As I have said previously, I'm outta here, leaving my editorship to others. But on the occasion of this particular intersection with the planet I couldn't help but note these current events.

Josias Kumpf, a US citizen for over 40 years, father of six, retired, living in Racine Wisconsin, is (as he puts it) "in trouble, more in trouble". Why? This is a quote from his deposition about what he saw 50 years ago:

When he [Kumpf] arrived by train that morning, he said, he and other SS guards ate breakfast. Then they heard the shouts and gunfire. "All the people were in the hole. ... I (went) over there too and look. I turn around and I ... sorry, it's not for me, that's what I told my friends."

He finished his breakfast, coffee and rye bread with butter. He said he was ordered to watch. He was told to make sure no one escaped.

"I was watching them shoot some people," he said. "Some people was shot and not good enough so they was still able to move, you know. That's what we have to watch so that they don't go no place."

Then, Kumpf said, "Everybody was excited because so many dead ones to see, you know. I was not excited. I feel sorry for the people."

What is going to happen to Kumpf?

On May 10, U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman in Milwaukee revoked Kumpf's citizenship. He ruled that Kumpf had misrepresented himself to immigration authorities. "American citizenship," the judge said, "is bestowed only upon those who meet fundamental standards imposed by law."

The judge further ruled that Kumpf's mere presence at Trawniki meant he "personally advocated or assisted" in the massacre, and as a result, was ineligible for a U.S. visa in the first place.

(above quotes taken from Case of ex-Nazi Living in US Comes to a Head from CantonRep.com)

Things have been too weird here on this planet lately. For this reason and after a long decision process which was definitely not influenced by watching Grenada get destroyed by Ivan, I decided to change from my previous material state into a more flexible mode - I have become chronosynclastically infundibulated. This means that I know exist solely as an energy phenomenon, a few concentrated waves in orbit around the sun. My orbit is large, elliptical and intersects with the Earth very infrequently. It has thus become much more difficult for me to work a keyboard in this state (although I am practicing learning to modulate myself as occasional IrDA packets). All this is to say that I am no longer going to be writing on this site.

One of the main reasons why Linux and FOSS are so appealing to hitchhikers is because hitchhikers love freedom. After my recent trip to Dubai (and despite what certain current fundamentalist rulers have been know to say) I'd have to observe that at least economically Dubai is very free, and that Muslims there definitely don't hate freedom. But did this love of freedom come from the West? Surprisingly, the answer is no, or at least it's come full-circle, according to American author Henry Grady Weaver, who worked for General Motors when his book The Mainspring of Human Progress was published in 1947.

One thing that happens when you're a hitchhiker is that you learn to read newspapers and other mass-media in a totally different way.

Many people have a hard time understanding, in this age of "free flow of information", CNN and supposed globalization, how parochial and controlled their access to news really is. Phil Hughes sent me a short email today which really brought this home. It was about the gathering held yesterday in Managua which celebrated the ouster 25 years ago of Nicaragua's US-backed dictator, Anastazio Somoza. Phil said he could find nothing in English about the event, and very little outside Nicaragua in Spanish. I did a little better, finding this story from BBCNews. Note that this article says there were 1,000 people at the service. However, this article (Spanish) says there were more than 300,000 people at the main gathering in Managua. As Phil points out, in percentage terms for a country that would be equivalent to 14 million people showing up for something in the US. But, it's not news in the US.

I got back to Panama on Saturday, July 3rd. I still haven't even coagulated and written down my thoughts about my trip to Dubai and London; but I ran across this and think it's important enough to interrupt everything else.

Today is Friday, which means that a lot of things are closed in Dubai. I have been here for a few days, and am really suffering from jetlag. For one thing, it was a long trip: I travelled from Panama to Caracas, Frankfurt, and London, where I spent the night; then the next day was a direct British Airways flight to Dubai. But, it's also ten hours of difference to Panama.

A couple of interesting notes about the flights: there were a lot of obviously Middle Eastern people on the flights from Panama all the way to Frankfurt. I spoke with one of them who said that a lot of people won't fly through the US anymore because of the possibility of being detained with no recourse, just because of appearance.

I've actually been meaning to put this up for a while, but had the reference packed away in a box somewhere which I just found. So I'm finally writing about it.

Last year I visited another Gringo couple who live in Costa Rica. The man, whose name is Dick, is also interested in Life, the Universe, and Everything, so eventually we got around to talking about what might happen in the US. His take on the situation is that people in different states are going to get so irritated with the Federal Government that they will secede from the union, and that once this starts happening, different regions will probably form some new countries.

While searching for references for this article today, I also happened to see this one, entitled "When the Legal Thing Isn't the Right Thing".

Unmoved by common sense, I sat in traffic for 10 minutes to go that one mile, while other cars continued to whiz past me on the right.



There was a time I would have felt morally superior to those selfish people breaking the law. I would have told myself that they had no regard for other people and congratulated myself on being a model citizen.

I just got back from a long week in Costa Rica, mostly involved with moving the rest of our stuff from there to here in Panamá. It was a long week because it involved a lot of lifting and transporting boxes, from the beach at Tambór to San José. In the end, there were 78 boxes which weighed 934 kilos. In case anyone is interested, it cost USD 680 to ship that amount of stuff from San José to Panamá via DHL. It will be here in a few days. It was in fact a lot cheaper to do it that way than with a moving company in a truck.

The most disturbing thing about the trip was talking to people from the US on the ferry. I had to take the ferry a total of eight times during one week, and each time I met Americans who were visiting Costa Rica. Now, this is nothing new; I have met lots of Americans, Canadians, and Europeans from various countries on this same ferry, as the Nicoya peninsula is a popular destination for tourists. The difference this time was why these Americans were visiting Costa Rica. Without exception, they were looking for a place to live outside the US. Also without exception, after an initial bit of hesitation about the subjects, they wanted to talk. I got to hear various visions of the coming US apocalypse including economic crashes, housing price collapse, social and political chaos, continued employment difficulties, dirty bombs in densely populated urban areas, and various other less-than-comforting subjects.

As I was wandering down Calle 50, a very busy street, and had narrowly avoided being run over by a large bus who saw no good reason to use his turn signal, I was thinking, "Why would anyone want to be a hitchhiker? Perhaps I'd better explain it." So, here goes a short essay.