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MFA, Playwriting, University of Oregon

Writing faculty, Portland State University (part-time)

Retired playwright and screenwriter.
Active novelist, librettist and teacher.

cdeemer@yahoo.com.

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Highlights:

Dress Rehearsals
A memoir

Love At Ground Zero

Seven Plays

Oregon Book Award finalist

• Troops to use tougher tactics
• Audio: Impassioned plea by an Iraqi woman now a U.S. citizen on Chicago talk show. From Blogs of War.
• How to encounter a peace activist. Dark humor that makes a point.

• Is Saddam alive? Wouldn't it be something if ...
• Terrible accident. The downside of suicide bombers (note that we own up to it).
• Iraqis in Bosra embrace freedom
• Just the beginning... Robert Dreyfuss on the larger battlefield beyond Iraq.
• Advisers Split as War Unfolds

• Iraqis Welcome U.S. Marines in Shatra
• Iraqi deserters talk about what it's like to serve in the regular Iraqi army.
• Iraqis torturing prisoners? Disturbing evidence found at hospital.
• Twisting the polls to support what you want them to support. Peggy Noonan on the Wall Street Journal editorial page quotes Rich Galen, whose research showed how 34% war support was really 85% war support.
• Peter Arnett fired for his anti-American propaganda on Iraqi-state-TV. Arnett apologized on the "Today" show.
• Large resources list on Iraq war from Lewis & Clark College Law School.

• The future outlook, sober and reasoned analysis of where we've been, where we are, and what might happen, by a retired military officer.
• Terrified Iraqis. "In public, we always pledge our allegiance to Saddam, but in our hearts we feel something else." Story by Essam Al-Ghalib, Arab News War Correspondent.
• 1000s volunteer for suicide attacks. And how do you stop them?

"One overriding impression left on U.S. troops by the first week's combat is that the Iraqis have developed an elaborate set of "dirty" tactics to capitalize on Americans' reluctance to endanger civilian lives. According to troops here, Iraqi forces have:

• Forced women and children to act as human shields in buildings occupied by Iraqi troops.
• Located headquarters in schools, day care facilities and, in one case in Nasiriyah, a children's hospital. More than one Iraqi prisoner of war has told American troops they do not need to worry about bombing schools because the schools have all been turned over to Iraqi militia forces.
• Lured U.S. forces into an ambush by pretending to surrender.
• Positioned artillery in residential areas so that even when radar systems locate it, U.S. commanders won't pummel it.
• Used ambulances with the Red Crescent symbol — the equivalent of the Red Cross — as personnel carriers, ferrying reinforcements to Iraqi positions under the noses of U.S. troops.
  Worn U.S. uniforms.
• Forced women and children to retrieve dead Iraqi troops and their weapons.
• Forced Iraqi civilian men and regular soldiers to fight by threatening to kill them and their families if they refused."

• The Wobblies
• James Otis and the American Revolution
• E.E. Cummings

• Dealing with the stress of war
• Wartime stress survival tips
• Ten "Inner Tips" for Coping with the Stress of War and Terrorism

War is one of the constants of history and has not diminished with civilization or democracy. In the last 3421 years of recorded history only 268 have seen no war. We have acknowledged war as at present the ultimate form of competition and natural selection in the human species.

...The general smiles. "You have forgotten all the lessons of history," he says, "and all that nature of man which you described. Some conflicts are too fundamental to be resolved by negotiation; and during the prolonged negotiations (if history may be our guide) subversion would go on. A world order will come not by a gentlemen's agreement, but through so decisive a victory by one of the great powers that it will be able to dictate and enforce international law, as Rome did from Augustus to Aurelius. Such interludes of widespread peace are unnatural and exceptional; they will soon be ended by changes in the distribution of military power. You have told us that man is a competitive animal, that his states must be like himself, and that natural selection now operates on an international plane. States will unite in basic co-operation only when they are in common attacked from without. Perhaps we are now restlessly moving toward that higher plateau of competition; we may make contact with ambitious species on other planets or stars; soon thereafter there will be interplanetary war. Then, and only then, will we of this earth be one."

"...repression is still taking place against the Iraqi population in order to prevent any uprising attempt and to eliminate the elements that could potentially resist the regime. It confirms what many Iraqis have always claimed: the Iraqi population cannot get rid of such a system without support.

"International Alliance for Justice repeats its condemnation of the repression of the population by the militias of Saddam Hussein’s regime, at a time when the regime’s propaganda is trying to make the world believe that the population is resisting. Iraqis have no other choice today than to protect their own lives and their relatives’, who are threatened by groups known for their extreme violence towards the population."

I have great respect for the men and women fighting overseas to protect our way of life in Iraq and other parts of the world. As the son of an Army officer, I understand the strength, courage and discipline required to successfully carry out their missions in hostile environments and feel tremendous pride they are representing us.

Obviously, no one likes war. Our Congress and President tried hard to avoid the use of force, but ultimately decided it was the best course of action. I like the assertiveness shown by President Bush and think we owe it to our political and military leaders, along with our brave soldiers to be as supportive as possible during these difficult and trying times. I just wanted to take this opportunity to let our forces know that I am thinking about you and wishing you and your families the best.

• Operation Interdependence. It takes a couple weeks to be approved after you register at this site. You will be approved to send items for the troops via a regional coordinator.
• USO Care Package Donations are a bit easier. You can send items direct from manufacturers or you can donate $25 for a care package, including paying online.

• Political humor
• French-jokes from late-night television for those now eating "freedom toast" for breakfast.
• Political cartoons at this very impressive site.
• What hackers did to the English-language Web site for Arab satellite television network Al-Jazeera.

So I descended from the first enclosure
down to the second circle, that which girdles
less space but grief more great, that goads to weeping.

So I descended from first to second circle--
Which girdles a smaller space and greater pain,
Which spurs more lamentation. [Minos the dreadful]

So we went down to the second ledge alone;
a smaller circle of so much greater pain
the voice of the damned rose in a bestial moan.

• Dante for the 21st century, an article about the new interest in Dante.
• Dante links

• The Rules of war, a list of them.
• Rules of war, a website by the Canadian Red Cross.
• Revisiting 'Rules of War' in age of terrorism. A book review. "The rules of warfare were developed in Stone-Age times ... and the goal is to make the enemy do something he doesn't want to do," said Bevin Alexander, a professor of history at Longwood University in Farmville, Va., talking about his book, How Wars are Won: The Thirteen Rules of War From Ancient Greece to the War on Terrorism. Here "rules" is used in the sense of "strategies," not in the sense of "humanitarian restrictions" as above.

• Ogden Nash Online
• A Tribute to Ogden Nash
• Quotations
• Ogden Nash Collection at the University of Texas.

Iraqis tell allies where to bomb their city
By Martin Bentham and Patrick Bishop near Basra
(Filed: 27/03/2003)

Iraqi civilians were reported to be emerging from Basra yesterday to pass critical intelligence information to British-led forces to aid attacks against Saddam Hussein's forces within their own city.

British intelligence officers said there had been a steady stream of information coming from the population in Basra, Iraq's second largest city, about the movements and activities of paramilitaries loyal to Saddam.

That information was proving crucial in identifying targets for British and American attack aircraft on bombing missions over the city.

"We are receiving a lot of information from inside the city," said one British officer. "Most of it is coming from Iraqis fed up with the regime and who are sneaking out across the bridges to tell us what is going on in the city. It is very risky but the fact that so many are prepared to do this indicates the level of opposition to Saddam within Basra," he said.

TEHRAN (AFP) - The Iraqi opposition has called on Iraqis to prepare for an uprising against President Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s regime and the army to desert, a spokesman for the main Shiite opposition group said.

Mohsen Hakim of the Iran-based Supreme Assembly of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (news - web sites) (SARII) quoted a statement put out by the leadership of the various opposition groups after a meeting which ended late Tuesday at Salaheddin, near Arbil in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Hakim said the seven-point statement asked the US and British coalition fighting to topple Saddam and the international community to recognise a transitional government and parliament to be installed by the opposition after the war.

The opposition asked the coalition to begin negotiations with these bodies for the disarmament of Iraq and prepare a timetable for the withdrawal of foreign forces from the country, he added.

• Cartoon: McKinley and the Philippines
• McKinley Defends U.S. Expansionism
• McKinley's Decision on the Philippines
• Mark Twain on War and Imperialism
• Mark Twain and the Onset of the Imperialist Period

"You know, look, this is a book of political humor. So, I mean, I don't respond to that sort of stuff, you know," he said.

"Glaring inaccuracies?" Mr. Dobbs said.

"No, I don't. Why should I? How can there be inaccuracy in comedy?"

• Existentialism: An Introduction
  
• What is Existentialism?
  
• Resources on existentialism
  
• Existentialism Philosophy Blog

A group of American anti-war demonstrators who came to Iraq with Japanese human shield volunteers made it across the border today with 14 hours of uncensored video, all shot without Iraqi government minders present. Kenneth Joseph, a young American pastor with the Assyrian Church of the East, told UPI the trip "had shocked me back to reality." Some of the Iraqis he interviewed on camera "told me they would commit suicide if American bombing didn't start. They were willing to see their homes demolished to gain their freedom from Saddam's bloody tyranny. They convinced me that Saddam was a monster the likes of which the world had not seen since Stalin and Hitler. He and his sons are sick sadists. Their tales of slow torture and killing made me ill, such as people put in a huge shredder for plastic products, feet first so they could hear their screams as bodies got chewed up from foot to head."

• Dorothy Parker: Selected Quotations
  
• Dorothy Parker: Poems
  
• The Comprehensive Dorothy Parker Bibliography

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature, and has no chance of being free unless made or kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.

This is an appeal to all anti-war and peace organizations. We don't want war, but your so-called humanitarian and peace-loving groups have let the Iraqi people down for more than 30 years. Now, you came to demonstrate in our name to avert the only possibility left to remove the nightmare that has descended on our land.

Iraqi people were dying in the hundreds of thousands while you were busy strengthening the Iraqi regime by insisting on so called peaceful solutions and containment. Your solutions have only brought us sanctions, isolation and suffering. Meanwhile, the butcher and his gang were getting bloodier and richer and more influential in the world with the money he is stealing from our people - to pay for the support of many organizations in the west who are now demonstrating against the war that would topple the ugly, fascist regime.

Our families still live in Iraq. They told us that they and the majority of the Iraqi people are waiting for the day of liberation from one of the most vicious and bloody regimes in the history of mankind. This is what the Iraqis want!

The Americans have found out (finally) that their interests are now in helping the people in creating a democratic, peace-loving Iraq, and if there is another country who is willing to help, then we will welcome it with open arms. Oil is our fortune and misfortune. Until now it has been our misfortune, with Saddam Hussein selling the oil fields of the country to France, Russia and others. That's why those countries are opposed to the war - not because they are afraid for the world order and the UN. And if the oil is what is making the Americans interested in helping us, then we are only thankful for this!

I ask you in the name of humanity and peace: why you don't ask the Iraqi people and the Iraqis living among you about what they think before you go out to demonstrate?

On behalf of a group of Iraqis in Switzerland, Germany, Denmark and Canada, I say: your anti-American cause is not our cause!!

FALEH HANI, MISSISSAUGA

So long as there are men there will be wars. --Albert Einstein

The purpose of all war is ultimately peace. --Saint Augustine

It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace--but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death! --Patrick Henry March 23,1775

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction....The chain reaction of evil -- hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars -- must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation. --Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968)

It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it. --General Douglas MacArthur

In war there is no prize for the runner-up --General Omar Bradley

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature, and has no chance of being free unless made or kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. --John Stuart Mill

Fighting terrorism is like being a goalkeeper. You can make a hundred brilliant saves but the only shot that people remember is the one that gets past you. --Paul Wilkinson

War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today. --John F. Kennedy

War is only a cowardly escape from the problems of peace. --Thomas Mann

Everyone's a pacifist between wars. It's like being a vegetarian between meals. --Colman McCarthy

The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his. --Gen George S. Patton

You can't say civilization don't advance... in every war they kill you in a new way. --Will Rogers

I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. --John Adams

The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it. --George Orwell

The fear of war is worse than war itself. --Seneca

• David and Goliath
• I've Got Mail
• Web Addict

“There was a machine designed for shredding plastic. Men were dropped into it and we were again made to watch. Sometimes they went in head first and died quickly. Sometimes they went in feet first and died screaming. It was horrible. I saw 30 people die like this. Their remains would be placed in plastic bags and we were told they would be used as fish food . . . on one occasion, I saw Qusay [President Saddam Hussein’s youngest son] personally supervise these murders.”

This is one of the many witness statements that were taken by researchers from Indict — the organisation I chair — to provide evidence for legal cases against specific Iraqi individuals for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. This account was taken in the past two weeks.

Another witness told us about practices of the security services towards women: “Women were suspended by their hair as their families watched; men were forced to watch as their wives were raped . . . women were suspended by their legs while they were menstruating until their periods were over, a procedure designed to cause humiliation.”

The accounts Indict has heard over the past six years are disgusting and horrifying. Our task is not merely passively to record what we are told but to challenge it as well, so that the evidence we produce is of the highest quality. All witnesses swear that their statements are true and sign them.

For these humanitarian reasons alone, it is essential to liberate the people of Iraq from the regime of Saddam. The 17 UN resolutions passed since 1991 on Iraq include Resolution 688, which calls for an end to repression of Iraqi civilians. It has been ignored. Torture, execution and ethnic-cleansing are everyday life in Saddam’s Iraq.

"In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility--I welcome it. I do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation. The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it--and the glow from that fire can truly light the world.

And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you--ask what you can do for your country."

• Quotations from Man's Search for Meaning
  by Viktor E. Frankl.
  
• Viktor Frankl
  
• Viktor Frankl Institute
  
• Man's Search for Meaning from amazon.com.

• Robert Graves Society Information Centre
  
• The Robert Graves Archive
  
• Academy of American Poets: Robert Graves

• International Brecht Society
  
• Bertolt Brecht
  
• Brecht Turns 100: A Web Exhibit

• The W.H. Auden Society
  
• Academy of American Poets: W.H. Auden
  
• Auden Archives at The New York Review of Books
  
• Selected poems:
  
  • Funeral Blues
    
  • Musee des Beaux Arts
    
  • September 1, 1939
    
  • In Memory of W.B. Yeats
    
  • Epitaph on a Tyrant
• Meeting Auden

• Oliver Wendell Holmes
  
• Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894)

• G.K. Chesterton, as complete a resource link as you could want.
  
• Gilbert! magazine, devoted to Chesterton's work and ideas.

• Academy of American Poets: Theodore Roethke
  
• University of Washington Showcase: Theodore Roethke
  
• Works by Theodore Roethke

• The Ambrose Bierce Appreciation Society
  
• The Ambrose Bierce Site
  
• The Devil's Dictionary
  
• Quotations

• Twin Peaks Online
  
  This comprehensive site includes just about everything a fan would want, including:
  
  • Episode Guide, brief summaries of every single episode.
  
  
• 2003 Twin Peaks Festival in and around Snoqualmie and North Bend, WA on August 15-7, 2003. Limited to 200 tickets.

• Robert A. Heinlein: Dean of Science Fiction Writers
  
• The Robert Sheckley Official Home Page
  
• Isaac Asimov Home Page
  
• The Theodore Sturgeon Page
  
• Frederic Brown
  
• Center for the Study of Science Fiction

• Alexander Pope: An Overview
  
• The Alexander Pope Page
  
• Selected poems:
  
  • The Rape of the Lock Home Page
    
  • Essay on Man
    
  • An Essay on Criticism
  
  

• Tom Chaffin in the L.A. Weekly.
  
• Kevin Farrell at jazzsingers.com.

• Langston Hughes resources.
  
• Poetry exhibit from the Academy of American Poets.
  
• Ossie Davis reads Langston Hughes.
  

• Allen Ginsberg Tribute.
  
• Academy of American Poets: Allen Ginsberg.
  
• In Memoriam.
  
• 1996 Interview.
  
• Allen Ginsberg's FBI File.
  
• Selected poems:
  
  • Howl
    
  • Sunflower Sutra
    
  • America
    
  • Kaddish
    
  • from "Wichita Vortex Sutra"
    
  • Who Runs America?
    

"It began on the following occasion. It is allowed on all hands, that the primitive way of breaking eggs before we eat them, was upon the larger end: but his present Majesty's grandfather, while he was a boy, going to eat an egg, and breaking it according to the ancient practice, happened to cut one of his fingers. Whereupon the Emperor his Father, published an edict, commanding all his subjects, upon great penalties, to break the smaller end of the eggs. The people so highly resented this law, that our histories tell us, there have been six rebellions raised on that account; wherein one Emperor lost his Life, and another his crown. These civil commotions were constantly fomented by the monarchs of Blefuscu; and when they were quelled, the exiles have always fled for refuge to that empire. It is computed, that eleven thousand persons have, at several times, suffered death, rather than submit to break their eggs at the smaller end. Many hundred large volumes have been published on this controversy: but the books of the Big-Endians have been long forbidden, and the whole party rendered incapable by law of holding employments."

• The Jonathan Swift Page.
  
• Gulliver's Travels

• James Taranto on why liberating Iraq is crucial to beating terrorism.
  
• The War Behind Closed Doors, Frontline's look at the Bush strategy.

• Biography.
  
• Life and times. Resources from the New York Times (requires free registration).
  
• Quotations.
  
• More quotations, including:
  
  • "Television hangs on the questionable theory that whatever happens anywhere should be sensed everywhere. If everyone is going to be able to see everything, in the long run all sights may lose whatever rarity value they once possessed, and it may well turn out that people, being able to see and hear practically everything, will be specially interested in almost nothing."
  
  
• The Elements of Style ("Strunk and White").
  

President George Bush is on a trip to several European countries. While visiting England, he is invited to tea with the Queen. He asks her what her leadership philosophy is. She says that it is to surround herself with intelligent people. He asks how she knows if they're intelligent. "I do so by asking them the right questions," says the Queen. "Allow me to demonstrate."

The Queen phones Tony Blair, puts him on a speaker phone and says, "Mr. Prime Minister, please answer this question for me. "Your mother has a child, your father has a child, and this child is not your brother or sister. Who is it?"

Tony Blair responds, "It's me, madam."

"Correct. Thank you and goodbye, sir," says the Queen. She hangs up and says, "Did you get that, Mr. President?"

"Yes ma'am. Thanks a lot. I'll definitely be using that!"

Upon returning home, he decides he'd better put some of his old friends to the test. He calls Dick Cheney first and says, "Hi, Dick, I wonder if you can answer a question for me."

"Why, of course, Mr President. What's on your mind?"

"Well, your mother has a child and your father has a child, and this child is not your brother or your sister. Who is it?"

Cheney hums and haws and finally asks, "Can I think about it and get back to you?" Bush agrees, and Cheney hangs up. Cheney immediately calls members of his staff and they puzzle over the question for several hours, but nobody can come up with an answer. Finally, in desperation, Cheney calls Colin Powell at the State Department and explains his problem.

"Now look here, Colin, your mother has a child, your father has a child, and this child is not your brother or your
sister. Who is it?"

Powell answers immediately, "It's me, of course, you idiot."

Much relieved, Cheney rushes back to call Bush and exclaims, "I know the answer, sir! I know who it is! It's Colin Powell!"

And Bush replies in disgust, "Wrong, it's Tony Blair!"

The whole world is festering
With unhappy souls
The French hate the Germans,
The Germans hate the Poles
Italians hate Yugoslavs
South Africans hate the Dutch
And I don't like anybody very much

• Hank Ballard
  
• Hank Ballard and The Midnighters
  
• Inducted into Rock-n-Roll Hall of Fame, 1990
  
• Interview from November, 1996

• Iraq Options Symposium at UCLA.
  
• Alternatives to war, University of Notre Dame.
  
• Terrorism library.
  
• The Case for War by George Vrandenburg in Tikkun Magazine.
  
• The Case Against the War by Jonathan Schell in The Nation.
  
• A Last Chance to Stop Iraq by Kenneth M. Pollack.
  
• Why Iraq Can't Be Deterred by Kenneth M. Pollack.
  
• Bush and Iraq by Anthony Lewis.
  
• Iraq: an Alternative to War by the editors of Newsday.
  
• Peace networking.
  
• Support the troops.
  

• The story of a man whose "dream retirement" is ended when he has to defend himself against a ghastly accusation (the novel I'm now working on, with the working title Character).
• Love in the Ruins, based on the screenplay I just drafted, a tragic love story set against 9/11.
• The Navy Wife, a fictionalized story of my family with my mother as the protagonist (both my parents are dead, the only way I could do this).
• Something based on my Army experiences as a Russian Linguist when the Berlin Wall went up, perhaps based on my screenplay in progress, Hitler's Blue Movie.
• Something based on the last 30 years here in Portland, Oregon, probably a personal story rooted in the arts and how local arts organizations often get the shaft as cities grow; or perhaps something more grandiose, an epic story set here. I should leave town before I write this.
• A new idea, fresh and exciting, with the working title Gods of Juniper County, to build more on a fictional terrain I've already defined in a number of plays and stories, retelling classical mythology in the small town environment.