Oil Hearings: Somebody Spoke And I Went Into A Dream

Although reverie is much too pleasant and lighthearted a word for it, I fell into one of those strange drifts of thought where anything can happen, where fantasy and logic meld effortlessly.

In the crazy daydream, in my arms I carried a few quarts of motor oil in garishly-colored plastic bottles when suddenly I was gripped by an uncontrollable, really an unconscious, impulse to twist off the caps and begin pouring it (take your pick):

1. into Bethesda Fountain in Central Park,
2. over the Channel Gardens that lead to the statue of Prometheus where the famous Christmas tree is sited in Rockefeller Center,
3. into the Hudson River,
4. over the floor of Grand Central's main concourse,
5. all over Fashion Avenue's "Walk of Fame,"
6. onto a Rembrandt in the Metropolitan Museum, or maybe one of the Egyptian sarcophagi, etc., and,
7. for good measure, I found a few frogs sitting in the Lake in Central Park and gave them a good dose of the poisonous goo.

Maybe a quart or two for each prime location. Places that represent the "ecology" of the great city. Not a lot of oil, mind you. Let's say two gallons total would do the trick.

I wondered what would happen to me. Certainly I would be arrested. Most likely, if the authorities didn't have me committed, I would do jail time, be forced to make restitution (in the case of the Rembrandt probably community service unto the seventh generation). Lord knows what the papers would make of my actions.

It's likely I wouldn't be brought up before a Congressional panel wearing a three-thousand-dollar suit while I blamed my subcontractors, associates, friends, neighbors and the little boy who lived down the lane. I certainly wouldn't be flying in and out of Washington on a private jet. I wouldn't get no stinkin' $200 lunch out of my anti-social behavior.

I'd be branded an outlaw. A lunatic. A miscreant. A sociopath. A scarlet O for oil would be blazed into my skin.

I'd be fined, jailed, shamed, and pretty much enjoined to keep my grubby hands off any and all oil products for the rest of my pathetic life.

We increasingly live in a two-tiered society. Everyone knows it. The Tea Parties in their off-kilter way express it. The divisions in American society are palpable and frightening. Which side of the divide will our children and grandchildren end up on?

To get off scot-free when dousing the world with oil, it's wiser to spill 200,000-plus gallons a day than just a gallon or two. Then you're a somebody. Then you'd make a multimillion dollar salary and be among those untouchable by the real law.

You remember that: the law of crime and punishment, not crime and lashes with a wet noodle.

No clean environment, no future. No justice, no peace.

Nuremberg, Eichmann and Terror Trials Today

There can be no greater argument for holding the imminent terror trials in a fair, transparent setting than the two photographs in this posting, the top from Nuremberg, below from Jerusalem.

These barbarous men, instruments of evil during the Nazi era, were responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of people and property destruction the likes of which the world had never known, and has not known since. Many of these deaths were not part of the so-called normal course of war, but systematic terrorist acts against helpless civilians.

Yet, in front of the whole world, they were put on trial, evidence was brought, weighed, deliberated upon, and sentences passed. It would have been easier to summarily shoot these fiends, but then billions of eyes would never have seen, billions of ears would never have heard of the scale and scope of their monstrousness.

I don't argue for holding the contemporary terror trials in either civilian or military courts, nor do I argue for lower Manhattan versus a secure military base. The cost of the Manhattan scenario seems repellently high, on the order of $1 billion+.

Regardless of venue, I do argue for the same complete transparency that Nuremberg and the Eichmann trials gave civilization, two complicated acts of juristic courage that will color history forever.

The terror trials should be wide open to the press from all corners as were the World War II trials: 250 journalist covered Nuremberg, 500 Eichmann's.

Eichmann's was the first war crimes trial to be treated to full television coverage. For those of us old enough to remember, he was the Man in the Glass Booth, flickering across the airwaves, a sinister manifestation of a past we knew only in legend.

From where does the argument come to make Khalid Sheikh Mohammad and his devilish brethren "Men in Concrete Bunkers?" From the right wing, naturally.

Senator Lindsey Graham, an extremist Republican who wants the trials to be held away from the eyes of journalists, said disingenuously today: "These Al Qaeda terrorists are not common criminals." Thank you for that sunning insight, Mr. Graham.

In comparison to Goering, Hess, Ribbentrop, Speer, Neurath, Fritzsche, Bormann, Eichmann and the rest of the devil's disciples?The radical Sheikh is a two-bit murderer who should at least get a clean undershirt for the trial.

In a mere 10 months, the Nuremberg trials dealt with six years of war crimes and 21 accused. For all the complaints at the time of "victors' justic," the trial was astonishingly fair to the accused, with three being acquitted. Eichmann's trial was short, as well, although appeals put off his death sentence for a year after the trial.

Keep the trials open, well-covered by all members of the press around the planet, hold dear to our system of openness and fairness. Let the Republican radicals understand that vengeance and justice are two distinct ideas, let the world know that proper evidence has been brought and serious deliberation been made in an open society.