Rails from the Radical Middle...

Election ’04: Malice in Wonderland Meets the Armageddon Complex

by Solomon Bell

10-24-04 

Am I the only one standing in wonder and disgust at the surreal quality of this pathetic presidential race? Not only do the candidates trip through Wonderland with there stupefying banality, but the elite media trips right along with them, yammering about it all with utmost seriousness. The only thing serious about these elections is what’s at stake for the world, and given that chunk of heavy gravity, you’d think a commensurate reality would be center stage. Instead, it appears that said gravity has tipped the scales right past reality, through the looking glass and down the flippin’ rabbit hole.      

Just what is going on here? Why does the elite media, including the evil right wing Fox News, not push the candidates and their insipid minions beyond the bullshit rhetoric and into substance? Better yet, why don’t they ignore the insipid minions and dig out the truth themselves? Let me answer that. They don't want to. 

Prime example: Mr. Media Tough Guy, (and phone sex aficionado) Bill O’Reilly interviewed Bush a couple of weeks ago. Bill has long railed about the border situation and the problems it poses, the most important being homeland security.   Anybody paying attention, which is to say nobody in the elite media, knows that Middle Easterners have been sneaking across the Mexican border in veritable droves.

In June a group of 53 were captured near Wilcox, Arizona, while another hundred or so escaped. No matter, because most of the 53 were released into Arizona pending hearings! Texas congressman Solomon Ortiz has said, “Similar incidents are happening all over the place. It's very, very scary". A border agent on the case had this to say: "These guys didn't speak Spanish, and they were speaking to each other in Arabic. We are told not to speak to the media about it. It's ridiculous that we don't take this more seriously.”  Indeed, the border patrol has been ordered by Under Secretary for Border and Transportation Security Asa Hutchinson, not to speak to the media about Arabs and other possible terrorists crossing the border with Mexico.       

Twenty-five Chechens (the good Muslims who slaughtered hundreds of children at Beslan) were getting across the border just about the time of the O’Reilly-Bush interview. Just about the time O’Reilly, either in a lapse of courage or a colossal fit of incompetence, failed to ask Bush about border security as concerns terrorism.

A simple little question from O'Reilly like: “Mr. President, how can we believe that you are serious about homeland security while Middle Easterners, quite possibly terrorists, are sneaking across our borders with virtual impunity?” never left his lips. Neither did, "Mr. President, why did Asa Hutchison order the border patrol not to speak to the media about possible Arab terrorists crossing the border?" Oh that Bill. Just “lookin’ out for the folks”!   

But it’s far from just O’Reilly’s selling out to power, it’s the vast majority of the entire elite media’s selling out that has us immersed in this absurd reality.  Nobody is asking the right questions, let alone probing the story independently. I mean c’mon, how is it possible that Arabs and other Muslims sneaking into the country in large and well organized numbers doesn’t make the front pages, lead the nightly news and become a major election issue? Why doesn't Kerry, who will grasp at anything, pound on this? Are these clowns really risking our national security over the possibility of offending Hispanic voters? Go ask Alice, but I'll tell you this: In the event that any future terrorist attack in the US is traced back to the border, whoever is president, ought to be impeached on the spot.  

More from the Wonderland front… The elite media as well as the Bush team knows full well that John Kerry got a dishonorable discharge from the Navy, and was stripped of his medals. Jimmy Carter fixed all that in 1978, which is now the official year of his "honorable" discharge. But since Kerry will not release his military records in full, and the media refuses to pressure him to the way they did Bush over his National Guard service, it remains a "secret".  

Then there's the elite media and the Democrats in cahoots, out there still flinging the  “Go it alone”, “No links between Saddam and Al Qaeda”, “Halliburton is evil”, “Iraq is a diversion in the War on Terror”, “The economy is the worst since Herbert Hoover” crap, while the seemingly hapless Republicans flounder in their tepid attempts to counter it. They are so restrained it’s almost as if they want to lose this election.

For example, Dick Cheney is often accused of linking Saddam to 9/11, and yet he never has. The thing is, he could. When Cheney says there are NO links between Saddam and 9/11, that’s when he’s lying! There are links, including a three-day meeting in Malaysia between an Iraqi agent, two 9/11 hijackers, and Ramzi bin al Shibh, a major Al Qaeda planner of 9/11!

Nevertheless, links between Saddam and Al Qaeda, as well as other terrorist groups training inside Iraq at Salman Pak, are well established and numerous.  (See “Quagmire of Spin: Saddam’s Links to Al Qaeda” for details.) That the Democrats and the elite media are continually misleading and outright lying to the public on this, insidious as it may be, is hardly surprising. That the Bush boys refuse to forcefully utilize the overwhelming evidence they have to counter the Democrats and their shills in the elite media, well, this again is Wonderland territory.  Like I said, its almost as if they are trying to lose.  Note that 527 groups trying to get Saddam/Al Qaeda  commercials on television are being refused, even by Fox. Just what the hell is going on here?   

As for Kerry and Iraq… Are you fucking kidding me? He and Edwards have succeeded only in twisting themselves into a two-headed pretzel, while all the morons in Wonderland nod in agreement, as if they are actually making sense. Boatloads of wet whale shit have been successfully redefined as “nuance”. As late as January of 2003, just before the war in Iraq that Kerry voted for, he was out there saying that Saddam was on the verge of having nuclear weapons and that he must be stopped. Edwards went so far as to say what Bush did not, that the threat from Saddam was “imminent”. 

And now they say Bush is a liar, and it’s the wrong war, wrong place, wrong time. The Democrats and the elite media naturally, see no contradictions here.

Kerry has no plan for Iraq whatsoever, other than to do exactly what Bush is doing only "better".  How? By undercutting the morale of the troops day in and day out, only 12% of whom support him? By insulting our 30-nation coalition day in and day out? By insulting Iraqi Prime Minister Allawi, calling him a Bush puppet? What the fuck kind of diplomacy is this from the great monotone drone?     

One Kerry/Edwards ploy is to paint Bush as out of touch with reality in Iraq. Forty-three senators to date have been to Iraq. None of them have been Kerry or Edwards. Apparently watching C-BS News has them more in touch with reality on the ground in Iraq than actually touching down in Iraq would.

I do think the Bush boys are out of touch with reality, not on Iraq (at least not at this point) but on how to deal with a hostile national and global media. They pretend like it’s 1956 and the media is more or less fair. They know different of course, but they choose instead to play an exasperating prevent defense. Kerry ads wreaking of Michael Moore are ripping Bush to shreds, while Bush ads smell more like Mary Poppins in comparison.   

Instead of standing up for themselves and challenging the propagandists in the media, Rove and the Republicans more or less grin and bear it. They think it’s too risky, that they should stay above the fray. They don’t fully realize that the times they have a changed, and that most people understand how biased and willfully incompetent the elite media is, and therefore are extremely frustrated with any leader who refuses to take them to task. Bush has taken more unjust, skewed up abuse than any other leader in world history, and in this rabbit hole reality he has been made more broadly hated than Hitler or Stalin were then, or bin Laden is now. 

How could this be? What makes this madness possible? 

Iraq and the Armageddon Question

My theory on this irrational fear and hatred of Bush is that it’s rooted in what I call The Armageddon Complex.  Prophecies of the “end times” appear throughout world cultures and religions. They all seem to point to these times. Many “end time” hysterias have come and gone of course, but none have had all the necessary ingredients. These times just may. War in the Middle East, Islamic bombs in madcap Pakistan and perhaps soon in Iran and possibly already in the hands (in the form of missing Russian suitcase bombs) of Al Qaeda, not to mention that zany Kim Jong Il in North Korea, all lend credence to the psychology. There are other factors as well, scientific factors, including the earth being simultaneously inside reoccurring mass extinction and magnetic field reversal windows. 

Could this mass Bush hysteria be a visceral reaction to a not so subconscious fear of the apocalypse? Does the left not brand Bush a religious zealot, as a strict believer in Bible prophecy? Do they not fear Bush as a crusader moving towards The Rapture et al, whose unwise actions may facilitate a future of mass death and destruction?

I see it in their faces. I hear it in their voices. They are afraid and they are angry and they are irrational and the combination makes them extremely dangerous. On some level they seek to stop the march to Armageddon. But because they are irrational, because they do not see the Bush offensive as it is intended—which in effect is to preempt any kind of Armageddon scenario—they do not understand that it is their own ill conceived actions against Bush that are making such a scenario increasingly possible. Let us not forget that it was the Left’s shortsighted opposition to Vietnam that politicized it into a Johnson/McNamara disaster and eventually forced a withdrawal that resulted in the deaths of more than 1 million innocent Vietnamese, deaths that John Kerry's lack of wisdom played a role in.        

Not that Bush is by any means blameless. His biggest and most liberal mistake, which opened the door to hell in the Sunni Triangle, was in buying the “Happy Iraqi” scenario and not going in with overwhelming force. He tried to fight a politically correct war from the get-go, not fully appreciating that the iron fist must come before the velvet glove, or the glove gets ripped to shreds. We have seen the results of the “velvet fist” approach.  

That being said, Iraq is still salvageable. But is Bush? His wretched communication with the American public in every single aspect concerning the Middle East is precisely why this election is a toss-up heading into the final week.  He was not forthright with the true long-term strategy for Iraq and the region, and the complex rationale for it. He refuses to take the UN, France, Russia, Germany and China to task for their betrayal, for 'diplomatic' reasons. 

The world is at odds with the US over the UN and the above four nations. They opposed the war in Iraq not for any altruism whatsoever, but because they were in bed with Saddam, spooning no doubt, and up to their upturned noses in corruption. It is largely the weapons of these four nations, sold illegally to Saddam right up until the war began, that are killing coalition forces and innocent Iraqi’s today.  

And yet, because Bush and his administration are so woefully inept, even mysteriously inept at articulating their case—a case that if fully understood is compelling in the extreme—he has become the bad guy in the eyes of half of America and 70% of the world. South Koreans think he’s more dangerous than the megalomaniac to the North; Europeans think he’s more dangerous than the mad mullahs in Iran.

The Bush communications ineptitude aside, it is the willfully ignorant elite media fueled by a malevolent Mad Hatter ideology—more than the mistakes in Iraq—which has created the dangerous surreality in which we now find ourselves. Welcome to Malice in Wonderland. 

I’ve mentioned twice that the Bush team is playing the election almost as if they want to lose. I almost want them to. Perhaps only the unmitigated disaster of a Kerry presidency can wake the left the fuck up.  For as long as the left continues lost in its malevolent little sleepwalk, and the right continues to try and appease them, then we will continue on towards the realization of our own worst nightmare. It is not inconceivable to me that the Armageddon Complex may one day prove a self-fulfilling prophecy.   

Though I am very frustrated with the kid glove Bush campaign, I still think that they will end up pulling  it out by a few points. What wonderful sport it will be then to watch the depressed head-cases on the Left pulling their hair out to figure out why. Never have a more clueless clan of fools roamed the American political landscape.  

~Solomon Bell

TheArtichoke.org

Fahrenheist  9/11

7-11-04

For Michael Moore, the heist began even before the filming of Fahrenheit 9/11, when he ripped off Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, much to the consternation of Mr. Bradbury. From there the disrespect and dishonesty only got worse, resulting in a perversely cynical cinematic attempt to mind heist the misinformed and willfully malleable among us.       

I screened Moore’s class project for the Joseph Goebbles School of Propaganda recently, and ended up grading it a D, for dereliction of truth. I would have given it an F for flat out false, but it was rather clever at times in the way it spun selected facts with news footage in order to give the impression of truth. The editing is good sleight of hand, and Moore certainly deserves some cajone' points for his relentless, shameless audacity.   

In grading the film I tried to imagine myself in the goose-stepping shoes of Herr Goebbles himself. It was Goebbles who said, "Propaganda has only one object: to conquer the masses. Every means that furthers this aim is good; every means that hinders it is bad." In other words, the ends justify the means. Clearly Moore has taken this to heart: anything and everything, regardless of veracity, to get Bush out of office. Still I think Goebbles would be highly critical of his student’s work, not because he didn’t show great promise in executing his hit piece, but because he was so embarrassingly obvious in doing so. 

The old artist’s axiom of ‘less is more’ has never been Moore, in any way, shape manner or form.  Though our slovenly super hero of the maniacal left employs many of his Meister’s old tricks of vilification: ominous music; a languorous lingering on the ugliest and most embarrassing Bush visuals he could dig up; unceasing factual distortions done in “knowing” voice-over while misleading the viewer with numerous cherry-picked quotes, non contextual shots and stilted sequences; and finally, the propagandist’s coup de grace—the rank exploitation of raw emotion—in this case the anguish of a confused and overwrought mother looking to blame Bush for the death of her son in Iraq.       

The only people fooled by Fahrenheit 9/11 are fools going in. I sat in a theatre full of these mutant Maoists, ears peeled. With few exceptions, what I heard was the usual paranoid, factually vacuous, often hysterical mantra of the churlish left. If their willful ignorance weren’t so mind blowingly maddening and ultimately frightening—it would be rip snortin’, knee-slappin’, belly-ache hilarious.

What does it say when Fidel Castro shows the film on Cuban national television? When the terrorist Hezbollah steps forward to help with distribution in the Middle East? When communist China cuts its extra thick red tape and opens its arms to an expedited nationwide distribution?   Think about that, dear liberals.

I attended the film with my younger sister who—at 32, with no particular political leanings or expertise but a good head on her shoulders—was both angry (except for a couple of places where even Bush supporters couldn’t help but laugh) and incredulous all the way through. She was angry with Moore for his perverse disrespect, and incredulous at the audience who was lapping it up. Only misinformed cynics and card carrying Leftists could grant Moore a verisimilitude—normally implicit in an actual documentary—that is grossly unearned, it’s that over-the-top. I’d call Fahrenheit 9/11 a mockumentary, but that would be a disservice to serious mockumentarians everywhere. Perhaps a new word should be coined to describe Moore’s work, crockumentary perhaps, but then again ‘propaganda film’ or ‘character assassination piece’ works just fine. 

If Moore were to turn the tables and make a hit piece about Bill Clinton, we would be seeing Clinton portrayed as a congenital liar, fraud, extortionist, former cocaine abuser and grafter, serial philanderer, rapist, traitor, benefactor to dozens of highly suspicious death causing "accidents" and murders, and leader of the most corrupt administration in US history. Scary thing is, Moore’s Clinton film would be a whole lot closer to the truth than Fahrenheit 9/11. It would have to be.  

One of the most laughable of Moore’s sequences is where Iraq is portrayed as a bucolic playground of love and kite flying giggles just before Moore so artfully cuts to the spectacular destruction of “Shock and Awe”.  Apparently there was no footage available of Saddam having limbs hacked off, the desert fertilized by hundreds of thousands of human corpses, relatives forced to watch loved ones fed through wood chippers, or Dobermans eating one of Uday Hussein’s rape victims--alive!

Central to Moore’s celluloid delusion, is inferring time and time again, through the abuse of peripheral facts and outright falsehoods, that Bush, bin Laden and the Saudis were in cahoots over 9/11.  He presents exactly ZERO hard evidence to support his fantasy.  Instead he makes visual allusion after visual allusion of ordinary news footage voiced over with sweet conspiratorial nothings. He also lies outright, saying that Bush arranged for the bin Laden family to be secretly whisked out America while American air space was closed. Even leftist hero Richard Clarke has stepped forward to rebuke Moore, stating, just as he testified before the 9/11 Commission, that he alone gave them permission to leave the country, AFTER American airspace had been reopened.  

Moore also tries very hard to make sinister hay over Bush’s initial reaction to 9/11 while reading to schoolchildren. In Moore’s eyes the president’s deep look of concern, a.k.a. "deer in headlights" gaze, with his mind obviously churning away as he tries not to let on in front of the cameras and children, is a sure sign of evil foreknowledge, or at least gross incompetence. It never occurs to Moore that since Bush was in the public eye at the moment, and initial information was sketchy and confused, that he was buying time while his staff was working to get a clearer picture of what was going down in order to react as effectively as possible. Nor does it occur to Moore (or the Bill Mahr's of the world) that the machine---the Secret Service, FBI, CIA, NORAD et al---does not require a presidential decree to kick into gear. The wheels were already in very serious motion. (By the way, John Kerry said that at the time he sat down and couldn't even think for 40 minutes!). What should Bush have done, leapt up and "rushed to war", half-cocked? Nor does Moore mentioned that Bush was instructed--via handwritten message held up off camera--to stay put for the time being. Now look, I’ll admit that he could have calmly excused himself and consulted his team in private sooner, but to take his quite understandable and acceptable reaction under the circumstances and leap to hyperbolically negative conclusions is the height of willfully blind partisanship.  

Then there’s the weapons of mass destruction debacle. Here again Moore calls Bush a liar. He lied about WMD to justify the war! Never mind that Bill Clinton, Al Gore, John Kerry, the United Nations and every major intelligence agency on the planet believed the same thing. None of that matters, Bush lied! And of course, once again, it makes perfect sense. What better strategy could the Bush team employ than to lie about WMD to start a war, knowing full well the lie would be exposed after they invaded, thereby giving the mad left its most exploitable argument for getting Bush out of office. It’s fooking brilliant!  Sheer fooking genius it is! Oh that Carl Rove really knows his shit!  

Then there's the Florida 2000 debacle. Here again Moore lies and misleads with reckless disregard for the truth. First he tells us that Bush's cousin worked for Fox News on election night and made the network's call that Bush won Florida. This much is true. What Moore fails to tell us is that Bush's cousin, along with the other networks, had earlier projected Gore the winner. Then he leads us to believe that once FOX made the call for Bush, that this somehow forced the other networks into changing their calls as well, thereby beginning a grand conspiratorial snowball that rolled right up the steps of the US Supreme Court. Just one little problem with that---it was NOT Fox News that first changed the call from Gore to Bush, it was both CNN and CBS!**  

The idiotic contortions the Michael Moore’s of the world must do in order to believe the kind of unadulterated horse-crap showcased in Fahrenheit 9/11 are disturbing enough. That the left dominated global media fuels this insanity, and has in recent years viciously vilified a good man with a few honest shortcomings in Bush and deified a corrupt to-the-bone sociopath like Clinton, is even more disturbing than it is disgusting. What it says to me, like ringing a bell off my skull, is that far too many of us have our damn fool necks stuck down the rabbit hole but good. The only question remaining is how long will we wait—and will it be too late—before we finally manage to pull our heads out and see the world right side up and outside out again.  

Perhaps Meister Goebbles wouldn’t be so critical of Mr. Moore after all. Though his de facto, post mortem protégé’s work may be obvious and provably false to any independent thinker with an IQ above that of a chimpanzee, his target audience—just like the Meister’s target audience of budding young Nazis leading into WWII—are little more than sheep herding to the canine incantations of an inbred whelp.       

 ~Solomon Bell

Rails from the Radical Middle

TheArtichoke.org   

**The lies and deceits in election section of the film are especially pronounced, so beware. For an excellent, in depth vetting of Moore's film, please read Dave Kopel's "59 Deceits in Fahrenheit 9/11", in which he soberly and factually breaks it all down, deceit by lie by lie by deceit. If you can handle the truth, dear liberals, go to: www.davekopel.com/Terror/Fiftysix-Deceits-in-Fahrenheit-911.htm

UNSCAM: Why the United Nations, France, Russia and the Global Media Scammed the World over Iraq

By Solomon Bell

7-1-04

The left dominated global media that was so fervent in its thinly veiled support for the French/Russian led opposition to the Iraq war, never reported the true motivation for it—which was to keep the covers on the bed of greed they shared so intimately with Saddam Hussein. Underneath those covers lay the single largest case of graft and corruption the world has ever seen—the UN sponsored Oil-for-Food Program, affectionately known as “UNSCAM”.

As it turns out, the nations on the UN Security Council that most stridently opposed the war—France, Russia, China—were the nations with the most to lose should the war take place. They were the nations most beholding to Saddam, the nations atop the genocidal megalomaniac’s bribes list; atop his armaments suppliers list—and hear this, dear  Liberals—atop its oil exploration and development contracts list. (No blood for oil was righter than you knew!)  All told, the four-poster bed these nations shared with Uncle Saddam was worth some $200 billion in fluffy anti-war pillows, satin sheets and goose down comforters.   

At the time of the UN Security Council debate over the war, the Mad Media—Euro and American alike—refused to investigate or report the then brewing Oil-for-Food scandal and how it was poisoning any chance of honest debate. They also failed to report that France and Russia were selling illegal arms and providing other forms of aid and comfort to the enemy. Not only did they ignore the truth, they trumpeted the lie—that the French led opposition to the war was legitimate, even altruistic.  

Russia was altruistic for 330 million barrels of oil in outright bribes and untold more millions of black market barrels purchased well below market prices. Russia had further multi-year oil deals in Iraq totaling more than $50 billion. In addition, Russia was the number one supplier of weaponry to Iraq; even selling them thousands of pairs of night vision goggles right up until the war began. Worse, they provided Saddam with radar jamming electronic equipment, with Russian technicians on the ground helping to fix the equipment after US warplanes bombed them. Only a direct call from Bush to Putin sent the Russians packing before the ground war began.

Former French ambassador to the UN Bernard Merimee; former French minister of the interior Charles Pasqua (who now works closely for/with Russian president Vladimir Putin); and the founder of the French-Iraqi Export Club, Michel Grimard, were altruistic for 32.1 million barrels of oil.  Notorious oil trafficker Patrick Maugein, a “cousin” to French president Jacques Chirac who introduced Maugein to Saddam specifically to broker oil, was altruistic for 25 million barrels. (Please note that the French High Court has recently preemptively granted president Chirac immunity from prosecution until after he leaves office). The French connection gets even more disgusting, not only with illegal arms sales, arms now killing American troops, but with French passports being provided to some of Saddam's high level thugs who used them to escape to Jordan, and possibly even to France.  

China, in addition to being the number two arms seller to Iraq, (China also sold weapons to the Taliban and provided training to Taliban forces in Afghanistan), was altruistic for their 22-year, multi-billion dollar oil exploration and development deal.  

UN Director of Oil-for Food, Benon Sevan, had his altruism secured for 7.3 million barrels of Iraqi crude, with millions more left unexecuted as coalition troops pushed into Iraq.

The UN under Secretary General Kofi Annan was altruistic for its 3% commission, which became the number one source of funding for the ten UN agencies involved in Oil-for-Food.

* * *

Oil-for-Food was originally designed to provide targeted relief for Iraqis suffering under UN sanctions. Under it, Saddam would be allowed to sell certain amounts of oil on the world market in exchange for food, medicines, hospital equipment, and to build water and sewage treatment facilities. 

What it became, with UN complicity and control provided by Kofi Annan and Benon Sevan, was a gigantic funding and money laundering operation for Saddam, who took some $67 billion into his coffers under Oil-for-Food. Some of it was legitimate. At least 21 billion of it went to fatten bank accounts, build palaces, and purchase massive amounts of illegal armaments from the aforementioned France, Russia and China. 

Let us not forget that it was Kofi Annan who personally negotiated Oil-for-Food with Saddam, and continually pushed to increase the scale of the program, even after he knew full well that it was rife with corruption. (Hopelessly outdated medicines and spoiled food shipments—shipments inspected unilaterally by a Swiss company with shady money ties to Annan’s son Kojo—from Europe and Russia were routine, with bribes paid to UN officials to look the other way).

The sick and tragic irony is that tens of thousands of Iraqi children targeted to be saved by Oil-for-Food, were in effect killed by it—knowingly.    

And still the plot thickens…

Did Saddam Fund Terror via Oil-for-Food?

There are at least two links already documented that the mainstream media and the Democrats refuse to recognize. Both involve oil traffickers hand picked by Saddam and approved by the U.N. under Oil-for-Food. One was a firm tied to a Liechtenstein trust that has since been designated by the U.N. itself as "belonging to or affiliated with Al Qaeda." The other was a Swiss-registered subsidiary of a Saudi oil firm that helped to fund the Taliban and quite likely Al Qaeda.  

I guess it’s just not newsworthy that Saddam may well have funded global terrorism under the cover of the UN and its supposed humanitarian relief program. This is yet another link between Saddam, terrorism and Al Qaeda, yet another link (see "Quagmire of Spin") that blowhard ideological fools like Ted Kennedy and Al Gore will deny and subvert--with the media mainstream shilling for them all along the way.   

All this, all the above and oh so much more, and still the cat called UNSCAM is  having trouble getting its head out of the bag. Why? Because the very same Mad Media that “unilaterally” opposed the war is doing all it can to push that nasty feline of truth back in the sack. The Oil-for-Food scam, again—the biggest in the history of the world—is being massively under-reported, so much so that most people are not even aware of it, let alone the gravity of it. Further, sad to say, it appears the US may itself be hindering the investigation—leveraging it—to get France, Russia et al to support US efforts in the UN and Iraq. 

This is a mistake. Chirac is rabidly anti-American, not to mention immune from prosecution, and will take his chances. Bush needs to stand up and call him out, call France out, call the UN, Russia and China out, and lay them bare before the world. But he won't, because that's not how the game is played, and to change the rules to his advantage takes a greatness he simply does not possess.   

* * * 

In light of UNSCAM it is no longer deniable that UN opposition to the Iraq war was based on lies and distortions designed to cover the collective sorry ass of the UN, Kofi Annan, France, Russia, China, et al. The current hysteria and hatred against Bush and America therefore, is rooted in the lies and distortions that girded the false opposition to the war forwarded at the UN and willfully spread round the world by the largely anti-American anti-Bush mainstream media.   

Now remember, this is the very same media, along with leftist politicians everywhere—speaking broadly now—that said if the UN Security Council gave final approval for the war, making it a “legal” war, then they would approve it as well. In other words, to cut to the nut—if Kofi Annan, Jacques Chirac and Vladimir Putin weren't sharing the bed of greed and corruption with Saddam that made opposing the war in Iraq compulsory, then George W. Bush would NOT be an evil, lying Hitlerian swine.    

It's a crock of shit folks, and many Americans, along with most Europeans, fell for it.  It's not George W. Bush who poses the greatest danger to the world, it's the useful idiots who've been brainwashed into believing it.          

~Solomon Bell

TheArtichoke.org

QUAGMIRE OF SPIN: SADDAM’S LINKS TO AL QAEDA

by Solomon Bell 

11/1/03

What we have here…is a failure to communicate!

It is an unfortunate truth of the information age that as the amount of information increases and becomes more and more available, the veracity of that information becomes less and less reliable. It is an axiom of war that the first casualty is truth. Nowhere is this more evident than in the Propaganda Wars of the early 21st century, and amongst its many battlefronts, perhaps none offers a more telling and intriguing anatomy than Saddam Hussein’s connection to Al Qaeda. 

Polling in late 2003 showed that 82% of Americans thought Saddam had ties to Al Qaeda, and that upwards of 70% thought it “likely” that he had a hand in 9-11.  The former percentage makes Liberals wince; the latter throws them into paroxysms of disdain and disbelief.  In one spasm of superiority they point to Bush as having lied about Saddam and 9-11, and in the next they mock the stupidity of the American citizenry. But just who is lying and who is stupid here, dear Liberals?  

When pressed, talking head Liberals admit that there is no record of Bush or anyone in his administration making a specific statement connecting Saddam with 9-11. In fact just the opposite has been repeated repeatedly. They will then say that although this may be technically true, that nevertheless the administration has made the allusion that Saddam was involved in 9-11, otherwise why would 70% of Americans think he was?  It is true that the allusion has been made, and the waters purposely muddied. But the reasons for it are not what the talking heads would have us think.  

Clearly the answer to the question of why so many of us think Saddam was in on 9-11 is a mixed bag.  Some Americans are indeed, fantastically stupid. Most however are merely ignorant, feeding exclusively and/or sporadically as they do from the Mainstream Media trough. But since the Left dominates the content of this trough, leftists get apoplectic when the majority of the country doesn’t “get” what they're slopping up. They simply cannot comprehend that there is a clear, cogent, legitimate and compelling worldview opposite their own, or that there are many millions of intelligent citizens who hold it. And there is something to be said for street smarts and a collective intuition that sees right through the fog of the Propaganda Wars, and senses truth where smoking gun proof may not be possible.    

Rather than take the Left’s stance of automatically assuming that the 70% of Americans who connect Saddam, bin Laden and 9-11 are either complete morons or hapless victims of White House spin, this Rail will consider the evidence and the possibility, just the possibility, that they may be neither, and further—that they just may be right. 

As you will see below, links between the Evil Duo--by the mainstream news as well as both political parties--have been systematically underplayed, denied, spun, discredited or willfully ignored. This is indeed a mysterious case, because media and government forces alike, both for and against the Iraq war, are in effect conspiring (for different reasons) to keep the full truth of the matter under wraps. The Left denies the links outright, while the the White House underplays them. But why? What sense does it make? Before I offer my theory, and a damn intriguing one at that, let's first establish the connection.  

Below is a list of just some of the information publicly available on the Iraq-Al Qaeda connection, a connection that goes back more than a decade.   

1992: Vice presidential candidate Al Gore admonishes president George H. W. Bush

for not doing anything about Iraq's support of Muslim terrorists intent on attacking the United States.

1992: Khartoum, Sudan: The first of numerous known meetings between Iraq and Al Qaeda in Sudan involve deputy director of Iraqi intelligence Faruq Hijazi, and al Qaeda’s then soon to be #2 man, Ayman al Zawahiri. (Zawahiri had years earlier founded Islamic Jihad in Egypt. After being released from prison by Anwar Sadat, Zawahiri expressed his gratitude with a complimentary assassination). Subsequent meetings with Iraqi agents would include bin Laden.

The CIA has confirmed two additional meetings between Zawahiri and Iraqi intelligence, in 1992 and 1998, not in Khartoum, but BAGHDAD. 

In 1995 the Sudanese began offering extensive intelligence reports on bin Laden’s activities inside Sudan to the Clinton Administration.  Clinton would deny each and every offer because Sudan was on the terrorist nations list. Never mind that they were trying to begin the process of getting off the list by offering the intelligence. Later the Sudanese took it a step further, offering to turn over bin Laden himself. They were refused on three separate occasions. After leaving office Clinton would explain his refusal to take bin Laden by citing “legal reasons”. It wasn’t until August of 2001, a month before 9-11, that the Bush Administration would ask for and receive the Sudanese files on bin Laden, which included his dealings with Iraqi intelligence.   

1993: The first World Trade Center bombing occurs. The FBI strongly suspected Iraq was behind the plot, concealing its involvement behind Islamic dupes. We know this to be true because the FBI’s own lead investigator on the case, deputy director James Fox, told us so. We also know that Clinton did not want the case against Iraq made, shown by the immediate suspension of Fox when he spoke out to the press. Clinton also shut the CIA completely out of the investigation, making it a matter for law enforcement only. The administration was quick—too quick—to dub the terrorists “a loose network”, veering sharply from decades of proven and presumed state sponsorship of Arab/Islamic terrorists. We now know that “loose network” affectionately as Al Qaeda.  We also know Al Qaeda had always, at least in part, been state sponsored.  

What else do we know? We know that Ramzi Yousef, the convicted ringleader and bombmaker was---despite his nebulous Pakistani origins---known by his fellow conspirators as “Rashid the Iraqi”. We know that the other known bombmaker, Abdul Rachman Yasin, was an Iraqi living in Baghdad just before the bombing and that he was harbored back in Iraq soon afterwards. We know that Yasin is an expert in a notorious Iraqi specialty—souping up the post-blast killing power of bombs by lacing them with hydrogen-cyanide gas—which is exactly what he did with the World Trade Center bomb. Only a miscalculation in the force of the blast, which resulted in most of the gas being incinerated upon detonation, saved untold lives when smoke filled the tower.

We know what ABC News knew in 1994 when it reported that Yasin was living in Baghdad and was on Iraq’s government payroll.  A few months after taking Baghdad in 2003 the ABC report was confirmed when the FBI discovered documents in Tikrit showing that Saddam had ordered regular monthly payments and housing for Yasin. 

1995: Al Qaeda begins training at Salman Pak, a terrorist training center outside of Baghdad.  According to CIA Director George Tenet, as testified before a 2003 Senate Intelligence Committee, Al Qaeda members were trained by Iraq in advanced bomb-making, (possibly with help from Yasin and infamous terrorist and master bomb-maker Abu Nidal, a Baghdad resident also on the government payroll), the use of poisons, gases, and document forgery.  

Most notable of all about Salman Pak was the Boeing 707 parked on site, which was being used for skyjack training by 1997.  Al Qaeda soldiers were taught how to takeover commercial aircraft using bare hands or small knives only.  This and more is corroborated by multiple sources, including five Iraqi defectors who worked at Salman Pak, and two UNSCOM inspectors who saw the aircraft and were told that it was used for COUNTER-terrorist training. (A claim only Janine Garofalo, Sean Penn et al, would believe). Final and irrefutable confirmation came when US forces arrived at Salman Pak. What they found were mass graves, large weapons caches, terrorist training manuals, detailed instructions on how to hide WMD from UN inspectors, and yes, the Boeing 707.      

One Iraqi defector, a former colonel with Iraqi intelligence, reported to the London Observer that there was a special “foreigners camp” within Salman Pak that was controlled directly by Saddam Hussein.  “It was a nightmare! A very strange experience," the Iraqi agent said. "These guys would stop and insist on praying to Allah five times a day when we had training to do. The instructors wouldn't get home till late at night, just because of all this praying."  (So much for the continuing media myth about secular Saddamites and fundamentalist Al Qaeda hating each other too much to cooperate. Beware of Talking Heads that are still forwarding the myth and know that they are shills, fools or both.)  He also corroborated the use of small knives in skyjack training, as well as working in groups of four and five, the very same modus operandi used on 9-11.

Another high ranking, name-protected defector told the Observer that hijacker-trainees at Salman Pak were from several Muslim countries, including Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Algeria, Egypt and Morocco. "We were training these people to attack installations important to the United States. The Gulf War never ended for Saddam Hussein. He is at war with the United States. We were repeatedly told this."

Finally, in an October 2001 interview with PBS, a former Iraq army captain named Sabah Khodada, who was stationed at the terrorist training center, said he was sure the 9-11 attacks were carried out by “graduates of Salman Pak”.  

1995: The Oklahoma City bombing.  Seven weeks prior to the bombing the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare issued an official warning to government agencies that an Islamic terrorist attack in the American heartland may be imminent. Not included in the official warning but part of the Task Force record, is information from Israeli intelligence that Iraq may be involved, and that “lily whites” may be used as dupes to carry out the attack.

Despite this, and despite eye witness reports (later to become signed affidavits) placing a Middle Eastern man (the infamous John Doe #2) with Timothy McVeigh riding shotgun in the Ryder truck the morning of the attack, Clinton/Reno, suddenly and without explanation, ordered the FBI to cancel its All Points Bulletin on John Doe #2.    

A subsequent investigation by Oklahoma City television reporter Jayna Davis identifies John Doe #2 as Hussain Hashem Al-Hussaini. Al-Hussaini bears a tattoo marking him as a member of the Estikhabarat, unit 999 of the Iraqi Intelligence Service. Unit 999, dear friends, was based at Salman Pak.  Davis’ investigation has gathered 22-signed affidavits and more than 2,000 pages of documents making the case for Iraq’s involvement in the Oklahoma City bombing. Many have praised her work, including former Clinton CIA director James Woolsey and senator Arlen Specter. Specter met with Davis and after reviewing the evidence told her he’d look into launching a senate investigation. Not surprisingly, this Warren Commission co-conspirator then saw to it that no such investigation would occur. (See jaynadavis.com for news story links).

And as for an Al Qaeda connection…

Terry Nichols, a man with little if any bomb-making expertise, took several trips to the Philippines in the months leading up to the attack. He went to Cebu where, lo and behold, fugitive bomb-maker Ramzi Yousef and Al Qaeda #3 man Khalid Sheik Mohammed were hiding out. Philippine police document at least one meeting between Nichols and Mohammed.           

Let’s not forget that the indictment against McVeigh and Nichols included a conspiracy with “others unknown”. When sentencing Nichols, U.S. District Judge Richard Matsch said, “It would be disappointing to me if the law enforcement agencies of the United States government have quit looking for answers.”  Well, they have, and Nichols new trial will soon prove it. Once a cover-up, always a cover-up.    

1998: President Clinton delivered a speech from the Pentagon in which he pointed to Iraq’s involvement with “an unholy axis of terrorists, drug traffickers, and organized international criminals." He went on to say that “We have to defend our future from these predators of the 21st century…they will be all the more lethal if we allow them to build arsenals of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons and the missiles to deliver them. We simply cannot allow that to happen. There is no more clear example of this threat than Saddam Hussein.”

The day after Clinton’s speech, Iraqi intelligence issued a memo laying out a plan to step up cooperation with bin Laden. The memo, dated February 19, 1998, was recently unearthed in Baghdad by Mitch Potter and Inigo Gilmore of The Toronto Star. Each reference to bin Laden had been covered over with liquid paper.   

In May Saddam warned the United States of “dire consequences” if UNSCOM weapons inspectors are not called off and UN sanctions not lifted. Bin Laden issued several contemporaneous warnings to the US himself, all of them citing and supporting Iraq.  It was shortly after this that Saddam paid $300,000 to Ayman al Zawahiri. 

In August, just two days after Saddam forced the evacuation of UNSCOM, Al Qaeda bombed US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, killing hundreds and wounding thousands.  The day was August 7, the eighth anniversary of Bush 41 announcing the deployment of US troops to Saudi Arabia—to protect the kingdom from Iraq.       

In December, first reported in Europe by Rome’s Corriere della Sera, Saddam sent Farouk Hijazi (later named Iraqi ambassador to Turkey; now in US custody) into Afghanistan to formally offer asylum to bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Omar in Iraq. The report describes Hijazi as “the person who has been responsible for nurturing Iraq's ties with the fundamentalist warriors since at least 1994.”

1999: Newsweek, who now generally denies any serious connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda, ran an article titled “Saddam + Bin Laden” with the subhead, “America's Two Enemies are Courting." Christopher Dickey and three others wrote the article.  Dickey now calls the connection, as little put forward by the Bush team as it has been, an “egregious smokescreen.”  What’s egregious Christopher, is your little masquerade through life as an 'unbiased' journalist.  

2000: January, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. An Iraqi airport employee named Ahmed Hikmat Shakir, placed in the job by operatives at the Iraqi embassy, escorted two of the  9-11 hijackers, Khalid al Midhar and Nawaq al Hamzi, through Malaysian customs in Kuala Lumpur. Shakir then took the Al Qaeda men to the Kuala Lumpur Hotel where they held a three-day meeting with Ramzi bin al Shibh, one of the major Al Qaeda planners in the 9-11 plot.   

2000: Salah Suleiman, an Iraqi intelligence officer, was arrested near the Afghan border by Pakistani authorities. Jane's Foreign Report, a well respected international newsletter, reported that Suleiman was the go-between Iraqi intelligence and Ayman al Zawahiri, the brains behind bin Laden.

2000: In May a weapons smuggler hired by Iraq to make deliveries of arms to bin Laden in Afghanistan, Mohamed Mansour Shahab, was arrested by anti-Hussein Kurdish forces. He confessed his smuggling role to American intelligence and later to the New Yorker magazine.

2000-2001: The often-refuted meetings in Prague in June 2000 and in April of 2001 between 9-11 hijack captain Mohammed Atta and Iraqi “diplomat” Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, did indeed take place.  Czech interior minister Stanislas Gross made the Czech position on the matter official on October 26, 2001 when he said the disputed meeting between Atta and al Ani did occur. Gross was later corroborated by prime minister Milos Zeman. The controversy stems from a front page article by the New York Times which claims president Vaclav Havel "quietly" told president Bush "the information is  false".  Within hours of the story's publication, Havel issued a denial through his spokesman Ladislav Spacek, calling the New York Time's claim "a fabrication". As far as I've been able to determine,The Times has never explained Havel's rather strident and accusatory denial.    

The last public statement on the Atta meeting to date was made on October 26th, 2002 by former Czech deputy Foreign Minister Hynek Kmonicek who flatly told the Prague Post "the meeting took place...the Czech government collected detailed evidence of the al-Ani/Atta meeting."

Despite all this, the mainstream news and the Left are still out there claiming the meeting never happened, repeatedly ripping Dick Cheney for even mentioning it.  And the Right, media feeble as ever, by and large lets them get away with it.

The Czechs it should be noted, spurred by the last Atta meeting with al-Ani, finally expelled the Iraqi agent. He was strongly suspected of being involved in a plot to bomb Radio Free Europe, an entity and icon of the United States of America.

2001: Ansar al Islam is organized in Northern Iraq by Mullah Melan Krekar, for the expressed purpose of conducting suicide attacks on Americans.  The terrorist group had strong links to both Saddam and bin Laden. Mullah Krekar, now in custody in the Netherlands, has admitted to meetings with bin Laden going back to 1989. He told Newsday that shortly after setting up Ansar, "...three bin Laden operatives showed up with a gift of $300,000 'to undertake jihad." Talking Head claims that Ansar al Islam was hostile to Saddam are bogus. Ansar was located in a region not controlled by Saddam, this much is true, but most of it was loyal to the regime. Several Ansar attacks against independent Kurdish groups who were hostile to Saddam help to illustrate this. UPI quotes a spokesman for the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan: "...Krekar [Ansar al Islam] was funded by Saddam Hussein's regime in Baghdad."  Hundreds of al Qaeda fighters are believed to have found sanctuary with Ansar al Islam in Iraq after US forces drove them from Afghanistan in 2001. US air strikes destroyed the Ansar base in 2003. Many of the terrorists, including the extremely dangerous Abu al-Zarqawi, survived the strikes and are thought to have found refuge in Falluja.    

2001: In August, less than a month away from the 9-11 attacks, the CIA and FBI met with Israeli intelligence services and were reportedly told of an impending large-scale terrorist attack against America on American soil.  A senior Israeli official later told the Sunday Telegraph “there were strong grounds for suspecting Iraqi involvement.”  News of this meeting has been virtually blacked out by the American media.

2002:  Babil, the official Iraqi state run newspaper controlled by Uday Hussain, in its November 16 edition, identifies Iraq’s ambassador to Pakistan, Abd-al-Karim Muhammad Aswad, as an "intelligence officer…in charge of the regime's contacts with Osama bin Laden's group…”  Oops!

2002: A December 12 report by the Washington Post based on information pulled from the CIA threat matrix, says that Iraq successfully smuggled out VX nerve gas to Al Qaeda through Turkey. The intelligence comes from a “sensitive and credible source” according the CIA. But this was not the first time such smuggling had occurred. Secretary of State Colin Powell has stated that al Qaeda operative Abu Abdullah al-Iraqi was sent to Iraq by bin Laden and was successful in purchasing poison gases several times between 1997 and 2000.

2003: A month after a terror bombing in the Philippines that killed an American Special Forces officer and two Filipinos, the Al Qaeda linked Abu Sayyaf leader who planned the attack was shown on television bragging about conducting joint operations with Iraq. His claims were initially met with pointed skepticism, but an ongoing investigation by Philippine intelligence later revealed phone records supporting the claim. Frequent calls between Hisham al Hussein, the second secretary of the Iraqi embassy in Manila, and two Abu Sayyaf leaders immediately before and after the bombing, led to Hussein’s February 13 expulsion.

2003: Here’s a little blockbuster you probably haven’t heard—on Wednesday, April 2 a United States district court in Manhattan ruled that Salman Pak played a material role in the attacks of 9-11.   Judge Harold Baer’s $104 million dollar judgment against Saddam Hussain and Usama bin Laden is the first legal decision tying the evil duo to 9-11. 

Now, wouldn’t you think this court decision would be plastered all over the news? The New York Times and the Washington Post didn’t just bury the story as you might expect. Their April 3 editions didn’t report it at all!  And the television networks, including Fox News, if they reported it at all just glossed over it. It was a non-story after the first day. Of all the major newspapers and wire services, only the Philadelphia Enquirer and the Chinese news service Xinhua bothered to mention Salman Pak by name. Can you say "censorship by omission?" If not, you had better learn.

* * *

So there you have it: a brief overview of the Saddam-Al Qaeda connection, including a recent court decision linking them to 9-11.  Now how stupid is the 70 % of the American public who think Saddam was somehow involved?  

The Left would have us believe the Bush Administration has mislead the public into thinking Saddam was involved in 9-11 when they know he wasn’t. I submit that the Bush Administration has ‘mislead’ the public into thinking Saddam was involved in 9-11 because they know he was.   

That the mainstream news and the Democrats refuse to admit or even honestly investigate the strength of the evidence concerning the Saddam-Al Qaeda connection comes as little surprise. The surprise is that Bush is playing rope-a-dope with the Democrats and allowing them to hammer away when clearly, if he chose to fight back, he could knock them out with a quick flurry and a thunderous overhand right.  The strategy, that the Democrats will eventually punch themselves out, is risky in an election year. For now Bush has enough of the American public behind him to keep pushing forward. If that support should begin to crumble however, look for the Bush team to leak just enough  “new” information out the Saddam-Al Qaeda connection to shore things up.      

But why “just enough?” Why wasn’t the Saddam-Al Qaeda connection put front and center from the beginning, when it would have given Bush nearly universal support for the war on Iraq?

Clearly there must have been vital and compelling reasons.  And thus we arrive at the heart of the matter:   

Imagine if you will, that you have become president of the United States and inherited federal intelligence and law enforcement agencies in turmoil and disrepair.  Imagine discovering that your predecessor was largely responsible for this, and that among other things had subverted the system and successfully covered up the state sponsorship of a major terrorist attack on American soil.  And when other attacks involving the same state sponsor ensued over the years, the inertia of previous cover-ups (CYA) forced new cover-ups.  Imagine in the midst of discovering all this your nation is hit with a 9-11 magnitude terrorist strike, a strike likely sponsored by that very same state entity.

You know what you must do. You also know that you must bite the bullet of your inheritance and move forward because if the previous administration’s cover-ups were exposed it would create a political and media firestorm that would virtually eviscerate the various law enforcement and intelligence agencies involved—the very agencies you now so urgently need to defend the nation.

Vital and compelling reasons indeed. 

I am confident that this is exactly what GW Bush is dealing with. He and his cabinet and a fair chunk of Capitol Hill know full well that Saddam and Al Qaeda have worked together in committing terrorism against the US. (Which makes the phony partisan vitriol of the Democrats all the more reprehensible.)  There may be of course, additional reasons for the Bush team’s reticence. They may be waiting until all their ducks are in a row, for a smoking gun, and then to spring it before the 2004 election. Then again they may be covering their own collective ass concerning what they knew before 9-11. Clearly there was warning, as stated above, from Israeli intelligence in August ’01. We do not know how detailed that warning was.  We do know that they played dumb about it after 9-11. 

In any event, I think the Bush thinking is that if a full fledged case connecting Saddam and bin Laden and even 9-11 were made, the mainstream news might actually be forced to investigate, likely opening a titanic can of worms that would slither right back to the original Clinton cover-ups. The resulting mega-scandal would send enough Washington ass scurrying for cover to virtually paralyze the FBI, CIA, DOJ et al, just when they’re needed the most.  Bush as we have seen, has been very protective of these agencies failures. 

President Bush has with commendable courage risked his presidency over Iraq because he believed it was the right and necessary action to take.  Further, he has chosen to endure the virulent onslaught of misplaced hatred from the Left rather than further endanger the nation by exposing the true legacy of his predecessor, a legacy so violently thrust upon us that clear September morning of the year two thousand and one.         

~Solomon Bell

Rails from the Radical Middle  

TheArtichoke.org 

 ------------------------------------------------------------

Saddam’s Bombs: Exploding the Media Myths of the ‘Dove’ Left and Iraq’s Role in Global Terrorism

By Solomon Bell

1-11-03

We are at war with Iraq. Have been since 1991, in case you haven’t noticed. Saddam himself has maintained his “at war” position all along, never wavering, repeatedly vowing revenge against America, ceasefire be damned. There have been thousands of volleys fired over the last twelve years, many of them heard round the world. How deafening the truth can be to some.  A dozen years of shooting later, the deaf among us are up in arms and shouting about a “preemptive” war, and that “containment” is the answer. What a load of wet, dove shit.    

A refresher course seems in order.

1993: The first World Trade Center bombing blows a six story hole in the parking garage. The explosion is designed to topple one tower into the other, destroying both and killing tens of thousands. Instead, six people in the vicinity of the blast are killed and more than a thousand injured. Evidence that Iraqi Intelligence may have commissioned the attack through a fledgling Al Qaeda led on the ground by Ramzi Yousef—a.k.a. “Rashid the Iraqi”, nephew of Al Qaeda #3 man Khalid Sheik Mohammed—is present and credible.  The bomb includes hydrogen-cyanide gas, an Iraqi specialty designed to be spread by the explosion, but was instead burned up by its miscalculated intensity. Saddam harbored one of the indicted bomb-makers in the plot, an Iraqi citizen named Abdul Rachman Yasin, both before and immediately after the bombing.  ABC News reported in 1994 that Yasin had been put on the Iraqi government payroll. Yasin remains at large to this day, probably still in Baghdad.    

   Clinton decides to steer the case away from any Iraqi connection early on, and begins by designating the bombing a law enforcement matter only, placing the investigation under complete FBI control, which in turn completely shuts out the CIA.   Even though the FBI is effectively prevented from pursuing evidence of an Iraqi connection, the lead investigator in the case, assistant FBI director James Fox, sees enough to convince him that Iraq is behind the plot. When he refuses to toe the company line and speaks out to the media, he is immediately taken off the case and suspended.  Before his death in 1997 Fox again speaks out, this time with investigative journalist Laurie Mylroie. Amongst other things, he tells Mylroie that the FBI did not pursue the connection because it was clear to him and others that “The [Clinton/Reno] Justice Department did not want state sponsorship addressed.”  I leave the reasons, which lie somewhere in the political machinations and exigencies of Clinton’s self-obsession, to you.

   Clinton’s handling of the first World Trade Center bombing is to set a precedent of cover-up, negligence and missed opportunity that is to repeat itself again and again during his presidency—and pave a clear path for the events of 9-11-01.           

Later in 1993… In June, Clinton launches a Tomahawk missile attack on the Iraqi Intelligence building in Baghdad. The cover story is retaliation for the assassination attempt on Bush 41 in Kuwait. More than that, it is a person-to-person response to the World Trade Center Attack, Clinton ‘punishing’ Saddam and attempting to assuage the concerns of a certain restless faction of the New York FBI. The missiles strike an empty Mukhabarat headquarters just after midnight, timed by Clinton to lessen any risk of civilian casualties. No doubt Saddam, so caring of civilians, got a good chuckle out of this girlish, politically correct missile strike. Clinton’s laughable retaliation only serves to embolden Saddam and terrorists all over the Middle East, not the least of whom I will venture, is Usama bin Laden himself.     

1995: The Oklahoma City bombing rocks the nation. The case is awash in evidence of Iraq’s intimate involvement. Again the FBI, under arcane orders from Clinton/Reno, drops the Iraqi ball immediately. Thankfully, Oklahoma City television reporter Jayna Davis, despite being pressured and eventually fired for following leads leading to Iraq, refuses to give up her investigation. And what she finds, little reported in the Mainstream Media Complex (MMC), is damning in the extreme.   

   Some of the evidence included in 22-signed affidavits and more than 2,000 pages of documents gathered by Davis, includes the witnessing of Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols in the company of several Middle Eastern men on multiple occasions leading up to the bombing. Most of these men turn out to be ex-Iraqi military that are among the 12,000 Iraqi’s allowed into the US after the Gulf War.  Among them is a dead ringer for the FBI’s John Doe #2, Hussain Hashem Al-Hussaini. Al-Hussaini bears a tattoo marking him as a member of the Estikhabarat, unit 999 of the Iraqi Intelligence Service. Unit 999 is based at Salman Pak, southeast of Baghdad, and is well known as an advanced terrorist training center.

  Yossef Bodansky is the executive director of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare. He confirmed to Jayna Davis that on February 27, 1995, seven weeks before the bombing, the task force issued a warning to government agencies of an impending Islamic sponsored terrorist attack.  On March 3, an update was issued stating that the attack would likely occur in the American heartland. The list of potential targets includes Oklahoma City.

   Also according to Bodansky, a month prior to the bombing an independent warning was received from Israeli intelligence indicating that an Islamic terrorist attack, possibly tied to Iraq, was impending. They also warned that “lily whites” had been activated to carry out the attack. “Lily Whites” are non-Arabic persons without police records or terrorist backgrounds who could not be linked back to their Arab masterminders.

   Here let me add the numerous trips Terry Nichols, a man with little if any bomb-making expertise, took to the Philippines in the months leading up to the attack. Is it just coincidence that fugitive bomb-maker Ramzi Yousef and Khalid Sheik Mohammed are hiding out in the same area (Cebu) in the Philippines during this same period? Hardly. Philippine police document at least one meeting between Nichols and Mohammed.           

   Let’s not forget that the indictment against McVeigh and Nichols included a conspiracy with “others unknown”. When sentencing Nichols, U.S. District Judge Richard Matsch said, "It would be disappointing to me if the law enforcement agencies of the United States government have quit looking for answers."

     The Smoking Truck…  Tim McVeigh is seen several times in the company of the previously mentioned Iraqi’s, some of whom work at the Samara Motel (owned and frequented by Iraqi’s) in Oklahoma City. On the morning of the bombing, at 7:40am—one hour and twenty-two minutes before the explosion—the Samara’s owner and a maintenance worker come within a few feet of a Ryder truck parked on the motel lot. They notice that the truck smells heavily of diesel fuel (a key component of the bomb) coming from the rear carriage. Several minutes later McVeigh delivers the room key to the front desk and checks out. He then gets into the Ryder truck and drives off the motel lot. Riding next to him in the passenger seat, as stated in the owner’s sworn affidavit, is none other than Mr. Al-Hussaini, the dead ringer for the FBI’s John Doe #2. 

   Where’s Inspector Fucking Clouseau when you need him?   

These are just a few highlights of a mountain of evidence gathered by Davis and others. Senator Arlen Specter has seen the evidence and told Miss Davis that he will look into the possibility of a senate investigation. Knowing Mr. Specter’s dubious past however, not to mention the powerful forces on both sides of the aisle with powerful motive to keep their asses covered, I suspect he is only patronizing Miss Davis and that no such investigation will ever get off the ground. And as long as Washington continues to drag its feet on this—especially with Terry Nichols still around—you can bet your ass the MMC will go along and continue to either ignore and/or marginalize it.   

    That Iraq was involved in the Oklahoma City bombing is a virtual certainty. Again, the FBI and the Clinton Administration refused to openly follow the leads that would prove what they suspected/knew. The APB for John Doe #2 was suddenly and without explanation, cancelled. Clinton had covered up the likely first state sponsored attack by Iraq, and so was compelled to cover up the second as well. CYA rules the day—everyday—in Washington.

   The Bush Administration, who stands to gain great public support for the war on Iraq if this connection were publicly shown, has steered clear of it. There are still legions of officials from the Clinton era now involved in the Bush era, and there’s a veritable coward’s mountain of covered ass in the way. As much as the Bush Administration might like to make the truth of Clinton’s real legacy be known, they simply cannot risk unleashing a scandal of this size and scope. The resulting cataclysm would virtually emasculate the CIA, FBI and the Justice Department just at a time when they’re needed the most. The administration has plenty enough support to go into Iraq as it stands now, and so will not make any case for Iraq sponsored terrorism that could lead to scandal, even if it be Clinton’s. The barrage of largely dishonest dissent from the Left, as annoying and problematic as it may be, has zero chance of preventing them from doing what they know they must. (For more detailed information and news story links on Iraq and Oklahoma City, see jaynadavis.com). 

1995-2000: Iraq begins and continues training Al Qaeda fighters at the terrorist training complex at Salman Pak, just outside of Baghdad.  Training includes the use of poisons and gases, bomb making, and document forgery, as testified to by Director Tenet before a Senate Intelligence Committee.  The crown jewel of this training (tellingly ignored by Tenet but confirmed by UNSCOM inspectors and numerous others) centers around a Boeing 707 parked on the site. Here eager students board the airliner to learn the fine art of skyjacking, using only small knives! (Knives under 4 inches were then legal to bring aboard aircraft.) Sound familiar? Just a charming little coincidence to the ‘Dove’ Left, I’m sure. And just never mind—as of course you will—longtime former Salman Pak employee and recent defector to the US Sabah Khodada, who told PBS in October 2001 that he believed the 9-11 attacks were carried out by "graduates of Salman Pak.”   

1995-96: On no less than three occasions during this period, Sudan, who is hosting bin Laden and his merry band of mass murderers, offers to turn him over (as well as reams of intelligence on Al Qaeda) to the United States. (Iraqi intelligence had a strong presence in Khartoum during this period as well, and there are multiple documented meetings between them and bin Laden beginning in 1994.) Arrangements for the arrest and extradition of bin Laden are made each time. And each time, Clinton backs out. When recently asked about this by the press Clinton responds sharply and defensively, saying that he couldn’t accept the offer for bin Laden for “legal reasons”.  Clinton, in a rare moment of truthful introspection, is quoted in the award winning 2002 Sunday Times series, “The Road to Ground Zero”, saying that failing to act on the Sudanese offers for bin Laden “was the greatest mistake of my presidency.”  Bet you haven’t heard that in the MMC, have you? Hmmm…

1996: In direct defiance of president Clinton, Saddam sends three tank divisions and 30,000 troops to capture Irbil, a Kurdish city in Northern Iraq. Clinton responds with 44 cruise missiles in a two-day strike on military targets, not in the north where the Kurds are under assault, but in the south! This is seen in the Arab world as a victory for Saddam over the paper lion US under Clinton.   

1998—August:  US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania are bombed by Al Qaeda, bin Laden and…?  Saddam had warned in May of “dire consequences” if UNSCOM weapons inspectors were not called off and UN sanctions not lifted. Bin Laden issues several similar warnings to the US in the months leading up to the bombings, all of them citing and supporting Iraq.  Two days after Saddam forces the removal of UNSCOM, the embassies are attacked, killing hundreds and wounding thousands.                                                                   

   Clinton responds as usual with cruise missile attacks on bin Laden camps in Afghanistan and the duly dubbed “aspirin factory” in the Sudan. The Sudan attack is a blunder born of clear negligence and/or dog wagging that kills dozens of innocent workers.  It is important to note however, that the intelligence Clinton used to authorize the attack, that the facility was at one time manufacturing VX gas, was intelligence that named Iraq as a facilitator.

   The Afghanistan attack fails miserably as Clinton, in a spasm of unbelievable stupidity, alerts Pakistan of the attack once the missiles enter Pakistani airspace. He might as well have phoned bin Laden himself, because the arch-terrorist is quickly tipped off and manages to escape with 9-11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed just minutes before his camp is annihilated. To add insult to injury, two of the cruise missiles fail to explode and are gathered up by the Taliban who later sell them, guidance systems and all, to the Chinese. Nice work, Bill.     

Later in 1998… Clinton announces a new US foreign policy: Regime change in Iraq.  Less than four months after the embassy bombings in Africa, Operation Desert Fox is launched and Iraq is again under direct bombing attack. There are no cries heard from the ‘Dove’ Left about preemption.                                                                      

   In December, as reported in a 1999 article by Britain’s Guardian Weekly, Saddam sends his deputy head of military intelligence Farouk Hijazi (later named Iraqi ambassador to Turkey) into Afghanistan to formally offer asylum to bin Laden in Iraq.

2001: The attacks of 9-11 shatter the Great American Sleepwalk.  All warnings are either ignored (As in the Oklahoma City case, Israeli intelligence warned both the FBI and CIA in August 2001 of an imminent large-scale terrorist attack with possible ties to Iraq) are fumbled in both intra and inter-agency infighting.  Strong and documented evidence of meetings between Iraqi Intelligence and Al Qaeda lead up to the tragedies of 9-11.

    The often-refuted meetings in Prague in 2000 and in April of 2001 between 9-11 hijack captain Mohammed Atta and Iraqi diplomat Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, did indeed take place. The August 2, 2002 edition of the Los Angeles Times quotes an unnamed high official in the Bush Administration as saying that evidence of the Prague meetings “holds up.”  No matter what the MMC repeatedly says, since Czech interior minister Stanislas Gross made it official on October 26, 2001 and was later corroborated by prime minister Milos Zeman, the Czechs have NEVER wavered on the matter. (And yet Left wing pundits go unchallenged in the MMC when they repeatedly deny that the meetings ever took place. They cling to a CIA report that says there is no record of Atta leaving the country during April 2001, ignoring the 2000 meeting, ignoring the Czech government’s official corroboration, and completely “forgetting” that Atta routinely traveled on false passports.) The Czechs expelled the Iraqi "diplomat"  not long after the last Atta meeting for his suspected involvement in a plot to bomb Radio Free Europe, a United States entity.

2002: A December 12, 2002 report by the Washington Post based on information pulled from the CIA threat matrix says that Iraq successfully smuggled out VX nerve gas to Al Qaeda through Turkey. The intelligence comes from a “sensitive and credible source” according the CIA. 

* * *

The above incidents do not reflect the thousands of anti-aircraft firings on US and British jets over the No-Fly zones over the years, the hundreds of US and British retaliatory strikes, or the repeated vows of revenge and assertions by Saddam that the war against America was far from over.

Preemption? Containment? 

Wake the fuck up!         

The Dark Side of ‘Containment’

It is sadly ironic that the Dove Left in America and Europe are cooing for containment. Even if they choose to deny that the above list of terror attacks has anything to do with Iraq, they cannot deny what their own beloved organizations, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have documented to be true: that horrific, systemic human rights abuses are ongoing under Saddam and his mentally mutant madmen. 

If you will recall, Clinton, under NATO guise, bombed Serbia for 78 days, killing more than 2,000 innocent civilians. The reason: Milosevic and his ongoing war crimes and human rights abuses. Where was the cry from the Dove Left then?  Why was attacking Serbia over Slobodan OK then and attacking Iraq over a more dangerous Saddam not OK now?  Could it be as simple as a reviled Republican in the oval office? Why yes, I think it could.

What Saddam Hussain has done to Muslims during his 23-year reign of terror makes Slobodan Milosevic and his gang of genocidal rapists look like Barney Fife and the gang down at Floyd’s Barber Shop.         

A little illustration for the morally selective, hemp can-save-the world, Dove Left…

Saddam has professional rapists in his employ, charged to extract information from political prisoners. They don’t get paid much, but being “people persons” enjoy a high level of job satisfaction drawn from the close-knit relationships forged through the raping of wives and daughters in front of husbands and fathers. Other favored means of extracting information include the usually reliable hanging of children upside down by their ankles to be beaten senseless in front of their parents. High voltage electricity to zap political prisoners and their requisite genitalia across dungeons is also a popular technique.  For those especially pesky and reluctant to speak prisoners, well, they get the special treatment—slow immersion into vats of flesh eating acid. I wonder how Alec Baldwin, Martin Sheen and Tim Robbins would feel about this impending “illegal preemptive strike” with THEIR NARDS burning in acid?  A quicker and more high-pitched metamorphosis from dove to hawk I cannot imagine. 

Not to be outdone for sheer creativity, Saddam’s son Uday has his own colorful forms of sadistic entertainment. Since he is in charge of Iraq’s Olympic athletes he has taken it upon himself to try out some novel coaching and training techniques. All in the Olympic spirit, to be sure.

For example, poor athletic performances are rewarded with prison time. Once imprisoned, athletes are beaten, flogged, given inspirational chalk talks, drug naked along the ground until they are good and bloodied, thrown from a tower into pits of raw sewage and then—heaven forbid—forced to watch game films. The raw sewage promotes infection, but just how this infection improves athletic performance is a closely held Iraqi national secret. When training day comes to a close for these dedicated young Olympians, coach Uday, whistle dripping with bubbling spit, will often show a remarkable and unexpected tenderness, gently washing the sewage from the athletes himself—by pissing on their heads.  (See ESPN.com for more details.)  

Heard enough? Or shall I go into the public beheadings of women by Uday’s own black hooded death squad, known as the Fedayeen Saddam? How about his personal version of Fargo, when he has living persons put through wood chippers, head first if he likes them, and feet first if he doesn’t? What do you say to the chopping up of rape victim’s bodies and the express delivery of said chopped up bodies to the front doors of the victim’s families? Miss Garofalo, did you hear about the one where, after a long weekend of repeated rape and torture, Uday smothered his victim in honey and fed her alive to his starving guard dogs?  How do you suppose you’d feel about this war if that had happened to your sister or mother, dear Janine?

OK, more than enough said. But I must ask, is this really the kind of thing you on the ‘Dove’ Left want ‘contained’?  Is not your containment the condemning of still more innocent people to such ongoing episodes of unimaginable pain and horror? Where is your vaunted compassion? 

I sense your wings beginning to flap in uncertain spasms. Let me try another tack that may move you to full flutter; that of Saddam’s draining of Shiite ancestral homelands in the south, which has forced more than a million people into relocation and desperate poverty. True, it’s not as striking as acid baths, sewage Jacuzzi’s, or standing in for a bowl of Alpo, but I don’t think you’re quite getting it yet. Forget the rape and torture, forget the public beheadings of women, get over the Kibbles n’ Bits, and just never mind the genocide of real live human beings for a moment—the Shiite homelands, dear Dove Left—were WETLANDS! 

“That’s it!” cries Martin Sheen in a fit of sudden awareness. “That bastard Saddam has gone too far now by God! He’s displaced waterfowl!”

“Holy birds of Babylon!” rejoins Janine Garofalo, “let’s nuke that sand sucking son of a bitch!”  

“WMD going once! WMD going twice…Sold! to the dumbed-down populace in the front row!”

Yep, weapons of mass destruction are the most trumpeted reason for escalation against Saddam. Louis Armstrong couldn’t hit the note any harder. WMD are the easiest to sell to the public under the circumstances, something that everybody can understand and understandably oppose in the hands of a megalomaniac. Everybody but the ‘Dove’ Left, who seem to think Saddam’s WMD are nothing more than the slick auctioneering of cheap rhetoric in exchange for a war nod from the Oafdom. They may have a point there, but only to a point.

“Where’s the proof!” the Dove Left cries, demanding a smoking, anthrax laden SCUD on a platter of mixed greens.  (Proof they never did then or would now if Bill Clinton were still president).  

There is no proof per se, only the informed conclusions of the US, UN, and every major intelligence service in the world. This is enough. Besides that, WMD is only part of the equation.  The Bush Doctrine clearly states that anybody who supports or harbors terrorists, let alone commits terrorism, is a legitimate target. That Iraq falls into this category is absolutely undeniable. Don’t forget, that despite the main thrust of the sales pitch, that this is first and foremost a war against terrorism, and a beachhead for the reshaping the Middle East. Without a basic transformation from oppressive regimes to benevolent ones, from 9^th century Islamic beliefs to 21^st, global Arab/Islamic terrorism will continue.   It’s high time for the Terrorist Belt to buckle.

Understand this dear ‘Dove’ Left: Even if Saddam has no WMD programs whatsoever, (in which case he is not only a sick bastard but a fabulously stupid one as well) he has failed to live up to the obligations imposed on him by UN resolution 1441, (not to mention the previous 16) and therefore opened himself to the “serious consequences” agreed to unanimously by the UN Security Council. The WMD subterfuge continues with the hapless UN running in circles. Why? If he’s not busy hiding his weapons programs, then what, his after-school programs?  

It’s up to Saddam to spread his legs and prove he has no WMD, and not up to the US and the corrupt and feckless UN to prove he does. Either Saddam complies, or he and is murderous offspring have their legs spread for them.       

Of Hawks and Doves and Velvet Gloves…

Obviously, yours truly is no left-winged, faux-dove. But nor am I right wing hawk. Call me a fucking owl: an ambidextrous fucking owl who’s owlish on Iraq. This owl is deeply troubled by the horrors inflicted by war and longs for a day when Man is man enough to no longer fight them.  But while I’m longing I’m strapping a cruise missile under each wing, just in case. An owl does not enjoy the kill and does so only out of necessity, sparingly. Similarly, the judicious killing of the right Iraqi’s—the Baathists—will temper the escalation.  I have no doubt this will be done as best we are able. A big group-hug, a pack of Camels and a healthy dose of freedom are due all the rest.       

The war continues as it has since 1991, but the final escalation is still not entirely certain. We may yet get an 11^th hour surprise from the Iraqis.  As the pressure builds and Saddam’s generals are faced with imminent destruction, some may finally have the ‘great balls of fear’ to whack Saddam and his menacing progeny.  But I doubt it. Saddam has everybody spying on everybody else and the immediate fear of death may well be greater than the fear yet to materialize.    

Or, Saddam may yet prove smart enough to at least appear to roll over and turn ‘everything’ over to the UN, which would suck the wind from The Pentagon’s sails faster than a line of coke through a Clinton nostril. Remember, the policy of definitive ‘regime change’ has been backed away from to appease the UN, and would prove diplomatically precarious to re-approach if Saddam appears to lie down.  Expect ‘regime change’ therefore to creep back into the rhetoric fairly soon.   

Or, and likely the least likely, uncle Saddam may decide to turn in his megalomaniac’s union card and retire to the shores of Tripoli, content to sip Virgin Mary’s with Qaddaffi whilst dipping his mohair toes in that little irony.      

Again, it is important to understand that although the pending escalation has many purposes (eliminating Saddam and any WMD programs; securing long term Middle East oil reserves; securing Israel; and securing—tellingly—the House of Saud) that it’s primarily a strike at the heart of the multiple alliances in the Middle East that constitute Arab-Islamist terrorism, and secondarily for the liberation of the Iraqi people. Before you scoff to loudly at the latter, consider that a peaceful, liberated Iraq is essential to our aims in reshaping the region. Paramount in this is establishing a base of operations right next door to Iran and her nuclear/terrorist pursuits. Basing the US military right under the deodorant-free armpits of the mullahs and ayatollahs will be a powerful motive for either voluntary de-radicalization, or face involuntary revolution. It may in fact be the only way to avert an otherwise inevitable war on Persian ground. Further, as Iran goes so goes Syria, which is not only her ally in state sponsored terrorism, but in the brutal occupation of Lebanon as well.   

Anybody who seriously thinks the US is going to lay waste to Iraq, steal her oil and continue on to take over the world, needs to bitch-slap themselves silly and stop listening to the menopausal hysteria of Susan Sarandon and her dashing, ever loving co-star—Tariq Aziz. 

There is a lot of talk about the price of victory, and whether or not it will be worth it. If I told you prior to WWII that the price of victory would be the untold suffering and deaths of tens of millions people you would have been against it, and understandably so. Yet who among us now (save a few neo-Nazis and assorted other nut-bags) would stand up and argue that it was not worth it?

Of course nowhere remotely near those death tolls will occur in Iraq. The 500,000 innocent deaths the Left is squawking about the US inflicting are grossly hyperbolic, propaganda at its worst. The only person in this war willing to inflict such a death toll against innocent Iraqi’s is himself an Iraqi. There will be no wholesale coalition carpet-bombing or nuking of Baghdad, and anybody with any sense knows it. Yes unwilling innocents will die in Iraq, willing US soldiers will die and I am distressed about it as much as anybody. But in a just war the price of victory, no matter how high, is always cheaper than the price of appeasement, and eventual defeat because of it.    

Maybe comparing the War on Terror with WWII is a stretch, but then again maybe it isn’t. With a bunch of nut-jobs running around with anthrax in their pants and nukes in their Samsonite, it could evolve into a world war of an entirely new order. The point is that NOW is the time to thrust our collective sword through the black heart of Terrorism and bring democracy (or at least benevolent leadership) to the Middle East, because tomorrow—as we have seen in shocking Technicolor—could prove too late.    

“But even more Muslims will hate us for attacking Iraq, and we’ll suffer even more big terrorist attacks!”

Goat splat. We are already redlining on both counts. Oh they may hate us more and there will probably be a spike in terrorism and terrorist recruitment, but the maximum amount of Blockbuster terrorism they are capable of inflicting is already in the works and has been for a decade now, with special thanks to your man Bill. So strap on your Kevlar and quit your caterwauling. You Neville Chamberlain’s out there who think we can negotiate peace with the effectively insane, who think we can make nice with Muslim terrorists by building schools and daycare centers and then expect them to do an about-face to embrace peace, love and Where’s Waldo, need to wake the hell up and smell the venal, feckless stench of your Liberal programming. There’s quite a bit of business to take care of before the olive branch can be safely extended. Extend it now and you’ll be pulling back a bloody stump.  Turn the other cheek and you’re liable to get your head chopped off.

It is no exaggeration to say that the only thing these people truly understand and respect, is brute, absolute force. If you doubt this, then you need to study your history of the Middle East right up to the present. Can you spell Hama, as in Syria? OK sure, now you can. And now that you can, look it up and learn something!

“But we’re the ones who gave Saddam his WMD starter kit!”

And your point is…?  Yes we gave Saddam his part of his WMD starter kit, at a time when we were allied with him against Iran. So did half of Europe contribute to his WMD ability much more recently, selling dubious ‘dual use’ technology and a host of other goodies.  Unless you are armed and ready to take a grand conspiracy argument to its limits, then you need to face the same unfortunate facts that old Dr. Frankenstein faced, that your creation created unintended consequences that have become intolerable, and must therefore be de-created.  

“But if we weren’t such a big bully in the world everybody would love us and terrorism wouldn’t even exist!”

Whatever you say, Miss Poppins. Modern Arab-Islamic terrorism was created in the wake of the arbitrary division of the Arab world following World War I and again after World War II, which among other things gave land for the Jews and none for the Palestinians.  It has spread and been fostered for many years, most notably by the following: Jimmy Carter jerk-screwing the Shah and helping to usher radical Islam to power in Iran; Jimmy Carter failing to use decisive force to free the hostages; the Reagan Administration’s double crossing and abandonment of Pakistan which opened the way for Islamist radicals to seize power; the Soviet war against Muslim Afghanistan which gave birth (with help from the USA) to the “Afghan Arabs” who would become bin Laden’s soldiers and make him a legend*; Reagan’s hasty retreat from Lebanon following the bombing of the Marine barracks; the US military basing on Saudi soil; Bush’s ‘betrayal’ of Saddam in Gulf War I compounded by refusing to take Baghdad; the collapse of the Soviet Union and the ongoing debacle in Chechnya; the long ongoing systematic oppression and radicalization of the Arab and Muslim street by the Arab and Muslim elite; decades of worldwide Wahabi indoctrination, terrorist support and double dealing by Saudi Arabia; and last but certainly not least, the multiple blunders, cover-ups and criminal negligence of the Clinton Administration.

All have made their contributions towards the creation of the global Jihad we now face. The greatest contributions however, come from the terrorists themselves. Whatever the reasons and rationalizations, the wholesale slaughter of innocents can never be justified. The ultimate blame is theirs and theirs alone.  

* * *

That Iraq is not the obvious next major phase in the Terror Wars is an argument for liars and ignoramuses.  It has supported, trained, harbored, sponsored and committed terrorism for more than 30 years.  It has terrorized its own people and brutally murdered some 300,000 to 1,000,000 of them. To not see Iraq’s long and deep involvement in terrorism and genocide is to be either ignorant of the facts, or driven to ignore them by an increasingly vituperative Liberal ideology that dominates the Left and the MMC, not only in this country, but in most of world as well. 

If Bill “Quarter Roll” Clinton were president during 9-11 and 18 months later listed the reasons for taking out Saddam (just as he did in 1998 with rhetoric that mirrors almost word for word George Bush’s now) then the very same ‘Dove’ Left, the very same MMC, the very same United Nations would be backing him all the way. In short, the opposition is politically and even cult based, and has zero to do with “legality”, “morality” or any other brand of horseshit propaganda being shoveled.    

We among the sane (a growing minority) hear many of the facts described in this Rail quietly reported in the MMC (though most never make it to Cable and Network News) and then marvel when the MMC dutifully goes about its well-practiced business of marginalizing whatever doesn’t fit or forward its agenda. Pundits willing and able to make a strong case for the Iraq-Al Qaeda connection are either bumped from the regular talking head guest list or put on the air next to screeching ‘Doves’ trained to interrupt, deny and denounce rather than address directly the facts on the table. 

When I hear my dear lost Liberal friends parrot these pundits as if they spoke the gospel I want to jab needles in my eyes to escape the pain of my frustration.  When the frustration subsides an uneasy foreboding creeps in, because I see clearly the malleability of the mass mind and the power of the mass media to stealthily mold it.

Everybody thinks he is a free thinker when in fact almost nobody is, and no two classes of people believe it more fervently than intellectuals and ignoramuses.  (Religious or secular zealots can be either.  In fact the latter is necessary for the former to prosper.)

And therein lies the effective genius of the MMC, which has become the de facto tree of knowledge, offering just enough fruit for each of us to poison ourselves in our own way with our “own personal opinions.” Having precious little first hand or true knowledge on which to base those opinions, we are all working propagandists to one degree or another.

The sober, centered radical understands this and factors it into the equation of his worldview. The drunken rest—crude rubes and refined elites alike—haven’t a clue, or at least not one that they can’t successfully deny, rationalize, or tell honest lies about. 

True lies far outnumber true truths, and the difference is the world we live in.     

* * *

If Saddam is the moment’s “Dr. Evil” (Kim Jong Il can wait his turn, Newsweek) then bin Laden has in a sense been his “Mini-me”. Perhaps a better (but less shagadelic) analogy would be a “Devil’s Pact” between mafia crime families who secretly conspire to defeat a common enemy. That Iraq and Al Qaeda have been complicit in at least three major terrorist attacks against the United States seems virtually certain. That they had a working relationship and publicly announced motives to launch such attacks is 100% certain.  Do not buy into the oft-repeated “intellectual” drivel that their mutual hatred for each precludes such a relationship. This is yet another argument made by parrots, intellectual fools and/or Left wing ideologues. That the MMC continues to pour cold water on this relationship and refuses to seriously investigate it on their own comes as no surprise to anyone who understands how the MMC works.**  Responsible journalists outside the MMC have pursued it and the evidence shows us, if not the gun itself, then certainly the sound of gunfire and a thick plume of curling blue smoke.     

Make no mistake, both Saddam and bin Laden need to depart the planet, post haste.  Al Qaeda and its affiliate members must be killed or jailed into ripe old age. They will not be de-radicalized. At least not without castration and a graduate course in reverse brain engineering. It is the would-be radicals and the regular folk on the Muslim street that must be steadfastly reached out to, educated and otherwise helped to help themselves. I know that on its face beginning such a ‘reaching out’ with war seems an odd way to go about it, but it is the only way with terrorists and dictators.  Japan and Germany were both destroyed during WWII, then rebuilt and democratized. The result was two peaceful, economic powerhouses.  There are times when destruction is the only way. Without the destruction of the Singularity some 13.5 billion years ago, there would be no Universe, no Milky Way Galaxy, no planet Earth, no America, and no miserable little you to complain about it.        

That said, as I have said previously, with today’s technology the destruction of Iraq can and will be targeted and minimal. It shall be history’s first politically correct war. And it may lead to our undoing. Because of this, after Saddam’s army is defeated and scattered to the four winds, multi-national forces in large numbers under US command will almost surely have to be brought in to help secure the country and pave the way for a massive wave of infrastructure specialists and materials. New and old Iraqi security forces will need to be trained and worked back into the system. Moderate Shia and Sunni religious leaders need to be courted and encouraged to preach calm and patience, and militias disarmed. This will go a long way towards keeping the seeds of a possible 3-way civil war from germinating in the aftermath. Any Jihadists from other countries stupid enough to enter Iraq and die for their twisted cause should be accommodated.  The more we can fight radical Islam in Iraq the better.  And yes the war will create more radicals and more terrorism, there will be a spike, you can bank on it. How effectively we prosecute both the war and the peace will determine whether or not it is a short term spike.    

This cannot be overstated: In order for there to be a true and lasting victory, in order to avoid a major conflagration and subsequent transmogrification into global jihad with a possible Armageddon finale, a precise and overwhelming force must be morphed into a profound and overwhelming finesse. If we fail one, we fail both.    

The iron fist and the velvet glove.  

The hawk and the dove.

The fucking owl.

—Solomon Bell

 Rails from the Radical Middle

*Contrary to popular MMC created belief, there is no evidence that the US was ever directly involved in supporting or training bin Laden during this period. In fact bin Laden spent most of his time in Pakistan, and his ‘legend’ as a fierce warrior slaying Russians seems to have been largely manufactured.

**For a crash course on how ‘we the sheeple’ are being blinkered, lied to and led around by the nose by a mainstream media that is highly political, driven by cheap profit and free only to a point, I refer you to a recent book of insider essays written by 18 award winning journalists with the rare balls to tell the mind blowing truth:  Into the Buzzsaw, edited by Emmy and Murrow Award winning investigative reporter and former 60 Minutes producer Kristina Borjesson, is a must read for anyone who cares anything at all about the truth. These guys make Time magazine’s triumvirate of whistle blowing “Persons of the Year” look like kindergarten tattle-tales.  I’ll let you figure out why it isn’t getting much press. www.amazon.com

Bush, Holy War, and 60 Minutes

by Bennett Stevens

February 11, 2004

60 Minutes is afraid of George W. Bush, in part, because he’s a practicing Christian. A February 8 segment on evangelical Christians in which several fundamentalists preparing for the end of the world were interviewed, 60 Minutes did its best to suggest that Bush too was a glaze-eyed fundamentalist. They didn’t do it outright, as there is no evidence, so instead twice ran the clip of his 2000 election debate answer to the question of what philosopher he admired most. Since GW didn’t say Socrates or Descartes or Kant some other intellectualist icon, but Jesus Christ, well then, he’s obviously a religious wack-job!   

What 60 Minutes is trying to do is the same thing Al Sharpton is—good company kids—which is to draw parallels between Bush/Christ and bin Laden/Muhammad. This is about as shameless as it gets.  Sharpton is trying to make the war on terror a Bush created religious war, at least in the eyes of anyone stupid enough to listen to him, not because he believes it, but to appeal to his base base. Enter 60 Minutes and you get the same damn thing, only more subtle and with better production values, not to mention a much larger audience. Since Bush has done nothing to indicate that the War on Terror is a religious war (and please spare me the single off the cuff ‘crusade’ reference, you people know he ain’t exactly Mr. Eloquent) and everything to indicate just the opposite, its pretty obvious 60 Minutes is engaged in political propaganda. Big surprise, I know.  

It is unfortunate that many Christians, mostly the born again and fundamentalist types, believe the Bible as the verbatim word of God whenever it suits them, and do interpretational contortions whenever it doesn’t—to make sure it does. The fervent belief that only people who have accepted Christ as their lord and savior will be saved when the end of the world comes, is just plain sad. It’s also pretty damn un-Christian if you ask me, a Christian.

To think for example, that 800 million Hindus, no matter how pious, how loving of their neighbors, or how charitable they are—whose own “savior” Krishna walked the earth some 3,500 years before Jesus was born—are damned to hell if they don’t reject their own religion and embrace Christ as the one and only, is not only terribly misguided, but arrogant, ignorant, and even mean spirited. Of course the same fate would await all Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, etc., if the fundamentalists were to be right. Thank God they could not be more wrong.  

When Christ said he was the light and the way, he meant the light was the way, and he was an embodiment of that light, a vessel.  It was never about Jesus personally but the Christ consciousness within him, the light, and let me tell you loud and clear, no person and no religion has a monopoly on the light!  The light is everywhere and in everyone. The only difference between people that really matters is in how brightly the light shines through them.  And really, how bright could the light be from those who would condemn 5/6ths of the world to hell, simply for not believing as narrowly as they do?

Sounds dangerously bin Ladenesque, doesn’t it? And so we understand where 60 Minutes is coming from, at least in theory. And I don’t blame them for being wary of fundamentalists in power, they should be. There is however, a great difference.  Christian fundamentalists aren’t out systematically slaughtering non-believers for not believing. At least on that score, they’ve evolved and matured over the last millennium.  Frightening numbers of Islamists still have not.

In terms of Bush there are great differences as well.  He’s never acted in a way to lead the clear thinking among us to believe he’s a religious zealot, let alone engaged in a holy war against Islam.  His enemies on the left would love that he would, but it just ain’t gonna happen, because that’s not even remotely what the man is about. Bush may be a lot of things, but the very first thing he is, quite obviously I should think, is a good and loving man who believes strongly in religious freedom.     

If and when 60 Minutes, you do manage to find evidence that Bush is a religious fanatic preparing for the end of the world while condemning 5/6 of the planet to hell, then I will be the first to pay close attention. Until then, why not quit casting venomous aspersions and go out and do some real investigative journalism for a change, you know---the unbiased kind, the kind that really digs deep to find the unvarnished truth about the most vital stories of our time? No, I don’t suppose you do.

~Bennett Stevens

Rails from the Radical Middle

TheArtichoke.org

The Big Dirty
by Bennett Stevens

Question: Has anybody, and I do mean anybody, in the Mainstream Media ever seriously investigated or even offered more than a cursory glance at The Big Dirty secret girding the US/World economy? How about you Mr. Jennings? Mr. Limbaugh? Mr. Friedman? You Mr. Woodward? I didn’t think so.  Please—allow me. The freedom to point out the truth is one of the few fringe benefits enjoyed by those of us who haven’t yet taken the opportunity to sell out.   

‘The Big Dirty’ is part and parcel with the most financially vital of all international trade sectors. Nope, not oil. Not high tech.  Not the travel industry. Not automobiles or agriculture or commercial aircraft or telecom or pharmaceuticals. No, not even the virulent spread of Starbucks.  I’m afraid the answer is far more insidious than even the $4 cup of coffee.

The answer: Armaments. The honest call them the weapons of war. The doublespeak professionals in Washington call them the ‘tools of peace’. 

Tools of peace so successful that they enabled some 120 wars to get up and running through the 1980’s and ‘90’s.  And since the tools of peace have the tendency to expend themselves and destroy each other, the demand for more peace tools is self-perpetuating. Reader, meet the peace racket, the etymological birthplace of ‘more bang for your buck’.   

The numbers are staggering, with worldwide estimates from the more than 80 nations now involved in the peace-tools trade reaching into the trillions of dollars annually.  That’s right, trillions. These estimates are extremely difficult to gauge not only because of flat out secrecy, but also do to a  veritable kaleidoscope of deceptive governmental (emphasis on ‘mental’) accounting practices. Arthur Andersen and the boys at Enron couldn’t carry Uncle Sam’s $4 cup o’ Joe on this one. 

Government arms dealing began simply enough in the early 1960’s as a way to help arm US friends and allies while using the profits to pay for the US’s own weaponry.  It looked good on paper and worked some in the beginning, as shortsighted technocratic policies sometimes do. The problem with it, setting the moral issues of peddling war for profit aside, was that there were no profits! At least not for the government.

Astoundingly, what the authors of this policy, the ever feckless Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and his myopic minions failed to take into account, was that Uncle Sam was not a businessman, nor was it within his capacity to become one.  Let’s face it; if Israel needs US weaponry to defend itself but cannot afford to pay for it, then Israel gets US weaponry, courtesy of the US taxpayer. And the same goes for any other nation that cannot afford them, as long as the US determines that it’s in its own national interests.  The initial assumption that arms would be sold as capital goods—goods in return for capital—was fatally flawed from the start.

But that wasn’t the only major flaw in the plan. What McNamara also failed to appreciate was that other nations would follow suit, eventually in droves, countering US arms sales with arms sales of their own. Not for capital returns mind you, but for strategic ones. While the nuclear arms race between the superpowers was grabbing all the headlines, a much more pervasive conventional arms race swept around the planet largely unnoticed. 

As previously alluded to, the first casualty of this brand of conventional arms dealing was of course, the conventional deal. What seller nations did in lieu of monetary payment was to create labyrinths of complex debt paper between themselves and buyer nations so that never-to-be “capital” goods—false profits—were counted as real.  These false profits generated the printing of hard currency, hard currency that ran through the world economy with nothing but bad paper and thin air supporting it.  The result after more than 30 years of this continuing practice is a global economic armaments bubble of undeterminable scope. 

The recent bubble in hi-tech was well charted and predicted by many to collapse well ahead of time. It was classical, following well-known precedents. Conversely, the armaments bubble is not classical but anomalous, and isn’t charted at all. Those few in the know have no idea when it might collapse. All they know is that the only way to keep it afloat is to keep blowing into it.

The life breath of the armaments bubble is demand. Demand, in the case of armaments, can be created through the implementation of defensive strategies but cannot be sustained indefinitely. Time to time offensive strategies—war—must be implemented in order to increase demand and prevent the bubble from collapsing.   

In short, we the perpetual preachers of peace and freedom have become dependent on a perpetual war economy. It has become the ‘vital national interest’ nobody in power will talk about publicly. Not defense contractors, not government economists, not government agencies and certainly not politicians. Even if they wanted to talk they wouldn’t because they couldn’t prove anything. Moreover, they’d be effectively neutered, their careers marginalized or even destroyed.  And yet along the dusky corridors of power The Big Dirty is quietly—almost silently—understood and accepted. 

Don’t expect the Mainstream Media to do any talking or investigating either, for much the same reasons. They have in recent years become increasingly reliant on and acquiescent to the machinations of the Washington power structure. Most reporters haven’t a clue anyway. The ones that do, know better. 

Never mind that forty percent of all United States scientists are working in weapons technology. Never mind that sixty percent of all government R&D money goes to weapons technology, or that a goodly chunk of Silicon Valley survives on it.  Never mind that this new War on Terror is just the beginning of a whole new and improved era of Big Dirty economics. Never mind the curious timing and negligence over a ten-year period that made way for its trigger on 9-11. Never mind that there are already enough armaments to kill every single man, woman and child on Earth—many, many times over. 

I mean come on, these are investments in peace we’re talking about!      

~Bennett Stevens

TheArtichoke.org

The Celibacy Heresy: Catholic Sex Report Continues Vatican/Mainstream Media Cover-Up
 

by Bennett Stevens
 

Despite today's stunning report from the National Review Board, the American public continues to be spoon-fed a bad Reader’s Digest version of a worldwide sex scandal that is far more pervasive than either the Church or the Mainstream Media is willing to admit, investigate or report.  This largely suppressed scandal involves tens of thousands of priests and a shocking array of sin and sex crimes that threatens to topple one of the ‘great’ illusory pillars of the modern Roman Catholic Church—the Law of Celibacy.  

But before we get into all that red meat, let’s first try to clarify, rectify and amplify what little the Mainstream Media HAS reported on.

Up front and for the record, pedophile priests are only responsible for a small fraction of the sex abuse occurring within the Church. The fact is that some 80% of what has been labeled pedophilia isn’t pedophilia at all, but hebephilia; defined as sexual obsession/expression with pubescent boys and/or girls ages 11 to 14. This is not a case of semantics, but of major behavioral differences, not to mention accuracy. Moreover, hebephile priests are predominantly gay, and the preponderance of the sex abuse cases scandalized in the Mainstream Media involve gay priests and teenaged boys.  

This raises a number of questions the media refuses to ask, not the least of which is why man-boy hebephilia is so prevalent within the Catholic Church. Three main reasons:  

1. A powerful homosexual subculture within the Church of which man-boy hebephilia is a significant, and in some notorious seminaries, even a promoted extracurricular activity.  Many a seminarian has been recruited as a young teen and brought into a seminary where gay sex is prevalent, then either led into voluntary sex or simply abused.  If abused, his own sexuality—even if he is straight—can be deeply scarred and transmogrified, thus making later expression along the same lines a probable outcome. 
2. In attempting to live unnaturally as a celibate and suppress normal desire, normal desire undergoes a mutation into the forbidden and focuses on availability and opportunity.  The guilt associated with the forbidden is overcome by a desire that in part is fueled by that very guilt. Desire leads to action, action to release, and release back to guilt. Rinse, lather, repeat.
3. Tacit Church permission.  If caught, about the only price to be paid for centuries was a transfer, if that. In other words, ass-jack enough of your flock to arouse suspicion and you got rewarded with a fresh new flock!        

Many would have us believe the percentage of hebephiles in the Church is roughly the same as within the general population. The reality is that the Church fosters a much larger percentage, at least double, probably triple and possibly quadruple that of the general population.

But even hebephilia is a small fraction of the whole.

Mass Sex

There are several aspects to this unseemly whole actually, which among other things makes structuring this Rail a real pain in the ass.  But the Big One, the one that leads most directly to the origin of the problem and poses the biggest perceived threat to the Church, the one that has thus far been kept from belly-flopping into the mainstream—is hiding in plain sight.  

Why it’s none other than…. drum roll please….

Adult-Adult, HETEROsexual sex!

That’s right folks, mostly regular old man-woman sex, only with a white collar on the nightstand and a crucifix swinging devilishly between a pair of blaspheming breasts. (Assuming the missionary position.)

 There are more priests involved in illicit sex with women than with men, teens and children combined!  Who knew? and Alleluia!

 To illustrate the surprising scope of sexual activity and abuse amongst Catholic clergy in America, the conveniently ignored 1990 Doyle-Moulton-Peterson Report, headed by Canon lawyer Fr. Thomas Doyle cites the following round numbers:

 Of 47,000 American priests…

12,000 sexually involved with adult women

6,000 sexually involved with adult men

3,000 sexually abusing minors 

These numbers do not include paternity suits (Deadbeat Fathers for fathers) numbering in the thousands, priest-nun rape, pregnant nuns, and multiple incidences of forced abortion.

So where’s the outrage? Where’s the cry against celibacy, and for the sanctity of marriage to return to the priesthood?

Where’s the hell is the blithering, blathering, palavering Mainstream Media? You mean to tell me the above isn’t sensational enough to strap onto the great media milking machine? What gives? Have we been so Clintonized in this country that only the most heinous acts of sexual desecration (of which priest-nun rape presumably no longer qualifies) gets our attention?       

As shown above, approximately 21,000 of 47,000 (45%) American priests are involved in sexual relationships of one brand or another. Three cheers for the efficacy of celibacy!

CELIBACY I

The Law of Celibacy or ‘the gift from God’ as the Church is fond of calling it, was made part of Roman Catholic canon in 1139.  It became so for a number of reasons, but its main purpose was to end the threat of married priests and their unchecked penchant for nepotism which was eroding not only the overall efficacy of the Church, but the homosexual power structure within it. Slathered up with religiosity, the gift of celibacy was ushered in and the scourge of nepotism cut off at the source.  The sex of course went on as usual, the difference being that straight priests had to go the way of their homosexual brethren and head underground with their sexual exploits, even if they were already married!

Celibacy as law and sex as sin fueled a new scourge that took hold and spread throughout the Church like a young seminarians guancia di culo.  With most priests naturally unable to live up to the law and the law broken in various forms by so many compelled to hide their transgressions, a multi-faceted culture of sex and sex cover-up gradually became institutionalized.     

Do you not wonder why there has not been more outrage by Bishops and Cardinals, and by the Pope himself? Could it be that this is a problem they have long (for 800 years) been intimately familiar with? Could it be that a good percentage of them are sexually active in their own right? Could it be as simple as wide-scale institutional and personal self-preservation; a desperate need to keep the lid on brazen mass scale hypocrisy?  

 On the eve of the 2002 bishop’s policy conference in Dallas to address the ‘pedophilia’ issue, a Dallas Morning News investigation revealed that 103 of 170 Roman Catholic diocese bishops and all eight archdiocese Cardinals had been somehow involved in covering up sex crimes and proliferating the problem. Naturally the Bishop’s conference did not directly address their very own conspiracy of silence concerning these crimes, which for the most part continues. 

Nor did the conference delineate the homosexual driven problems within the Church, namely man-boy hebephilia and an alarmingly high incidence of HIV/AIDS.  According to the Kansas City Star, AIDS has claimed the lives of some 400-800 American priests and infected untold others. Now how on earth has this managed to go so unreported in the otherwise HIV/AIDS trumpeting media? 

Nor did the conference address the dirty big secret concerning the high number of priests involved in adult-adult sexual relationships.   

Finally, the conference avoided any serious discussion of celibacy and its adverse effects on the psycho-sexual behavior that has seeded the very sex abuse they were ostensibly there to find solutions for.  Their simple solution to a very complex problem: Zero tolerance (sort of) for priests caught sexually abusing minors. Never mind the rest of the titanic iceberg.   

Today’s report by the National Review Board admits only that the numbers are worse than previously admitted to, while continuing to deny that forced celibacy has anything at all to do with the problem.

But we know they know. A report drafted for the 1999 Australian Catholic bishop’s conference and leaked to the Sydney Morning Herald, states that sex abuse by clergy is a ‘direct result’ of the unequal treatment of men and women in the Church. The report went on to blame the male celibate culture within the Church for a ‘denial of the feminine’ that helps to foster a climate that more easily leads to abuse.  It says further that it was evident from the responses of certain offenders that they believed sex with minors was a loophole that ‘did not violate the rules about sex with adult women vis-à-vis celibacy.’

Rape on the Cross 

If the problem is bad in America it’s even worse beyond our stunningly self-obsessed and fabulously myopic shores.  How about this little book of revelation: Priestly sex abuse and scandal, including nun-rape, is nigh next to endemic and ongoing in no less than 23 countries. You’d never know it relying on the Mainstream Media.  I seem to be missing the crack reporting about all the white collar criminal sinning going on in Africa, Austria, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Columbia, Cyprus, France, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, the Philippines, Venezuela, and the Pope’s own Poland.  Where oh where for example, during the Pope’s 2002 return to his beloved homeland, was there even a mention of the Polish Catholic sex scandal?  The Worldwide sex scandal? All better now?

Hardly. The systematic raping of nuns by priests in scores of Catholic communities around the world (including cases in the U.S.) is ongoing and being swept as quickly as possible under already bulging Church rugs. 

Sex between priests and nuns in some diocese is so common that nuns are forced to take birth control pills! How’s that for screaming hypocrisy? But other, more traditional priests it should be noted, apparently remiss to break with Church law in such an unseemly manner, properly use no birth control at all while going about their raping. This helps to explain why the record for the most simultaneously pregnant nuns in a single Catholic community stands at an impressive, 29. 

To avoid the obvious embarrassment of pregnant nuns waddling up to be counted, many of these more traditional priests have found their answer under the veil of forced abortion. Yes, forced abortion.  In one notable case a botched procedure resulted in the death of a nun, and the good Father who first raped and then in effect killed said nun, later had the gall to preside over her requiem mass!

In an unnamed diocese in Africa (Reuters, March 21, 2001) a Mother Superior had complained to her Bishop that parish priests were continually sexually abusing her nuns.  Finally, after 20 of them became pregnant and she demanded a stop to it, the Bishop did what any good Bishop would do—he demoted her.  Perhaps he even called her a jealous old party-pooper because nobody was bothering to rape her.  

The plight of nuns is particularly bad in Africa because of the rampant spread of HIV/AIDS.  The good old days of priests doing up prostitutes are mostly over as most of them are now HIV positive. What to do but seek safety in virgin territory? Clearly changing times call for changing habits, so why not bend a nun or two over a pew or two and save a few collection plate dollars in the process? Better yet, why not kill a couple of more birds by racking the good sisters up inside the confessional, dutifully hailing Mary all the while?  “Forgive me Lord for I am sinning! I’m sinning! Holy Christ am I sinning!”

CELIBACY II

 The Vatican and the Rational Review Board steadfastly denies that celibacy is part of the root cause or even has anything at all to do with priests having sex, which of course is an absurd claim that flies in the face of the most basic common sense, and yet still goes unchallenged by the media. Denying that the official repression of sex within the Church has nothing to do with the inevitable and often reprehensible expression thereof, may be the most asinine blanket denial I have ever heard.  And not eating has nothing to do with starving, which in time makes even a bucket of maggots look like a savory taste treat.    

Not surprisingly, nobody, and I mean nobody in the Mainstream Media has nailed this thing yet, and let me tell you; it isn’t that difficult a thing to nail.  Father Spin and pre-spun blowhards like Catholic League president William Donohue who are owned by the ‘company’, all try to lock in and narrow their argument to the pedophilia script, saying that it is a sickness that has no relation to celibacy.  They have some unproven psychological data to back this up, but even if true, pedophilia is in large part a red herring. It is a fraction of a much larger story that has very much indeed to do with celibacy, or again as the Church calls it, ‘the gift from God’. The gift that keeps on giving apparently, evidenced by a plethora of pregnant nuns, aborted babes, thousands of paternity suits and legions of sexually abused youth, some of whom will feel compelled to pass their abuse on, creating still more gift givers. And let’s not forget about those hundreds of dead priests given the gift of AIDS.   

It is quite clear to the mentally functional among us (an increasing minority) that it is the ill conceived law of celibacy and the doomed attempts to live up to it which lay at the root of the larger problem, right there with the not so subculture of sex and sex cover-up, both gay and straight, that has risen along side it for the last 800 years. The fact that the repression of sex in any community leads either to other forms of twisted expression, or more often to twisted forms of sexual expression, has been well known for thousands of years.  When it isn’t twisted, well, show me a clergyman who has never engaged in illicit sex, or at least pounded his little padre into submission, and I’ll show you either a eunuch or a saint. You simply cannot vow such a powerful natural force out of existence, and it is only the most rare of souls who can ever truly transcend it.  For the Church to expect young men to defy nature cold turkey, and to continue on with it’s gift from God charade is not only childish and absurd, but as we have seen, extremely harmful. 

The sexual subculture within the Church has various factions, the least pervasive and most heinous of which, the pedophiles and hebephiles, are the only ones finally being punished. Not only do they need to be, but as they are relatively few in number and only about a third of them have been exposed—they can be.  Sacrificial wolves.

Then the Church figures the spotlight will be off and the lid put back on the can. To admit and address the big dirty secret involving nearly half the clergy is simply not an option, as it could well strike a blow from which it could never recover. Or worse still, it might force the Church to grow the hell up and actually make some serious changes for the better. No, no, mustn’t have any of that! Better a sick institution than a dead or even a recovering one, they seem to be saying.    

And guess what? The obvious Vatican strategy of cover-up, spin, and flat out lies and denials seems to be working rather well, doesn’t it? One way or another they have managed to get the media to limit its reporting, in effect conspiring with the Vatican to suppress a potentially much larger scandal which points directly at the great sham of celibacy.

Despite the shocking new numbers of abused children and teens reported today, despite an overall cost approaching $700 million dollars in the US alone, the Church still refuses to address the screamingly obvious root of the problem.  And so once more half measures are taken, once the furor  dies down, there will be a quick return to business, almost as usual:

‘Take your pill and spread ‘em Sister!’

‘Best hurry on with those robes your Excellency, my husband comes home early on Tuesdays.’

‘Oh Monsignor, your such a queen!’

‘Billy! Father O’Sodomy is here to see you!’    

Makes you feel warm and fuzzy all over, doesn’t it? One might want to think twice before dropping another dollar in the collection plate of one of the richest and most deceitful ‘corporations’ in all the world. It might be helping to pay for Sister Theresa’s birth control pills, or her abortion, or the good Father’s loophole-brication. You are definitely paying to support the world’s original white-collar crime syndicate.   

‘Oh but the Church does so much good!’ you cry.

Yeah. This is admittedly a bit of a stretch—these days—but so does the Hezbollah.

~Bennett Stevens

The Artichoke.org

 Escaped Catholic, Ardent Progenitor of the Radical Middle

P.S.  I addend this Rail with a brief priest classic from the Irish Times. Underlines mine.       

GALWAY — A former Franciscan brother who went to confession to confess that he had been sexually abusing young boys was himself then abused by his confessor, a Franciscan priest, a trial in Galway heard. Robert Keoghan, 50, of Waterford, pleaded guilty to 8 charges of indecently assaulting 8 boys aged between 9 and 16 on various dates between 1969 and 1972.

Keoghan, who is currently serving an 18-month sentence for two similar offences, told the court that after a complaint was made by the father of one of his victims, he was sent on a retreat by his superiors. While on this retreat in the early 1970s, he went to confess his abuse. The confession, he said, took place in a room and not a confessional and his confessor sexually abused him.

The judge said he was "flabbergasted" to hear the accused had been sexually abused while in the process of making a confession. The court had heard earlier that Keoghan was sent to a Franciscan seminary at the age of 13. He was illiterate and from the moment he entered the seminary he was systematically abused by other brothers, most of whom were in their 20s.

The judge imposed a term of 2 years in prison, to run concurrently, on all 8 charges before the court.
Irish Times, 2/20/00

Where Have All the Great Ones Gone?

by Bennett Stevens
 

Wisdom on the world stage is marked most clearly by its absence. There is not a single world leader who can, even at a D-grade level, summarize and elucidate the state of the world from both a socio-geopolitical and ontological perspective. Without a clear ontological understanding, the movements of the socio-geopolitical world cannot be deeply understood. Without deep understanding, there is no wisdom. One doesn’t have to look far for abundant evidence of this.     

In the wake of 9-11 when religion was thrust to the forefront, the woeful inadequacy of America’s religious leaders also became sadly apparent. Not a one of them could tell us  “why bad things happen to good people”. (That, as always, is left to the Self-Help authors). Not a one of them could speak authoritatively on the inherent essential unity of all the world’s major religions, despite their superficial, seemingly divergent dogmas. Not a one of them made an attempt to project this essential unity and the understanding thereof onto a future brought to peace as it only can be brought to peace—in that essential unity. 

Of course there are great men and women who can speak to the above, quite eloquently and powerfully. But these are not the kinds of people the pragmatists of the power elite embrace or take seriously. The Dalai Lama won a Nobel Peace Prize, but so did the fool from Plains. The Dalai Lama is cute and fine and wise, but respected only on the margins. He, like the much less wise Pope, is little more than a hood ornament on the engine of world political power. Wise men like the late Joseph Campbell, Andrew Cohen, Ken Wilbur and others—will likely never be seen in a presidential cabinet. The pragmatists who inhabit hard reality have no place for people who understand a deeper reality, because a deeper reality is the one thing the pragmatists fear more than anything else.      

And that is the heart of the matter, the very crux of life and evolution on a young planet earth—the difficult mergence of hard and deep reality; of how to effect the conscious maximization of human potential in a world unconsciously designed to minimize it. How to empower wisdom over mite; understanding over fear and ignorance, information over propaganda, charity over greed, honesty over deceit, unity over enmity, peace over violence. Of course it is one thing to sit alone on a mountaintop philosophizing about lofty solutions and quite another to actualize that philosophy with the masses down on the ground.

This, only great ones can do. But can a great one rise in this day and age? The ever-subverted elective structures of American ‘democracy’ that yield only to money and power have made this highly unlikely anytime soon. Our system of government, born of wisdom, has been so bastardized over the years that precious little of it remains. Power wars are fought on the extremes by the few while the masses in between are left holding the bag of an increasingly polarizing body politic.

We the Sheeple have been so masterfully propagandized that most of us actually believe we live in a free democracy. The truth is that It’s not even a representational democracy any more because our representatives no longer represent us, but rather serve the machinations of a system now controlled by a phalanx of un-elected lawyers, advisors, corporate overlords and mainstream media elites.  Senators and Congresspersons have very little power to effect real change these days, even if they wanted to, which they don’t. These men and women are little more than jabbering puppets and fronts who understand all too well just how little power they have. If they rock the boat too much they will be marginalized, and if they persist, eventually they will be forced out, one way or another.  

So, where have all the great ones gone? Where are those with breadth of authentic knowledge and an accessible wisdom that knows no dogma, with a dignity of spirit that trumps all self-interest and an ability to communicate it to a world hungry for true leadership? Where the hell are Solon and Socrates, Washington and Jefferson, Voltaire and Paoli? Yes, I know they’re dead, smart-ass. But would these semi-enlightened fathers of era democracy even be listened to today? Have we wrapped ourselves so tightly in the straightjacket of structure serving the will-to-power that authentic truth and the potential for actualized wisdom has become the enemy?

Yes, sadly, and no. It is a mistake to focus too narrowly on the media focused, nationalist-world stage, even though a good 80% of us use it as a brain-stop. Greatness may have been relegated to the undercurrent for now, but it is the undercurrent, not the shallow showy waves that moves the oceans. No, true greatness is not gone, nor is it dormant. It is simply swimming beneath the surface, biding its time. It swims with us, and it is we who will empower its rise, a rise that is far nearer than the puppet ‘greats’ and their puppeteers, advisors and technocratic legions are capable of sensing. Recognizing the writing on the wall has not been part of their elitist education. After all, the ‘wall’ is theirs alone to write on, and surely they would notice a foreign hand.

Surely.

~Bennett Stevens

TheArtichoke.org

A Nuke for a Nuke
by Bennett Stevens

Hiroshima was an avoidable horror. It came in the wake of the horrific fire bombing of Tokyo and 65 other Japanese cities, where some 600,000 to 1,000,000 innocent civilians were incinerated in up to 1,800-degree firestorms. It came after Japan had been cut off from oil and was nearly out of fuel. It came after Japan had virtually no military production going on, for lack of resources. It came when Japan was for all intents and purposes, defenseless. It came after months of Japanese overtures to negotiate a surrender, including Potsdam, where the US disingenuously demanded an unconditional surrender, a demand known to be unacceptable, and moreover, unnecessary. It was as sincere as Ted Bundy inviting a gal out for dinner and a movie. 

Truman had, the day before Potsdam, approved the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Macarthur was outraged. Eisenhower said Japan was already defeated and that the dropping of the bomb was completely unnecessary, even to save American lives. Still, under the psychology and circumstances of 1945, Hiroshima can almost be rationalized successfully. 

But Nagasaki cannot. Two days after Hiroshima, Nagasaki became the site for the greatest single act of mass murder the world had ever seen. It was entirely avoidable, and we knew it. We did it anyway. We, the good God loving USA, land of the free and home of the brave, slaughtered 73,884 mostly old men, women and babes. It was an act of barbarism that dwarfs the attacks of 9-11, all done in the name of God and country, peace and freedom. An act of so called defense against a defenseless nation 5,000 miles from our shores, when surrender was imminent. It was live target practice; a science experiment, a monstrously ominous warning to the Russians. It was a warning so chilling that it convinced the Kremlin that we were capable of anything, and propelled them full speed into the nuclear arms race. The Cold War was up and running.   

My main point here is not to castigate Truman and the boys in their rational madness, or the people of the time who overwhelmingly approved. They bought the rhetoric, rhetoric we now know, quite clearly, was a lie. The point is that too many of us still believe the lie, and I am afraid are poised to believe more such lies. We need to stop our rationalizing and face up to the truth of what we did in Japan. We need to understand what our government is capable of, so that we the people of the United States don’t let ourselves be snow-jobbed into approving such crimes against humanity in the future. 

Questions: Are we so self-righteous as to really believe we can avoid the laws of cause and effect, of karma, of a “tooth for a tooth and an eye for an eye”, forever? Do we really believe we can unleash such a horrific weapon of mass destruction upon the world, proliferate it like so many mad mushrooms, and never have it come back to haunt us? 

And should we suffer a nuclear attack one day, how will we as a nation react militarily? Will it be with caution and wisdom, or with righteous rage and vengeance? What if terrorists without a sponsoring country nuke us? Who do we nuke in return? And if we do nuke somebody, probably some sandy somebody to assuage our rage, do we fully appreciate that such a course of action may well domino into “the end of the world as we know it?” Now I ask you, is this really such an extreme doomsday view as to be brushed aside, or is it becoming an increasingly possible scenario?

There are presently some 30,000 nuclear warheads on earth, mostly in America, Russia and former Soviet republics.  Even more comforting, there is enough plutonium and enriched uranium to make approximately 250,000 more.

Pakistan, not exactly a bastion of rational thought and political stability, has about 50 nukes and may have already sold nuclear materials and technology. India, virulent enemy of Pakistan, has about 150. Axis of Evil charter member Iran is building a massive nuclear reactor, clearly for a homegrown supply of enriched uranium and/or plutonium. Kim Jung Evil and North Korea has a few and are on their mad and merry way to more. (Thanks to the special gift of two nuclear reactor cores given by Mr. Bill and the bumbling of Madeline Albright and Jimmy Carter). China, currently massing men and armaments across the Taiwan Straights has them, along with our best missile guidance systems.  (This yet another special gift from Mr. Bill, via the “honest mistakes” of Loral and Hughes, and the security disasters of Hazel O’Leary and Bill Richardson.) 

Nuclear materials have been available on the black market for over a decade now. Precious little is known about who has bought what from whom. An estimated 50 nuclear suitcase bombs were reported missing (by the very general in charge of counting them) from the Russian arsenal after the breakup of the Soviet Union. The Russians now deny that any at all are missing. Why don’t I believe this? 

Terror by Samsonite. I can just see the look on the face of the $10 an hour x-ray machine operator when that baby rolls through the airport. “Let’s see now, toothbrush, hairbrush, tennis racket, nuclear triggering device, roll-on deodorant…OK, have a nice flight!”

~Bennett Stevens

TheArtichoke.org

Archives:

Danny Pearl: The Judeo-Christian Angle

by Bennett Stevens

Danny Pearl was likely kidnapped and killed at the behest of rogue elements inside the Pakistani ISI as way to rebel against the hated new infidel, Pervez Musharif. But there is evidence, largely ignored, that Pearl in particular was chosen not because he was an American journalist, but because he was a Jewish American journalist. Hint, hint Mr. “Let’s Give War a Chance” Rumsfeld. Hint, hint, American free press.

Free apparently, to be just as moronic and myopic as it wants to be. I mean hey, what’s the point of broadcasting any more than a minute a day about the teetering, bullet strafed domino to all out war in the Middle East, when there’s a good dog mauling story to swarm over? Who cares about a little Intifada between the Palestinians and Israelis when there’s an Olympic ice skating controversy to be beat to death? 

Daniel Pearl’s murder, the murder of a real journalist, at last appears to have brought a slap of reality home to the mainstream media. You would have thought 9-11 would have been enough. It is a leap, admittedly, to suggest Pearl’s religion will help push the media to focus its power for positive action towards that little skirmish going on down Israel way. After all, they have long held cheap ratings above the conducting of actual journalism. But since the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is so obviously one of the main excuses for global terror, and since the Bush Administration has for all intents and purposes ignored it, you would think they might smell a story to monger. You would think.

The future of the world hinges on what happens in the Middle East. We will go to war in Iraq. Iran and Syria will get involved. The violence between Israel and the Palestinians will increase. Sooner or later, Israel will bomb Iran's nuclear facilities. Musharif may get assassinated, putting some 50 nuclear warheads in the control of radical Muslims. 

Now I am far from being a Bible thumper, preferring my orders from God to come unedited, but isn’t there something in there about an Apocalypse being triggered in the Holy Land sometime during this period in history? Wars and rumors of wars? Or is that just too “Pat Robertson” to consider seriously?

Just wondering.

God bless you Danny Pearl, your sweet brave wife, and your unborn son.

Bennett Stevens

TheArtichoke.org
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Terrorist Bagels and Fruit Loops

1/21/02

I continue to be amazed over this Guantanamo prisoner situation. The British liberal press that started all this are not only hacks, they are lying hacks, the purveyors of fine yellow journalism. Inflammatory stories of torture and deprivation without any facts, all the while with the terrorists slurping Fruit Loops and chewing fine Jewish bagels, should be laughable. The reason they are not, is that our ever free to be just as moronic and incompetent as they want to be press corps, have taken the ball from their British brethren and run with it.

One such press member, sure to win a Pulitzer and year now, whined to Donald Rumsfeld that it was hot in Cuba, intimating that it was somehow inhumane for the terrorists to be subjected to 70-90 degree temperatures, while shaded in their breezy pens. The good Donald put the reporter in her place, but he did so humanely. He pointed out that not only do the guards have to endure the inhumanity of such temperatures, but that the Cuban people have been managing it just fine for centuries. In fact, what do the Cubans do to cool down? They go outside and sit in the shade! 

But the torture of these prisoners does not end with shade, bagels and Fruit Loops. These upstanding young men also get their choice between an Islamic lunch, (whatever the hell that is—probably gruel prepared by a battered and oppressed woman), or a McDonald's Happy Meal (for cooperating). They get a hot dinner, all the fresh water they can drink, (a luxury in Afghanistan), the same type of sleeping mat our own troops use, daily showers, soap, shampoo, toothpaste and toothbrush, (as compared to the traditional sand and stick).

On the religious side, not only have they been issued prayer mats and Korans (the very book that has been twisted in their minds to spell “Kill all Americans and Jews”), allowed to erect a sign pointing to Mecca, and to top it all off, they get to use the prison PA system as a muezzin! Oh the inhumanity!

To show how far out to lunch I think the press is on this one, not only are the terrorists not being brutalized, they are being pampered! These people want us dead! They may well have information that may prevent many of us, even press members, from death in the near future. Now I’m as humane as the next guy, probably more so, but in this case I say the press should be kicked out of Gitmo so that some serious war time interrogation can be engaged. They can have an extra bowl of Fruit Loops and a pedicure after their rubber hosing.

The notion that putting these nut-bags up in the Geneva Convention Hilton would somehow result in kind reciprocation for Americans in the future, is fabulously inane and naïve. “Oh hello American prisoner, and welcome to the Al Qaeda Oasis Hotel. Since you were so gracious in the treatment of our boys in Guantanamo, we’ve decided not to torture you, skin you alive and cut your infidel head off. We are nothing if not civilized!”

When oh when will the Far Left in this country ever grow up? OK, the Far Right too. Perhaps if they bred with each other it might result in more clear thinking offspring. The likes of James Carville and Mary Matelin best get to it!

 ~Bennett Stevens

TheArtichoke.org |
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PC Absurdity and the 9-11 Statue

by Bennett Stevens

This altering of the now famous 9-11 flag raising photograph into politically correct absurdity in the form of a statue, is representative of the exact wrong way to achieve what its proponents are ostensibly trying to. It is instant revisionist history, moreover, it is a lie. Imagine, just imagine if those fireman were in actuality three black men, and the statue (model for) came out depicting white men? All holy hell would break loose, Jesse Taliban Jackson leading the charge, chanting his three-for-a-dollar slogans and claiming a great moment in Black history has been racially raped and subverted by the white power structure. I wouldn’t agree with his reasoning, but I would be in support of maintaining historical integrity, and call for the statute to be depicted accurately, with three Blacks, just as it occurred and was photographed.

The question is exceedingly clear and simple. IF you are to use that particular photograph as the model for your statue, then you must show it as it actually was. The case before the court is basic, its decision important, not so much in terms of Licensing Rights and Public Domain, but as a measure of how far PC, which is fundamentally false by definition, will be allowed to further flourish over truth in this atmosphere of dumbed-down patriotic zeal. If you want a rainbow memorial fine, then base it on something else, or make it up. Just don’t mess with the truth. The truth shall set you free, remember?

I want racism to end as much or more as anybody not a victim of it can, probably far more than Jackson or Sharpton or Farrakhan who depend on it, even incite it to their own selfish ends. But it simply cannot be done without the truth and the guts to face it on both sides, because whenever truth is breached, resentment is instilled still deeper in the opposite side, and the goal is put another step back.

If race really shouldn’t matter, then why racially alter the statue in the first place? It’s high time to stop preaching diversity, and start embracing unity. Who’s up for a government funded program promoting interracial sex? The sooner we are all the same color, the sooner we’ll be able to figure out more sensible ways to hate each other.
 

 ~Bennett Stevens

TheArtichoke.org |

JESSE ‘TALIBAN’ JACKSON

Has dear Jesse been properly ridiculed and shamed for his shameless and transparently phony attempt to ‘profit’ from the limelight offered by the war? If you are going to write yourself a letter from crude English speakers Jesse, (the Taliban) you might want to write it crudely, and not load it with your own brand of cheap eloquence. You not only smelled of rat when you read it out loud, you looked like one. What a sad human being you are. America, and Black America especially, would be better off if you, the great self aggrandizing race exploiter, never again as a public ‘leader’ saw the light of day. You sir, are more full of shit than a Senate septic tank. Your mentor ML King would be ashamed of what you’ve become.

~Bennett Stevens |

The Other Nuclear Terror Threat

40 thousand tons of spent radioactive nuclear reactor fuel is stored in very vulnerable pools around the country. Once drained of water, these pools are easily ignitable, and once ignited cannot be put out. Once burning, nuclear fallout would then be released into the air continually for many months. There is virtually no security to protect against even a small plane crashing into such a pool, nor is there much to keep an airliner from smashing into a reactor dome. Despite what the always-reliable-to-lie-like-hell Nuclear Industry’s claim that the domes are capable of absorbing such an impact, there is NOTHING to back up this claim.

The French surrounded their nuclear reactors with anti-aircraft weaponry immediately following 9-11. The South Koreans have done this since day one. We have yet to move a muscle towards such measures, despite the fact that nuclear facilities are high on the terrorist target list. But at least we have plastic knives with which to cut our tasty airline repast. You may wish to demand that your local graduate of the Orwell School of Doublespeak, er—congressperson, do something quite a bit more radical to protect our nuclear sites than merely ordering the rent-o-guards from Pinkerton to be on extra alert as to when to switch thumbs--the ones they keep up their asses.

Or move upwind.

~Bennett Stevens  |
 

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“Evil Doers”

"The loss of one Muslim life is worth more than the lives of all Americans”
–Mullah Omar

Now that is some sound, well reasoned, rational, holy religious Allah loving thinking there Mullah. That’s almost downright American of you.

His son was killed in the first night of US bombing. He is said to have begged and sobbed like a little girl to the doctor to save his son. Now, if his above attitude was that before his son was killed, we have one seriously insane and pissed off Mullah on our hands. The question is, since EVIL is now every other word GW uses, are Mullah Omar and his crew really evil? Would true EVIL cry over a fallen son? Is not Lucifer himself but a fallen angel, and in the end isn’t all that we call ‘evil’ enfolded back into the loving womb of God?

Charles de Gaulle:

“The United States uses simple straightforward emotion to disguise complex policies.”

The United States:

“We’re gonna get those evil doers, we’re gonna smoke‘em out of their holes and were gonna whip ‘em.”

Ah, the gentle caress of rhetoric. Such statesmanship. Shut up George. There is no such thing as evil. Extreme negative mental programming yes, evil no. There is nothing to whip George, not the way you’ve so simply emotionalized it, even if there was evil you can’t just whip it through force. Impossible. Initial force in the short run is probably necessary, yes, but beyond that this 'evil' must be engaged and re-programmed; whipping just whips up more of it.

Does not anyone get the FACT, that these terrorists did not do what they did because they thought for one little second they were EVIL, but quite the opposite? That in their screwed up hearts they were fighting for love and God and the freedom of their people? Of course their thinking is fucked up, but it is not completely baseless, and that is exactly the point we need to understand. It is not a question of destroying EVIL, it is a question of de-programming and re-programming fucked up heads on multiple fronts. Of course it’s easier just to shoot the bastards, but at some point we need to figure out these expedient methods only create a greater need for such methods in the future. Even the most dull witted of hippies knows you must at some point break the cycle of violence, and he is scoffed at out of hand by almost everyone.

~Bennett Stevens

TheArtichoke.org |
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Selling Freedom

The US has the greatest Sales/Advertising Force in the world. Do not the best salesmen sell themselves? Or at least a caricature of themselves? If we really believe in what we say we stand for, then it seems to me freedom should be the easiest sell imaginable to the Arab /Muslim world. The question is, do we really believe in it for everyone, or just for ourselves? Or, more precisely, ourselves who can afford it. After all, if everybody is free who will be the labor that makes our brand of freedom free? Can we really afford freedom for everyone?

Of course we can, if we truly understand freedom, and understand that we are now but prisoners of a narrow and relative freedom. Land of the Free is really only Land of a Freer than you. You wanna be free? OK. Come here and wash my underwear. That’ll set you free. And when you pay your dues and move on up and send for cousin Frijole, then he can wash my underwear. Ad infinitum.

The sad thing is most of you are agreeing with this. It’s the American way. Work your up via the dollar to be respected and taken seriously. Via the dollar. You can be the biggest piece of shit in the world, but if you have money you will be taken seriously, whereas a poor man who is a million times the true caliber of the rich man will be dismissed out of hand. Matters not if he has made the conscious decision not to play by a sick system’s rules. That makes him even more suspect. The truly free and great are almost always marginalized, while those ready to subvert themselves to the system and play by the systems rules, those best subverting the rest, are most rewarded by it. It’s extortion in its most insidious form, as almost always those best extorted psychologically make the best extortionists, and there is never a shortage of those.

The role of the system then is not only to entrench itself, but also to bury all competition under the psychological dirt of its own entrenchment.

~Bennett Stevens

TheArtichoke.org |
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Where the Hell was God?

9/14/01

Where the hell was I? That’s the question we need to be asking ourselves. This event has raised the age-old question over and over again: If God exists then why does It allow things like this to happen? Every big name cleric I've seen respond to this has the same answer: They don't know. Let me answer this for all you willfully ignorant archbishops, priests, preachers, pastors, reverends and rabbis: God does not allow it. We do. It’s a little thing called, free will.

God and James T. Kirk have something in common: The Prime Directive. Non interference. Man will do what Man does, as is his learning, and his learning is why he is here. We, all of us on this planet who share a vast, connected, and only partially individuated human spirit-mind, had a part in allowing these terror attacks to happen. It’s all a matter of degree, from indirectly infinitesimal to directly responsible. But it ALL adds up. No doubt many if not most would take issue with this. This is a measure of how far we still have to go.

It will take no less than a majority silent no more; the refreshing popping sounds of heads uncorking from assess worldwide to not “allow” such terrible things to happen in the future. Not by force, not by the incessant waging of war, not by putting Sky Caps out of business, but by a proactive determination to work towards a love and understanding that fills the hearts and minds of all people, and makes such things unthinkable. This is not as dopey as it sounds. It’s already unthinkable for 90% of us. Is it really that naïve to think that 90%, if we got our acts together and wisely focused, could not in time win over the 10%? It’s a big “if” I know, but in the long evolutionary life of Humanity, we are still in our terrible two’s.

The essential problem is that we are too steeped in Old World, paranoid thinking. We are too fearful, too biased against the reality of our own internal truths to truly embrace them. Most especially, we are too selfish with our love, not putting nearly enough of it out into the world.

We are so afraid in so many ways, and terrorists and other human horrors are the result of it, not the cause. The fearless truth that lives inside our hearts, the truth we dream of the world being, the one labeled naïve, unrealistic, impractical, and therefore why bother?, that truth is being smothered in its crib and subverted by the very structures that are ostensibly there to nurture it. How else do you explain a world where peace is impossible and War is ever more practical? It cannot be simply US vs. the Crazy People anymore. It is far more complex than that, and at the same time inscrutably simple. This Old Age thinking must end for all this “practicality” of war to cease repeating itself endlessly. We need to develop a long range plan to bring an end to war, a worldwide coalition so powerful and so ready to act that no nation or rebels will dare. That same coalition would identify potential trouble spots and overwhelm them with alternatives. How will the cycle of war ever end unless we stand up and end it ourselves?

Perhaps we are not capable. Perhaps we will remain lemmings, sprinting blindly towards the cliff, deciding to stop only when our momentum has carried us past the point of no return. But I’m not ready to give up yet. New Mind has always existed, and it is being imbued at an ever-accelerating rate into the consciousness of a growing minority, and only needs to find greater expression through unity to one day surpass Old Mind as the greatest force on earth. That unity, that expression is up to each one of us as members of the Individual Whole, the Ultimate Co-op. Further, it en masse is not 1,000 years away. One way or another, it is just around the corner.

Look around the world at how much love and oneness has poured from this terrorist attack, in the West and parts of the East, love and oneness that would have otherwise remained locked inside us. Humanity created this horror just as we create all of our horrors—because we need them. We demanded a vicious wake-up call and that’s what we got; that’s how asleep we were. But we are still drowsy, and many of us are already rolling over to hit the snooze button. These attacks, horrendous as they were, were but a shot across our bow and nothing compared to what may well be coming down the pipe, should we retaliate with more force than wisdom. We probably will. The Hawks are hungry and ready to hunt. If we give them enough tether they will eventually break their own necks, true, but it is we who will be left holding that tether, with blood on our hands. But it doesn't have to be this way. We still have a bit of time. It's our choice.

God gave us that.

~Bennett Stevens

TheArtichoke.org |
 

Mr. Al Qaeda, Esq.

by Solomon Bell

Look up ‘sophisticated’ in the dictionary and you find adjectives like urbane, subtle, refined. Consider 9-11. Nothing urbane, subtle or refined there. You also find terms like ‘highly complex’ and ‘characterized by advanced form’. I guess I’m still not quite getting it.

Why does every Talking Head I’ve seen describe bin Laden and old Al Qaeda as sophisticated? What is so sophisticated about mass murder? Not exactly urbanity in action. Were those hijackers wearing smoking jackets? Were they wielding gold monogrammed box-cutters? What is so sophisticated about the ability to read flight schedules? About getting those then legal box-cutters onto airliners? About learning how to steer already airborn airliners into 110-story buildings? Mr. Rogers could have trained a group of neighborhood slackers to pull off 9-11. And I guarantee you those slacks would have hit the damn White House. Only they would have been ‘sophisticated’ enough to do it when the President was actually in it.

Al Qaeda is said to have cells in 60 countries. I suppose this could be considered sophisticated under the ‘highly complex’ definition; that is until you consider that the International Jump Rope Association has operations in nearly as many.

If that sinister Mr. Al Qaeda was indeed sophisticated here is what he might have done:

1. Hit Congress and the President and every other lying congressional weasel during a State of the Union address.

2. Hit all the major stock exchange buildings nationwide directly at the same time.

3. While doing the above, hit our very vulnerable power grids and nuclear facilities.

4. While doing the above, hit our water supplies with biological or chemical agents.

5. While doing the above, hit major cities with chemical agents in a variety of ways.

6. While doing the above, hack and sabotage government computer systems.

7. Been patient enough to get a Nuke or two to pull any of the above off in style.

Now, a truly sophisticated network with 150 operatives in 10 cells could pull off all the above with 12-months planning, in a single day.

If the above is TOO sophisticated for you, here is a much easier way old Al and the boys could have earned the gold monogrammed moniker:

1. Had a phase II locked and loaded. While we were still reeling over 9-11, launch phase II.

2. Had a phase III locked and loaded. While we were recovering from phase II and beginning to relax—like now—launch phase III.

The result: America in the tank. Had these ‘sophisticados’ had any clue at all about how amazingly vulnerable we were and still are, we would be living in anarchy, our economy in a free-fall. Runs on banks with so little real money in reserve, would ruin us. The really frightening part is, if these murderous dune devils ever do get sophisticated, to this day it would be very possible to pull off any, many or all of the above.

I think I get it now. The Talking Heads are playing with terrorist’s heads. Call them sophisticated, let them think they’re sophisticated, and maybe they’ll never figure out what true sophistication is.

“Mum’s” the word.

~Solomon Bell

Rails from the Radical Middle

TheArtichoke.org
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The Middle East Beast and the Palestinian Excuse

2/5/02

The beast is not Arafat or Hamas or Sharon or The House of Saud.  It isn’t even bin Laden.  The beast [here I go!] is the dark heart of Man himself, a darkness forged of hate that feeds off hate and so must always create hate to proliferate. The beast is religious fundamentalism—hate in the guise of love and God—a mass malevolent psychology long fomented by those in power to maintain it, and those seeking power to gain it.  In the world today this beast is most evident and most virulent in the Middle East, and it is fed on the hatred for America, Israel and the infidel West, using the Palestinian cause as its dinner bell.  

Arab states and tribes and Muslim sects it should be noted, don’t reserve their hatred for Israeli’s and Americans. They hate each other too. If they are not fighting infidels they are fighting amongst themselves, even killing for power within clans and families. This being the case, what brings Arabs together and empowers them as a block is the mutual hatred of Israel and America.  

In Kuwait for example, you see the easy duplicity of the anti-West Arab mind at work. The US freed them from Saddam and his army who raped and slaughtered their sons and daughters in the streets, and they said they loved us and were grateful. Ten short years later, despite our continued support, two-thirds of them are now against us, with a shocking 35% of them going so far as to claim 9-11 was morally justified. Morally justified! What kind of mind sees such an intentional slaughter of innocents as moral?      

Despite the rhetoric, the last thing in the world most Arab states want is a peaceful resolution to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.  The people don’t want peace because they have been raised to believe the Jews are evil and must be pushed into the sea. The rulers don’t want peace because peace would put world attention back onto their oppressive regimes, and they would be pressured to enter the 21^st century.  Entering the 21^st century would mean loosening the chokehold on the general populace and tightening the noose on the radicals, a recipe for civil turmoil and a threat to power.  What they don’t seem to realize that the status quo they now struggle to maintain will soon pose an even greater threat.       

But for all their internal blustering, neither do Arab rulers really want Israel destroyed.  As much as they might do back-flips of joy over it, again, the ongoing instability, as long as it doesn’t get too far out of control, better fuels and excuses their oppressive hold on power.  In the arena of world opinion Arab leaders ride the fence, saying just enough to appease the West without seeming to betray their base of down home nut-jobs. With public opinion crudely but more or less effectively managed, private opinion is bought and traded in a complex web of dubious dealings, often involving the good ole USA.    

Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah’s ‘peace plan’ is a prime example of PR management, of political posturing with a duplicitous core.  A Saudi royal to this day would not be caught dead in the same room with a Jewish leader, let alone work to broker a peace they don’t really want. Sharon knows this full well of course, thus his ‘rebuttal’ via Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak inviting Abdullah to sit down and smoke the peace pipe with him. Touché, Ariel.  Whatever Abdullah says, whatever the Arab League may do in the name of peace, it is only to protect their own hold on power, and will have nothing to do with real peace.  Of course they will try to make any proposal sound genuine, and of course the doddering press will by and large take them seriously and put the pressure on Israel. 

Bush and the boys have been virtually hands off during the current Palestinian Intifada for good strategic reason, also having nothing to do with real peace.  GW stands up and cries that in order for peace to come, there must first be a vision for peace. Naturally, he makes no attempt to offer such a vision himself.  Sending General Zinni back in is about as authentic a move as Abdullah’s peace plan.  He and his administration understand that there will be no peace in the Middle East that is not preceded by war.  They understand it because they are complicit in it; stoking the war-fire through over-weighted policy and neglect, then coming back time to time to sprinkle a little water on it. It is only a question of managing the size and the time of the eventual inferno, so as to best take advantage.  Zinni is an errand boy thrown into a forest fire with a garden hose.  Any ceasefire he might cajole will be short lived.    

With the War on Terror center stage and soon to enter the Middle East, it is now in our ‘national interest’ to see the Israeli’s crush the Palestinians (oppression just isn't enough) before imposing peace.  At the right time, of course. Why? Because the instability in the region will necessarily increase, and with any luck, draw the likes of Iraq, Syria and Iran into the mix.  Catching ‘evil doers’ doing evil in the light of day opens a wide ‘moral’ door for the US to saunter through.  

This sounds good to hawks fed up with the beast, but it is a strategy fraught with what would normally be considered unacceptable risk.  But normality has flown the coop under the new and improved terrorist threat. It is quite clear that the US now sees war as a reasonable option to an unreasonable problem. The obvious beast of the Middle East is the subtle beast within ourselves.  

The Right and the Left, simplistic as usual in their own ways, fail to see the complexity of the big picture.  The Right fails to see an alternative to a wider war, and in their desire for war and over confidence, fails to fully appreciate the potential for catastrophic escalation over time. They think the Left is naïve to think that anything less than all out war can succeed in ‘securing’ our nation. They also widely consider the Arab cry against the US over the Palestinian situation to be an excuse so devoid of sincerity as to be meaningless. The Left themselves fail to comprehend the hard reality that the window for peace has been effectively closed and further, that the Arabs have never been very much interested in it anyway. 

The Right is part right.  In large part, Arab rulers could give a dead harem girl about the Palestinians, whom they routinely oppress in their own countries.  It is an excuse.  It is far from meaningless however. That it is a primary weapon employed to foment hatred of America as well as Israel is inarguable. The worse it gets for the Palestinians the worse it gets for America, as the radical Islamic Fundamentalism we are fighting only grows more radical and more pervasive. They are either in denial over this, or in defiance. To ignore and even inflame such a potent psychological weapon used by your enemy is a funny way to fight a war. We might as well be giving them Stingers, RPG’s and Visas.  Oh that’s right, we already did.     

Now, the Right will go on to argue that if we brokered a Palestinian state tomorrow that the Arabs would just find another excuse.  This is true.  But the Palestinian excuse is so potent that once taken away, they would be hard pressed to find another that would be taken as seriously. They would have to scramble and in their scrambling world pressure for change would build. The next excuse and each excuse thereafter, would likely be easier to defeat in the arena of world opinion and private diplomacy. 

So to just dismiss the Palestinian excuse as nothing more than an excuse is an excuse in itself.  It’s an excuse that allows the Right to claim that a wider war to reshape the region is the way.  The first wedge will be driven in Iraq, and maybe concurrently in the West Bank and Gaza. 

The Left is part right, the Palestinian issue is key, and we really should bring the parties back to the table and push for peace with everything we’ve got.  Problem is they are too late to the party and lack both the vision and the guts necessary to lead a true peace charge. The last chance for peace between the Israeli’s and Palestinians with any real hope of getting it, was back when, as the Media would have us believe, Barak offered Arafat everything but his foreskin and Arafat turned him down by demanding the impossible bit anyway. He did so for purely selfish reasons--he preferred not to be assassinated by Hamas. Yes, it was a bum deal and the "98%" was a media driven myth, but if it gave the Palestinians a nation state and got the Israelis off their throats, they would have been a helluva lot better off now or are likely to be in the foreseeable future.   

The problem now is, as inspired and visionary as any peace plan must be to work, it simply cannot work with the current players in the current climate.  You can’t throw a pack of wolves a football and expect them to take you to the Super Bowl.  All you can hope for is that they don’t rip it completely to shreds before losing interest. This doesn’t mean the ball shouldn’t be thrown, it just means you need to be ready to sew it back up and keep throwing it, realizing the learning curve is nigh next to flat.  For that to change, certain things need to play themselves out. Unfortunately, these certain things likely involve death and destruction. It’s a shame that Colin Powell doesn’t have true greatness in him.   

Essentially all we can do at this point, as a people, as a press corps, as friends, family and enablers of the well reasoned rational madness of the power elite, is to ask good hard questions.  And keep asking them, and keep following up with better and harder questions, all aimed at uncovering the kernels of true intention buried in the truckloads of shite being heaped upon us.  Without the truth on the table and the manure in the garden, a rare harmonic configuration, we are effectively being blinkered and led around by the nose.  What else is new?      

The beast of the Middle East has been engaged, and war is a forgone conclusion. The current thinking of the hawk Right, crudely capsulized, is to kick as much Middle Eastern ass as it takes to gut terrorism, gut Iraq and possibly Iran and Syria, install the right people in power and get other Arab leaders to roll over and spread their cheeks for us. They think these newly bored out leaders will then rain hell to quell the hyper-charged radicalism that has become a way of life, and begin an inexorable march towards freedom and democracy. 

And they call the left naïve.          

--Solomon Bell

TheArtichoke.org

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The Gump Effect: Muslim Polling

Recent Gallup Polling of nine Arab and Muslim nations includes the following results:
77% are against the war in Afghanistan, including 80% of Pakistani’s, with only 4% approving! (More people than that approve of death as an effective weight loss measure.)

63% of Kuwaiti’s, whose asses Bush 41 freed from Saddam, do not like Bush 43

69% of Kuwaiti’s whose asses were freed from Saddam, are against the war to free Afghani asses from the Taliban/Al-Qaeda

The most telling of all the numbers to me are these:

61% don’t believe Arabs or Muslims were in any way involved in 9-11

86% of Pakistanis don’t believe Arabs or Muslims were in any way involved in 9-11

35% think 9-11 was MORALLY JUSTIFIED!

Arab American, Maryland University professor Shibley Telhami had this to say on the matter: “There is a sickness in the region that is not psychologically dissimilar to the O.J. phenomenon.”
 

American Blacks to this day, roughly to the tune of 80%, think O.J. is innocent. They have been so culturally ingrained to mistrust the police and the white establishment that obvious reality has been denied and subverted, just as it has in the Arab world. I can only hope that 35% of American Blacks don’t think the murders of Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman were morally justified. I have long predicted that O.J. will again implode, and will again murder someone, probably a woman. I will predict now, that even if he is caught on videotape, a good 10% of Blacks will still deny it, just as 61% of Arabs today deny the bin Laden tape where he admits his involvement in 9-11. It's even got a name now: The Gump Effect. As in Forrest. If JFK can shake hands with Forrest Gump and laugh about his having to take a pee, then certainly bin Laden can yuck it up over the slaughtering of 3,000 people.

This is a prime example of the malleability of the human mind, especially an oppressed and mal-educated mind open to all manner of deleterious propaganda. Our dear friend and ally Saudi Arabia ran stories in the state controlled press about how the Israeli’s, in cahoots with the Americans, were responsible for 9-11 as an excuse to wage war against the Muslim world. Similar stories were treated credibly all over the Middle East. (As I have written earlier, [Please see Daniel Pearl: The Judeo-Christian Angle], and as time will prove one way or another, they may not be entirely wrong on this. Before you blow a ventricle, there is no doubt Arab Muslims and Al-Qaeda conducted the 9-11 attacks. But don’t kid yourself into thinking that the possibility of engaging all out war in the Middle East has not been entertained by the White House and the Pentagon).

Getting back on track, despite early statements by Bush to energize an American PR machine to reach out to the Muslim world and make sure they get the facts, next to nothing has been done in this area. Unless you count the leaflets dropped on Afghanistan two days after the bin Laden tape was released, showing him clean shaven in a suit and tie. This of course only strengthened The Gump Effect. The results of this PR neglect and curious incompetence, as reflected in the Gallup Poll, are disturbing to say the least. Lest we get too bent out of shape however, let’s remember back to the 2000 Presidential elections when Gallup Polls were the most inaccurate and wildly fluctuating. 3%-5% margin of error, my ass. I am very interested to see the results of Zogby polling which will take place in a few weeks. Zogby himself is Arab American, so I expect we will see significantly toned down numbers. As in most cases, the truth may lay somewhere in the middle. In any case, we have got some serious and dangerous PR problems that must be addressed.

At the heart of our Arab/Muslim/terrorist problems of course, my oft beaten drum, is the Israeli/Palestinian Intifada. Professor Telhami did a recent series of interviews of Arab elites which back-up my previous rails. He asked each interviewee if they thought a resolution bringing a Palestinian state into being would solve Arab-Muslim problems with America. 66% of them said that it would. (44% said ALL, 22% said MOST.) So why the hell is the Bush Administration continuing what CNBC’s Chris Mathews’ termed, “malignant neglect” concerning the Intifada? And why isn’t the American mainstream media screaming about it instead the damn prisoners at Gitmo? Gitmo brains, people, please.

Alas, NBC’s Brian Williams has appeared in Israel. On the very day the official “Doomsday Clock” was pushed deeper into the 11th hour, to 11:53. I’d say that’s just about right.

~Solomon Bell

Rails from the Radical Middle

TheArtichoke.org
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Larry King

Insipid slavering Lapdog.

~Solomon Bell  |
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As to this Anthrax Business…

10/19/01

As to this Anthrax business…I think it is very likely not bin Laden, but rather domestic. Why? The saboteur is a Right Winger. He has gone after Liberal newsmen Tom Brokaw and Dan Rather. He has gone after one of the worst Liberal weasels of them all in Tom Daschle. Everyone targeted so far is a Liberal. This would include the UN Environmental office in Kenya, environmentalism and the UN being two favorite Right Wing peeves. Liberals may not like bin Laden, but they are certainly more on his left side than Right Wingers, tending to actually be against American bombs blowing up babies. Right Wingers aren’t much for peace marches and protests. They may want peace, but not until after the war is good and bloody over.

It is my considered opinion that the Anthrax Killer is….Rush Limbaugh. So stop your panicking people, my God. Three letters out of billions and billions served!

NOTE: A week later the news reported the “Death to America” stuff in the Anthrax letters. Of course anyone could have written that, and I am sticking to my domestic theory. And I am joking about Rush, who is my second favorite Right Winger, and right on the money a good 51% of the time.

~Solomon Bell   |

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