When I refer to myself as an expat in Mexico, I often get asked “what is an expat.” Now I am having to change my Mexican visa from a temporary one to a permanent one. Do I want to be a Residente Permanente? At least I will not have to renew my visa every year. Today […]

In his A Global Soul Pico writes “We travel, some of us, to slip through the curtain of the ordinary, and into the presence of whatever lies just outside our apprehension. I fall through the gratings of the conscious mind and into a place that observes a different kind of logic.” Especially when we Stand […]

I don’t have to talk about Snowden and Egypt, Syria and all the other countries struggling for self-determination. It’s all over the web. But I have a special place in my heart for Turkey…and my friends there. On the first day of Ramaden, Istanbul Turkey broke fast with a mile long table along Istikal Street […]

Set your dreams where nobody hides
Give your tears to the tide
No time
No time
There is no end, there is no goodbye

Disappear with night
No time
No time
No time
No time
No time

Erdogan rallied about 200,000 bussed-in AKP party supporters yesterday, at tax-payer expense and gave a 2-hour hate-filled lie-filled speech while protestors and police fought it out in the side streets. Police are getting edgy. Couple thousand union people went on strike Monday and pushed through a police line until the chemical-added water cannons cut them off. […]

Well, yesterday, Erdogan, after initially promising to leave the park alone, emptied the park with only seconds of warning. The police emptied Gezi Park in Istanbul with tear gas, water cannons with water that leaves people with skin burns, extremely strong gas and all manner of cruelty by the police including rubber bullets and clubbing. […]

My friends always remember my birthday because that is when the municipal police tried to clear out the striking teachers from the Zocalo in 2006. Every year they have a memorial walk to commemorate it.

Erdogan met with members of the Solidarity Group yesterday. Apparently it didn’t go well. On Facebook this morning by OccupyGezi:

Media claims that PM Erdogan has raged at the previous night’s meeting with the representatives and left the meeting suddenly without even handshakes. They wrote that PM Erdogan was mad at Arzu Cerkezoglu, the General Secretary […]

From Facebook today: “PM Erdoğan addressed to the mothers of the protestors and said “call them back to your houses for their own safety”. Mothers answered. They showed up at Taksim Square. Formed a human chain between the police and the protestors. In front of Gezi Park. This is the real “tear” gas.”

Erdogan has called a […]

After being gassed out of Taksim Square, the government spent the night cleaning up. Just in time for the children to come back with this: The Children Of Taksim

By dint of their imagination, humor and self-possession, they are proving themselves to be just the kind of people who should make up the “new” Turkey that Erdogan’s party […]

Policemen are using real bullets now and one man was shot and killed in Ankara. This in addition to at least 3 others killed by beatings or tear gas. And scores hospitalized. Caught on tape, it’s on YouTube. Erdogan wants to meet with the protestors. Now we will see how wound up the gordian knot is. […]

Updated and amended daily since May 29, 2013 I was in Turkey for a month in February staying mainly with locals. My couchsurfing friends there have been criticizing the Prime Minister, Tayyip Erdogan, who has been dismantling the democracy that Ataturk built nearly a 100 years ago. The last democracy in the middle east. The […]

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