A Tale of Two Dutertes

Last week I wrote about Arthur Koestler's efforts to get inside the headquarters of the fascist rebels in Spain in 1936. He believed that it was the only way anyone outside Spain would ever get a clear understanding of what was happening, since none of the liberal newspapers in  Europe did. The role of a foreign journalist inside such places of conflict and confusion can sometimes be vital. Since the election of President Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines in 2016, I have sometimes felt like a foreign correspondent observing the extraordinary events that have taken place here. But, unlike Spain in 1936-38, or Germany after the election of Hitler as Chancellor, it seems that observers outside the Philippines have a far different, and clearer, view of events than ordinary Filipinos do.

Like the 2018 midterm elections in the U.S., which was branded as a referendum on Trump (and Trump lost), the election on May 13 here in the Philippines is a referendum on the current president, Rodrigo Duterte, whether or not anyone dares call it that. Duterte's six-year term in office is only halfway over. And if it is true that all of the congressional, gubernatoral, and mayoral races around this far-fung archipelago were a referendum on Duterte, the Philippine sitting president, unlike his American counterpart, achieved a resounding mandate. Despite a significant drop of more than twenty per cent in the president's public approval rating, it is still at a healthy 60 percent. A majority of Filipinos are convinced that Duterte, or "DU30", is the best man for the job. But they are not exposed to foreign media coverage of Duterte's performance, which is overwhelmingly negative. Which brings me to the central puzzlement: which of the two widely divergent interpretations of Duterte's performance in office is closer to the truth - the one in the Philippine domestic media that paints him as a bold and courageous champion of the people or the one in every international news outlet that paints him as a thug and a virtual dictator?

There is a long tradition of press freedom in the Philippines, but as vocal critics of Duterte's murderous drug war over the past three years have gone down, one by one, both political rivals killed in "ambushes," and elected officials, like Senator Laila de Lima, being arrested on manufactured charges and placed in "detention," it has become increasingly clear that the Philippine press is playing it safe. On any given day, camera crews from the nightly network news dutifully follow police engaged in "buy-bust" (aka sting) operations in the streets of Manila, nabbing tiny amounts of methamphetamine (called "shabu") or marijuana (both classified as "dangerous drugs") and a handful of pesos, and putting the pathetic faces of those arrested (when they aren't killed outright) on national TV. Meanwhile, Maria Ressa, one of the most distinguished Filipino journalists and editor of the online news organization known as Rappler, has been arrested on one charge after another, including libel and embezzlement, but they have not stopped her open criticism of Duterte's strong arm political tactics. Shelley named poets the unelected legislators of the age, because they alone have the freedom to tell the truth. Journalists, belonging to the Fourth Estate, have the same freedom and bear the same responsibility.

Who is Rodrigo Duterte? Now 74, he comes from a prominent provincial family in the far south of the country. He was educated as a lawyer and became a prosecutor for the city of Davao, a sprawling city on the southern coast of Mindinao, the largest of the Philippine islands, was elected vice mayor and then mayor of Davao. He served as mayor an unprecedented 22 years. Like most provincial politicians, Duterte ruled Davao with absolute impunity. We were given a terrible glimpse of such impunity in 2009 by what is still called the "Ampatuan Massacre," in which more than 50 people, mostly journalists, were gunned down when someone other than a member of the ruling clan challenged their monopolization of power and tried to file a certificate of candidacy in an upcoming election. He sent his wife to file the certificate and she was among those killed, along with her unborn child. Ten years later, the people who ordered the massacre, as well as those who carried it out, have never been prosecuted. One pathetic member of the Ampatuan family, named Zaldy, was tried and convicted. He was likely singled out because he drew he shortest straw.

Duterte organized "death squads" and even took part in their patrols of Davao City, randomly gunning down perceived lawbreakers. Human rights groups documented 1,400 deaths from 1998 to 2016. Despite Duterte's claims that he made Davao the safest of Philippine's major cities, it still has the highest murder rate and rape rate in the country. When he was elected president in May 2016, confident in his prowess as an enforcer of the law, he told followers he would make the Philippines drug free in six months. When six months had passed, he said he need another six months. Now, after three years have failed to see the Philippines made drug-free, questions are being raised about the success - or lack thereof - of Duterte's drug war.

What astonishes me is how clearly ignorant of foreign affairs Duterte has revealed himself to be, that he could think he could get away with his killing squads in Manila while the whole world was watching. Whenever Duterte and his tactics are criticized by foreign governments, as they were when Barack Obama was the American president, Duterte's reaction exposed his total ignorance of the proper role of a world leader when basic human rights are violated anywhere on the globe. But, of course, the Philippines is not in any position to judge the human rights records of any other nation. The International Criminal Court in The Hague initiated an investigation into Duterte's Drug War, that has accounted for as many as 5,000 deaths since he took office. He responded to their investigation by withdrawing the Philippines' membership in the ICC, but the investigation, we are told, will continue. Clearly, foreign pressure has demonstrated to Duterte that Manila is not Davao, and that he can no longer continue his "slaughter" (his word) of Filipinos, users and dealers alike, involved in the drug trade with impunity.

Clearly, what has happened is that the murderous methods of Philippine provincial politics have been visited on the national government. Soon after taking office, a "hotline" was set up for people to call to report "government corruption." Except it sounds like life in Nazi Germany, in which ordinary citizens were encouraged to inform on one another if they noticed they were doing or saying anything that was critical of Hitler. And once the "extra-judicial killings" (EJK) of drug dealers and users was underway, Duterte promised every policeman that he will protect every one of them from prosecution for violations of the law. Rumors ("tsismiss" in Tagalog) suggests that the primary motivation of voters last month was fear of the EJKs. Drug use has declined because dealers and users don't want to be slaughtered.

Despite his tough talk, the president is now visibly frail and barely ambulatory. He can't exit or enter a vehicle without assistance. Rumors have been flying for months about his health problems. Despite his failing health, his party's gains in the May elections will probably embolden him to double down on his drug war tactics. His foolish promise to eliminate the drug trade in the Philippines (which he couldn't do if he lived a thousand years) is bound to end in failure. As long as he doesn't address the causes of drug use and addiction, he is doing nothing but stand on the roof of the presidential palace and piss into an oncoming typhoon. And his piss is being blown right back in his face.

It is easy to remind oneself that the Philippines is a small, poor, and insignificant country. Duterte is counting on international indifference to the slaughter of Filipinos by Filipinos. He is counting on our "compassion fatigue" as well as our notoriously short attention span. Justice within the Philippines is next to impossible. It must come from without.

Darkness at Noon Reboot

And the living nations wait,
Each sequestered in its hate;

Intellectual disgrace
Stares from every human face,
And the seas of pity lie
Locked and frozen in each eye.

W. H. Auden, "In Memory of W. B. Yeats"

The writer Arthur Koestler had a nose for trouble, a willingness to confront it, and an odd confidence in his own safety. In 1936, when a rebellion against the Republican goverment of Spain broke out, and frustrated in his attempts to learn exactly what was happening, he decided to go to Spain - not to the relative safety of the Republican-held regions, as many foreigners were doing, but to what was then the capitol of the rebellion in Seville. At the beginning of his book, A Spanish Testament, Koestler described the extraordinary atmosphere of July 1936. When the democratically-elected government in Spain began to move to the Left and enact reforms that threatened land ownership and the authority and freedoms enjoyed by the Roman Catholic church, an organized rebellion commited to toppling the government arose with General Francisco Franco as its leader and military and material support from fascist Germany and Italy. But coherent news from Spain was either not forthcoming or was incomplete. Koestler explains:

On July 18th, 1936, when the Franco revolt broke out, it looked at first as though the revolt had proved abortive and that the Government was master of the situation throughout Spain. Then the news grew more and more alarming. By the end of a week it was clear that there was to be a civil war of long duration, with possible European complications. We greedily devoured a preposterous number of newspapers ... The part played by the Press in the Spanish affair was from the outset a most peculiar one. The rebels refused to allow a single correspondent of any Left-wing or even liberal newspaper into their territory, while correspondents of liberal newspapers with pronouncedly Right-wing views were equally unwelcome on the Government side. Thus a state of affairs was rapidly created whereby, roughly speaking, the Right-wing newspapers had correspondents only ont he Franco side, and the Liberal and Left Press only on the Government side. The communiqués from the respective headquarters were grossly contradictory, and almost as great were the discrepancies between the telegrams sent by thec orrespondents on both sides, for whom a drastic censorship, furthermore, made it impossible to send out unbiased messages.

"The Spanish Civil War," Koestler concludes, "had, as it were, infected the Press of Europe ... In these circumstances, as a journalist of liberal convictions I was bound to be tempted by the idea of getting into rebel territory." So, with credentials supplied by a newspaper, Koestler embarked two days later from Belgium on a ship bound for Spain. He tried to infiltrate the rebel stronghold in Seville in order to get the scoop on their activities. He was informed on by a former German colleague who recognized him and he escaped, bringing with him proof that Mussollini and Hitler were supplying the rebels with arms and personnel.

We are not living in the 1930s, when there was nothing but newspapers and radio to disseminate information (or disinformation). Nor can we argue that every news service in America is either Left, Right or Center, as they were in Europe in the '30s. George Orwell told us that "history is written by the winners," simply because what happened in the Spanish civil war is still a subject of controversy because the Government version of events was supplanted by that of the fascist rebels. And as writers like Jorge Semprun, in his script for the beautiful Alain Resnais film La Guerre est finie, pointed out, the war was still being fought thirty years after it was officially over. In some ways, it is still being fought more than forty years after Franco's death because it is now a war for the truth.

Today, there is such a multitude of sources and media outlets, on television and online, that it is simply not possible to be completely ignorant. No one today would be in the same position that Arthur Koestler was in, trying so desperately to know what is happening in any particular place of conflict that the only way to find out is to go there himself. And yet, what is happening in the civil war in Syria is far from certain. Assad's greatest victory is outlasting our curiosity about his massacres of his own people. We are suffering from what is being called "conflict fatigue" - but it's really nothing more than the usual apathy.

An even worse fatigue is afflicting people today - "information fatigue." Then the problem isn't the medium, but the message. It is no longer an issue of how one is informed but by whom one is informed. Not only are we now supposed to be wary of everything our government tells us, but the political agenda of media outlets, with billionaire ownership, is putting whole swaths of the population deliberately in the dark and keeping them there. It is not the media's job to comfort us and tell us only what we want to hear - even if what we want to hear is lies. Last week, NBC reported the reaction of a woman who is an admitted Fox News viewer to the revelation that the Robert Mueller report contained information that implicated President Trump for obstruction of justice. “I was surprised to hear there was anything negative in the Mueller report at all about President Trump. I hadn’t heard that before," the woman told a reporter. "I’ve mainly listened to conservative news and I hadn’t heard anything negative about that report and President Trump has been exonerated.”(1)

While I watch CNN as my primary source of news, I also get news reports from Reuters, NPR, the BBC, and The Guardian - all liberal news sources ("liberal" in the broad sense used by Koestler, synonymous with "free"). My political leanings are Leftist, so my perspective on national news in the U.S. is, accordingly, Leftist. But the news itself is presented as politically neutral. Some people, particularly on the Right who insist there is a "liberal bias" in news reporting, will probably call this a naïve expectation. But if the mainstream media is Leftist, then so, I'm afraid, is American culture. It is Leftist because the prevailing cultural attitudes are progressive instead of reactionary. If pressed, most people will profess a belief that society can improve and is improving. The good society lies ahead of us, not behind us as reactionaries believe. We have not gone too far but not far enough.

But something akin to the political atmosphere of 1936 is upon us. The same polarization of viewpoints that Koestler encountered has been happening in the American Press for several years, and has accelerated since the election of Donald Trump in 2016. He went after support from a demographic group of Americans who felt ignored or overlooked and, because of his appeal to what most concerns them (whatever it is or the liberal media might think it is), they rallied behind him and keep on rallying, despite overwhelming evidence of his incompetence. He pulled off one of the biggest cons in history. The head of the Democatic National Committee announced last month that Fox News reporters will not be invited to upcoming debates. The 2020 campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination will formally begin next February. Nine months later voters will go to the polling stations to vote for which version of history will be told. You don't need Arthur Koestler to tell you it's going to be messy.


(1) The full report is here.

Thankless

With Thanksgiving just a few days away, it may seem like an inopportune occasion to express my ingratitude to all those people, most of whom don't know me, who found it necessary on Veterans Day to thank me for my service. But I cannot escape the feeling that circumstances are conspiring, even as I write this, against me. And that I may not have much more time to put down my true feelings on this most sensitive, for a disabled veteran serviceman, of subjects. But here goes.

When I first joined the Navy in May 1988, Ronald Reagan was president and we were on course to achieving a 600-ship fleet. The Navy had three recruit training centers, in Great Lakes, Illinois, San Diego, and Orlando, Florida, which is where I did my basic training.

That was thirty years ago, and a great deal has changed since then. For one thing, there is no longer a Soviet Union to oppose us, making such an enormous military obsolete. Two of the RTCs have long since closed. Even Desert Storm, which inspired so much pride in the military in 1990, ended with a resounding fart, and hundreds of thousands of servicemen who were considered vitally necessary just months before were handed their pink slips. It was called downsizing, but it was more like a fire sale. Recruiting quotas dropped to almost nothing for awhile.

Then 9/11 happened, and people were volunteering in droves again - principally to give them a license to go off and kill Arabs. And boy did we ever. Even conservative estimates counted more than 100,000 Iraqis killed after the 2003 invasion, but later studies count as many as a half million. We didn't kill them all (they were killing one another long before we showed up), but the invasion accelerated the rate of killings. 4,804 Americans and coalition forces were also killed.

Currently 0.4 % of Americans are serving in the military, but 7.3 percent of all living Americans have served in the military at some point in their lives (thank you FiveThirtyEight). Our last four presidents didn't serve in the military. Three of them dodged the draft to avoid service in Vietnam. Fewer people see the need to serve. Some are open about it. I was interviewed for a job in 2007 in which the young man interviewing me, upon learning of my 11 ½ years of service, told me to my face that he didn't see the point of serving one's country. Since I needed the job, I didn't put the stupid punk in his place.

I have been living in self-inflicted exile in the Philippines on a 30 % Veterans Disability rating for more than a decade. That's currently less than $500 a month. For awhile it was less than $400. Myself and a woman and her children. I never meant this to happen, but that it did has been an enduring miracle. That miracle has been brought down to earth. I was informed in August that I was being audited. Then I was informed that, since 2003, I was overpaid $37 a month the first year all the way up to $49 a month this year. Not a staggering amount, but it adds up to my owing the U.S. government more than $7,000. (My first thought was: this is how our president is trying to pay for his Big Tax Cut, by going after defenseless veterans like me.) How do I repay it? I wrote and sent them a letter explaining my total dependence on my monthly benefits check - not to persuade them to defer my debt, but to convince them that deducting a major part of it would precipitate the end of my life here among the tinkling palms. And by "the end" I don't mean a get-out-of-jail-free card.

So now, whenever I hear the phrase "Thank you for your service" I sometimes detect sincerity behind it. It includes thanks for the sacrifice - for not just fighting America's wars, but standing sentry duty all over the globe so that they could sleep safe and sound. And to them my response is a warm "You're welcome." Anytime. My pleasure. But most of the time what I hear in those words is someone who feels obliged to say it, that in saying it they are fulfilling some duty of their own. What I actually hear, behind the practiced, clichéd phrase, is "Thank you for relieving me of the duty of serving my country." And to that funny kind of gratitude I have to respond with "No thanks."

Death in 3-D

It was announced today in the news that a federal judge in the U.S. has blocked the online publication of the blueprints for a 3-D printed plastic gun. The publisher of the blueprints has argued that it is a First Amendment - free speech, - not a Second Amendment - the right to bear arms - issue, since the online publication is in the exercise of his freedom of speech. The NRA is, needless - heedless - to say, fighting the federal court decision, and President Trump has come out with a typically incoherent statement on the issue (the president's learning curve looks like Mount Everest).

The gun cult in the United States is taking on ever more ridiculous and dangerous proportions. Last month in Florida a black man shoved a white man to the ground during an altercation involving his girlfriend. The indignant white man then pulled out a gun - for which he had a permit! - and put one round in the black man's chest. The black man was pronounced dead at the hospital. The white man wasn't charged with any crime because of Florida's preposterous "stand your ground" (Trayvon Martin)  laws that make it perfectly legal for people to commit cold blooded murder if they feel threatened with death or "grievous bodily injury." In other words, if you're about to get your arse kicked in a fair fight, all you have to do to spare yourself the embarrassment is pull a gun on your opponent and shoot him to death. Why can't a boxer who is being pummeled by his opponent in the ring do the same? In the Bruce Willis movie, The Last Boy Scout, a football running back pulled out a pistol and shot the tacklers who stood in his way of a touchdown. Wouldn't his actions be considered legal in a "stand your ground" state?

If this scenario seems nightmarish to some people (or Home Sweet Home to others), the great Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel, in his memoir, My Last Sigh, describes, in his inimitably amusing style, the "gun cult" in Mexico that held sway throughout the 1940s and 1950s. I am fully aware of the fact that many Americans who advocate concealed carry laws, would like to see their country return to a Wild West environment in which everyone wears a sidearm and taking the law in their own hands becomes routine. I, however, refuse to accept the fanciful notion that my fellow citizens, who can't even be expected to behave themselves behind the wheel of their cars, can be relied on not to murder me by mistake.

Here is Buñuel's account: 

There is a peculiarly intimate relationship between Mexicans and their guns. One day I saw the director Chano Urueta on the set directing a scene with a Colt .45 in his belt. 

"You never know what might happen," he replied casually, when I asked him why he needed a gun in the studio. 

On another occasion, when the union demanded that the music for Ensayo de un crimen (The Criminal Life of Archibald de la Cruz) be taped, thirty musicians arrived at the studio one very hot day, and when they took off their jackets, fully three quarters of them were wearing guns in shoulder holsters. 

The writer Alfonso Reyes also told me about the time, in the early 1920s, that he went to see Vasconcelos, then the secretary of public education, for a meeting about Mexican traditions. 

"Except for you and me," Reyes told him, "everyone here seems to be wearing a gun!" 

"Speak for yourself," Vasconcelos replied calmly, opening his jacket to reveal a Colt .45. 

This "gun cult" in Mexico has innumerable adherents, including the great Diego Rivera, whom I remember taking out his pistol one day and idly sniping at passing trucks. There was also the director Emilio "Indio" Fernandez, who made Maria Candelaria and La perla, and who wound up in prison because of his addiction to the Colt .45. It seems that when he returned from the Cannes Festival, where one of his films had won the prize for best cinematography, he agreed to see some reporters in his villa in Mexico City. As they sat around talking about the ceremony, Fernandez suddenly began insisting that instead of the cinematography award, it had really been the prize for best direction. When the newspapermen protested, Fernandez leapt to his feet and shouted he'd show them the papers to prove it. The minute he left the room, one of the reporters suspected he'd gone to get not the papers, but a revolver ~ and all of them took to their heels just as Fernandez began firing from a second-story window. (One was even wounded in the chest.) 

The best story, however, was told to me by the painter Siqueiros. It occurred toward the end of the Mexican Revolution when two officers, old friends who'd been students together at the military academy but who'd fought on opposing sides, discovered that one of them was a prisoner and was to be shot by the other. (Only officers were executed; ordinary soldiers were pardoned if they agreed to shout "Viva" followed by the name of the winning general.) In the evening, the officer let his prisoner out of his cell so that they could have a drink together. The two men embraced, touched glasses, and burst into tears. They spent the evening reminiscing about old times and weeping over the pitiless circumstances that had appointed one to be the other's executioner. 

"Whoever could have imagined that one day I'd have to shoot you?" one said. 

"You must do your duty," replied the other. "There's nothing to be done about it." 

Overcome by the hideous irony of their situation, they became quite drunk. 

"Listen, my friend," the prisoner said at last. "Perhaps you might grant me a last wish? I want you, and only you, to be my executioner." 

Still seated at the table, his eyes full of tears, the victorious officer nodded, pulled out his gun, and shot him on the spot. 

This has been a very long digression, but in order not to leave you with the impression that Mexico is no more than an infinite series of gunshots, let me just say that the gun cult seems finally to be on the wane, particularly since the many arms factories have been closed. In theory, all guns must now be registered, although it's estimated that in Mexico City alone there are more than five hundred thousand guns which have somehow escaped licensing. Curiously, however, the truly horrific crime ~ like Landru's and Petiot's, mass murders, and butchers selling human flesh - seems far more the prerogative of highly industrialized countries than of Mexico. I know of only one example, which made the headlines a few years ago. Apparently, the prostitutes in a brothel somewhere in the northern part of the country began disappearing with alarming frequency. When the police finally decided to investigate, they discovered that the madam simply had them killed and buried in the garden when they ceased to be sufficiently profitable. In general, however, homicide in Mexico involves only a pistol shot; it doesn't include all the macabre details that often accompany murder in Western Europe or the United States.

How magnanimous of Buñuel to commend Mexicans for not being nearly as murderous as we Americans! The way he describes it, Mexicans sound so much more responsible as gun owners than Americans, and only shoot one another out of honor or economic facility, instead of from a fear of losing a fair fight or when they flip their lids. Speaking for myself, America increasingly seems like a nation of cowards or lunatics.

Sleeping Beauties

“Good day, mother,” said the Princess, “what are you doing?” “I am spinning,” answered the old woman, nodding her head. “What thing is that that twists round so briskly?” asked the maiden, and
taking the spindle into her hand she began to spin; but no sooner had she touched it than the evil prophecy was fulfilled, and she pricked her finger with it. In that very moment she fell back upon the bed that stood there, and lay in a deep sleep, and this sleep fell upon the whole castle.

(Grimm's Fairy Tales, "The Sleeping Beauty," 1812)



Yesterday - Friday here in the Far East - I spent most of the day in a state of amazement. Though I am dubious of Kim Jong Un's ultimate ambitions on the Korean Peninsula,(1) his very presence in the Korean Demilitarized Zone across a table from South Korean president Moon Jae-In, and walking side by side with him, planting a tree and even having what looked like a friendly conversation away from microphones, was an amazing spectacle. 

However unconvinced I am that Kim has turned over a new leaf, this has to be an immeasurably heartening moment for Koreans - in the south, that is. Who knows what the North Koreans have even heard about the meeting? I have written about the year I spent (1997-98) in what the U. S. Army calls Area One in South Korea, the area between Seoul and the DMZ, so my interest in what happens next is personal. Since everyone is speculating about possible conditions prior to actual negotiations for peace, I suggest only one: how about a Kim-free Korean peninsula?

But earlier on Friday, in the wee hours, I was equally amazed when I learned that Bill Cosby was found guilty on three counts of sexual assault in a court in Pennsylvania. I have not mentioned Cosby in the years since women started to come forward with accusations, most of them remarkably similar, that he drugged them and had sex with them when they were unconscious. Like most people, I believed the women's stories, and not simply because, eventually, there were so many of them. 

I am rapidly approaching the age of 60 (less than three weeks!), so I remember watching I Spy when I was a boy and listening to some of Cosby's many comedy albums. I didn't hear his Fat Albert stories until later. Then there was The Cosby Show from 1984  until 1992. It was easy to like Cosby by then - an innocuous wise old man. His chastisement of young black comics (like Eddie Murphy) who used foul language in their comedy was a little silly - especially now that we know about Cosby's dirty little secret. 

Phylicia Rashad, who played Cosby's wife in his hit TV series, made some callous statements after the first victims came forward with their stories. After trying to walk her remarks back, Rashad then insisted that "What I said is this is not about the women. This is about something else. This is about the obliteration of legacy." However much she may have tried to defend Cosby's "legacy," it's all over by now. 

Whatever it's called by psychoanalysts, it's clear that Cosby had a definite taste for performing sex acts with helpless, defenseless women who were unaware of what he was doing. There is an interesting precedent for Cosby's strange behavior from an unlikely source: a 1961 novella by Japanese author Yasunari Kawabata called The House of the Sleeping Beauties. It tells the story of an old gentleman named Eguchi who frequents an exclusive brothel that caters to old men who want to pay an unnamed sum of money to spend the night sleeping next to a naked young woman. The women with whom they spend the night are sufficiently drugged to make confidentiality certain. They're involvement in the transaction is voluntary, or, to use the legal term, "consensual." 

Eguchi is informed that sex with the young woman is forbidden. The first sentences of the novella make this prohibition explicit: "He was not to do anything in bad taste, the woman of the inn warned old Eguchi. He was not to put his finger into the mouth of the sleeping girl, or try anything else of that sort." But the simple fact that the girl is naked (beneath a quilt) arouses the expectation in the reader that some form of sexual contact is taking place. 

Given the key to the room, Eguchi smokes a cigarette outside the door. "He was a light sleeper, given to bad dreams. A poetess who had died young of cancer had said in one of her poems that for her, on sleepless nights, 'the night offers toads and black dogs and corpses of the drowned'. It was a line that Eguchi could not forget. Remembering it now, he wondered whether the girl asleep.. no, put to sleep.. in the next room might be like a corpse from a drowning. And he felt some hesitation about going to her. He had not heard how the girl had been put to sleep. She would in any case be in an unnatural stupor, not conscious of events around her, and so she might have the muddy, leaden skin of one racked by drugs. There might be dark circles under her eyes, her ribs might show through a dry, shriveled skin. Or she might be cold, bloated, puffy. She might be snoring slightly, her lips parted to show purplish gums. In his sixty-seven years old Eguchi had passed ugly nights with women. Indeed, the ugly nights were the hardest ones to forget. The ugliness had had to do not with the appearance of the women, but with their tragedies, their warped lives. He did not want to add another such episode, at his age, to the record. So ran his thoughts, on the edge of the adventure. But could there be anything uglier than an old man lying the night through beside a girl put to sleep, unwaking? Had he not come to this house seeking the ultimate in the ugliness of old age?"

Eguchi enters the room: "He locked the door, drew the curtain and looked down at the girl. She was not pretending. Her breathing was of the deepest sleep. He caught his breath. She was more beautiful than he had expected. And her beauty was not the only surprise. She was young too. She lay on her left side, her face toward him. He could not see her body, but she would not yet be twenty. It was as if another heart beat its wings in old Eguchi's chest." After he undresses, Eguchi slips under the quilt next to the girl. "She was not a living doll, for there could be no living dolls. But, so as not to shame an old man no longer a man, she had been made into a living toy. No, not a toy. For the old man, she could be life itself. Such life was, perhaps, life to be touched with confidence."   

Doing what he was told to do, Eguchi slips into reveries, and finally sleeps beside the unconscious girl. He dreams. Eventually he dreams of his mother, until the sight of blood oozing from a fish she had cooked in his dream wakes him: "Old Eguchi awoke with a groan. He shook his head, but he was still in a daze. He was facing the dark girl. Her body was cold. He started up. She was not breathing. He felt her breasts. There was no pulse. He leaped up. He staggered and fell. Trembling violently, he went into the next room. The call button was in the alcove. He heard footsteps below."

How long must it have taken Bill Cosby to work out the correct dosage of whatever he was using to drug his victims? And how far was he prepared to go to exercise his power, his control over his sexual encounters with all those women? Rape - non-consensual sexual contact with another person - is a kind of murder - the taking of something that was not his to be taken, that would otherwise not be given: another person's physical integrity. Perhaps Cosby is lucky that his peculiar sexual practices hadn't, after all the years he practiced them, resulted in charges of murder?


(1) Kim's statement that "New history begins now" sounds suspiciously like Pol Pot's declaration to the Cambodian people that it was "Year Zero." What he meant - in true Marxist fashion - was that the political struggle of history was over.