more control, asks Bolivia? Other countries have states or provinces, with their own regional police forces, for example...

If you're viewing Bolivia and Spain as equivalent, it is a reasonable question. But what's going on in Bolivia has to do with natural resource control and indigenous racism; it has to do with colonial conflicts that never quite got resolved. The department voting for autonomy, Santa Cruz, is whiter and richer than the rest of Bolivia. They want the ability to control the revenue from the natural gas under their land. The populist president, Evo Morales, and the Altiplano region of the country are indigenous, and want the gas to provide for all of Bolivia; they call the referendum illegal. From the Guardian:

"My family is voting for autonomy because the Indians want to dominate us," said Olga Tordolla, a woman in a largely indigenous quarter of Santa Cruz city known as Plan Tres Mil. "They are racist, they hate white people."

The federal government rejected the referendum as an "illegal survey" and an attempt by greedy, paler-skinned Bolivians to continue the social and economic exclusion of indigenous people which dates back to the Spanish conquest.

This conflict is about the exploitation of resources, in a more dramatic way than the conflicts in Spain or Kosova are. To have Santa Cruz secede is to open the natural gas to foreign exploitation, and Morales would like to keep the gas in the hands of Bolivians.

Llallagua, Bolivia -- Miners support president Evo Morales

Is there U.S. involvement in this situation? Roger Burbach in the blog Bolivia Rising argues that there is:

The illegal referendum held on Sunday to declare autonomy in Santa Cruz, Bolivia’s richest province, is backed by the Bush administration in an attempt to halt the leftward drift of South America. ... Evo Morales, the first indigenous president of the country, bluntly declares: “The imperialist project is to try to carve up Bolivia, and with that to carve up South America because it is the epicenter of great changes that are advancing on a world scale.”

The US ambassador, Philip Goldberg, who was appointed by the Bush administration in September 2006, has maneuvered behind the scenes to support the political forces opposed to Morales and his governing party, the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS). It is notable that Goldberg came to Bolivia from Pristina, Kosovo, where as the US Chief of Mission, he played a central role in orchestrating Kosovo’s independence from Serbia, which it had been a province of for centuries.

While I personally wouldn't put it past the U.S. to meddle this way-- they do have a long history of this around the world-- it is also suggested that this is "a homegrown issue." Jim Schultz, the director of the Democracy Center in Cochabamba (and a really kind, smart guy) recently was interviewed by Amy Goodman on the radio program Democracy Now. He explained that the current referendum is something that has been going on for a long time, and the significant point he made is that the oligarchs have managed to turn their wish for power into a regional issue that people on the streets support. Schutlz reported that both a taxi driver and a woman selling gum on the street in Santa Cruz declared that they don't want to be sending their money to the central government. While it used to be the indigenous people vs. the wealthy elite of Euro-descent, it is now the people vs. the people, and that is a difficult situation.

While I support the autonomy of Kosova and am ambivalent about the benefits of autonomy for the Spanish provinces, I wouldn't support autonomy for Santa Cruz (and the other gas-and-oil rich provinces that are also having referendums on autonomy) because it seems like yet another stratagem to screw the indigenous people out of resources and wealth that should be theirs to share in. It would destroy Morales's project to actually have a people make use of their resources. I was trying to cross Bolivia on May 1, 2006, when Morales nationalized the gas. Troops guarded gas stations on trucks; the mood was strange; but it was a remarkable symbolic gesture in saying the wealth from the land belonged in the hands of the people, and not multinational corporations. Movements towards decentralisation and autonomy should be used to give a people a homeland where they are safe from oppression and can practice their culture; these movements shouldn't be used to sell out a people.

These matters are complicated and controversial, but the basic point I was trying to make is that one disintegrating state does not equal another. It is difficult to imagine the Spanish coming into Catalonia and forcing the Catalunyans to flee to the mountains to avoid death, for example; Catalunya is no Kosova and Bolivia is no Spain. Each situation must be understood on its own terms; these situations don't provide precedents for one another in actuality.



SEPARATION ANXIETY


In the United States, the idea that borders are inviolable likely comes from the Civil War; its pain inscribed somewhere in our collective consciousness.

But Europe is already full of small states: so where does this fear of separation come from? Again, memories of war:

European stability since World War II has rested on the concept that borders are inviolable, even if they contain within them regions of other nationalities.

The break-up of Czechoslovakia was the result of mutual agreement, and that is precisely what the Europeans want. They do not want Kosovo to set a precedent for Belgian Walloons wanting out of Belgium. To a great extent the world wars of the 20th century were triggered by borders not matching nationalities. [citation]


But people can exist in small states peacefully without war: Europe generally proves this. To believe that decentralization results in war is to take a dim view of humanity.

Before I close this epic, I'd like to point out that the idea of nations is flawed. Countries are fictional entities. I do not think there is actually such a thing as the "United States", in reality.

And in too many cases, the arbitrary creation of these nations has caused much pain. Look at the current war in Sudan: caused in great part by how the Brits drew colonial borders.

Our bizarre sentimental attachment to countries might do more harm than it does good.
Often, the sentimental feelings we have about countries are simply tools that other interests use to manipulate us. Do you have a nation in your heart? Is it your country you love, or your culture? Your country is the force that takes a third of your hard-earned income and goes and bombs other countries with it. Your culture is the tapestry of traditions and values that makes your life meaningful. And regions of cultures can (and do) exist without nations.

A return to regionalism is exactly what the world needs. But how will we stop ourselves from being overrun by the Chinese, without our big federal army? the skeptic asks. Well, the EU is a decent example of a coalition of nations that works together to build a power bloque. I wish the United States functioned in the same way, as a coalition of nations rather than weakened states (I suspect it will in the future, but that's another post).

Perhaps this century can become truly cosmopolitan and global; where we will abandon these thoughtforms of countries, and honor the cultures we live in. Where we don't allow business interests to manipulate our feelings, or our hatred for others, into warfare on the basis of these "countries"; where we can live regionally, for the benefit of our bioregion, harmoniously with nearby regions.

What are your town's demons? Looking at the people next door

Today, I've been trying to write something about separatist movements, but I keep coming back to the Fritzl case, and then the Ellis case, and then this torrent of wonderings about the people who compose our society; the people we think we know.

I don't know how much coverage the Fritzl case got in the U.S., but they manage to keep it in the Euro headlines every day, and out of some grotesque fascination, I keep following it.

In summary: Josef Fritzl, of the quiet little town of Amstetten, Austria, built an underground dungeon in his home. When his daughter Elisabeth was 18, he forced her down there, where she bore 7 of his children over the years. Some of them were kept down in the dungeon, one died and was incinerated by Fritzl, and others came to live upstairs after being adopted by Fritzl, who "found" them on his doorstep. ... One of the children from the dungeon -- Kerstin, 19 by this time -- was sick, and so Fritzl took her to the hospital, and that's how the 42-year-old Elisabeth came to be freed, too.

Fritzl says he is not a monster:

"When I went into the bunker, I brought flowers for my daughter, and books and toys for the children, and I watched adventure videos with them while Elisabeth was cooking our favourite dish," News magazine quoted him as saying.

"And then we all sat around the table and ate together."

It is the details of this case which are distressing; the details which paint a parody of normal life. From the Guardian:

On the grimy white bathroom tiles are a painted yellow snail with green shell, a purple octopus, a child's drawing of a flower and a fish, and stickers of stars and the sun - all of them things her 'cellar children' had never seen, except on the television, which was on all day.

...

He bought Elisabeth clothes. Sometimes she chose them out of a catalogue. On other occasions he would choose them himself. Friends he holidayed with in Thailand saw him picking out a glittering evening dress and lingerie at a market - clearly much too small for his rotund, ageing wife. When he realised that he had been spotted, he joked about 'having a bit on the side'. Not for one minute did they suspect it could be his daughter.

But it is clear that he wanted Elisabeth, whom he called his Liesl, to dress up and parade around for him in the squalid, miserable cell he forced her to call home. Then, after raping her, he would settle down at the table while she prepared a meal and they would discuss the children's upbringing.

It is these details which make the whole story so twisted; if the circumstances had been farther out-there, they would have belonged in some imaginary land. No, this was entirely planet earth in 2008: the cell with electronically locking doors that was allegedly equipped with poison gas; the mimicry of normal family life.

The people in the community of Amstetten are asking how they didn't notice this was going on for the past 24 years -- not to mention how a person with a rape conviction could legally adopt children, or how building plans for the elaborate dungeon could be approved.

The people of Austria as a nation are engaged in soul-searching, too. Natascha Kampusch made headlines when she was freed from a dungeon after eight years; she had been snatched on her way to school as a girl. From the BBC:

She also suggested Austria's history had played some part in the cases of abuse which had taken place there.

"I think this exists worldwide, but I think it's also a ramification of the Second World War and its connection to education and so on," she said.

"I think it can happen everywhere and it also exists everywhere, not just in Austria."

She went on to explain: "At the time of National Socialism the suppression of women was propagated. An authoritarian education was very important."

What in his environment, in or his society, turned this man sick? From the Belfast Telegraph:

"Josef grew up without a father. His mother raised him with her fists," Mrs R said. "She used to beat him black and blue almost every day. Something must have been broken in him because of that. He was unable to feel any kind of sympathy for other people. He humiliated my sister for most of her life."

Fritzl was born in 1935 and would have been four years old at the start of the Second World War. It was not clear whether he lost his father during the war, but, when the war ended, he would, as a nine-year-old, have experienced first hand the invasion of Austria by the Soviet Red Army in 1945. Reports in the Austrian media have claimed that as a child he "suffered badly" during this post-war occupation which was notorious for the high incidence of rape perpetrated by Russian soldiers on civilian German and Austrian women.

And there were Nazi death camps in Amstetten, "a short stroll" from Fritzl's home, as reported in The Sun.

Austrian academic and social commentator Martin Reiter, 45, says the Fritzl case highlights the “dark underbelly” of Austrian society.

Mr Reiter, who grew up 30 miles from Amstetten, said his countrymen became insular and adopted an “ask no questions” policy after the war. He added: “Austria needs to face up to her demons. When I lived near Amstetten you could sense the paranoia in the air. It was like living in a Hitchcock film.

"No one wanted to know what their neighbours had done in the past, no one wanted to talk about the dark history.”

Our criminals can tell us something about the ills of our societies; they are the agents of our society's ills.

So you don't live in a quiet town with former Nazi death camps. What are your town's demons?

A few days ago I flew into the town where I grew up. As I usually do, I flipped through the pages of the paper which lands on everyone's driveway for free each Thursday: the Columbia Flier. The first story I read was about one of my former classmates, who used to be in my "Gifted and Talented" classes throughout middle and high school: Ex-teacher gets 5 years for sex abuse of student.

Don't you occasionally wonder about those people that you used to do projects with in school when you were forced into "group work", the kids that your friends had crushes on, the names and faces of people who you never really cared about but saw every day, the names and faces that exist somewhere in deep memory? Well, it seems good old Joey Ellis went to college and became a social studies teacher and coach in the same county we went to school in. At the age of 25, he emailed nude photos to a 17-year-old student, sent her sexually explicit text messages, and on one occasion exposed himself to her during an after-school visit in the classroom. After a painful trial, he's got five years in jail -- the district attorney requested that he get nine.

Sick? I would not call this sick (especially when compared to the above case), but I would call it absolutely moronic. If we were talking about a seven-year-old, that would be sick. I don't think Ellis was sexually sick, but I think he was stuck in high school, in some adolescent mentality where a 25-year-old thinks it would be hot to score with a 17-year-old high-school senior. He probably had the fantasies that most men have-- that our culture kind of encourages-- and, with the lack of impulse control of an adolescent, was stupid enough to act on them. This was a lame suburban crime, a produce of the lame suburban society that Joey grew up in.

"The former student victim's statement .. described how the incident has left her unable to trust men and the effect it has had on her and her family, leading her parents to the brink of divorce ... 'I never though I'd be one of those girls with crazy psychological issues, but now I am,' the student said in her statement."

Well, it's a shame. And, controversially, I think it's a shame he'll have to spend five years in jail for it. I definitely believe the guy deserves some kind of repercussions that might make him less moronic, but is he going to be a better person after five years in the U.S. jail system? No, he'll likely be much more fucked up after that experience, and maybe even genuinely sick, maybe even a genuine menace to society. The crime is so born of suburban America and the reaction to it is so typically suburban-American; it all gives me a headache.

What would I suggest for Fritzl, for Ellis, for all of us? I don't suggest that we all go around wondering who the normal people next door are, afraid. If we want to live in healthy societies, we should be trying to learn from our criminals, instead of treating them as sick aberrations and objects of curiosity. They might have clues to what is wrong with us as a whole, and instead of sequestering them and "punishing" them, we should be trying to help them understand themselves and heal. Putting people in prison is not going to cure anything; it's treating the symptoms instead of the causes. Imprison only those who are truly a danger, but help them; in doing so, we all will be helped.

the Horror of Andorra

Imagine if your entire country was one long traffic jam.

If that doesn't sound like fun, I don't recommend visiting Andorra.

I knew as soon as I entered this country that I wanted to leave ... but the queue of cars trying to escape back to Spain at the border was too long to bear, so I resigned myself to spending the night. I settled down to eat at a Tex-Mex restaurant where New Mexico plates decorated the walls, where disco versions of Manu Chao distracted me, where a plump lady with jingly jewelry brought me tacos that were stuffed with green beans and peas. (There is nothing like EuroMexican food to make you feel like something is missing in life.)

Claustrophobia was setting in...

Why, you may ask, might a charming principality like Andorra provoke such glumness?
I had always wanted to go to Andorra since I was a little girl learning my capital cities: the very name Andorra la Vella rang like a magical city of princesses and unicorns in my head...

The thing about this tiny country, nestled between France and Spain, is that it is an entire country squashed into what is basically a canyon (technically, there are 3 valleys, shaped like a Y). The valley is sometimes as wide as a kilometer, but sometimes only wide enough for a two-lane road between the rock walls.... hence, the incredible traffic.

Not only are there an abundance of cars, but there is an abundance of shops. It is said that Andorra is one big duty-free mall, and they have crammed commercial centers selling tax-free alcohol into the crevasses of the mountains. Andorra survives through this, and through banking: it is well-known as a tax haven.

Celebrating 50 years of the Private Bank of Andorra

But why on earth would its ~ 70,000 residents, living in this area the size of Queens, most of which is huge mountains, even need or want cars? I wondered. They should all just park their cars on the border and walk, or build a rail line, through the country. Perhaps I just caught the country on a bad day, but living in a traffic jam seems to put everyone here in a negative mood. For it could be quite a beautiful place, with the majestic mountains, if not for the cars...

I seriously wonder how long it will be before the automobile is generally recognized as humanity's worst mistake. I am thinking perhaps 20 years; what do you think?

Trains, Again: A Metronome in Prague

Leaden outside; gold and warm in the train. This train would go all the way to Budapest Keleti-pu, but I am getting off at Praha Holesvice.

I was thinking about how national demons get vanquished -- if they ever do get vanquished, or if they simply die down to rise up again later at another opportune time.

Germany was heartening, is heartening to think of. They are one of the most liberal and progressive countries in the world, in the 21st century, despite the 20th century difficulties. In Dresden there is a bridge with a stone inscription that reads something like Freedom is the Freedom to Think Differently; a post-war reconstruction. Imagine how drastically a manner of thinking can change in a generation...

In Prague, my friend tells me, there used to be this statue of Stalin up on a hill. Then they blew up the statue of Stalin -- now a metronome stands in its place (pictured below). Time keeps on ticking; everything changes -- sometimes more than you will expect. The world is in need of a radical change in thinking, but history proves that it is possible.

A German Train Set

One morning in the Dresden Ostbahnhof, with minutes to fritter, I found myself entranced in a model train set, which seemed to be a miniature German world.

I felt like there was a key to the country inside the glass case...




One inserts a fifty-cent piece, and one can select the train of choice, the ICE or the D-ZUG or the GUTERZUG or the PERSONENZUG, the choice being the allure of the entire exhibit. If not for the choice, the temptation to press the large button would have been considerably less.

The first thing I noticed was the spinning wind turbine: cool, progressive power. Then the Bundespolizei drew my attention, with their long blue truck, next to the well-lighted and cozy homes, as if perhaps there was an unconscious link between the security and warmth of the homes and the great mysterious truck of protection.





The old steam train laden with coal rests happily alongside the new gleaming InterCityExpress, sleekly poised to jump into action.




And around the bend, the horses frolick, in some kind of pastoral bliss, in more motion than the trains, in uncontrollable motion, in motion that cannot be started or stopped.



The wilderness too has its place, and deer stride along the rocks, while tourists enjoy the view of the wilderness from the castle. One lone hiker strides through the forests, with his walking sticks and rucksack, presumably enjoying the solitude... In the furthest corner of the display, an agreeable amount of wilderness is maintained.

Within this box, all the tensions of modernity are resolved. The past, present, and future coexist pleasantly in some kind of order. But it is, finally, the calamity that draws the most attention.

The fire glows red and dims at regular intervals, the LED lights on the sirens blink, and this moment of tragedy is frozen in time.





Meanwhile, the lone girl sits on her bench, unawares of the personal tragedy occurring within her very box. It reminiscent of Auden's study of Breughel's Icarus in "Muséé des Beaux Arts", the ploughman turning away from Icarus's fall: one person's afternoon on the bench while calamity befalls another,

the plastic trains clicking away or silent through it all.

Turning away from the display, I ascend to the gleis, to sit on my moving bench and be transported in an orderly smooth fashion away from this order, into another kind of land.

I am an Alienation Survivor !

Imagine your life a labyrinth of corridors and tunnels. Some with grey industrial carpet; some with tile that echoes ... Fluorescent tube lighting. Escalators. Stairwells. Elevators. Echoing caverns. You navigate these corridors all around the world. Announcements and murmurs. Pasajeros -- Lieber fluggast -- Attencion -- Nachster halt -- Please stand clear of the doors




Always a different room, usually the same garish decour. Lukewarm landscapes and pictures of coffee cups on the walls; spare beds for the ghosts beside you; surplus pillows you have to toss on the floor, as if the abundance of pillows made up for the essential lack of comfort.

There may be another human, across the way, in some unreachable space. If you want to reach him, send an email.







Imagine you cannot choose what you will eat for breakfast. (You are now in the situation of most of the people on Planet Earth, of course). Or, worse yet, imagine that you have to select your breakfast every morning from a chaotic dressed-up cafeteria. The breakfast buffet is full of slow geriatric beings that rumble and mumble through the aisles. To cruise through them and snatch a yoghurt and a museli you must be lithe, deft, quick. Break open mass-produced packets. You rise from the table each morning with a pile of plastic in your wake; empty containers; never quite nourished.



You can piss in a hole that thousands of others have pissed in; it all mingles together downstream; this is probably the least alienated any part of you ever gets. Look at yourself: your image caught in the prisms of a toilet room, a prisoner.

________________

Room 1913

dedicated to everyone who envies the business class

Finally got checked in the hotel, after the taxi driver drove me in circles. “Don’t you know where this place is?” I asked him. Of course he pretended not to, pretended to act confounded, his eyes glassy as he checked me out in the rearview mirror. He had one of those blue evil-eyes hanging from the mirror by a thin ribbon; it swayed as we turned. The night was humid; the air here is heavier than I’ve ever felt. The taxi driver peeled away from here in a ferverent cloud of dust & now I am looking out the window at the lights in the parking lot, wondering about all the other fares he will pick up tonight, all the other hotels and buildings they will go to. There is a musty smell here, peculiar; my eyes look hollow in the gilded mirror; I am going to collapse upon the bed now for I am too tired to really write tonight.

*

Woke when the sun slanted straight in from the dingy drapes, piercing my eyes. This room looks even worse when illuminated... like it was designed to be golden, but beige has taken over instead, like a gradual mold. I was on the way to the breakfast buffet and the elevator stopped just short of the floor. It was only a few inches that I had to step up, but I’ve never seen an elevator do that, you know? You would think the whole thing should be mechanically timed and measured. Well, the lady who was welcoming the diners to the breakfast room flashed me a big smile and offered me a newspaper: with that and a cup of coffee, the world seems bearable for another day.

*

Tried to nap, agitated, the pillow just the wrong size. I threw it across the room. They are doing construction on the other wing, something which requires a lot of pounding. The workers were listening to loud cumbia. I tossed and turned over the rhythms; I started to dream of a waving field of wheat when a new song began, reggaeton thumping through the blue air.
In an attempt to rouse myself, I tried to go through my yoga routine, opening ill-used muscles. From my position on the carpet I could see under the bed and there was a strip of shriveled bacon lying there. I was caught between wanting to throw it away and not wanting to touch it. Finally I fished it out, covered in dust, and then washed my hands with the hotel soap. It smelled like artificial lemons and burned my skin slightly. You know what else burns? The numbers on this digital clock. They are red and hot throughout the whole night.

*

I am sure the woman in the next room over is faking an orgasm. No woman ever really screams like that. She gets an A+ for theatrics, but can that really turn a man on? If I was a man I would have to burst out laughing. He has been going a long time. I hope I do not see them at the breakfast buffet. I do not want to know if he takes ham and beans or pastries for breakfast.

*

The nice breakfast lady, the redhead who checked off my room number every morning, is gone. In her place is this stern creature. She looks down her nose at the clipboard and then points you to one of the two breakfast halls. Yesterday she pointed me to the “Executive Breakfast” where they had quark with fresh berries and two kinds of smoked salmon and waffles with real maple syrup. Today she pointed me to the room with the folding chairs and the lifeless cornflakes. Why? I’m the same person as I was yesterday. I tried to ask her but she doesn’t understand my attempts at the local language.
This breakfast buffet is a deception anyway. It serves up plates of deception by the hundreds. It looks like there is so much stuff, and people mull around with plates heaping with cold cod on top of brie on top of potato salad on top of pain au chocolat on top of miscellaneous Germanic cold cuts... but you know what, none of it is actually good. The pate is dry and the papayas are from yesterday and turning brown and the pastry is all made from margarine with artifical butter flavouring. So you end up eating the same thing every day, which is a bit of bread with honey and white cheese, which is pretty much the same thing you eat for lunch and dinner inside your hotel room: surrounded with the illusion of choice, but without any choice at all.
And you know what else: the elevator clunked to a stop a foot from the door today. The cement of the shaft was exposed. Sure, I can step up, but what if I was handicapped or old or something? It could be quite difficult.

*

When I went downstairs this afternoon to get a new keycard (mine of course flashes red when I try to open the door) the receptionist was really perturbed about something. I could only watch her hands flicker as she talked. In the end I had to go outside for a walk. The sidewalk here is endless; one day I long to walk it until I discover an end. I keep hoping to see a coyote or a bird or a stray cat: but nothing.
I came back and the maid had been there. She used some kind of solvent that stings the eyes. I opened the window and the door to try and air it out... but then the music from the nearby strip club filtered in. I don’t know how they can call this place a four-star hotel. A broken constellation: one of the stars has its arms in a sling, one of the stars tried to go supernova but couldn’t quite make it, one of the stars was depending on little children to wonder what it was and when they stopped wondering she died of heartbreak. The last of the stars is actually dead, burned out thousands of years ago, but the light from it is still traveling towards us--

*

Came back today and she had rearranged all my things, again, all my razors and toothbrush in a plastic cup; all my books in a row. What if I like them scattered? They had also installed a new flat-screen TV to replace the old boxy one. The TV was on, and against a background of blue waves, little white script read, Welcome Guest in Room 1913. Today our special in the Hotel Restaurant is Veal Escalope with rice pilaf. A glass of sherry and a carnation for the ladies! Featuring the music of Memory Duo. It took me five minutes to find the button to shut it off; it did not want to be shut off.
I think the solvent is starting to affect me. I find myself with a headache every time I come back into my room, a kind of spinning headache that starts off slow and works its way back into my head. At least I’m not as bad off as the guy in the next room. He was harrumphing and spitting all night long, with a hoarse cough, the sickly sounds of humanity compressed into one being and one long night.

*

The Hotel Voice is talking to me from every different angle. On the screen of the TV the little letters say We invite you for a relaxing stay at our hotels around the world. On the nightstand Chambermaid Miss Maldita is the person in charge of the lay out and care of your room. On the table We recommend our Specialties and Typical Food of the Country. On the writing desk Revive Yourself! Center of Beauty and Thallasotherapy Spa Invites You... In the bathroom Missing Something? Call the Front Desk for anything you might need. It keeps talking and talking and I notice the logo of the hotel is subtly embroidered in white threads upon my pillowcase, easing its voice closer to my ears and my dreams.


*

When I woke up I tried to get online, but the wifi wasn’t free anymore. They had installed some kind of system which costs 17 euros for 24 hours, and it takes about twelve different screens before you can enter. You have to make up a password and security questions and pick an image to be your signal key and then tell them about your mother’s maiden name your pet dog your date of birth your secret lover your enemy’s middle name where you went to high school when you lost your virginity your one true wish for the world. After all that you enter your credit card details and then it says Final Processing Error -- Please try again later or email us at helpdesk@access.com for technical support. Of course, because you cannot get online you cannot email your mother, your pet dog, your secret lover, your enemy, or the help desk; you cannot email anyone.
I spent a long time then staring at the painting. It is a painting of some kind of square building, some elaborate edifice that is basically square, elaborations on a square, as if the elaborations made it more than a square, which they do not. There are a lot of ancient laborers sprawled around the bottom of it, wearing funny hats. One of them is pointing at another man’s foot. Also there are some horse-drawn carriages. I spent some time wondering why someone painted this scene, what story they were trying to tell, and why someone in the hotel wanted to put this on the walls of the rooms. Then I looked out the window again. It seemed like the trees were waving in the wind, but of course I could not feel any wind in here.

*

Yesterday the breakfast buffet was full of Russians on a package tour. No tourists ever really come here since there is nothing to do here, except for the Russians who maybe get sold on it because it seems better than whatever cold concrete-block-city they are from, but anyway, today the buffet was half-filled with reptiles. They oozed slowly from table to table in subtle competition for the choicest bits, as if there wasn’t going to be enough, as if tomorrow they would wake up and the doors would be locked, as if tomorrow they would bust into the buffet and the little serving trays would be filled with ashes.
This elevator is getting worse. I had to make a wild acrobatic jump to escape it, out into the catastrophic writhing floral carpet of the corridor, because the elevator stopped halfway short of the portal: and then as I was pondering what to do it started moving again. In any other country the inspectors would get them for having such a dangerous elevator. You may ask why I do not take the stairs. I had intended to leave via the stairs one time, began dancing down them, and came to a sign that said UWAZA / ATTENZIONE / PELIGROSO / ACHTUNG! NUR BRANDFALL. I was dubious but I kept descending, down where there was only one flourescent bulb flickering, down where there were no doors to floors any more but just concrete steps-- and then the door at the bottom was chained shut. I had to climb all the way back out again, as far up as the ninth floor, and catch the elevator from there.

*

It is the elevator that keeps me up all night, elevating heavy people up and dropping them down. You can hear the gears working in the shaft, they whine, and then BOOM! -- the whole thing thuds and jerks to a halt. It sounds like missiles going off -- whizzing through the air -- suspense -- and then landing. Yes, there is a war in the inner workings of the hotel. I would request a room farther from the elevators, but the receptionist has been giving me the evil eye, and besides there would just be some other thing going on with that room, there is always some other thing.
I am a bit scared to leave, too, because I don’t know if I’ll be able to get back in. The lock hasn’t been green lately, it flashes orange now, and waits a second before the metallic click that signals permission to enter. Last time it went through a fluorescent rainbow and started to shimmer. There is a rainbow inside that lock waiting to get out; it doesn’t want to be just red or green any more: which is fine for it, but difficult for me.
The window has me captivated. I pull it open all the way and soak my skin in the air. I watch the pigeons alight on the eaves. I look at the stringy trees and the dusty cars and the lone people lumbering here and there. Mostly I look at the horizon; long to touch it.
My body is halfway out the portal when a loud pounding freezes me. The door clicks and swings open. Two mustached men in uniform are there, as well as the receptionist in her suit and her pearl earrings. She is shaking her head and the men are beckoning me forth. They cross their arms over their chest and speak in a strange language. I decide I should put on my shoes and one of them takes my arm like a brusque grandfather. We take the stairs, down down down, and then the receptionist opens the locked door at the bottom of the stairwell with her ring of keys. They put me in their police car like a little package on the car seat and she is still shaking her head in the parking lot as we drive off.
The men chariot me through the traffic into a drab building and bring me into a room cluttered with papers. One of them sits down at a computer and begins to type. I sit on a hard chair and look at nothing. Then a woman clicks in. She brings me a paper and says, “You have to sign this, and then you can go.”
“What does it say?” I ask, glancing at the foreign script.
“It is a denouncement, stating that you were evicted from the hotel for failure to pay the facture, the bill, but that you are aware of this bill and agree to pay it in the future.” She shrugged. “It says that you have been warned and failure to pay within 60 days will result in further legal action.”
“Oh.” There is a clock on the wall that is ticking. I pick up a pen and scrawl my name on the black line.
“This is your copy,” she says, tearing off the bottom copy and handing it to me. I fold it and stuff it in my pocket. The man is still typing at his computer and the clock is still ticking.
“So, you are free to go,” she says again. I stand up, push my chair under the desk, and walk towards the door.
“What about my things?” I turn to the woman. “All my things are in the hotel.”
“I am sure the hotel staff would give them to you, if you need them.”
I am not sure of this and decide I do not need them, do not need anything, and step outside. It has grown into an amazingly cobalt evening while I was away and the trees are waving. There is no sidewalk because it has ended, but I think I can find my way.



-- Torremolinos, Spain / March 2008
with thanks to Ettore Minguzzi, who gave me the ending

images from the "Name That Country" folder