Weasel Droppings

"Things are going well" says General Pace, of the situation in Iraq, "though I wouldn't put a smiley face on it".
90% of Iraqi Citizens suffer from psychological problems, says a recent study (www.democracynow.org March 6). Psychological problems related to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
The braindrain of Iraq is appalling; Five psychiatrists left in the entire country, not a single child psychiatrist.
An Iraqi woman tries to get a visa to come to the US. Her entire family has been killed by US troops. She has no one left. Visa denied.
Why? Because she has no family ties in Iraq and no incentive to return. The old joke about the guy who kills his parents, then throws himself at the mercy of the court because "I'm an orphan" turned on it's head.
Oh God, I can't hear any more.
But there are reasons to smile yet: jobless benefits extended to Gulf Coast workers after a flurry of protest and lobbying by progressive groups.
And Anj has a job. I'm so happy about this; I no longer have to worry about him losing that wonderful apt in Greenwich Village!
Pete is still clean and sober and actually able to converse rationally and without rancor with me which is so refreshing, almost unimagineable just a short time ago. He's depressed about his life and where he is at almost 32 years of age. Living at home, working a shitty job. He's talking about going back to school, knowing that he will be working shitty jobs the rest of his life if he does not.
He worries that I "never go out of the house".
I try to explain that I love looking out over the water and seeing the flotillas of ducks diving for the herring, so plentiful now, despite the herring boats that rape the fish population. They don't want the fish; they want the roe only, to sell to the Japanese.
Millions it seems, of seagulls noisily diving for the fish, screaming as they descend on the water. I love it. Some of my neighbors hate it because it IS noisy; but being irritated by it is inexplicable to me.
What I find irritating is driving on the freeways in the pouring rain, with SUVs trying to butt in ahead of you, so many near misses.
I work double shifts twice a week and am exhausted when I get home. The job is draining. It's extremely noisy there, the patients are frequently abusive and nasty. We have become inurred to this and don't even hear it much of the time.
But it has a deleterious effect. It is manifest in my coworkers who are disengaged to the point where they don't give a shit about anything that goes on there. This detachment can be dangerous in a locked psychiatric unit, filled with the kind of patients that only the City will provide care for, the private hospitals reject them. They are violent, they are uninsured.
I will now go back to reading one of the most interesting books I've ever read: Valley of the Assasins by Freya Stark, a female explorer in the early part of the century.
First explorer to ever lay eyes on The Valley of the Assasins, a remote part of Iran where radical fundamentalist Moslems were exiled because nobody in the general poulation could tolerate them. The word "hashish" comes from the the name of this sect: The Assasins.
She drew the first ever maps of remote areas in Iran for the British Military. What a gal.