Yeah — and Another Thing!

The Tahrir is settled nicely into a routine at the marina in Agios Nikolaos, Greece. Our boat dog, Ringo, barks at the Coast Guard dog, Drago, but otherwise we’re on cordial terms with the handsome and polite young men who are still doing 12-hour shifts, just aft of us, aboard their blue and orange patrol vessel. They’re making sure that we don’t pull a fast one.

But a fast one, at this point, is part of the fading romance. We are literally and figuratively all tied up.

The Tahririans themselves are now “in the wild”, however, and are making trouble for Israel’s lunatic government in all sorts of unexpected places. Since this is likely to be my last posting on this adventure for at least a few months, I’m going to salt it with references to their various adventures in the hope that you will follow them at least part of the way.

Sticking with the nautical theme, one of my favorite operations in Gaza had some news. Civil Peace Service Gaza (CPS Gaza) began, a few days ago, to operate a small boat to monitor the attacks made by the Israeli Navy on fishing boats. Under the rest of the world’s maritime law, fisherman can exploit their “exclusive economic zone” to a limit of 200 nautical miles. Under the authority of the Israeli Government, Palestinians in Gaza can do so to a limit of about two miles.

So CPS Gaza thought it would be a good idea to accompany the fishermen as a witness to the attacks. On the second day of the operation, the Israeli Navy obliged them with a demonstration. While bullets are reserved for use against fishermen (several have been shot) the CPS Gaza boat was attacked with a water canon. Video was on the Internet within several hours, eliminating any hope that the fishing embargo was some invented complaint of the Palestinian government in Gaza.

CPS Gaza crew attacked by Israeli warship
http://www.cpsgaza.org/2011/07/cps-gaza-crew-attacked-by-israeli.html

Naturally, this isn’t about the fish. There are massive reserves of natural gas under the parts of the Med that belong, respectively to Gaza, Israel and Lebanon. Israel and Lebanon can argue about this at the UN. Not Palestine. Not yet. So Gaza will remain, for the time being, a land sadly lacking in millionaires.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=11680

But Ethan Bonner, of the New York Times, reassures us that things are OK in Gaza. The Times has a more musical “accentuate-the-positive” editorial stance, and Bonner is the man for the job. Point out that Gaza is a prison and he responds that the prisoners are allowed to farm.

They can’t farm on one third of the “unoccupied territory” in Gaza because that’s too close to what the Israelis regard as their border. Israeli soldiers shoot them when they try that.

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=56409

But they do have a farm and can now contemplate “food independence”, Bonner tells us. This is another way of saying that we resent giving them food aid — who wouldn’t when we have homeless of our own to feed? — but we’re not ready to let them handle the problem for themselves by exporting or importing like any other place in the world … well, excepting, of course, its prisons.

David Samel takes a more precise view in his praise of the benefits of prison obedience. He suggest that if it’s working so well in Gaza, that Israelis themselves might give it a go. His detailed prescription is here:

An open letter to Israeli boycott activists
http://mondoweiss.net/2011/07/an-open-letter-to-israeli-boycott-activists.html

Two of our Tahririans, Sylvia Hale and Vivienne Porzsolt, left the boat a couple of days ago, like so many others who had to return to their day jobs. But at Athens Airport, Sylvia and Vivienne took a right turn and ended up at Ben Gurion Airport. They were curious to know whether it was true that Israeli immigration does not knowingly allow foreign visitors to travel to the Occupied Territories. Two days in jail dispelled any doubts.

Sylvia and Vivienne are not only unruly Tahririans, but Australians as well. Rather than be passively deported like more than a 100 other “Flytilla” activists, the two elderly travelers decided to appeal their deportation order. And they won. Their victory suddenly opens up a new legal access point for the thousands of Palestinians who are denied entry to the places where they live and work.

The legal news is here:

http://welcometopalestinenews.blogspot.com/2011/07/press-release-unprecedented-court.html

Somewhere in Egypt, Miles Howe makes his way toward Gaza carrying his supply of Nova Scotia honey. We haven’t heard from him for four days now. Maybe he will pop up at Heathrow for a flight home. Maybe he is the sixth man in this news story:

http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=405081

But my bet is that he will show up on the north side of the border at Rafah. Miles is talented and resourceful, and has touch of irrationality that has served him well. He is, after all, a one-person trade mission with the blessing of the Nova Scotia government. He’s promoting trade between the Maritime Province and the Maritime Prison. If he can’t argue his way through the Egyptian checkpoints, or slide through a tunnel, he will at least prove to his readers’ satisfaction that no, the border between Gaza and Egypt is not open.

You can read his last post for the Halifax Media Co-op.
http://halifax.mediacoop.ca/photo/tahrir-tahrir/7747

So where are Karen and I? We are on the boat, helping keep it tidy for next time. We have a few days left before we leave for London to visit Simon. Maybe there, away from the daily news, I’ll have time to assess how far we got in this round.

In the meantime, I’ll leave it to other pundits. They claim the Israeli government of Bibi Netanyahu is firmly in place and pressing on with its expansionary agenda while the anti-BDS law, which allows anyone to shut down speech without even showing damages, is prompting serious political upheavals in Israel, and perhaps as important, among Americans who are beginning to doubt their faith in the Zionist project.

http://972mag.com/boycott2325-7132011/

Israel has abandoned its 9.6 billion dollar trading partner, Turkey, for the worthless economy of Greece. That’s a little bit like Canada closing the border to the United States so that we can trade with … Greece.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-07-10/deepening-israel-greece-ties-keeps-gaza-bound-flotilla-anchored.html

Greece has traded its once famous national independence for an IMF bailout and some cheap military supplies and training. This is the conclusion of a trusted Israeli historian, Benny Morris. You’ll note that in the list he presents of weapons used by the passengers of the Mavi Marmara, he leaves out slingshots. There’s something in the Israeli mind that avoids talk the word “slingshot”.

http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/greece-sides-israel-5579

Bibi’s trusted Likud partner Avigdor Lieberman struts back onto the Israeli political stage with yet more fascist legislation for the Middle Easts only former democracy,

http://972mag.com/sc3/

The Quartet — trusted custodians of the Peace Process — get’s together for a smiley-graph but otherwise has nothing to say.

http://articles.cnn.com/2011-07-12/world/middle.east.quartet_1_mideast-quartet-palestinians-israelis?_s=PM:WORLD

Maybe this Rip VanWinkle of Middle Eastern politics will suddenly wake up in September to a world unlike the one in which he fell asleep.

Finally, two of the Tahririans have jumped ship. Stephan Corriveau and Amira Hass are now aboard another vessel. After helping the Tahrir steering committee keep the passengers and the boat safe from attack by the Greek Coast Guard, Stephan has managed to find a place on another boat. Amira, the famous Israeli correspondent for Ha’aretz, is there with him. But we’re not sure where “there” is. The French boat, “Le Dignit?? Al Karama”, which might count them among its crew, is missing. If you are being watched by the Coast Guard, that’s not a bad place to be.

Well, for a time. Sooner or later they will succeed in leaving Greek waters (it takes a little longer in Greece that it would in Gaza), and will be met by the Israeli Navy. Now, if you were aboard the only ship that succeeded in breaking away from the Greek maritime embargo, and if you were a ring-leader in the Canadian attempt to do the same, and if several of the people aboard your boat had a previous reputation for sailing to Gaza, and if you were not a famous Israeli journalist, then you might expect a beating. That’s where Stephen is now. Worse still, everyone else aboard the boat is French — they argue and smoke constantly.

You may be interested in their progress. All I can recommend are the occasional tweets from @BateauGazaFr. A lack of tweets can have several meanings.

As shore support for the Canada Boat to Gaza, the hardest task I’ve had so far, has been staying awake during an afternoon session of a provincial courthouse in Crete. Our day in court did follow a sleepless couple of days of planned escape and an all-nighter on the shipping pier. But it was the hot room and my almost total incomprehension of Greek that made it barely possible to keep my eyelids up.

The room was built early in the 20th century. The height of its walls reduced by the two-tone paint job, grey-green on the bottom and pale green on top. It might have looked trim in 1940-something, but a rash of neglected paint flakes suggests the state of the economy and the general disregard for the dignity of the judiciary. The only mark of respect in the room was an oil painting of Jesus Christ, suspended on the cross and wrapped from the waist down so as not to offend the sensibilities of a pre-war Cretan.

We all looked as if we were doing this for the fist time, but especially the police who wanted to consult each other on every direction given to the large audience. I suppose sessions of a provincial court don’t normally draw a crowd. Waves of chatter waxed and waned as we waited. First an hour, then another. The upright wooden benches were designed to get us in an out as quickly as possible, but we had all seen worse. By the second hour, we had begun to sag. T-shirts were damp, friends fanned each other languidly, we shifted on the bench trying to avoid the angles. Curiosity in our new and slightly threatening surroundings gave way to boredom. We examined the faces of the policemen and coast guardsmen who had come to testify. They were almost our comrades by now, but we were uncertain what they would say. One of them helpfully used his bottled water to revive the sponge in a tiny bowl that the persecutor would use for dampening her fingers while she managed the paperwork.

Then we all stood. Finally the judge, dressed in a white business suit, her hair pulled back, arrived. The prosecutor, in a black jackets and white blouse, joined her on the bench. Our lawyers sat at a side-facing bench. The first witness, our professional captain, was called. He stood at a small podium with his back to us, facing the judge above him. Since we had fired him just before our departure, there couldn’t have been much to say, but the judge — not the prosecutor — continued to question him for almost 30 minutes. George’s relationship to the committee, his experience, his expectations about what we intended, were all examined in detail. The prosecutor, sitting next to the judge on the bench, asked a couple of softball questions and George was dismissed. Next was one of the coast guardsmen who, with some reluctance, it seemed, provided a few inconsequential details about the escapade. He was followed by a colleague who seemed even less interested in locking anyone up.

Sandra Ruch, a member of the Canada Boat to Gaza Steering Committee, was called. An interpreter, with a very small voice, stood beside Sandra so the audience gathered in the front benches.

Since our lawyers had consulted the prosecutors in advance I believe the line of arguments represented a consensus. Sandra testified that our departure from the marina pier was a kind of mistake — a stunt intended for the local press who were invited to the party. We were thanking the town for its frank support of our goals. It was impossible, she testified, to know who was driving the boat, which, since I was standing beside her as it pulled out, I can assure you is true.

When the judge finished, the prosecutor took her turn. It was brief. Then our two famous kayakers were called, one after the other. Michael was firm but deferential. He and Soha Kneen were playing around. That much was true. He didn’t have much experience in kayaks. Still true. He didn’t know whether the Coast Guard vessel wanted to leave in forward in reverse. True too. Not even the coast skipper knew that for sure. Soha kept it brief. We were going to Gaza, but not yet. It seemed like a good time to rent a kayak.

Our lawyers sounded off, one after the other. This is when we began to hear the words Gaza and Israel and Boat. The judge and prosecutor nodded. The Island of Crete seems to have little respect for the government in Athens and even less for the government in Jerusalem.

Cretans are ambivalent about a gas liquidation plant being proposed for the island, but Greece as a whole is enthusiastic. Its worth a lot of dough. So getting it built and connecting it to the pipeline is a government priority. Bibi Netanyahu has promised to help George Papandreou, at least in part, because Israel has a lot of offshore gas and is attempting to ensure that they will have their own and Gaza’s too.

So Bibi has managed to halt the flotilla in Greek ports by destroying an economic and political relationship with Turkey, a country whose economy is 960 billion and growing, for a relationship with a country whose economy is in shambles. Israel, which is less than a quarter the economic size of Turkey, and even smaller than Greece, has made its choice purely, it seems, to prevent medicine from arriving in the port of Gaza. Bibi will remain triumphant with his talk of missiles, though the Mossad knows better, while Israeli business people run the numbers. Until then, Bibi Netanyahu, we do it all for you.

The sentence? A fine the size of our dinner, Greek Salad.

The cast was in place. The activists in their colorful three-week-old costumes, the Greek Coast Guard in snappy blue uniforms with gun holsters on the thigh, a contingent of the Greek Army carrying their M-16s and wearing that natty camo gear and flack jackets. They brought their SUVs as well and scattered them around. We were all assembled on the concrete pier that had become our neighborhood, a neighborhood that included the various British, French and Australian yachting people who seemed to be in a continual state of languid amusement.

I had the honor of taking the first scene. I hadn’t read the script, but I was told that, during the afternoon’s safety drill for the activists, I would not … be needed … on the … boat. OK. Got it. I stood by the dock lines and waited for the twin Caterpillar 3414s to turn over. Then I slipped the bowlines off the bollards, and sauntered back to hand the stern lines to Peter Wolter, who, as an ex-German Naval office, knew how to get the 2-inch lines off the cleat. By this time, the boat was moving aft. The Coast Guard vessel, which had been tucked into the corner of the pier right next to us — for just such an eventuality — was beginning to collect blue and camo uniforms the way a a pot of honey collects wasps.

Near the bow of the Coast Guard boat were two rented beach kayaks. One carried Soha Kneen, from Ottawa, and the other, the Australian Michael Coleman. Michael was able to reach the anchor of the patrol vessel — just to steady himself — and they were both far enough under the bow that the captain could not be made aware of them by the frantic crewmen buzzing about the deck. The dock-lines were causing trouble too — I was standing on one of them — so the patrol vessel attempted to back and shunt, jamming the gears, while Michael and Soha began to sashay their kayaks in front of it. The only effective weapons against kayaks, short of running them over, seemed to be the two-foot spherical fenders, which one of the crewmen began to wield, wrecking-ball style, but only after I had helped him to get it untied from the life-lines. I’m so bad at knots, but I’m persistent.

The Tahrir, given a few minutes of freedom, was now in forward gear and gathering speed toward the harbor gap. The army personnel who were not able to get aboard were now leaping into their SUVs, but getting their M-16s caught in the doors. The patrol vessel was still dancing with kayaks, but now several yards off the pier. And the chase began.

The Tahrir is a former troop ferry, retired to the tourist trade, then sold to Canada Boat to Gaza. She’s able, but not built for speed. At about 80 feet, she can manage 15 or 16 knots in distress, but is happier at 10. Of course, it took the Coast Guard only minutes to catch up. Their 60-foot, Norwegian patrol vessel can shake its ass like a runabout.

After only ten minutes of chase and a mile or two of open sea, the Coast Guard faced their next problem: what to do with the Tahrir. The water canon seemed like a good idea until they opened the valves and soaked themselves like kids at a water park. No one ever told them, in their Coast Guard training, not to piss into the wind.

The first ones to actually threaten the Tahrir’s progress toward international waters were two machine gunners in a big Zodiac. They roared up along-side and, despite bouncing off the Tahrir a couple of times, were able to scramble aboard. Once they made themselves part of the the tour, the Tahrir came to a halt. There were some sharp words exchanged but they took over the bridge in pretty short order.

However, a chorus line of elderly activists climbed up on the bench that runs across the front of the wheelhouse and placed their butts comfortably against the windows. And the mustachioed army officer, who they soon named “Super Mario”, had even bigger problems than a line of large butts blocking his forward vision; it seemed as if the throttle-transmission control — a very large version of the device that most of us have seen on any standard recreational power boat — was not responding, at least not in the expected way. When Super Mario pushed forward the vessel went aft. When he pushed aft, it went forward, but only sometimes. When it wasn’t responding in reverse, it responded differently for each of the twin engines, skewing the Tahrir about in random directions.

Super Mario may never know that our very own engine gremlin, Kevin Neish, who has spent a career as a diesel mechanic, was in the engine room. He had uncoupled the transmission and throttle links and was watching for what the bridge seemed to want. Then he decided what he wanted, and did that. Of course, all of this unpredictable behavior made it dangerous for the patrol vessel, which stood off several yards in bewilderment while the blue-jackets shouted at each other on their phones.

In the end, the activists had to pay for their fun. We all ended up spending a rocky night tied against the shipping dock while the police, Coast Guard, army, harbor masters and, I’ll bet, the Minister of Civil Defense in Athens, decided what to do with us. Naturally, civil servants like to have someone specific to blame because the next step is into court. A perfect person to blame would, of course, be the person in charge of the Tahrir when the crime was committed. Oddly, just before I cast off the dock lines at the beginning of this episode, our professional captain and two paid crew-members, were fired. When the authorities demanded to know who was at the helm, at least 30 of the activists offered their guilty souls. (In fact, the ship was on auto-pilot at the moment of apprehension. It was “Mr. Northstar” who should have been jailed.)

Instead, three of us were put in the clinker. Sandra Ruch, since she represents the owners of the vessel, as well as Soha Kneen and Michael Coleman, because they “Kayaked” the Coast Guard.

In this tourist town with a strong leftist tradition, we were soon joined on the dock by hundreds of the curious and sympathetic. We learned that here on Crete, the Communist Party, are the people who will bring you blankets and stay up all night to make sure you are not arrested by the State.

The night wore on through various incarnations of bureaucratic theater of the absurd. With no power or light but plenty of rock and roll against the dock, no one could have slept, but at dawn, they were up again and on their feet. It took more than a night and a day, but in the end, with our lawyers aboard, the Greek authorities decided that having a scruffy boatload of activists on the dock that as built for Mediterranean package-tour cruise ships was not good for business. They soon relented and moved us back to more comfortable quarters in the marina.

Some of the Coast Guard and even a couple of the army personnel came aboard to see whether they were going to make it into the papers. Of course, Miles Howe had caught them in many flattering and unflattering poses. They crowded around his camera to review the takes, stopping him every few frames to pick out a good shot — one that their girlfriends would appreciate. “That one. There. Can you put that in my email? Please?” asked a young coast guardsman who had been caught in an heroic pose against the Palestinian flag fluttering at our bow.

“No”, Miles would reply, “You stopped our boat. You don’t get any pictures until you let all my friends go free.” This was followed by dejected and apologetic looks. No one’s heart is in this, but they too are trapped by an order from the Greek Minister of Civil Defense that prohibits all vessels of any flag that set a course for Gaza from leaving a Greek port. There are a lot of lawyers — maritime, shipping, civil and criminal — who will have a lot to say about that, but not for a while yet.

In the meantime, “OK,” says Miles, “If you bring me a gyro, you can have your pictures.” Later, I spotted Miles on the fore-deck enjoying his dinner.

Soha Kneen, the kayaker, has become a hashtag on Twitter. You can follow her as @SmithSofia. You can find more about the Tahrir’s departure and capture in just about any major newspaper in the world. But I’d like to recommend Miles Howe’s account at http://halifax.mediacoop.ca/boat_to_gaza. We are also accompanied by the famous Israeli journalist, Amira Hass who has insisted on camping out with us. Amira writes for Haaretz (Haaretz.com). Jesse Rissen Rosenfeld, writing for Toronto’s NOW Magazine, took a similar stance and lent his moral support. Another happy camper, Jim Rankin has been filing features and blog posts for the always fair-minded Toronto Star. The CBC’s Alexandra Szacka stayed with us right up to arrest with her camera man Alexey Sergeev. Peter Wolter, representing the German paper Junge Welt, helped cast off the lines and may actually … well I shouldn’t say more. Jase Tanner and Santiago Bertolino have miles of video in the box and are still shooting. Kenan Gurbuz covered us for the Turkish press, Hassan Ghani and Adam Apostol held out through day 16 when their Press.TV producer pulled them back to London. Daria Aslamova, a notable Russian journalist — look up her name — added a certain ‘je ne sais quoi’ to the press corps. In fact, you could say that the only interested news organizations that were not allowed to send a correspondent were Palestinian.

Happy Fourth of July! We celebrate you — even those of us who are Americans by enthusiasm only. The King’s attempt to bring you to heel failed, and you escaped the noose for yourselves and for us. You got your representation for taxation and you did it by breaking the law, by dumping some goods in the port.

While you grill your burgers and contemplate your dawn’s early light, spend a moment thinking about your compatriot law breakers who have been rounded up in Athens. Their hunger strike is “illegal”. Their boat cruise is “illegal”, their threat to the blockade of Gaza is “illegal”.

You may feel that they represent the minor edge of sensitivity to human rights, and that maybe they could use a little cooling down, that the situation is complicated and delicate — wiser heads must be allowed to manage the situation, for our protection the theirs.

That’s an argument I’ve heard and the only answer I have is that, when the colonies declared independence, it was far from a unanimous decision. The Rebels, too, could have used a little cooling down. They were playing a dangerous game. And the army led by Washington was a long shot. The Americans had a little foreign intervention by some unruly French and a little domestic intervention too by people who would eventually be called Native Americans for their trouble. But there were many colonists, far more than a simple majority, who wanted well enough left alone.

In other words it was messy. There were principles and hot-heads. Hangers-on and thrill-seekers. Opponents and obstructionists. The fearful and the silent. And no one knew the outcome and there were a thousand possible results. But there was only one compelling logic — the logic of a new world were people must be equal under the law.

Today, the most sacred day of equality under the law, I am in a port in Greece under the watchful eye of the Greek Coast Guard. They are legitimate agents of an elected government that, over the last few weeks, has sold its independence to the bank. It was able to make the sale by the grace of the Israeli Government whose leader is now trumpeting his ability to reign in the rebels. He’ll be using this power to continue the expansion of his domain and diminish the rights and opportunities of his subjects — both the Israelis who elected him and Palestinians who did not.

What’s next? The people, equipped with airline tickets to Ben Gurion airport, are now arriving there and, in a new-found frankness, declaring to immigration authorities that they are traveling to the West Bank. Until now, if you were actually traveling to the occupied West Bank, you had to pretend for Israeli Immigration that you were not, unless you were prepared to beg with Israel’s IDF border control at the Allenby Bridge from Jordan. Either way, you’re supposed to lie or beg to meet a Palestinian. Unless, of course, the Palestinian lives in Gaza. In that case, you’re supposed to just go away.

So Ben Gurion is now filling up pretty quickly. It may get a little messy. It’s hot. There may be some arguments. Someone may dump a box of tea over the side.

We have arrived in Gaza. Yet our vessel, the Tahrir, is tethered to the pier in Agios Nikolaos, Greece. We are in the pleasant company of a stable of yachts from various parts of the other world.

I chat with the Yachtsmen and Yachtswomen. They feel right at home with someone who knows the difference between a French Omni Alubat and an old Roberts ketch. They ask me to explain Gaza because our Tahrir, a 25-metre day ferry, is draped now in “Free Gaza” banners.

It turns out, of course, that they already know. They are people of the world, after all, privileged wanderers, like us. But they love the details.

One asks, “Do you mean to say that you’ve had your papers done up for a week and the Greeks are blocking you in the harbor just because you might piss off the Israelis?”

“Yes.” I am now answering in the briefest way I can.

“Well that’s bloody strange. I mean when we’re ready to haul up, we just tell them that the slip is free and we fuck off. Why would he care where you go?”

As usual, the why is more difficult than the what. And that’s why I make the exaggerated claim that we are all in Gaza now. Being in a state of statelessness means always having to say you are sorry. You are never allowed to say “but this is the law that the people have elected you to uphold.”

The law of Greece, like the law of any modern nation that depends for it’s life on shipping and tourism, is that foreign vessels are welcomed into its ports and bid farewell when they leave. There are regulations. The Greeks must know who you are and whether your vessel is in sound condition lest it sink and inflict undue cost on the nation’s rescue services.

But not here and not now. Greece, famously a member of the EU, has a Minister of Civil Protection who has invented an instruction to the port authorities. The instruction is nonsense to anyone who has read a legal document (for example, the time period is specified for one day — the day of issue, and nowhere else defined), but it compels the port authority to find a regulation, any regulation, that could, in an alternate universe, be in doubt.

At the same time, it makes sense. The Minister is part of a government that needs every nation’s help to survive. Not the country — it will get along fine — but the government of the country. It’s in trouble for all the usual reasons. You can read elsewhere who is intervening on the Greek Government’s behalf and what the reasons might be. But there is a logic, and here it is:

No one in power wants to stop the imprisonment of people who live on that narrowest of strips, Gaza. Yet few in power want to support it. And while we do nothing, the million and a half of us continue to disappear as citizens of a world of humans. Instead, we are the animal humans of a powerful nation. Sometimes Palestinians in Gaza are fed and sometimes they are not. Sometimes they are bombed and sometimes they are just shot. They can snarl and bite, or they can be cowed and attractive. But they can never leave the farm.

Here in Agios Nikolaos, we are getting a small taste of what that will feel like. This is an easy way for the powerful to manage the world and it may be coming to a barnyard near you.

When Canada was building railways and highways, if you could speak English and peer through a surveyor’s level, you had a job. No matter that your arithmetic was less than reliable — you’d get through the winter.

When most of us were doing well in the 1970s and busy reading consumer magazines on the general subject of “How to be rich,” a young man could be a consumer magazine editor with much less than a degree in literature. You could pay the rent in the big city.

Just in time, computers began to appear under our office desks and they demanded software. If you could find your way around a database query, you could make enough to fly your family to Europe.

Recently, I had begun to think that I might be a little old for the next big thing. But no. There’s another boon-doggle, and it’s here in the Med.

Business is good for terrorists, and a willingness to work is all you need. National governments are so desperate for terrorists they’ll take just about anybody. This is going to be bigger than Mary Kay Cosmetics.

Most of us are in our sixties. We don’t yet need help crossing the street, unless we’ve forgotten our sunglasses. We’re still young enough to paint a banner and drive a boat. Our talents for organizing are … well let’s just say that we can create chaos all by ourselves, and at a moment’s notice just by calling a meeting. And we’ve learned that if you keep yabbering “human rights, human rights” you’ve got the job.

But, I really need the work, so I’m going the extra mile. I hang around the street, in clear view of the recruiters, with a young man named Mohammed. He’s better looking than Omar Sharif, and he has that threatening confidence that only an X-ray technician can project. We make a formidable pair, as long as I don’t let my stomach slump.

I wear those military-style pants with pockets on the thigh because, otherwise, I can never get to my cell phone before it gives up on me. Yes, my number will remain secret. And yours too. That is, until an anti-Terrorist mugs me and runs off with it. That’s already happened to the less vigilant among us. They made the mistake of leaving their phones in their beach bags. Now they’re off the pay-roll. I’m not going to make that mistake.

The beard helps too. Three days of growth is about right, and that’s my usual when I’m not traveling on business.

It looked a little dodgy yesterday, when a minister of defense instructed us to use dangerous chemicals. My black baseball cap and my lethal mechanical pencil were suddenly under par. Not one to give up, I found a bottle of skunky beer — no one can stand that chemical — but it was hard to carry around. Then I realized that my sun-screen contains Paba, which is banned in all European countries. It causes cancer. I’m in.

Not until Darth Vader popularized the calming effects of deep breathing was better use made of the non-speaking sound track. Up until that moment, the best breathers were Jacques Cousteau and his faithful companion Albert Falco. Lloyd Bridges, as Mike Nelson, in Sea Hunt, came close, but his voice-overs were in Californian, while Jacques narrated the breathing in a nicely accented French, interspersed among long underwater moments of sswiiffff-nik-rubblerubblerubble-sswiiffff-nik …

That’s how it would have sounded the other day, under the flat belly of the Swedish-Norwegian-Greek ship in Piraeus Harbor. I wonder whether it would have happened at night. Darkness is helpful when a couple of pals are out for a swim in a busy harbor, but the cutting torch throws quite a glow.

It takes a few minutes to cut through a propeller shaft, even when you have the very best Broco Tactical Exothermic cutting rods (burning in excess of 10,000 degrees — “Fahrenheit” of course, because they’re made in Rancho Cucamonga, California, down the road from the beach where Mike Nelson used to dive). They would have used the Broco Military and Tactical Breaching Torch Kit PC/TACMOD1, because it’s … well it’s just so good. It’s ultra-lightweight (it doesn’t matter what that it in pounds), and designed for “man-carried operation” above or under the surface.

Now, if you were casting this scene, you’d want to use a blond woman to act the man who carries the torch — she’d have a profile in a rubber suit and her eyes would just yearn for freedom. And that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? Freedom!

Freedom from all of that legal stuff that, otherwise, would land you in court for cutting someone’s propeller shaft. Freedom from the international laws of the sea that tell you to leave civilians alone unless they commit a crime. Freedom to be the tough cop who adjusts her sunglasses and pulls out her weapon. Then kills all the bad people who are not you.

One of the precepts of the our project is that it is normal for a small country with a harbor to welcome a vessel from another country. This is despite the fact that there are criminals who live in this country who may be planning to cause some death. I like Mexico as an example, but Ireland in the 1970s would also do. In both cases, large numbers of people are, and were killed as the result of armed gangs getting their hands on powerful weapons shipped over their borders.

We seem generally to agree on how these problems are best resolved, though we’re spectacularly bad at living up to our convictions. But in neither case would we have suggested placing the civilians under occupation and abrogating their human rights for 20 years.

Similarly, it was normal for four students to have lunch together at the local Woolworth’s store in Greensboro North Carolina in 1960. That lunch counter is now preserved as a Museum piece, and it reminds me that only 12 years after Woolworth’s prevented their Black customers from buying lunch, I went to work for the same company in Toronto, oblivious to the connection.

Oblivious is a nice way to be. It allows you to get on with your day.

That’s why we’re being secretive. We’re careful about our conversations. For example, this morning I thought twice about showing you a picture of Karen’s boat luggage. I decided against it.

You should be under no illusion that anyone who really wants to know what we’re up to, where we are and what type of hydraulics our steering system uses, has known this for at least several days. Thanks to the power of text search and analysis, there are also a couple of packet sniffers sending this text to a natural language processor and scoring it for significance. (I also hope that some student of literature, hunting for a PhD subject, is planning to analyze the effect of generalized spying on styles of literature, in the way that Russian scholars now study the forms of literature under Soviet oppression. As Shandy would have done, I digress.)

And this is why you won’t see Karen’s boat luggage: it’s packed in a cast-off beach bag with a silly beach-bag pattern on it. The person who left it here will remember where. And that person’s name and email address is easily available to anyone who has access to an electronic reservations system. Finding the former owner of the bag is the sort of filtering problem that a young intern researcher, with a false Facebook identity for several languages, would delight in solving. So yes, it would be just another node in the semantic graph, but it won’t be mine.

Today in Athens there will be a press conference that, among other things I suppose, will discuss the problem created by someone who has filed a complaint against the Americans. Their boat is not seaworthy, the complaint argues, so they should not be allowed to leave the harbor. The government of Greece already has too many fish to fry and may react with the arbitrary finality of someone who has been working too long in a hot kitchen.

Obliviousness would have permitted them to say, “We were busy, we didn’t know, sorry, won’t do it next time, how are the olives?” Now, however, they have to explain, in a court, that a harbor master does not normally have the authority to prevent a vessel from leaving unless they can show cause that it will sink in the mouth of the harbor and restrict access by other vessels. That will take some time. The French went through this a few days ago, and now two French vessels are on their way. My best wishes to the Americans in Athens this morning.

Many of you will remember my series of posts “100 Days in Omaha”, which came to its promised end in the summer of 2008. The series I’m starting today doesn’t know when it will end, but it’s underway.

Karen and I had our first cup of coffee together after a march when the US was preparing to invade Iraq. In the meantime, I’ve read that declaring your beliefs, especially against a powerful opposition, is good for your disposition. I can tell you that it’s also good for your marriage. I recommend it to all of you.

We all like to play at secrecy, and in this case there is good evidence that it’s useful; I won’t be offering details that imply time or place until it is safe for us to do so This is also true of the several journalists who are here with us.

One of these journalists, Amira Hass, filed this for Sunday June 26.

And yes, that’s Karen watching one of her fellow protesters being dragged off by fellow protesters who are playing the part of the soldiers. Most of us have had personal experience with soldiers of several governments — democracies, dictatorships and everything in between — so we were able to vouch for the realism. As to what happens after the incarceration, there are, of course, interesting variations. More on that later.

Many of you will know that I kept weekly update here chronicling my experience as a lymphoma patient undergoing treatment in Omaha, Nebraska. Apparently I developed a following before I stopped writing in about August of 2008. I stopped because it was in August that I was told I could “go home” — which, for Karen and me, meant packing a truck and driving across the middle plains and coastal mountains back to Vancouver.

Before I leave the subject of lymphoma and what it may be like for others to consider the possibility of a quick, unplanned exit, I’d like to declare my faith in curiosity, experimentation and endlessly careful scientific and technical work. I hope I can emulate those qualities in my own life — now that my subscription has been extended.

One last thought: Please reflect for a moment on how uneven is the distribution of good luck in both time and geography. During my treatment I was regularly perplexed by the fact that I was enjoying such effective and expensive attention when only a few kilometers away — let alone in distant countries — there were people suffering the same threat, but alone. We have wealth to spare and too few of us are good at putting it to work.

And now what? I’ve been project managing for a company here in Vancouver. CharityVillage.com is the place where you find people and jobs in the non-profit and government sectors in Canada. We’re working on a new version of the site so have a look in a few week’s time.

Then it’s back to my familiar territory — XML technologies, documents, complex publishing challenges and getting big projects across the finish line standing up.