Having lunch ("dinner" to us farmboys) at the Shelter, it being the end of the month and I being broke, I had a most informative chat with Jim afterwards. He told me a couple of very interesting things:
1. The Chinese "government" (however it's defined) has been bugging the Dalai Lama to try to get him to declare where he's going to reincarnate when he dies; which, not unnaturally, he refuses to do. Meantime "China" (or its "government") has been levered into an admission that it (or they), in all deadly seriousness, believe in reincarnation.
2. The end of "Frank Goodnight," Special Forces, two tours of duty voluntarily in Iraq, torturing and murdering children; the same as to whom, some five months ago, in response to his question, "Say then that America is bad. What would you do with me and those like me?" I said, "I would shoot you all in the back of the head at close range." "Frank" and I never spoke after that. A couple of weeks ago Jim was standing right next to "Frank" when two very buff men all in black (bounty hunters? Blackwater?) jerked him to his feet, handcuffed him, and hauled him away, saying loudly that he was wanted for armed robbery on the Mainland.