Time present and time past Are both perhaps present in time future, And time future contained in time past. If all time is eternally present All time is unredeemable. What might have been is an abstraction Remaining a perpetual possibility Only in a world of speculation. What might have been and what has been Point to one end, which is always present.
Today, I am old, the kind of old that puts me in the same league of dotage as the doddering Tom Shugart, senile Frank Paynter, and perennial dirty old man and lecher, Christopher Locke. I am now a Mother Grundy of the Winer vintage, a male equal in crone-age to Elaine, as worthy of scholarly study as Joe Duemer, and eligible for elevation to a sage status of the type enjoyed by old farts such as Papa Doc.
Yeah, you'd put me right up there with the Cluetrain Kid had I the sagacity needed to back the 45 fucking years that have been mugged from my lifespan by a God and circumstances acting with the speed and aggression of teenagers distancing themselves from a senile, soon-to-be-dead parent.
Just yesterday I was cool; a hip throwback to the days of denim jeans and fast bikes, faster girls and outrageously fast cars, a forever teenager, a virtual high-octane Gary Turner on steroids. Today, I'm in the sink with Loren and Michael and those of you too lily-livered to wear your ages...
Today, still on the shelf, I have passed my sell-by date. Things, as Bob points out, have changed. I've walked into a wall; unable to write, function or think lucidly. It's as though I've run my race, come as far as I can and now, I'm in freefall.
Without, and I stress this, without feeling too sorry for myself, it's as though I've begun the not-so-long march to an untidy grave before my life's had a chance to take shape or meaning.
Recent circumstance has compounded this feeling, leading to desultory scribblings deleted unsaved.
For some, it is the Big Four; for others, the Big Five-Oh. Golby's always been different. He's said as much on his blog. Having suffered his midlife crisis at puberty, he decided to revert to three and remain there forever, following the sound of his own tin drum.
Shocked to a reality usually reserved for Texican miscreants named Carla Faye Tucker, he faced, with a fear hitherto unknown, the advent of His Own Private Big Four-Five.
Footfalls echo in the memory Down the passage which we did not take Towards the door we never opened Into the rose-garden. My words echo Thus, in your mind. But to what purpose Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves I do not know. Other echoes Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?
"Well, you dumb fucker, now that you've woken up to the harsh light of April 24, 2003, how does it feel?"
"Fucking awful," I answered, "I've become Dorian Grey. You know, the part where..."
"Yeah, shit, don't tell me. You don't look too bad, though. And your mother-in-law thinks you're 42."
"I always liked that woman. She has class."
"Doesn't change the nature and size of your predicament, though, does it?"
"Nah, what other people think never does. I feel like hell."
What brought this on? Why had I edged towards this personal milestone filled with fear and trembling, raging against the clock, fading agility and gravestone teeth? [Why the fuck I should have gravestone teeth, I don't know, but it sounds like a good idea for an aspiring (or expiring) corpse.]
The day before my birthday [last Thursday], I climbed the neighbours' wall, hopped onto their roof and chopped a bloody big limb off the giant Syringa tree that had overgrown their verandah. Mindful of the legacy passed down to my by Marlboro Men and Crawford Cowboys everywhere, I hacked [with bulging biceps, rippling quadriceps and a double duplex] through the nine-inch bough.
After a thousand well-timed and targeted blows of unerring accuracy dredged from my fast-fading biological memory of years on the dojo floor and packed with unseemly haste into my trusty old panga [machete], I watched with great satisfaction as it crashed to the ground.
Standing there on the roof looking down at the fallen bough made for something of a cutting, double-edged metaphor. It was not lost on me.
I chopped and hacked at the thing some more before Wendy and I lugged its carcass to the dump. Friday morning, I went out onto our verandah just to admire the huge stump marking the beginning of great space once covered by the surging font of green-leaf joy I'd brought tumbling down.
I tested my shoulders and my skateboard-broken wrist. Ya'll remember that? Well, I reckon I broke the wrist and tore ligaments in my shoulder, but was too proud to take my pain to the doctor. Anyway, my shoulders and wrist felt fine.
Brittle bones, my ass. I'm good for next year's Dogtown Z-Boy downhill run between Table Mountain's upper and lower cable stations.
Skateboards cost, though.
Physically, I'm fine. My blood pressure's 120/70. The morning's sunrise was fine too. A great, purple cloak of Easter blood shrouded the autumnal sky. Changing to violent orange, it set the high cloud, blown to a mottled curtain by soft winds, aflame.
Viewed through the gnarled fingers of crabbed trees, the day roared "Hello" but I saw life's winter rising. My mind was in the dumpster alongside the broken tree.
Quick, said the bird, find them, find them, Round the corner. Through the first gate, Into our first world, shall we follow The deception of the thrush?
Internally, we use different mechanisms to cope with life. When I was a kid, I used obsessive-compulsive behaviour. In this, I was no different to tens of millions who've grown up to a state of relative normalcy.
I have no idea when I started making deals with God but, as we all do, I did. When I was tucked up in bed and my parents went out for the evening, I'd wheel and deal with the Big Guy About Whom I Knew So Little.
"Listen, I need my folks."
"Tell me about it. I'm the Eternal Orphan."
"So you don't mind...?"
"Nah, go right ahead."
"Well, here's the deal. You get them back safely and you can take me in 2007."
"Okay."
"Fucking Hell. What do you mean, 'Okay'?"
"Just that. Okay."
"Isn't there supposed to be more to it than that? Aren't we supposed to haggle and bargain and that sort of shit? Aren't I meant to promise you stuff?"
"Nope. You do that with the Devil. You'll meet him later. 2007's cool with me."
"Jesus Fucking Christ. You're a pal."
"That's what I like to hear; little kids saying their prayers. I'll edit out most of your foul-mouthed shit and send Peter what little is left."
And, with that, I'd fall asleep. My folks always returned. God was obviously a Man of His Word, a Fellow I could trust. He was, as they say, a Capital Guy. When you're seven, and after I'd done the arithmetic, it seemed a bloody good deal. I mean, fuck, forty-nine? Who'd ever want to live beyond that? There's nothing there.
It looked a really sweet agreement all those years ago.
During my career as a Recovering Human Being, I decided I had cause to go over the various social and other contracts constituting my life, as I knew it. This meant my little deals with God were up for review.
"You there?"
"Who's asking?"
"Don't get shitty with me. You know who I am."
"Hmm... They taught you well. Whaddaya want?
"Remember that deal we struck? The 2007 thing?"
"Uh-huh."
"Well, I've been thinking..."
"Heh..."
"Okay, so what about it, you know-it-all louse? Sorry."
"It's fine with me."
"You mean the deal's off?"
"If you want."
"Even though I scored?"
"Yeah... Hey, listen, who the fuck do you think you're talking to? I'm God, the Capital Guy."
"I know. I'm sorry if I'm being a bit obtuse about all this but You know how it is."
"Yea verily."
"So I get to live?"
"Listen, you little dipshit. I told you thirty-eight years ago that you dabble in that kind of crap with the Devil. Don't try it with Me. I'll call you when I need you."
"Eh. Okay. Thanks."
And that's the situation for now. Negotiations continue. I'll keep you apprised of further developments following future plenary sessions [as they say]. In fact, I'll blog them.
We live lives, if not of quiet desperation, quiet and deep. We experience universal responses uniquely, in our own way. Disjoint. Fracture. Common meaning misunderstood.
The unheard music hidden in the shrubbery.
Into our first world. There they were, dignified, invisible, Moving without pressure, over the dead leaves, In the autumn heat, through the vibrant air, And the bird called, in response to The unheard music hidden in the shrubbery, And the unseen eyebeam crossed, for the roses Had the look of flowers that are looked at.
Worse was to come. On Friday, weighed by the rock of ages, the prospect of returning to work after several days of doing bugger all, and a severe dose of feeling hard done by, I had cause to ponder on the parlous state of the family fiscus and the continuance of this blog.
Down and out in Cape Town is a very different scene to down and out in Oregon, Texas or Maine. In fact, it's kinda different to most places in the First World. For reasons too numerous to go into, I had to face my inadequacy in taking, over an unbroken twenty-five year period of work, my family to a position of financial security.
In uncertain times and despite evidence to the contrary, it sometimes seems I am dragging them in the other direction.
I have worked hard. Being of reasonably sound mind and body, I have pulled my weight, hoed my row and shoveled my share of what the French call merde. In fact, when I hit thirty-something, I started to mature. It would be hard to believe were it not so fucking predictable and, yes, inevitable.
There's no telling when the maturation process will start but, believe me, like 'The Establishment', there's no escaping it. Kids, work, marriage, hardship, fortune and dead friends all play a part in 'growing up'. Sooner or later, the sound of one's own tin drum will always become a hollow, irritating clatter.
I worked for about fifteen years in the local publishing industry, going nowhere. I chucked my job and went solo. It lasted two years. The money ran out and I still had mouths to feed. I've now been working for ten years in the electronic publishing industry.
Again, nothing's changed. I'm still nowhere and those mouths still demand food.
When did I start to measure success in material terms? I've no idea, but I've a sneaking suspicion I've always done so. Despite a spirit that rails against the excesses of materialism, I have the nous to realise that, in a real world, real things matter.
Yeah, okay it goes back to my early realisation of my own hypocrisy. Like most, I am, but only to a degree, a cheque-book socialist. I have been ever since the kid next door was given a toy I wanted. We won't get into rebirthing and 'The Inner Child' in this post but some things, as I've said before, never change.
Besides, all that Jungian-Freudian hippy dippy shit is so nauseatingly middle-class.
Like my fellow dumb fucks raping this planet to death, I measure success in terms of what I have or possess. Not having money or possessing 'stuff' demands a small measure of self-delusion. It's a delusion I'm quite happy to take with my tablets in the morning because it makes life more bearable. There is nothing more pathetic than someone mooching around asking, "Why don't I have these things?"
Well, it was pathetic until last week, when I realised I was about to turn forty-five. "Jesus H. Christ! What the hell's happened. Where's the time gone? I'm fucking old. Where's the money?"
It was nowhere to be found. I logged on to my bank and thought of absconding. As I frequently don't take my medication [it shows, eh?], the thought didn't perturb me. I am used to irrational thought and know how to deal with it. I indulge it a while and then, when I decide its coalescing into a pretty good idea, I start thinking of other people.
It works. Every time a coconut, as they say.
I started to measure the extent of my failure to accumulate a measure of wealth. It was a sobering exercise. In fact, it's the sort of dumb exercise you undertake only when you're hell bent on making yourself as miserable as you can possibly be. It's not a good idea. Don't do it and warn your kids against trying it at home.
It's not that I'm unaware of being, in material terms, a yard or two short of stellar success on the global money markets. Like most, my awareness packs itself into a tight ball of acidic anxiety eating away at the pit of my stomach, occasionally breaking into full-fledged panic attacks when the lawyers' letters arrive.
I like to call this 'living on the edge'. However, what I like and others want are generally the same thing. So, I give them my pay cheque each month.
Having started the exercise, I followed it through to its dreary close. I won't bore you with the details but, when you own nothing, you can draw up quite a list of the things you should have by the age of forty-five. When the terror became too much to bear, I rationalized it to manageable portions. I am a dab hand at this. Having once been decidedly weird and having turned pro at the same time, matters of the intellect come easily to a man of my breeding and station.
"It's not my fault," I told myself.
Sure, Bubba, it works every fucking time... except when it's April 24, 2003 and you turn 45.
There they were as our guests, accepted and accepting. So we moved, and they, in a formal pattern, Along the empty alley, into the box circle, To look down into the drained pool.
As I was writing of the dire problems with which I am so sorely afflicted, incoming mail and the blogs canned my thoughts. It was time to think of others. Fuck, sometimes I hate them. Jonathon reminded me that Shelley was in dire straits and needed assistance if she was to stay online.
I've followed Jeneane's journey of fiscal uncertainty with interest and empathy and am immensely pleased she was able to extricate herself from a difficult situation. I felt bad not being in a position to help Marek and Mark get back on their feet when they were temporarily laid low by a lack of much-needed cash.
I learnt that, despite their massive collective shortcomings [we'll go into that later], North Americans are, on the whole, generous to a fault.
And, financially, that's where it stuck... a fault. A fault between the First and Third Worlds that translates to a chasm in which we find ogres such as globalisation, the Digital Divide, JINSA, the PNAC and the Devil hisself, George W. Bush.
My predicament is very different to that faced by my predominantly North American blogging friends. Locally, when circumstance puts you in the role of sole breadwinner, you become you family's last defence between a life in the suburbs and starving in a township shelter.
Others' generosity is not really up for discussion. It's time to look at the 'economic fundamentals' so beloved of our Minister of Finance, Trevor Manuel.
Were I earning a living from my scribbling, I'd stick up a PayPal account and hope to finance a move to a machine better than a 486 sans sound card. With computers in short supply [they cost], families share PCs and save space for the .swp file.
This machine is way too slow for effective blogging and I've given up reading my blogroll on a regular basis, visiting friends when and if I have the time. Writing takes several hours each day and my work precludes anything but the occasional break wherein Notepad becomes the site of a relaxing interlude and Yahoo! News a looted graphics shop.
In the evenings, after pulling material from the news sites, writing, uploading, publishing and editing, a late night is always on the cards. Has it been worth it? Definitely. Is it worth it today? I don't know. A friend's words gave me long pause for thought. Surely, in reflecting on and teasing into words that which is on our minds, we're stunting our awareness of what happens around us, i.e. missed opportunities we could and should be exploiting.
I can understand that. Taking several hours each day to fashion Web entries becomes too much time spent in front of a computer screen and not enough time dealing with the harsh reality unfolding about me.
Mutual appreciation of each others insights and flashes of talent do not pay the rent and, yes, it's tough enough doing even that. Medical cover, insurances and more long-term securities are a bit further down the road for the average unqualified working stiff locked out of the First World economy.
If I cannot adopt a saleable style and successfully punt my writing into print, surely it's time to take a second job down at the local video store?
Mm... yes, that's about where it's at. If a decent PC is a fishing rod used for recreational angling, it's not much use to me at all. I need to break into commercial fishing, find waters not fished out and focus on them with mercenary vigour.
In other words and my case, generosity would merely perpetuate a more deep-seated problem faced by many bloggers. Blogging takes time. Time can be money. The world needs kind hearts if it's to keep turning, but financially sustainable solutions call for more than the generosity of wonderful people.
The washing of the hands.
Dry the pool, dry concrete, brown edged, And the pool was filled with water out of sunlight, And the lotos rose, quietly, quietly, The surface glittered out of heart of light, And they were behind us, reflected in the pool. Then a cloud passed, and the pool was empty.
I was scribbling about this and other stuff, good hard-hitting stuff that my bloody machine suddenly decided to freeze out of existence, when my friend Don, The Jazz Singer [definitely another Entity worthy of capitals], popped in for a visit.
I hadn't seen him for about six months. He's in Shit Street, up the creek without a paddle and he sees high water everywhere. At the beginning of the year, he sold his house in Guguletu and bought a flat down the road from me. Before he had a chance to move, he was robbed four times and hijacked.
Arriving home at 1:20 one Saturday morning after a gig in town, he parked his old but well-cared-for BMW in his drive and started unpacking the gear he'd used Friday evening. He heard a pistol being cocked and turned to find three guys demanding his car keys.
"So what did you do?"
A singer, his laugh is extraordinarily rich.
"What do you think I did? You know me. I fought them. They pistol-whipped me. Look."
I could see the residue of the long, black bruise marring his sparkling face.
"Fuck it, Don, you old bastard. I'm proud of you. I'd probably be dumb enough to do the same."
"Heh heh. Yeah, I'm lucky to be alive. It didn't make any difference, though. They took everything. Hey, I'm glad to be out of that place."
"Was the car insured?"
Dumb question.
"Hah!"
"Sorry."
The thing that gets me about Don is his humility. A hard-talking showman of the old school, he's as tough as nails, and will rip to shreds any hypocrisy, nepotism, chicanery, bullying, or injustice he imagines or encounters. A street fighter and gentleman, he is enormously dignified.
My other friend, Bob, also a singer, maintains that dignity ain't ever been photographed. Bob ain't ever seen a decent picture of Don.
Don and I chewed the fat. Together, we easily find the upside of a world turned inside out. I told him of the story favoured by the guy running the rehab where I visited my wife last Easter. He used it to unseat his junkie charges when they felt they were having it tough.
"How does it go?"
"Well, a down-and-out guy settles down to sleep on the cold, stone floor of an abandoned warehouse. After asking the question favoured by all who sleep on cold, stone floors; 'Why me?', he follows it with another. 'Hey, God, if you're so fucking sympathetic to those who're down and out, where the hell are you?' 'Sleeping right next to you, my son,' replies God with a slightly mean laugh."
My songster friend is not a church-going man, but he is deeply religious. As far as he's concerned, God has never let him down. "Hey, look at me. I've had it all; a long life and everything I need. I'm here, aren't I? What more could I ask for?"
I was about to say "Money" but he had a point. I have a job and a damned good employer. Okay, my salary would make a twenty-something single proud and doesn't cover the month, but that's not my employer's problem. I'm free to look elsewhere. I have a most remarkable family and, were it not for the generosity of others, I'd have sunk without trace a long time ago. We laughed.
"Hell, when they nailed Christ to the cross people threw lots for his robe. He had stuff."
"He sure did."
"Heh."
Right then, old age and penury didn't look too bad but, like generosity, commiseration in isolation never solved a thing. Don was rocked by his experience. A singer, it's his job to put the warmglow of song into others' hearts.
He's good at it and has several years in the spotlight ahead of him. To perform though, Don has to lie to himself about his own reality.
His face-to-face experience of a daily reality, i.e. hijacking, came as an immense shock to his system. He didn't know, as he put it with some confusion, that 'such things' are so close. He doesn't want to see any more of it.
He's 70 now, and his future is pretty much a foregone conclusion. He faces the lonely, pauper's end that closed the careers of many of the artists I came to know in a short time covering local music. And I can do nothing about it but be there for him.
For myself, well, I don't want to go out like that. It's time for change and change demands action. Whether writing can remain a part of the action remains to be seen.
As David Weinberger, a well-known blogger who cannot be slotted into any age group with certainty [it's a combination of philosophy and marketing], says, "Let's just see how it goes."
Life's winter rose� at 45? You must be kidding.
Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children, Hidden excitedly, containing laughter. Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind Cannot bear very much reality. Time past and time future What might have been and what has been Point to one end, which is always present.
Indeed, I was in something of a slump, but I'm over that now. Past future perfect, as it were. I am, after all, a professional and these things, as Father Augustine was wont to tell me, are sent to try us.
Risen from the Brownian Motion of my past week's fugue, I apologise to those family and friends who ventured into my foul state of mind to extend their best wishes for my well-being. I was in a dreadful mood. You've no idea how brave you were.
Thanks to the good wishes of you who have cooled my fever'd brow with an icy dash of reality, I have reverted to the maturation process. It has a way to run� yet. But never mind that now. I would never pick on anybody bigger, older, smaller, younger or uglier than me.
And I certainly wouldn't be rude to the ladies.
To my friend Don, the Eternal Jazz Singer, forever able to remind me it's a wonderful world, and with sincere apologies to TS Eliot, who is dead, and won't mind.
Well, Frankie Lee and Judas Priest, | They were the best of friends. | So when Frankie Lee needed money one day, | Judas quickly pulled out a roll of tens | And placed them on a footstool | Just above the plotted plain, | Sayin', "Take your pick, Frankie Boy, | My loss will be your gain." | Well, Frankie Lee, he sat right down | And put his fingers to his chin, | But with the cold eyes of Judas on him, | His head began to spin. "Would ya please not stare at me like that," he said, | "It's just my foolish pride, | But sometimes a man must be alone | And this is no place to hide."
There was no way we could have foreseen Mary's free-fall into full-blown psychosis. It broke so suddenly it created another dimension into which only some of us stepped, with trepidation and fear-filled pangs of uncertainty. For how could this upright scion of integrity, fortitude and strength be reduced, in an instant, to a slavering wild-eyed monster of shattering intensity?
Mary was my best friend, a red-blooded male given a female name by unkind circumstance. His parents, the Kurtzes, had two sons, Marlow and Willard. We lumbered Marlow, the eldest, with the unkind abbreviation, Mary. His only comment was to giggle and say, "Fuck you." As a result, and contrary to his gentle nature, he taunted his younger brother, Little Willie, through junior school.
It was again left to his friends to step in and change the second son's name to Wily. Schooled in the narrow confines of a Protestant upbringing, strictured by morals, values and norms, Mary's behaviour was impeccable, gracious and polished. With a brain trained for business and three-bed-roomed domesticity and his sensitive being nurtured in the amniotic fluid of respectability [with a moustache to underline it], he did not at any stage down the long flight of time give any indication he would waver from the pedestrian confines of his paved-with-honest-deeds path.
Yet, in the days of dope and acid the signs were there, for only the few took our route. We never wondered why. Mary was one of us and, for several years, dope was our life and our lives were shrouded in a dry haze of pungent smoke. In the laughing days of seeing music, the green weed opened us to new experience. It was not an evil or a curse and nobody told us we would become its dry-smoke sum.
But by and by from dealer to dealer and pill to pipe we realised there were few like us who sought calmer minds and more tranquil spirits in dope and other pharmaceuticals. We ignored the signals. The hopped-up, dropped-out crackpots who filled the periphery of our lives did not matter to us as the glowing neck of the perennial pipe became the centre of wherever we were at. Yes, it is the familar tale:
Late nights in hot-box cars, the back streets of Woodstock, Observatory, Harfield Village and Lavender Hill, the sandy, rotten-puddle stench-streets of Elsies River � stumbling the two 'o clock decks of great, silent, generator-humming freighters in Cape Town's cable-twisted, derrick-silhouetted harbour � lying quiet beneath shrouds of smoke and the music-filled starlight of the mountain night � roadblocks and rusty eyes � weirdoes and finks � moonscape coasts become ribbons of sand stretching to forever ... ragging students who thought they could but couldn't � cracking pipes on long, hot summer nights ... here, there and anywhere � forests and mountains ... belts, bongs, apples, carrots, and cans ... music festivals and bars � 17-year old girls and cars.
And, of course, our bikes. Screaming through the gears the higher we soared, be it on mountain, beach or road, redlining through curtains of acid rain when with dope and wine we tasted the 10-hour hallucinogenic splendour of chemical dreamscapes and the illusory freedom of miraculous sight.
Mary was with us when the bubble burst. In the shambles of our day-to-day to hand-to-mouth lives, we took to Mandrax [buttons] which, with a pull, inflated our heads to three times their size and knocked us into drooling stupors. Things turned bad. Penniless and starving, we scavenged food from the rocks lining the Sea Point coast, fighting the seagulls for shellfish we boiled in pots and ate with crisps mashed into soft and mealy white rolls. We washed these down with brandy, our water and wine. A good night out became a drunken, Gaussian blur of smashing and grinding beer-bottle glass into the carpet of the Hotel Elizabeth, of finally being locked up in the cells or going out and stealing petrol for money.
Initially, we could not see that buttons might kill us, that eventually, it was not going to be fun anymore. But slowly, Wendy and I made out the graffito on the wall and returned to society, learning with disgust to strip ourselves of identities since regained. Most of our friends stuck around, but others moved off, some to Grahamstown, London, Trondheim� Simon, like Horse Badorties from Henry Kotzwinkle's The Fan Man, pinched ten of my books before disappearing overnight with Charles on a fishing boat bound for Singapore. We visited those who remained when we could but the silences were uncomfortable. Buttons and punk had become their world.
We stood, balanced on the edge, until Wily called to say his brother was missing. Wily, Mary's brother who, without rancor, had decided to leave it all after a single glimpse of dope's rare and unrealised potential. One night, driving a carload of stoned demons from one pipe to another, the insanity and the absurdity of it all hit him hard and, cracking into his high-pitched, maniacal laugh, he shoved the accelerator and then the brake and carried on doing this with lightning speed and the skill of a Neal Cassady. As the car hopped crazily along the dark but busy highway under the mountain, nobody could [or wanted to] persuade him to stop because he was right. It was absurd, he saw it and he was laughing.
Wily left us to follow the lunatic way without him, but now he 'phoned to say Mary was missing and he was re-entering the maelstrom of medicinal madness to find him.
We went to the house in Trill Road opposite Waglay's caf�, across the road from the hospital and the cemetery. For as long as we had known it, it had been filled with students and hopheads who hung Biko posters on the walls and collected unread black-spined Penguins while pretending to be radicals. They were soon ousted and relegated to minor rooms. The house was now in the control of the core. We plumbed the density of darkness found only in the thick-walled world of plaster-cracking, rent-controlled houses fronting directly onto the dirty night-time side streets where the solitary glow of the only street lamp illuminates the shells of cars glinting dully nose-to-tail at the curbside.
Inside was always another world. This one was close, stifling, filled of the lonely thoughts of those who lounged in their matchstick and ash muddlefuck. They were hollow men, stuffed men, smoking together. Like empty crab shells, they pondered Mary's whereabouts, the only sign of lucid life coming when it dawned on their scorched brains he had been with them during the past few days, had thrown darts at them, broken a door and escaped, screaming terribly into the pale yellow dishwater of the misty Observatory night.
"Hey, where the fuck's Mary? Where the fuck are my darts?" asked one as we were leaving. Wily, as did I, felt like spitting on these our friends, husks, empty shadows of people, and we left the bad scene forever.
"Oh, yes, he is my friend," | Said Frankie Lee in fright, | "I do recall him very well, | In fact, he just left my sight." | "Yes, that's the one," said the stranger, | As quiet as a mouse, | "Well, my message is, he's down the road, | Stranded in a house." | Well, Frankie Lee, he panicked, | He dropped ev'rything and ran | Until he came up to the spot | Where Judas Priest did stand. | "What kind of house is this," he said, | "Where I have come to roam?" | "It's not a house," said Judas Priest, | "It's not a house . . . it's a home."
When the blue-uniformed voice of the law intruded on the Kurtz home to signal Mary's presence in a crowded and dirty cell in Cape Town, Mr and Mrs Kurtz's world shattered with the force of an exploding shop window. They were hit with the awful, full-face shock of having to deal, not with their straight, upright, level-headed boy but with a crazed and demented lunatic whose brain had been fried by the bubbling and boiling pharmaceuticals he had shot through it with unnatural enthusiasm and vigour.
After Mary's raging exit from the trap that was the house in Trill Road, he had, with fury and purpose, slung his car to the nearest dealer. In a wild-eyed frenzy, he had demanded booze, dope and buttons. The dealer and his friends, allies and business associates, unused to seeing a junkie in full flight after abusing a wide range of the products listed in MIMS, complied and did everything possible to rid themselves of the unwanted hell fiend.
And so, in a spiralling psychotic whirl, Mary paid his respects to every dealer and shebeen owner from Observatory to Woodstock and, I suppose, Bloemhof Flats [Cape Town's equivalent of 'The Projects']. We were lucky enough to get out of there with our lives one night. We did so only because Red pulled the most childish stunt of them all, pretending to hold a pistol in his jacket pocket as we retreated from several knife-wielding josters. On the strength of his psychosis, Mary had the dealers of Cape Town load his car with sufficient alcohol, drugs and dope to put the average sap behind bars forever. He did this without being shot or knifed which, to some extent, reflects the violent aura of shattered energies spewing from his crazed head.
By the time he reached town, he had an objective firmly in mind and perhaps in sight because he drove at speed and with a skill not attributable to a raving junkie. He slew his car to a stop outside Cape Town's police headquarters, leapt out and launched himself at the bewildered, stunned and then painfully angry but heavily armed policeman on guard duty. The cop who, with a number of bored and underpaid colleagues, had been loitering in the darkness of the main entrance, became enthusiastically animated and subdued him with a zeal that would have made the Minister of Police proud. They then dragged the poor, straining, twitching, skull-cracked psychotic to the communal cells where they threw him in with the usual Friday night collection of gangsters, dealers, drunks, whores [male], robbers and casual window-shoppers picked up in error.
The speed with which Mary's derangement progressed made even the cops take note, because he fast became a veritable tiger, slavering at the chops in search of prey. He soon had the cell to himself as his fifteen or twenty fellow inmates backed away [as far as possible given space constraints] from his glowing, spitting, showering eyes, his jibbering, jabbering, twitch-mad jerks, his obvious hunger to reach out, from deep within, to take, to devour chew-crazy the world he saw: a drunken, motley array of bums from the stinking black-street city gutters representing a world he was forced to inhabit.
His frenzied rage seemed unstoppable, until he recognised one of his cell mates, a dealer of long acquaintance who, when Mary motioned insanely that he sought his company, began to quiver with an "I'm alone in the world and have to do my best to survive these mad streets" type fear, a fear that knows no concrete threat but rears at every unknown.
Knowing my friend was to be incarcerated for the weekend, I sat and thought on the tragedy of it all. This lunacy came hard on the heels of Monkey's death. Monkey's demise was brought on by a predilection for spiking himself with pinks, or Welcanol, a pain reliever for terminally ill cancer patients. From death to death, you have gathered a people to yourself� I spoke to Mary's parents. They occupied another space, trembling crazy in the void. Their ears could not hear. True to form, "Where did we go wrong?" started to emerge, as if those lovely, gracious people were capable of doing their sons wrong.
By Monday, Mary was a chained monster in front of a magistrate who found the situation ludicrous and sent him straight to Valkenberg, Cape Town's madhouse of renown and the jump-off point from where I had launched my study of the institutions of Cape Town. Mary was shunted into a lock-up ward barred by two doors and two warders. It held crazed nuts of unbelievable attributes: sheep-fuckers, mother-murderers, child-rapists and worse. My friend was a chicken stuffed into a foxhole with only the cunning of his insanity to protect him. It did the job well enough and he befriended several people possessed of the most exotic psychoses.
As a junkie gone mad on Mandrax, he was a novelty, a new and wonderful event exploding unexpectedly onto the psychiatric scene in a pyrotechnic display of crazed behaviour. To the clinicians, he had been sent to alleviate the tired boredom of bureaucratic psychiatry practised by sterile minds in white coats. These are people who deal day in and night out with the same old bunch of dreary freaks. They cure them by swamping their befuddled minds with a flood of chemicals before sending them home, slope-shouldered, fear-filled and quivering from drug shock, as burdens to families who, without comprehension, watch in bug-eyed terror for the first unpredictable spark of a neuron firing deep in the basal ganglia of their 'poor relative' before rushing to the bathroom, consulting scribbled lists as they frantically decide whether to give him or her one of the white, orange, green, pink or red marvels of science collected at the dispensary after each dreary, hopeless out-patient visit.
Copious notes are taken at these appointments with despair, notes that are stuffed into brown files so thick they indicate manuscripts in the making.
Mary was the antidote to this drudgery because, although the doctors knew about drugs and kids and crazies, here for the first time in their careers was an original, a total moon shot of a raver who had got that way by percolating Mandrax through a bottle neck, allowing them to simmer in the hob of his head. My friend's impact on Valkenberg [the madhouse of renown] soon became apparent. The uniforms were neater and crisper, the long white coats might have been starched and, in the eyes of the gentle benefactors and guardians of sanity could be seen the titles of the articles they would soon publish in foreign medical journals, outlines for PhD treatises, lecture tour notes, Nobel Prize acceptance... well, not quite, perhaps, but Mary was obviously a boy in need of their care and years of experience restoring normalcy to countless cases discarded as hopeless by families, the courts and a useless welfare system.
With Mary came a new and fresh look at the Hippocratic oath and doctors throughout Valkenberg and from elsewhere around the country [the news of the burbling idiot with the 'button brain' had spread with tachyonic speed] were injected with a renewed zest and a definite, missionary fervour.
They embarked with tremendous enthusiasm on the daunting task presented them, turning Mary into what he had been before he decided he didn't want to be that way.
My friend was not, of course, consulted on any of this. Had he been, he might well have told the purveyors of pills to seek enlightenment up their backsides because, as one who had smoked the ultimate smoke, pulled the perfect pipe, he had, in rising through its snow-white cloud, achieved a perpetual Nirvana, a Celestial equivalent to paralytic intoxication. He saw and experienced great visions, as great and mystical as any seen by the long-beard prophets with the burning-coal eyes.
When he was brought out on show in a lecture theatre for the benefit of the most eminent minds in psychiatry, Mary knew with a certainty deeper than Moses had of God that he, Mary, was P. W. Botha, the notorious fascist and dictator responsible for the subjugation and deaths of countless victims of apartheid. He took it upon himself as that august statesman to deliver a spitting, venomous and derisive tirade on the enemies of his new State of Mind. Rumours that Botha appropriated the speech in 1985 when his babbling sent the country spiralling into civil war and eventual anarchy have not yet been independently confirmed.
Great minds in white coats scribbled furiously, frantic to document the words of this, their release from the boredom of living in the land of the mad, the bad and the sad. In Mary, they were witnessing the release of the unconscious, the free and unfettered expression of the Id, the ego-less, boundless beauty of his true nature, the last trace he would leave before he became an archetype, a Moses in his own right and their presence. Mary glowered, he spat, and he prowled. He roared, he foamed and he fumed. He occupied, took over and possessed the room and all those in it, his energies pouring out in every direction and to every depth, swamping the room, the people and, he knew with a certainty describable only as 'utmost', the world.
The 'mind meisters' were stunned, stoned, awed and hopelessly out of their depth. Mindful of their task, they played it safe when treating him and filled him with enough drugs for his eyeballs to display the ROCHE imprint. They then watched his various energies vaporise, dissipate and leave him, and he subsided into a sad, twitching blob who dragged himself shuffle-footed around the ward in every aimless direction while they busily prepared him for a chemotherapy programme which, it was hoped, would make him normal, predictable and boring again.
Well, Frankie Lee, he trembled, | He soon lost all control | Over ev'rything which he had made | While the mission bells did toll. | He just stood there staring | At that big house as bright as any sun, | With four and twenty windows | And a woman's face in ev'ry one. | Well, up the stairs ran Frankie Lee | With a soulful, bounding leap, | And, foaming at the mouth, | He began to make his midnight creep. | For sixteen nights and days he raved, | But on the seventeenth he burst | Into the arms of Judas Priest, | Which is where he died of thirst.
In their foolhardy rush to medical eminence, they had let escape much from which they could have learnt. The spirit of Mary had, against all odds and with only the furnace fumes of his Mandrax alchemy, realised itself when in front of those assembled he had admonished, gesticulated, smashed, kicked, and gouged his way into their egos. He had scrambled their value systems and the carefully hung art galleries of their minds.
Unfortunately for the guardians of our minds and those they now treat from the luxury of private practice, excoriating speeches flaying them for their unspoken sexual proclivities, their fundamental evil and depravity, their nasty, vicious and sometimes murderous little self-interests could not find fertile soil in the scrubbed minds of psychotic WASPs. The failings of a society headed at high speed for the portals of a Hell only Mary could see, and the intense spiritual and emotional insights he discharged as fireballs from Heaven did not impress the photocopy sensibilities of those charged with caring for the Academy of Medicine.
They cast my friend into the effluent flowing from the dispensary and left him to sink or swim.
Sore, sick and sad; bewildered, dumb and numb; struggling against the chemical straitjacket suffocating his soul, Mary clung to floating shards of his remembered sanity [or lack thereof]. Whenever the Kurtzes stepped back sadly into their lounge after yet another visit, we learned that he was not yet ready to see us and yes, the two warders were still at the locked door. We knew they had our descriptions.
Why Mary chose this incarceration to commemorate his final charge to the outer limits is not clear. He could have gone out in a ball of fire like another button addict of my acquaintance. In fact, had the gregarious and outgoing Willard not had insight into the effects drugs might have had on him he, more than his elder brother, might have ended up like my acquaintance, Callum.
Callum stole ZAR35,000 worth of jewellery from his girlfriend's mother and, after fencing it for about a grand, got so stoned the police had difficulty in getting him to identify himself when they asked him to accompany them to the police station. That they tried to communicate with him at all speaks volumes for the humane nature of our underpaid, hopelessly corrupt police. All button addicts are thieves [in Cape Town, all thieves are button addicts as well] and the police know the intent of these poor unfortunates who have fallen from grace and their over-privileged stations is not evil. They are casualties of a desperate pursuit, chasing a salve capable of ameliorating an uncontrollable addiction. Button addicts fall into a special category. In as much as a surgeon needs to cut his patient to cure him or her, a button addict needs to steal to stay pure and chaste.
Callum was sentenced to five years suspended forever. To show he was in full control of his faculties, he took the people he had chosen as his future in-laws to court. He did this because they would not let him see their daughter. For two years, he had been avidly snapping up all the carnal knowledge he could of his 16-year old girlfriend and tried to have her declared an adult on the strength of their sexual activity. All he received for his troubles was a place in the South African Law Reports and an imposed celibacy. Later, having returned to respectability and horrible three-piece suits, he dismissed the whole affair as a physical manifestation of an addled brain. I never did like Callum.
Mary or, to give him his correct name, Marlow, was returned to society after six months, still twitching exhaustedly from the terrible beating he'd taken from the chemicals used to hammer him into an 'appropriate' mental state. He did not touch drugs again and married five years later. He now takes tea on Sundays with old friends [failed junkies all] and works for a large grey corporation full of grey people. He watches grey pigeons shitting on the grey window sills outside the tinted glass of the big grey building in which he will work for the rest of his life. On occasion, he will mutter to himself, "The horror, the horror," and giggle, but otherwise, he does not speak of his time at Valkenberg.
We might liken Marlow to any innocent person killed in the war. Yet, all is not lost. His insight, sensitivity and penetrating cynicism, combined with a delightfully malicious and macabre sense of humour, have escaped the ravages of the alchemical butcher's art and lend hope to future generations of Kurtzes for, genetically, the attributes that carried him through the psychiatric sausage machine will be passed on to his soon-to-be-born first child.
No one tried to say a thing | When they took him out in jest, | Except, of course, the little neighbor boy | Who carried him to rest. | And he just walked along, alone, | With his guilt so well concealed, | And muttered underneath his breath, | "Nothing is revealed." | Well, the moral of the story, | The moral of this song, | Is simply that one should never be | Where one does not belong. | So when you see your neighbor carryin' somethin', | Help him with his load, | And don't go mistaking Paradise | For that home across the road.
Note While this entry shares obvious parallels with that posted immediately below, names and details pertaining to certain people and events have been changed to protect the guilty.
Middle-Eastern and Asian Fragmentation Key to U.S. Global Strategy
"...something is going terribly wrong in Baghdad and something is going on which demands that serious questions be asked of the United States government."
Robert Fisk
Bush seeks global conflict, fragmentation, and domination of Middle East and Asia.
Some things are too hot to touch | The human mind can only stand so much | You can't win with a losing hand
Weighed down by an awful awareness of willing blindness, I watched supposedly right-thinking, sensible people around the globe ignoring the unfolding horror of Iraq's and, by the extension, the world's 'sacking'. Little was being said of irreplaceable Mesopotamian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Sumerian and other artefacts and archaeological wonders being destroyed or burnt at Baghdad's National Museum of Iraq and National Library. Archives spanning the ages were disappearing and Iraq's complex infrastructure, servicing 26 million people, was being trashed. The Bush Gang, a culturally deprived horde of low-rent pimps, drug lords and whoremongers dripping with the blood of innocents, was mugging the world before my eyes. On the blogs, with the exception of the usual suspects, nada. People were contemplating their virtual navels, ignoring the horrendous crime being carried out in their name.
In January of last year, I wrote an open letter to my long-lost brother in poetic madness, the hopelessly insane romantic, Marek J. I wrote it to thank him for offering to buy me a new PC. While waiting for FedEx to drop off the 3GHz laptop I will use instead of my trusty 486, my one-time innocence testifies to partial sight and bears reposting. Here, in part, is my letter to the panic Mole manic Pole:
Marek, thank you for your generosity. I intend setting up an offshore bank account to take full advantage of your concern for my well-being, but it may take some time. Please bear with me. I bank with Tropicana in Lagos (I started doing a bit of financial consulting on the side for the much-loved Abacha family, benefactors to the Nigerian people, who called on me personally in July last year) and I thought I would have no difficulty in arranging things to our mutual pecuniary benefit. However, I did not count on the FBI, CIA, NSA, sundry oil company representatives, several out-of-work US Secretaries of State, one ex-British prime Minister, and two Men in Black.
The nut of it is that these high-powered heavies from the US have been hanging around outside the doors of the bank for weeks now, harassing innocent customers. Among the heavies was a guy who insisted he was from the AA, but he looked like a drunk to me rather than a respectable representative of a Western security agency. I set a bunch of street kids onto him and he soon disappeared beneath a seething mass of small black bodies. He was last seen naked, trying to catch the last bus to Kano. I hope he made it in time for the riots. The Men in Black immediately gave the urchins scholarships to the School of the Americas at Fort Benning, where they will learn to behave like gentlemen.
Apparently this desire to interrogate innocent strangers in the interests of their continued freedom has something to do with overly advantaged, Koran-waving Saudis using the United States air transport system to kick over a couple of castles in the air above lower Manhattan and flatten a building called the Pentagram in Washington. The wanton destruction queered the pitch (to thugs now controlling access to Caspian Sea gas) of their superiors in a multinational gun-running outfit going by the name of The Carlyle Group, which hangs out at 300 Pennsylvania Avenue. The Carlyle Group is, ostensibly, run by former employees of the World Bank and Securities Exchange Commission, but it is known to be home some of the world's most heinous gangsters, including the likes of Frank Carlucci, George Bush Sr., James Baker, John Major, Fidel Ramos, Anand Panyarachun, and Karl Otto Pohl.
Apparently the building demolition jobs on the Eastern seaboard resulted from a spat between Dubya and a former boyhood buddy, the aforementioned Osama bin Laden, whose family also has significant interests in the Carlyle Group. Dubya, stressed to the gills by an incident wherein he was attacked by a pretzel after referring to some of his closest friends as "Pakkies", is still pissed off at Osama's reluctance to allow friends in the Carlyle group, including his family, to route a pipeline through Afghanistan and into the South Asian market. As Dubya's latest lover, 'Big Dick' Cheney, a former Secretary for Defense and CEO of Houston-based Halliburton, the worlds largest oil services company said jokingly in 1998, "...the Good Lord didn't see fit to put oil and gas only where there are democratically elected regimes friendly to the United States. Occasionally we have to operate in places where, all things considered, one would normally not choose to go. But, we go where the business is."
Indeed.
Dubya has always been one to stick close to the money. Unfortunately, things do not always work out as intended and the poor fool is now in dire need of additional income. Friends who had given him close on $2m for furthering their interests in Pennsylvania are in trouble and things are not looking good. What with Halliburton and one-time energy supremo Enron both operating out of Houston, it seems like a hell of a place in which to do business. Osama has fucked things up for Dubya and many other high-profile energy industry high rollers and they are out to get him. Hence the presence of their heavies at the doors of the offshore finance house of my choice. These guys carry big guns, larger wallets, and recruitment forms for the US Special Forces. They ask customers inconsiderate questions about personal matters that should be of no concern to them.
I believe they have Mr Abdullah Habib, the manager of the Tropicana, a devout Muslim and my personal friend, locked in the vault. There is no money in there. Abacha took it.
I did not foresee the horror of Iraq in that post. As my friend Bob Dylan says, "Things have changed." Yes, they have but, unfortunately for Bob [who I see as something of a prophet], the song remains the same. George W. Bush's live-in lover, Big Dick Cheney, said:
"...the Good Lord didn't see fit to put oil and gas only where there are democratically elected regimes friendly to the United States. Occasionally we have to operate in places where, all things considered, one would normally not choose to go. But, we go where the business is."
Unfortunately for all of us, this is as true today as it was when he said it. I should have foreseen the dark undertow leeching Iraq of life and a future from a billion dollars away. We can always count on Big Dick to continue raping the planet for fun and profit. He does it with the charm of a flesh-eating zombie. And he does it for the good of all mankind. In other words, he does it for us. He does it in our name. Not in my name? It's a nice slogan but I spit on it. Like it or not, the upending of history as we know it, the trashing of the Cradle of Civilisation, and the desecration of our global future by a gang of red-necked, oil-guzzling thugs and their willing partner, Israel [hotly pursued by out-manoeuvred, European vested interests], is being carried out in your name. The United States of America, in the guise of global policeman and arbiter of all that is right, good, and just, is smashing the Middle East to pieces. It seeks a fragmented, tribal Arab world a thousand years removed from an OPEC-powered, pan-Arabic bloc. Maintaining order is always difficult. Managing chaos is easier, especially when you control the wealth.
U.S. policy is to smash and fragment Iraq.
Forget nascent democracies, human rights, and an urge to rid the world of despots. Forget liberation, the protection of Iraq's interests, and a desire to get out of Iraq as fast as possible. The Americans want the Middle East and, by God and your good graces, they're going to take the whole fucking shebang. Don't expect them to relinquish it anytime soon. Other states will follow in the next few years and the Palestinians, well, fuck the Palestinians. After Ariel's played his part in Syria, he'll take care of the Palestinians. Sharon has a mind like a mortuary, is an internationally renowned homicidal maniac and war criminal, heads up the all-purpose butcher's brothel and charnel house disguised as the Israeli parliament, from where he dispatches his ruthless death squads, dressed in the garb of the so-called Israeli Defense Force [IDF].
Fuck me? Fuck you. As if Sabra and Shatilla and the ongoing carnage and wanton slaughter in the Occupied Territories weren't bad enough, this week we gaze on the bone-shattered, blood-spattered memories of Qana. You'll not glean this reality from your duplicitous mainstream, blood-sucking sham network media. Get it on the Internet. Get used to it and do something about it. "Not in my name" indeed. Amid reports of routine torture by U.S. security agnecies, such slogans are banners of rich expedience. The devious psyches of overly well-fed intellects will go a long way to avoid committing themselves to strong statements or action opposing the likes of Big Dick, Little Bush and The Devil's Outrider, Ariel "Fuck You" Sharon.
There is a particularly insidious little school of tea-party thought among wannabe liberals that says those opposing Israeli-supported U.S. aggression should offer the invaders alternatives to their chosen course of recent action. We should outline the means whereby George W. Bush, a deviant with a chocolate-chip morality, a cornflake Christianity and the culture of a bunker buster, can extricate himself [and us] from the quagmire into which he has led us. Implicit in this perverted little piece of blowback rhetoric is the assumption that the sick bastards pulling down the pillars of the Temple had 'good' and 'noble' reason to invade Iraq, a Third World, impoverished country led by cheap gangsters whose malice turns physical far more quickly than does that of anally retentive, repressed Western psycho-deviants.
I don't doubt they had reason, but don't try to sell me on the hoary notion of it being 'good'. Let's look at the situation as it now stands. Paid to sell their country and their people down the rivers that nurtured our collective histories, the Iraqi civil and military leadership, those running its civil service, scientists, academics, secret police, intelligence agencies, torture and death squads, and the myriad apparatchiks who made a meaningful contribution to the perpetuation of Hussein's power - in other words, tens of thousands of people, have DISAPPEARED. Yes. Bar four or five hosers and perpetual losers as well as several thousand Ba'athists press-ganged into terrorising civilians, poof! Offering no resistance, they vanished into the thin, desert air. Planes were grounded, weapons weren't used, bridges and oil wells were left intact and POWs were served up on a plate.
The trillion-dollar American military and intelligence machine that allowed a crazed populace to root around every nook and cranny containing anything of value in Iraq [destroying all that was left to the protection of the invaders], cannot tell us to where Saddam's demented coterie of mass-murderers have relocated. The extraordinarily vicious trashing of Baghdad and other cities [far worse than pillage seen in recent European and African wars and in contradiction to Islamic principles] constitutes a gross violation of the Geneva Convention protocols so beloved of Rumsfeld since a couple of dead marines were shown parading in front of television cameras. It should have triggered alarm bells. More, with U.S. prisoners of war being returned in extraordinarily good health, why is their pampered status as guests of a collapsing regime not being questioned? Spirited away to Germany, they were debriefed before being flown to a muzzled heroes welcome in Texas. Do not expect much in the way of intelligence from them. Or from the hollow halls of Rumsfeld's head for that matter.
Why were the lives of millions of civilians and the histories or our civilisations left unprotected? Because U.S. marines were too busy guarding looters and bussing arsonists into central Baghdad to raze government buildings. A long occupation demands the destruction of infrastructure and, by God, that infrastructure was to be destroyed. IslamOnline.net quotes an Iraqi lawyer telling al-Jazeera, "This is an Islamic country, and its people could not behave in such a way. American forces are involved in encouraging such pillaging." As for Saddam's missing government, the international media is full of ideas. They're in hiding. States of choice include Belarus, Syria, Russia, France, and the United States. Detailed theses of less-than-dubious value posit credible hypotheses of a duplicity mind-numbing in its cynicism. It bespeaks a demoniacal cunning staggering even for the rot-brained, cancerous cabal now dividing Iraq into three warring states and running the U.S. economy and its people into the ground and infinite penury.
Israel's role and interests in the Middle East are pivotal to the U.S. global agenda.
The catalyst tying the loose strands of perplexity surrounding the missing government and encouraged looting besetting Iraq is found in a Pravda article, Behind the Scenes of the Iraq War, alleging Israel's guiding hand in the destruction of modern Iraq. Before you throw your hands up in Holy Horror and kick your machine to a blue-screen death, hear me out. Under the dubious authorship of Harun Yahya, this particular article is likely to be panned. However, its sense and thrust cannot be scoffed or wished away. Nor can countless voices echoing the same refrain while shedding new light on Israel's role in the atomisation of the Middle East.
Israel sees Iraq's ancient cultures clashing with its desire to have the run of the region. Yahya's thesis is backed by a 1982 Ha'aretz article by military correspondent Ze'ev Schiff, calling for "the dissolution of Iraq into a Shi'ite state, a Sunni state and the separation of the Kurdish part." A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s, authored by journalist and former Israeli Foreign Ministry official Oded Yinon, sketched the possible break up of Iraq into three states around Baghdad, Basra, and Mosul. Veteran Israeli peace activist and former Knesset member, Uri Avnery, says Yinon's ideas inspired Ariel Sharon.
"[Sharon's] head was full of grand designs for restructuring the Middle East, the creation of an Israeli 'security zone' from Pakistan to Central Africa, the overthrow of regimes and installing others in their stead, moving a whole people [the Palestinians] and so forth."
Yahya's article details Mossad's active pursuit of the break-up of Iraq and other neighbouring countries, its role in driving America's subsequent wars in the region, and the now familiar plans put forward for Iraq's invasion by the Project for the New American Century [PNAC] back in 1997. Turkey's Cengiz Randar highlights the role played by the Jewish Institute for Security Affairs [JINSA] in formulating Richard Perle's much-touted strategy of 'Total War' and the 'Clash of Civilisations' theory, which call for the overthrow of governments in the region and the imposition of 'democracies'. Perle, a man with the face of a blood-soaked gargoyle and a co-founder of the PNAC, sees tribal 'democracies' or fragmentation spurred by the U.S. and Israel exploiting ideological, ethnic and sectarian differences in Saudi Arabia, Syria, Egypt and Iran.
Don't believe it? The PNAC's Feith and Perle worked on a plan for restructuring the Middle East, re-establishing the Hashemite kingdom in Iraq and using 'pre-emption' against Syria for Likud Rottweiler Benjamin Netanyahu in 1996. Chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board and co-author of the report, A Clean Break, prepared by the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, a right-wing Israeli think tank with ties to Netanyahu, Perle states:
"Israel can shape its strategic environment, in cooperation with Turkey and Jordan, by weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria. This effort can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq - an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right."
Yahya argues that Israeli regional objectives play a greater role than oil in the break up of Iraq. I certainly don't buy into that one lock, stock and barrel. The smashing of Iraq and the annexation of its oil reserves serve complementary Israeli and U.S. ambitions. The one is as important to the U.S. as the other is to Israel. Whether Israel wants the region as its playground or not is beside the point. The point is that the two increasingly inseparable allies are prepared to take on Islam to achieve their objectives. They are now doing so in a way that would make Josef Stalin blush.
Rather than face a certain annihilation, Iraq's leadership bought into the only avenues of escape publicly offered them by Rumsfeld and Bush. Bush, operating from the hellhole of an infinitely dense mind, gave Saddam 48 hours to leave town as Rumsfeld, using three detachments of 'human shields' and other operatives, made contact with and urged top levels of the Iraqi government and military, most notably, the Republican Guard, to defect. They skipped the country with face-saving grace, a war of token resistance, and the assistance of their ousters. Stripped by duplicity and devious agreement of any means to defend themselves, the Iraqi people were lambs led to a slaughter in a charade played out by blood-crazed butchers, amphetamine-stoked goons keen to blow any A-rab to a pink mist and Nirvana.
"Well, okay, so it happened. It's history. Let's not dwell on dark times. Who really gives a shit? Eh? No, we want the reasons you war protestors continue to protest and denigrate the freedom delivered the long-suffering people of Iraq. We want an alternative vision." You had no vision to begin with, Bubba. Why the fuck should I give you one? Wake up and smell the sick sweetness of rotting flesh. You were blind, blinded, and blind-sided. You were led, dumb and willing, to quiet collusion and complicity in a carnage that will reverberate down the annals of history and change forever the way we view each other and the future. Let's get the obvious shit out of the way. Politics does not brook altruism. It's a fundamental fucking law understood by anybody with half a brain and an IQ above 10. Politics is about gaining and retaining power. That's all there is to it. Simple, eh? Remember it. How does one go about it? Let's look to Israel again, the fears of Iraqi scientists, and the assassination squads sent in to murder some 500 identified by the U.S.
Maariv, an Israeli newspaper, reports a retired French general, interviewed by French TV's Channel 5, alleging that 150 Israeli commandos, working from within U.S. military units, are charged with killing 500 scientists identified as having worked on chemical and biological weapons for Hussein's government. The scientists were all slated to be interviewed by Hans Blix's UNMOVIC inspectors. The 'exercise' has been undertaken to eliminate Iraq's capabilities to develop chemical, biological and nuclear armaments. An e-mail from the scientists, pleading for assistance from the international community, was copied to IslamOnline.net on April 11. In the e-mail, allegations of the U.S. military transporting looters to Mosul University back the assertion that rampant destruction of property is taking place under U.S. military supervision. The scientists further allege arbitrary detention by U.S. troops working from lists naming individuals and demands that they hand over all academic and research papers in their possession. Several have been approached by the CIA with offers of work elsewhere.
So much for Saddam's ugly regime and Israel's non-complicity in this most underhand obliteration of a sovereign state. The mealy-mouthed dross and syrupy pronouncements of a deep commitment to human rights and everything else that makes us dance in fields of dreams and draw up noble documents of meaningless intent was just so much shite pumped out by dangerous psychotics with a blackhole sense of humour and disseminated by a complicit network media. That the dunderhead right swallowed such bullshit hook, line and sinker is of no concern to me. My concern is stopping their support for an ongoing crime against the past, present and future of humanity. There's more to this story than meets the average Republican's eye and, as Robert Fisk says at the outset, "...something is going terribly wrong." If United States' citizens cannot see their regime mirrored in that of the now-departed and unlamented Saddam Hussein, they have a long way to go before their minds hit ground.
The short story is that there are no 'weapons of mass destruction' in Iraq. As for the Americans, the story is very different. However, when it comes to the U.S., we use different criteria and standards. Rumsfeld knows this all too well and exploits it to the nth degree. The argument pushing oil as a prime motivator of this conflict is convoluted and follows two strands. The first runs along very much the same tack as that set out in my reference to the nefarious doings of the Carlyle Group and Dubya's childhood friend, Osama, another well-paid scapegoat and fugitive from justice. Crude Vision, a publication put out in March by one of myriad shady Washington DC-based outfits, the Institute for Policy Studies [IPS], appears to capitalise on Rumsfeld's buffoonery during the recent onslaught on civilisation. It reads as a publication targeting Rummy's tenure as Defense Secretary. Whether they're right, left or misguided, the IPS does offer us some facts.
Between 1983 and 1988, during the Iran-Iraq War, Saddam allegedly unleashed 13,000 - 19,500 chemical bombs and artillery shells on Iranian forces. He acquired them from his chief backers, the United States and other Western powers. On March 16, 1988, Iraqis allegedly gassed the Kurdish city of Halabja, killing approximately 3,200 people. While Iran and Iraq cluttered the Straits of Hormuz and the Shatt-al-Arab Waterway with the hulks of tankers of every nationality, the Reagan administration and Bechtel, whose interests and agents were synonymous, courted Saddam for the rights to build a pipeline from Iraq through to the Red Sea at Aqaba in Jordan. U.S. government officials and agents for Bechtel offered Israel's Labour Party 10% of the profits if Shimon Peres's government did not bomb the thing to blazes. With Aqaba a stone's throw from Eilat, I doubt he'd be able to resist the temptation.
None of them gave a damn about dead Iranians or Kurds. They gave Saddam the ordnance needed to get the Iranians to "shut the fuck up". While thousands choked on gas made in the U.S.A. and gasped their last, Rumsfeld did all he could to help Saddam 'increase his oil exports'. Official condemnation placated the media and Reagan's hoods put the squeeze on U.S. Export-Import Bank and the U.S. Overseas Private Investment Corporation to put up the money for Bechtel's pipeline. This disgusting [and shameful] episode shows us that, in 1988, the United States viewed the gassing of thousands of people as a potentially "embarrassing situation". Today it forms the focus of the publicity campaign driving their so-called War of Liberation in [or on] Iraq. How times and viewpoints have changed. I doubt pangs of conscience or a feeling of goodwill to all men have anything to do with it.
According to the IPS, the blood-toothed greedheads and numbskulls involved in the Aqaba pipeline deal included George Schultz, Ed Meese, William Clark, James Schlesinger, Lawrence Eagleburger, Robert McFarlane and a supporting cast of thousands. Ed Meese was later investigated for the Iran-Contra affair. He was about as much an Attorney General as Ollie North was a war correspondent. After Iran, Saddam thought he could count on the moral torpor of his Yankee friends and slid into Kuwait. He should not have mixed a dearth of morality with benefits accruing to the States from a cosy oil source. Saddam was hit with another devastating war, twelve years of sanctions and UNSCOM and UNMOVIC weapons inspections. These were interrupted by Operation Desert Fox, the carpet-bombing of suspected weapons facilities by Clinton's administration in 1998. Militarily, Saddam was a spent force by 1999, incapable of mounting a meaningful defence of Iraq.
Nuclear proliferation threatens U.S. hegemony.
Four years later, Scott Ritter of UNSCOM and Hans Blix of UNMOVIC went as far as they could in stating that no weapons 'of mass destruction' existed in Iraq. They were more inclined to point to those wielded and used so readily by Israel and the United States. These two rogue states seem to have a surfeit of the damned things. Why should Syria and North Korea not have a few nukes if Israel can stockpile around 160 bombs? What of the annual India-Pakistan Derby, during which long-range delivery systems and nuclear warheads are tested? What do these people need such things for if not to sow terror? Ah yes, Pakistan is on the U.S. roster. It is, after all, an Islamic dictatorship. Should it send one of its missiles towards Israel it would, if U.S. foreign policy is to make any sense at all, constitute a direct threat to the stability of the United States of America. Today, as U.S. oil reserves drop and the need to pump oil for their own account becomes more urgent, the U.N. is avenging its drubbing by the murderously arrogant NeoCons. It is demanding the reinstatement of UNMOVIC before the Security Council considers lifting sanctions against a U.S.-occupied Iraq. It's unlikely to win many friends delaying the U.S.' ability to flaunt its newfound wealth and hits a raw and oily nerve both sides of the Atlantic. The second strand of the oil story lends some substance to a near-miss post I made a few days before writing to Marek [see above]. On January 16 last year, I wrote:
This war has been waged for millennia and its battles have been fought on a pretty much continuous basis in the hearts, minds, and countries of every person conscious of its existence. The buildings hit on 9-11 were symbols or, if you insist, targets rather than battlefields. And the attacks formed a message rather than a military onslaught designed to meet set objectives. The message was simple. "You have lost the war. If you don't understand that by now, you're even dumber than your worst critics think. We, the barbarians, are no longer at the gates. We are inside and, once we've fucked you up good and solid, we'll be on top. Catch us if you can. Sleep tight."
It was as straightforward as that. Just because Dubya used the event to further family and others' interests in the oil and armaments businesses will not change a thing. The clarity of the statement was immediately apparent to all but those living inside the mental fortress of the Northern psyche. Subsequent events have shown Africa to be bemused at, Asia perturbed by, and the East indifferent to the West's propensity to try and stuff the process of achieving global dominance into an envelope of several years. They know all to well that these things take time and they're prepared to wait.
Saddam told Daddy that he was initiating the mother of all battles. Daddy didn't listen and Desert Storm was the result. All the US seemed to gain from that exercise was more sand in its eyes. It took the victor, Saddam, eight years to build his Mother of all Battles mosque and a further three to deliver his riposte. Destiny's children. We'll see more of them born as our misunderstanding of each other increases.
False perceptions abound. The US believes it's in a position to help the world. Crap. It needs all the help it can get. Its enemies believe they can teach the US a lesson. Rubbish. Uncle Sam is far too arrogant. Once we get these little misperceptions out of the way we can, perhaps, start communicating with each other and find a way out of the mess. Otherwise we'll just have to get used to living in the state of perpetual idiocy to which we seem to have become accustomed.
With an ability to discern differing personalities [Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein], I was right about destiny's children, but I failed to interpret Bin Laden's message correctly. After advising Bush he'd lost the war, he said "We are inside, and we are going to fuck you up. We are on top. Catch us if you can. Sleep tight." The translation doesn't really matter very much because the message remains lost on those 'living in the mental fortress of the Northern psyche'. The extent of Bin Laden's victory is only now becoming apparent. In The Real Motives for War in Iraq, Noor ad-Deen Ingalls fills us in on just how frantic our satanic suitor, Little Bush, has become. He also shows up the arch-conservative and hopelessly corrupt French president, Jacques Chirac, for the vested-interest joker he is.
The U.S. imports about 60% of its oil needs. Iraq's oil reserves are second only to those of Saudi Arabia, a country from which the U.S. is trying, with increasing desperation, to sever unnaturally close ties. Pointing out the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments estimate of $688 billion needed for long-term occupation and rebuilding and Yale University's Prof. William Nordhaus high-end estimate of $1.92 trillion, it seems George's desert adventure will not endear him to penny pinchers watching the U.S. economy and millions of jobs going down the drain. How does this fundamentally depraved and morally bankrupt individual get Iraq's looted oil to market? Ingalls highlights both the means Bush will use to accomplish this and the reason for the rift tearing apart the cosy family of Western nations. Bush will enter Partnership-sharing Agreements [PSAs] with U.S. and British oil companies large enough to foot the $60-140 billion needed to pump the black gold through various stages and into the back of your SUV. The advantage to the oil companies, which stand to realise a 30-year fixed profit tax and exemption from domestic environmental, tax and safety laws, is mind boggling.
The fly in the ointment, however, is the smiling visage of Saddam Hussein. Forced by sanctions to enter future PSAs with Russian and French companies, Saddam did two things. He put the oil beyond the rapacious America's reach and ensured one hell of a fall out. As France and Russia are two of Bush's most vehement opponents and stand to have their PSAs torn up, I guess he played his cards right. Further, the small matter of $1.1 trillion in contracts awarded China, Russia and the E.U. means the U.S., hell-bent on paying for its new acquisition through PSAs with U.S. and British companies, is likely to view those it intends disappointing as potential threats to entrenching its hegemony. One can view the Occupation of the Middle East and Asia as mineral and territorial imperatives for the U.S. and Israel. One can also see it as a last-ditch attempt by Bush to ensure the dominance of the dollar over the Euro and the Yen. Big Dick Cheney's view is less subtle. He reckons that whoever controls the flow of oil in the Persian Gulf enjoys a "stranglehold on the economies of most of the other nations of the world." Heh. Saddam and Osama bin Laden appear to have achieved what nobody was able to do before them, i.e. set the U.S., Russia, China and countless bit players at each other's throats.
Okay, let's deal with 'Saddam Invades New York'. We have seen there was no 'real and imminent threat' to the security of the region or the United States of America. Saddam had neither the weapons nor the means to deliver them. That around half of Americans believe the secular infidel Hussein played a role in a terror attack allegedly carried out by a shadowy bunch of Saudi religious fanatics and moneyed hoodlums going under the collective name of al-Qa'eda, is no indicator of Saddam's power. It shows how dumb most Americans are. For fuck's sake, I do believe if I leaked South African plans to invade America tomorrow, I'd be toast this evening. Yeah, we're coming at you with our 10 gunboats, 20 outdated Mirage IIs and 30 vials full of AIDS. Cause for a pre-emptive strike? You bet. The simple, brainless dupes who sucked in Bush administration garbage, slaughtered thousands, and then gloated while a bunch of uniformed yahoos, Iraqi dissidents and high-flying hoodlums flown in for the occasion, joined a few dozen locals looking for a party in pulling down a statue outside the hotel where the independent media had been shelled a couple of days before, are less than shark shit.
They have no brains and no balls. They are dumb cunts. Period.
Look, the evidence arguing against this act of Momentous Barbarism has been available for decades. It has been posted, nay plastered, across the Web for two years. Valid arguments opposing the invasion of the sand-blasted backwater formerly named Iraq so that the U.S. could manage a Yugoslavia-type break-up were as compelling as those used to fight bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone Age and implanting U.S. military and air bases in a ring of steel across Asia. If you need arguments opposing these things, well hell, I guess you need arguments opposing rape, pillage and murder. There aren't any that would matter to those who indulge in such things. I'd say you have to be pretty fucking bent if you don't see such activities as evil.
What do 'anti-war' or 'pro-peace' wets want now that the carnage has been allowed to go ahead? Simple. Get the fuck out of Iraq and forget about it. Let others, advised by Iraqis prevented from killing each other by a multinational peace-keeping force, clean up the mess and get the hell out as soon as possible. You foot the bill. Instead of realigning your sights on African oil-producing countries, stick your armaments up your jack and get down to negotiating oil deals. Start observing international protocols. Impeach the Anti-Christ Bush and his flunkies. Try them for heinous crimes against humanity and find the unscrupulous bastards as guilty as all hell. Burn them at the stake. Make like normal human beings. Take cold showers. It's not your job to impose your nightmare visions on the world. Leave it alone already. Is this likely to happen? Hah! The multi-billion dollar invasion of Iraq is going to cost nothing compared to the damage caused by its immediate after-effects and the coming war of liberation. As the generals tighten their grip, lock Iraqis in their houses at night and shoot curfew breakers on sight, antipathy towards the United States increases by the day. Americans will not bring war to Iraq. Iraqis and Arabs from across the Middle East, Africa and Asia will visit war on occupation forces.
Palestine: A working model of Divide and Rule.
As tens of thousands of Iraqis chant "Yankees go home" in the streets of Iraq, Robert Fisk has been dragging himself around Baghdad, taking notes as he goes along. Fisk is a damned fine reporter. He reports what he sees and this drives Americans crazy. He offers no spin. The man's obviously fucking crazy. If he sees Marines shooting civilians for the sheer hell of it, he reports it. If he sees canned carnage of a bridge over the Tigris, he reports it. If he hears of theories speculating on the whereabouts of Saddam and his missing thousands, he reports them. In fact, all you can really say of Robert Fisk is that he's about the only reliable source of information going in Baghdad today. Here's what he says of the coming war:
"It's easy for a reporter to predict doom, especially after a brutal war that lacked all international legitimacy. But catastrophe usually waits for optimists in the Middle East, especially for false optimists who invade oil-rich nations with ideological excuses and high-flown moral claims and accusations, such as weapons of mass destruction, which are still unproved. So I'll make an awful prediction. That America's war of "liberation" is over. Iraq's war of liberation from the Americans is about to begin. In other words, the real and frightening story starts now."
Too right. Witness Britain, where a semblance of conscience, 'fair play', and security of tenure in the House still plays a part in directing foreign policy. In Prove Iraqi guilt, MPs tell Blair, panic-stricken Labour backbenchers show increasing alarm that the failure to uncover weapons of mass destruction in Iraq will confirm that the war was illegal. Such things matter to the Brits. Was Saddam still alive as statue toppled? fuels a horrible fear that Saddam strolled the streets of Baghdad, waving to adoring throngs, as his statue was being leant on in the botched PR job Rummy laughably likened to the fall of the Berlin Wall. The Brits fear Hussein has lived to fight another day. If he hasn't been bought off, as speculated above, I don't doubt it. Saddam does not die for causes. Like Tony Blair and George W. Bush, he employs others to die for him.
This weekend's Mail & Guardian carries an Ewan MacAskill story from Nassiriya, US faces its nightmare scenario. "Dissent emerges as in Southern Iraq as Shia Muslims oppose a Western-style democracy" shouts the blurb. This is where the wheels come off and the Guardian reporter, for once, misses the point of this exercise in global rat-pack chicanery. Citing the possibility of Shiites aligning themselves with their Iranian counterparts, MacAskill warns:
"Western diplomats and academics have been warning Washington and London for years that the fall of Saddam could be accompanied by a rise in Shia power. Washington opted to take the risk and may yet have to live with the consequences."
MacAskill is one of countless journalists stuck in a groove that says the U.S. seeks a peaceful transition to 'democracy' in Iraq. It wants no such thing. It has gone in to smash the country, carbonise people who get in its way, render the place ungovernable, divvy it up, occupy it for years and profit hugely from its wealth. Echoing Rebuilding America's Defenses, a September 2000 PNAC strategy document, the Bush Administration's September 2002 National Security Strategy Report calls for a permanent American military presence and domination, through an imperialist Pax Americana, around the world, particularly in the Persian Gulf. Presenting the views of Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Lewis Libby, Paul Wolfowitz, Jeb Bush and business interests including Lockheed-Martin and Cheney's Halliburton, the PNAC states:
"The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American military presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein."
Need more? This is the stuff of apartheid South Africa. The Nationalists were past masters at the old 'divide and rule' strategy. They used it at every level of government and in every organ of civil society. Israel has used it most successfully to slaughter Palestinians and filthy anti-Semitic foreigners, and it is now being put to effective use by the United States. 'Divide and rule', applied by the National Party, became so entrenched in South African thought it struck me only last night that other societies might be new to its double-dealing, underhand and deadly duplicity. For many years, I've taken for granted an awareness of its use in hobbling the Palestinian cause. The U.S. goal in the region is to smash all dissent by setting neighbour on neighbour. It will exploit any social, religious, and ethnic differences it can find to foster massacres, terror, gangsterism, a fresh market for new guns and anarchy. MacAskill's article is blithely oblivious to this. The U.S. seeks fragmentation or atomisation rather than a threatening stability. Why else would the U.S. bring in Iraqi National Congress leader and international gangster, Ahmed Chalabi? Sentenced in absentia to 22-years in prison for a $200 million banking scam that threatened the Jordanian economy, the U.S. do not expect Chalabi to succeed. They need him as a front. The U.S. does not want secular states of the type built, against overwhelming odds and with uncommon brutality, by Saddam Hussein. Chalabi is a face of convenience, a short-term puppet with a healthy bank balance, no scruples whatsoever, and zero future.
Saddam Hussein represents a failed experiment in power broking, a deluded stooge with an independent streak willing to challenge Israel's regional hegemony and, therefore, the heartbeat of America. Noises now being made of Bush getting tough on Israel are just that, noise of a flatulent nature. With elections looming, Bush has to look to his traditional power bases, the fanatical far-right Jewish community that funds his campaigns [represented by mad beasts like Perle, Wolfowitz, Libby, Feith, et al], the white fundamentalist trailer trash who vote him in and the brainless bully, Big White Business, that sustains him. George W. Bush, fast developing a taste for frenzied orgies of genocidal gluttony, is as much a fascist dictator as the U.S. has seen to date. Having secured his domestic power base with a multi-billion dollar campaign of duct tape, flashing lights and draconian security legislation undermining the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights, the anthrax-spreading, remote-controlled corpse and dyslexic cowboy might turn out as much a failed experiment as Saddam. Somebody has to pay for so-called 'war-time security intensification'. In the short term, the U.S. taxpayer will foot a large and completely unnecessary bill.
Will the average American see through this giant charade? It's unlikely. A floundering economy, soaring unemployment and tax breaks for fat-cat friends, call for distraction and Bush Inc. can be counted on to deliver. While he can use Israel as a hollow drum on which to beat for a couple of months, the single-track U.S. and Israeli policy on Palestine calls for further twists and turns in the famously "fictitious" War Against Terror. In the cynical world of global politics, with a couple of months to go before the presidential campaign gets under way, Syria and other states fill the roles of expedient options. Little Bush holds them in reserve. They are targets of convenience furthering the agenda of a gang of thugs that, calmly and without blinking, stole democracy from under the noses of U.S. voters. These Third-World clay pigeons are guaranteed international sympathy. When it comes to a choice of the lesser of two evils, the dime-a-dozen pariah states awaiting fragmentation don't look half as dumb or dangerous as the average American voter. Lacking the willing blindness of the average couch potato to whom war is beamed by satellite from a swamp full of rumour-mongering satyrs mesmerised by the sleazy pornography of their own groupthink, they might well turn out to be the instruments of George's eventual undoing. But we can't bank on it. It's my belief that only the people who give George W. Bush his power can stop him. Until the American public steps up to the plate and says "Enough", this nauseating gnome doubling as the epitome of everything execrable and evil will continue to mug the world.
People are crazy and times are strange | I'm locked in tight, I'm out of range | I used to care, but things have changed
[A transitional arrangement, with words and music by the indistinguishable duo, Bush and al-Sahaf, from their smash-and-hit conflagration, Any Given Despot.]
"I think there is some methodology in my travels." U.S. President Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf
Hah! Yes, by the Grace of Allah, the Most Merciful, it is me again, you scabrous infidels and louts of colonialism. I am now your president, but you have nothing to fear from me. I know something about being a government. And you've got a good one. I think anybody who doesn't think I'm smart enough to handle the job is underestimating. Be assured. I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully. I think the American people - I hope the American - I don't think, let me - I hope the American people trust me. I promise you I will listen to what has been said here, even though I wasn't here. Please excuse my English. Although I do not speak it well, Allah be praised, I've coined new words, like, misunderstanding and Hispanically. Besides, it does not matter. I speak better English than that villain Bush.
By the Grace of Allah, the Most Merciful, the war against you infidels is over. The super power of villains has been utterly vanquished. Allah be praised. Their military effort is a subject of laughter throughout the world. On this occasion, I am not going to mention the number of the infidels who were killed and the number of destroyed vehicles. The operation continues. We're giving them a real lesson. Heavy doesn't accurately describe the level of casualties we have inflicted. Their dead and wounded lie everywhere. We have destroyed 2 tanks, fighter planes, 2 helicopters and many shovels. We have driven your soldiers back and I am now president of U.S.A.
Allah be praised, we have occupied you and are now in control.
Blair is accusing us of executing British soldiers. We want to tell him that we have not executed anybody. They were either killed in battle, most of them getting killed because they are cowards anyway, the rest they just got captured. Their forces committed suicide by the thousand at the gates of Baghdad. As they did so, our Iraqi fighters slapped the gangsters on the face, and then when they fled, they kicked their backsides. The battle was very fierce but God made us victorious. The fighting continues. It is a pathetic sight. These soldiers were thrown into the fires of Hell, the Museum of Antiquities and several government buildings by their leaders. They were like a snake and we cut it in pieces.
The Americans? They fled. The American louts fled like wild donkeys. Indeed, concerning the fighting waged by the heroes of the Arab Socialist Baath Party, one amazing thing really was the cowardice of the American soldiers. "By God," I thought on hearing this. "I think this is rather very unlikely. This is merely a prattle." Definitely, we had not anticipated this. We blocked the faltering forces of infidel mercenaries inside the city and we slaughtered them in the airport. We went into the airport and crushed them, we cleaned the WHOOOLE place out. They were slaughtered. They tried to bring a small number of tanks and personnel carriers in through al-Durah but they were surrounded and most infidels had their throats cut.
They were in a state of hysteria. Losers, they thought that by killing civilians and trying to distort the feelings of the people they would win. I did not think they will win, those bastards.
God willing, and with me as president, you are safe, protected. I think we agree, the past is over. There's no such thing as legacies. At least, there is a legacy, but I'll never see it. I am not scared, and neither should you be, praise be to Allah in His Infinite Mercy. I'm a patient man. And when I say I'm a patient man, I mean I'm a patient man. But do not turn off your TV sets. It will do you no good. I am your president now. I have you surrounded. You are being besieged. I am hitting you from the north, east, south and west. I chase you here and you chase me there. But at the end, thanks be to Allah, the Divine and Most Merciful, I am the person who is laying siege to you. And, God willing, it is not you who are besieging me.
We have driven the leader of the international criminal gang of bastards, the insane little dwarf Bush, back into the swamps where God will roast his stomach in hell at the hands of Iraqis. We're going to drag his drunken junkie nose through Iraq's desert, him and his follower dog Blair. There's no cave deep enough for America, or dark enough to hide. He deserves only to be hit with shoes. In fact, he is not worth an old shoe. I am a person who recognises the fallacy of humans. Bush is a very stupid man. His rear is blocked. When we were making the law, when we were writing the literature and the mathematics the grandfathers of Blair and little Bush were scratching around in caves. I think the British nation has never been faced with a tragedy like this fellow Blair.
You American people are not stupid, you are very clever. You teach a child to read, and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test. Rarely is the question asked, "Is our children learning?" So listen carefully. I can't understand how such clever people came to elect such a stupid president. My goals for this country are peace in the world. There's only one person who hugs the mothers and the widows, the wives and the kids upon the death of their loved one. Others hug but having committed the troops, I've got an additional responsibility to hug and that's me and I know what it's like. A dictatorship would be a heck of a lot easier.
My officials have been calling upon all the leaders in the - in the Middle East to do everything they can to stop the violence, to tell the different parties involved, praise be to Allah, the Divine and Most Merciful, that peace will never happen.
George W. Bush, this man is a war criminal, and we will see that he is brought to trial. God willing. We are not afraid to try the whole former American leadership. We butchered their villainous mercenaries and bastards with bullets and shoes. Allah has condemned them. They are nowhere... they are nowhere, really. They are also stupid. They are stupid - and they are condemned. We have them surrounded in their banks. I triple guarantee you, we have given these blood-sucking bastards a sour taste. God willing, they will be burnt. Our initial assessment is that they will all die. We are going to tackle them. They are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves! I do. By the Grace of Allah, the Divine and Most Merciful, I am President Mohammad Saeed al-Sahaf of U.S.A.
We made Bush Jr. and his international gang of bastards drink poison and Saddam Hussein's soldiers and his great forces gave them a lesson which will not be forgotten by history. Truly. They are lost in the desert... they can not read a compass... they are retarded. We defeated them. God willing, I will provide you with more information. I can say, and I am responsible for what I am saying, that they have started to commit suicide in the secret chamber under the Lincoln Memorial. We will encourage them to commit more suicides quickly. Yes, we will kill them all... most of them.
"There ought to be limits to freedom." U.S. President Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf
But, praise be to Allah the Most Merciful, I am not here to speak to you of the miserable Bush and his gang of Al Capones. We are here to make peace with Iraq and Syria. It is clear our nation is reliant upon big foreign oil. More and more of our imports come from overseas. For this reason, Allah be praised, you will now watch al-Jazeera TV. It is better for you than Fox or CNN or other blood-sucking instruments of the Great Satan. Don't believe anything they say!
What is this headline, "Time to restore order"? What does that mean, by God? Time to cover up the crimes of the villains? We will chase these rascals back to London! There ought to be limits to freedom. Will the highways on the Internet become more few? Allah, the Most Merciful, will decide. For now, the American press is all about lies! All they tell is lies, lies and more lies! These cowards have no morals. They have no shame about lying. They deceived their soldiers and their officers that aggressing against Iraq and invading Iraq would be like a picnic. This was a very stupid lie they told their soldiers. What they faced was a definite death. No one received them with roses. They were received with bombs, shoes and bullets. The game was exposed. Awe backfired on them. This was the boa snake. We extended it and cut it the appropriate way.
I blamed Al-Jazeera for the lies - they were marketing for the desperate Americans! But they are our brothers and, praise Allah, they have repented. I said to them, "The Americans, they always depend on a method what I call ... stupid, silly. All I ask is check yourself. Do not in fact repeat their lies. I can assure you that those villains will recognize, will discover in appropriate time in the future how stupid they are and how they are pretending things which have never taken place." Praise be to Allah, the Most Merciful, this has happened and I am able to speak to you today. Lying was forbidden in Iraq. President Saddam Hussein [there are 26 million Saddams in Iraq] would tolerate nothing but truthfulness as he was a man of great honor and integrity.
The little criminal bastards� failure in this regard was abysmal. Bush, Blair and Rumsfeld. They were the funny trio. They wanted to tell the world changes thought - as a matter of fact, they did not respect the world, they wanted to tell taxpayers and the domestic public to keep them deceived. We embroiled them, confused them and kept them in the quagmire. They began to tell more lies so that they might continue with the perpetration of their crimes. May they be accursed. As your president, I encourage everyone to speak freely of the truths evidenced in their eyes and hearts. Just look carefully, I only want you to look carefully. Do not repeat the lies of liars. Do not become like them. Once again, I blame al-Jazeera before it ascertains what takes place.
Please, make sure of what you say and do not play such a role. Search for the truth. I tell you things and I always ask you to verify what I say. I know what I believe. I will continue to articulate what I believe and what I believe - I believe what I believe is right. To this law, you will surrender or we will behead you all. Like flea-infested camels with open wounds and saddle-sores, you will carry your coffins on your backs until the day you die. Wherever you go, you will find yourselves encircled.
In the name of Allah the Most Merciful, you will vote for me in 2004. There may be some tough times here in America. But this country has gone through tough times before, and we're going to do it again. We will fix up little Ali and forget the rest. Our nation must come together to unite. God willing, things are looking up. As people do better, they start voting like Republicans... unless they have too much education and vote Democratic, which proves there can be too much of a good thing.
By the Divine Grace of Allah, the Most Benign and Merciful, there's no doubt in my mind that we should allow the world worst leaders to hold America hostage, to threaten our peace, to threaten our friends and allies with the world's worst weapons.
Praise be to Allah in His Infinite Mercy. May he continue to bless our country. I have taken up too much of your time. You infidels who celebrate the death of the prophet must take up your hammers and spikes, spears and vinegar-soaked sponges, and head for the hills. Your time has come. Eh? Who is this dog Powell in Qatar? What are you saying? Send him to me. There are no Americans here! What? Do you have blacks, too?
n. a dissolute or licentious person adj. licentious, dissolute
Please note: 'licentious', as defined by the OED, need not take on the attributes given 'morality' by Nietzsche. It should perhaps be taken in its archaic sense, as 'disregarding accepted rules or conventions'
I've been on a journey and I'm tired. I may be offline a few days. Over the past couple of months, I've travelled upriver, finding myself drawn to a dark interior. During the past week, I've continued writing of our quickening descent into chaos, but there's little point echoing horrors others will and do cover elsewhere, with greater brevity and, importantly, some levity.
So, for a couple of days at least, I'm spending more time with my family. Before I do, I want to thank those who've steered me on this particular, most worthwhile journey; Joe Duemer, ray sweatman, George Partington, Frank Paynter, and the irrepressible souls compiling the chronicle of our time at American Samizdat.
I owe them.
On a brighter note, I was fortunate enough to spend yesterday evening in the company of the chosen, called together for a celebratory banquet by the U.S. President of Vice, Mr. Dick Cheney. I went in the guise of Mike Sanders, who was attending a charity function for the victims of terrorism and could not, therefore, receive his medal. I'll drop it off sometime, Mike.
The festivities were held in one of the secret anterooms of the main chamber buried deep beneath the Lincoln Memorial. It was, according to those able to recall something of the event this morning, a rip-roaring success. All the usual suspects were there, including the donkey. Osama performed the Dance of the Seven Veils, Saddam and Satan did the skit from South Park, Glenn, Andrew, Nick and the donkey were rampant, Secretary of Faith St. John of Ashcroft did the scene from The Exorcist, the Prince of Darkness and his superhuman crew mapped out a blueprint for the future, and the President topped off the evening with his usual show-stopper, transforming himself into a Giant Lizard onstage.
But more of that in a couple of days...
Thanks to Shelley for the button, and to Norm for pointing to it...
The graphic of the Statue of Liberty is from the original by CLAVO, at WAR.
The air is getting hotter | There's a rumbling in the skies | I've been wading through the high muddy water | With the heat rising in my eyes | Every day your memory grows dimmer | It doesn't haunt me like it did before | I've been walking through the middle of nowhere | Trying to get to heaven before they close the door
Having posted a blog entry, I was mulling over others' ruminations when I heard the BBC report a successful tank attack on one of Saddam Hussein's palaces. The Beeb told us American forces intended occupying the palace compound overnight as a 'show of force'. I moved through to the TV area to catch up on the war as accompanying footage replayed the day's battle.
The images hit me like a hammer. Although the camera and reporter were about a mile from the onslaught, the zoom function melded the report to the action. Relaying his feelings as events unfolded, the reporter delivered Gonzo journalism from Baghdad's Palestine Hotel directly into my living room.
Saddam's palace towered above the Tigris, a dark, lazy oil slick sliding through Baghdad. The palace and its entrance were surrounded by palm trees, lending it a tropical air. Smoke from countless oil trench fires formed equatorial storm clouds, blocking out the sun and strengthening the illusion of a lush and steamy heat, a fog of unknowing and fearful possibility. Bradley armoured vehicles and Abrams tanks straddled the road, firing into the trees. Small-arms and machine gun fire blazed and crackled. I could see marines clambering from their carriers before heading into the tree line surrounding the palace.
Were one to superimpose Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now onto the scene unfolding before me, the three would be indistinguishable. I was reminded immediately of Conrad's French battleship, her ensign drooping limp as a rag, riding a greasy, slimy swell, incomprehensible under the immensity of the earth, sky and water, firing into a continent.
Saddam's palace, an ancient South American ziggurat rising from the thick, green foliage surrounding it, might have been transplanted from Coppola's film set. Life was imitating art. The oppressive air and carcinogenic darkness shrouding the river bank reflected the napalm orange of fires billowing from fuel silos blown up by the tanks. Black smoke exploded into the grey sky. The density of the tall palms and the invisible compound emanated a heavy silence evoking Conrad's lines, "And this stillness of life did not in the least resemble a peace. It was the stillness of an implacable force brooding over an inscrutable intention. It looked at you with a vengeful aspect."
To my mind, the marines were going into Kurtz's inner station at the head of the river rather than Saddam Hussein's sprawling, 2.5-square kilometre Presidential Compound. The footage was of the jungles of Southeast Asia or, if you prefer, the Democratic Republic of Congo [DRC] where fresh graves have been found following the massacre of at least 1,000 people last week. The media have chosen to ignore the 'inter-ethnic' slaughter in Central Africa as the iconic events of our time play themselves out in the Cradle of Civilisation. The horrific events in the DRC offer a more limited picture than does the blazing canvas of Baghdad. It is as though the world feels "It is as it ever was". Which, as I have argued in a blog entry dedicated to the Congo massacre, it is not.
No, Saddam alone is not Kurtz; he is merely a facet of his character. We are all Kurtz. Saddam is an aberration, a reflection of others, those who created him, armed him, supported him and steered him. They, their economies, technologies and social structures constitute a global insight into Conrad's vision of a mind plumbing the heart of darkness. Now, like the powers that colonised the jungles of the Congo and Southeast Asia, Hussein's puppeteers have returned to find and destroy him. Unlike Saddam Hussein or George Bush and their coterie of thugs, Kurtz was always brilliant, the sum of our dark selves. To Conrad's Marlow, he epitomised everything of which we are capable, "a 'universal genius'", "an emissary of pity and science and progress, and devil knows what else."
The irony in the description is exquisite. Kurtz duly lost his mind and went to the devil. If we consider the West's technologies, its breadth and depth of knowledge on every conceivable subject, we should realise how Westerners revere themselves, their leaders and all their small creations. Their awe is akin to that felt by those held in Kurtz's thrall in the jungles of Africa and Cambodia. Kurtz's job was to deliver ivory to his superiors. Ultimately, losing himself to an atavism residing deep in all of us, he believed the ivory to be his and buried much of it.
The story is repeated in Iraq. This time, though, where the Western colonialist and his Iraqi agent fight over a spigot of nationalised oil, the story seems set to run its full course - across the Middle East and, possibly, the globe. Kurtz, like Saddam, was a once-favoured product of Western expansionism. As his masters recognised his ability to turn their favour back on them, so they distanced themselves from him. Despised for being everything they wanted him to be, he ended up a loner, a demented prophet in an unholy land, fit only for death.
And that is where Marlow and Willard would empathise with him in a macabre way. Lesser in stature, but bedevilled by more ancestral conscience and insight than most fitting the 'company profile', they knew an interesting specimen when they saw, or heard of, one. Driven to recognise themselves in him, they were fascinated by all that which reneged against all that for which their civilisation purported to stand. Kurtz was a leader. Willard and Marlow followed orders. If it is to be, the one [be it dark, light, hot or cold], will always depend on the other. What happens when we lose the other? We join Kurtz.
On another level, he represents our relationship to what we call progress. Where do we measure our progress today? Where we have done so for aeons. On the battle field. The spirit of Kurtz, the everpresent, dark genius, drove Willard and Marlow upriver. Omniscient, he became Marlow's passion, his driving force, his quest for truth. For the West, the testing ground for today's weaponry has been Baghdad and the demigod they cast in their own image, Saddam Hussein. Today's Congo River is no longer the life-giving, arterial flow of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers coursing through the veins of the Cradle of Civilisation. Today's river is a poorly protected supply line of inflexible iron and deadly steel stretching back to the port of Umm Qasr.
Saddam, Baghdad, and the myth of war has driven American imperialism twelve years and three hundred miles to the base of the statue at al-Fardos [Paradise] Square.
"Only the Americans could build a place like this in the middle of the jungle. Only the Americans would want to." [Willard]
The Iraqi defenders, one in his underclothes, took off along the road towards one of the bridges and central Baghdad, small-arms fire chasing them. The camera swung back towards the palace. A dozen or so Iraqis were scrambling off the road, sliding down the river's bank, trying to find cover in deep bush. One stumbled abruptly at the roadside, shot. His body toppled off the road and fell down the embankment. I did not see it come to a standstill. The camera cut away, moving back to the troops firing and advancing into the treeline from their Bradleys.
A couple of Marines hung back, presumably to guard the vehicles and lay down covering fire. Two Iraqis fell to the ground behind them, surrendering. I saw a marine turn. He appeared to speak to the prisoners. He then shot one of the men, and the camera immediately cut away. It was the shooting witnessed and reported on e-tv by Channel 4's Tim Lambon the night before.
Do the Iraqis welcome their 'liberation'? Conrad offers us the answer.
"The prehistoric man was cursing us, praying to us, welcoming us -- who could tell? We were cut off from the comprehension of our surroundings; we glided past like phantoms, wondering and secretly appalled, as sane men would be before an enthusiastic outbreak in a madhouse. We could not understand because we were too far and could not remember because we were travelling in the night of first ages, of those ages that are gone, leaving hardly a sign -- and no memories."
Unlike the British troops in Basra, the Marines have not shown the Iraqis the respect Marlow bestowed on his crew of cannibals. Weighed down with the baggage of their uranium-depleted technology as they drew closer to Baghdad and the dawn of a forgotten history, U.S. forces could no longer be expected to remember their origins. Ironically, the U.S. armed forces represent Conrad's 'Pilgrims', so lost and out of time they cannot see their descent into the people they once were and will always be.
Reinventing the genocide of the native-American and the witch trials of its Puritannical past, Western fundamentalism's clash with Islam has led to an extreme fear of a non-existent danger, i.e. a "real and imminent threat" to the American hegemon. The demonisation of Saddam followed the path taken by Kurtz's detractors. In the end, the monster finds the demons killing him most alive in his own mind. There was and is no "real and imminent threat". The invasion of Iraq was and will remain a crime. The fear, the demons and the mind are America's.
The Marine's execution of the Iraqi grovelling before him showed little of Marlow's appreciation of his inner helmsman, murdered at the wheel, for whom he had a respect that grew as he drew closer to his meeting with Kurtz. On the boat, the dead man's blood filled his shoes, symbolically giving Marlow the strength to cope with what lay ahead. The marine on the banks of the Tigris, however, merely loaded the second prisoner into the back of an armoured vehicle. Of his helmsman, Marlow said:
"Well, don't you see, he had done something, he had steered; for months I had him at my back -- a help -- an instrument. It was a kind of partnership. He steered for me -- I had to look after him, I worried about his deficiencies, and thus a subtle bond had been created, of which I only became aware when it was suddenly broken."
A century ago, corrupt and directionless colonial powers raped Central Africa, pillaging and looting the region while inflicting unimaginable cruelties on its people. Like savages, they regarded and treated the place and its people as though they belonged to them. Ultimately, their loss of self in the jungle of arrogance and deceit corrupted them. During the '60s and '70s, we saw the same phenomenon take place in Southeast Asia.
The attack on Saddam's palace echoes the skirmish below the inner station, during which Marlow's steersman dies. In Coppola's film, Chief Phillips, the commander of Willard's boat, is speared. Once the steersman has gone, there is no turning back, literally and metaphorically. All that is left is the abyss and a freefall to chaos. So it has been with the U.S. forces in Iraq. The slaughter of civilians and the execution of prisoners left them incapable of exercising judgement.
Their hearts of darkness started to show.
"The heads? You're looking at the heads. Yeah, sometimes he goes too far, you know. He's the first one to admit it." [Photo-journalist]
Inside one of Saddam's palaces, U.S. troops from the 3rd Infantry Division, deprived of meaningful battle, began looting marble-walled rooms of sumptuous opulence. To Westerners, the palace might be a meaningless edifice occupying a desert space. However, the palatial monument to a nightmare was the sum of its intricate tilework, rich stained glass, gold-leaf veneers and heavy hand-carved doors. The lavish decor was complemented by high-backed, imitation French baroque furniture, TVs, pictures of a smiling Saddam.
It could have been put to good use. But the conquering forces were not there to admire Saddam's penchant for interior decorating. They sought only to destroy. Behaving like animals, they used Saddam's toilets and prised gold-plated fittings from the walls. They helped themselves to ashtrays, pillows, gold-painted Arab glassware and other souvenirs. Kurtz was alive and well and roaming the streets of Baghdad. Even his demented 'Russian' harlequin and archetypal trickster, for whom Marlow brought a gift and to whom the foreign press paid obeisance, stayed to the end. The always optimistic, ever-deluded Iraqi Minister of Information, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, played a strong, immensely important supporting part in an utterly predictable tragedy of "lugubrious drollery". In Coppola's film, he played the part of a photo-journalist.
But Conrad's book and Coppola's film have never been about other people. They tell us about the viewer or reader. Like Kurtz, Willard and Marlow represent elements of the best and the worst in us, the light and the dark. At the outset of Conrad's story we are in the company of the director of companies, the accountant and the lawyer. They are portrayed in the film by two military men and a civilian. Today, they take the form of oilmen, stock and power brokers, arms dealers, politicians and lobbyists, but they are essentially the same, people who deal in the lives of others, profiting from their loss, reaping rich dividends from their investment of pain.
The narrator is always a disembodied participant, a presence not quite real, much like a 'liberated Iraq'. In the current situation, the media cannot take the role. The media's duty is to deliver, as we take the place of Kurtz's Intended, the Great Lie. Happily, despite the dementia of its military fellow players, the devastating effects of three weeks' bombing by the most lethal weapons known to man, and the shelling of the Palestine Hotel and the Al-Jazeera and Abu Dhabi TV offices, it is still able to do so.
The narrator in Baghdad, who has now drifted on to Tikrit, Kirkuk, Mosul and further afield into Syria and Iran, is an ineffable presence of the past, present, and future. It is the spirit of man. Its version of Conrad's story, like the others, has a momentum and life of its own. I hope the Western media will now focus on other cities where, to now, U.S. forces have had carte blanche in the methods they use to smash popular resistance. Willard's officers and civilian equate to the professionals to whom Marlow recounts his tale. Marlow, or Willard, although they are obedient functionaries, don't quite fit. They are not outsiders in the Dostoevsky-ian sense. There is hope for them. They remind me of anti-war activists. They're blank slates on which some good can be written.
It is up to them to interpret the horror of this particular tale. It is up to them to give insight into the horror appreciated, at his end, by Kurtz.
"A slight clinking behind me made me turn my head. Six black men advanced in a file, toiling up the path. They walked erect and low, balancing small baskets full of earth on their heads, and the clink kept time with their footsteps. Black rags were wound round their loins, and the short ends behind waggled to and fro like tails. I could see every rib, the joints of their limbs were like knots in a rope; each had an iron collar on his neck, and all were connected together with a chain whose bights swung between them, rhythmically clinking. Another report from the cliff made me think suddenly of that ship of war I had seen firing into a continent. It was the same kind of ominous voice; but these men could by no stretch of imagination be called enemies. They were called criminals, and the outraged law, like the bursting shells, had come to them, an insoluble mystery from the sea. All their meagre breasts panted together, the violently dilated nostrils quivered, the eyes stared stonily uphill. They passed me within six inches, without a glance, with that complete, deathlike indifference of unhappy savages. Behind this raw matter one of the reclaimed, the product of the new forces at work, strolled despondently, carrying a rifle by its middle. He had a uniform jacket with one button off, and seeing a white man on the path, hoisted his weapon to his shoulder with alacrity. This was simple prudence, white men being so much alike at a distance that he could not tell who I might be. He was speedily re-assured, and with a large, white, rascally grin, and a glance at his charge, seemed to take me into partnership in his exalted trust. After all, I also was a part of the great cause of these high and just proceedings."
Today, amid the blood, carnage, ruined infrastructure and civil chaos of a country rendered ungovernable, while men, women and children rampage the streets of Baghdad and Basra, looting and pillaging anything and everything they can lay their hands on, our media play their part. They tell us, those living in the whited sepulchre called civilisation, that Iraq is now free. But I don't buy it for a moment. 'Mistah Kurtz' is a long way from death's dark door.
"The killer awoke before dawn, he put his boots on | He took a face from the ancient gallery | And he walked on down the hall | He went into the room where his sister lived, and...then he | Paid a visit to his brother, and then he | He walked on down the hall, and | And he came to a door..."
"A total of 4,7 million people have died as a direct result of the Democratic Republic of Congo's (DRC) civil war in the past four and a half years, according to a report released today by the International Rescue Committee, a leading aid agency." SourceMail & Guardian
At least 966 people were killed in dawn attacks on more than a dozen villages in north-eastern Congo last week, UN investigators said yesterday. They found 20 mass graves and discovered that many of the victims were executed in Thursday's attacks, the worst single atrocity investigated by the UN since the civil war in Congo began 4-years ago. The attacks lasted for between five and eight hours in the Roman Catholic parish of Drodro and 14 surrounding villages in Ituri province. Witnesses said some of the attackers wore military uniforms and others were in civilian clothes. more...
The UN mission, Monuc, said it would continue its investigations to identify those responsible for the bloodletting. DRC's minister for human rights, Ntumba Luaba, called on the Monuc to help catch the killers. "Monuc, which has already gathered some information on the massacre, must quickly pursue its investigation so the perpetrators are don't remain unpunished," he told AFP in a telephone interview from the capital Kinshasa. The violence came one day after the warring parties in the Democratic Republic of Congo signed a historic pact on Wednesday to end more than four years of brutal warfare. more...
Those who wail at Africa's lost-world status might take succour from the barbarism detailed above, using it to bolster their belief that law and regional integrity can only be effected through the barrel of Western military might. They'd be wrong. The news of the horrific 3-hour slaying of close on 1,000 villagers in north-eastern DRC, allegedly by Ugandan troops using guns and machetes, highlights the need for non-interventionist African brokered peace initiatives.
Thabo Mbeki has come under considerable fire for focusing on problems in Central Africa while 'ignoring' Mad Bob Mugabe's violent rape of what remains of his country, Zimbabwe. Compounding Mbeki's problems is his administration's lack of a substantive policy to fight HIV/AIDS.
I frequently rail at Mbeki's domestic inadequacies and seeming failures in local, Southern African initiatives. With my wife's family in Zimbabwe and this morning's airing of a radio report that the Zambian government will expel all former Zimbabwean farmers, my frustration is not surprising.
Yet, Mbeki, following on the work of his predecessor, Nelson Mandela, is doing much with his strategy of 'quiet diplomacy' to achieve sustainable periods of relative peace on the continent. Balancing the often bizarre whims of the African Union against the needs of the New Partnership for Africa's Development [NEPAD], which calls for governance by peer review, he shows himself aware of the sensitivities of potential foreign partners.
His mild condemnation of Mugabe, coming hard on the heels of the U.S. Department of State's imposition of targeted sanctions against 76 top officials in Mad Bob's regime, is offset by his continued insistence on speaking to the Monster across the Limpopo. Noah at AfricaPundit agrees with the Daily News' assertion that Mbeki and Nigeria's Obasanjo are being taken for a ride by Babbling Bob, but I reckon there's far more to it than that.
Both Mugabe and Mbeki are well-schooled in, among other things, Marxist and other political schools of thought. The depth of analysis and planning that goes into every position taken and utterance made would boggle the average brain. The difference between the two Southerners is that young Robert is stark, raving bonkers.
My late father, a pathologist, diagnosed syphilis of the brain way back in the early 80s. Admittedly, the diagnosis was made at a distance but, being a good pathologist, the family being good Catholics, and my having supported Mugabe's accession to power, we were among the few who took note of the Southern African Catholics Bishops' Conference report on the 1981-82 massacres of tens of thousands of Mugabe dissenters.
Mbeki is definitely not insane and has shown no evidence of it over the past fourteen years. While his stance might at times seem inexplicable, I am comfortable with the idea that there is always an extremely well-considered reason for it. Yes, I cannot help but feel there is a sinister, uncomfortably genocidal edge to government's refusal to make anti-retrovirals freely available to those who are HIV positive. If it is so, government ministers will have to answer for it as sane, rational individuals.
Responding to a note made by Jonathan Edelstein regarding Mugabe's treatment of Morgan Tsvangarai's opposition Movement for Democratic Change, Noah comments:
Mugabe must leave and the rule of law must be restored before any real debate on economic or social policy can resume. I believe that the people of Zimbabwe are capable people and that they will succeed if given half a chance. Whether they choose to be ruled by the MDC or some other party is up to them, but the choice must be theirs and it must be made freely. That can only happen when Mugabe and his cronies have been purged from the government.
The particular tactics referred to by Jonathan, i.e. whereby police ordered 'municipal police' to give Zanu-PF youths the run of local libraries in the run up to two recent Harare byelections, are possibly the mildest employed by Mugabe to date. Tsvangarai's on trial for treason and his deputy was recently arrested on similar trumped-up charges, namely organising the recent stayaways.
Over the past few years, hundreds of MDC supporters have been brutally murdered [tortured or beaten to death], gang-raped, violated with rifles, thrashed, locked up, shocked, shot, and hounded out of town. The MDC is a tough outfit and is not going anywhere. Despite harrassment and vote rigging on a scale expected in Zimbabwe, the MDC won both seats.
The people of Zimbabwe are more than capable. They are bloody incredible. They will adhere to the democratic process and shoot Mugabe out of power. They know there is more than one way to skin a cat and Bob is set to be flayed. They, more than anybody, realise there is but one way out for Mad Bob.
When they tire of him, somebody will shoot him or blow him up and, once the brouhaha has died down and several hundred MDC supporters have been buried, the party will take over. [This is the best-case scenario. Civil war is a distinct possibility the longer Mugabe stays in power.] Whether or not Tsvangarai will brook opposition is anybody's guess, but Zimbabweans will [and do] insist that it is they, and nobody else, who will see to Babbling Bob's demise.
Back to South Africa and Mbeki's subtle brinkmanship. He is aware that the ANC, of which he is the leader, is an extremely broad church, a party of convenient accommodation for all. His delicate balancing act, which is perceived by many to be a weakness or downright foolishness, holds in check the power bloc within the governing party supporting radical [anarchic] land reform of a kind similar to the Zimbabwe land grabs and reign of terror by Mugabe's youth militia, the Green Bombers. At the same time, he is mindful of rapacious international business interests eyeing African oil and mineral wealth. Both have to be dealt with. Both require tact of very different types.
Mbeki appreciates Africa as an entity, an organism, a living being full of the contradictions and paradoxes of life. And he knows that what happens on one part of the continent affects all Africans. The South African government, unable to adequately articulate its seemingly contradictory approaches to the political and social injustices taking place in Zimbabwe, seems to have got it right in the DRC. Had no accord been imminent, the horrendous slaughter of last week might have seen a full-blown descent into genocide.
Why such gratuitous violence? I don't know. I do know, however, that the West does not recognise, let alone appreciate, and is light years from acknowledging the horrendous long-term effects of colonialism and, in South Africa's case, apartheid. Get over it? The same might be said to the Jewish people, who have known victimisation for centuries, native and African-Americans who have tasted genocide and racism, or guilt-addled rednecks and descendents of modern America's founding fathers, still projecting their self-loathing onto peoples living in worlds and cultures completely alien to them.
ITN Channel 4 News presenter Tim Lambon reports tonight for e-tv an American marine, surprised by two surrendering Iraqi defenders, summarily executing one of the prostrate men within sight of reporters. More than 1,000 civilians and tens of thousands of ill-equipped, hopelessly out-gunned soldiers have died in Iraq. Heavily rationalised motives, different tools, same end.
Unfortunately for those living in the Great Lakes region, South Africa and other African countries are only now developing peace-keeping capabilities. For the foreseeable future, talk shops and agreements will continue to bind parties seeking ways to emasculate the warlords among us.
This is of no comfort to those living in areas of conflict in the DRC and other war-ravaged countries, but it's all we have.
We, like most of the world, continue to need coherent, credible, and dependable international bodies and humanitarian organisations operating without the constraints imposed on them by meddlesome neoconservatives pushing a vile agenda. We know that, if the world feels it can do without us, we cannot do without the world. Balancing this need is our awareness that the guns of the international Mafia now doing business in the Middle East will be soon trained on our unrealised wealth.
Looking for more details on the massacre in Congo, covered in full by the Mail & Guardian, I came across the following editorial and opinion pieces from the Sunday Times, South Africa's mass-circulation weekly.
They are extraordinarily good, reflecting some of the complexities of negotiating peace in a continent where frequent outbreaks of violence perpetuate poverty and the spread of AIDS.
To speak of a peace accord when 1,000 villagers were butchered a day after its signing [and fighting continues in the DRC and Uganda] might seem callous. Yet, as with the Iraqi war, peace is a local process and a long-term goal. The proliferation of arms, sold into Africa by Western and Asian interests, remains a grievous problem.
Peace, especially in the DRC, will not come overnight. In a continent where the south, east, western, northern and central regions reflect warring self-identities, the sentiment expressed in the Sunday Times editorial, and echoed by Kampala's New Vision, cannot be overstressed.
"A lot of hope now rides on the signatures put to those papers. Hope that, despite the obvious problems that will beset a settlement of this magnitude, the leaders of Congo will assume their responsibility of taking their country forward with sincerity. That responsibility lies with them, and them alone. The rest of Africa can only help."
Read Gary Younge's article, The limits of generosity, wherein he writes of the life of Toussaint L'Overture to illustrate the same point. "Toussaint's life taught us that liberation cannot be imposed from above, let alone be imported from outside, and that the rights of man are universal or they are meaningless, and irrepressible once they are understood."
"In overthrowing me, you have cut down in San Domingo only the trunk of the tree of liberty," he told his French captors as he was led away. "It will spring up again by the roots for they are numerous and deep."
"The prospect facing the people of Iraq should serve as sufficient warning that in future we too might have others descend on us, guns in hand to force-feed us [with democracy]," he said in Pretoria. "If the UN does not matter... why should we, the little countries of Africa that make up the African Union, think that we matter and will not be punished if we get out of line?"
Mbeki was opening a conference on elections, democracy and governance in Africa. He made his remarks on Iraq after imploring delegates to take an honest look at how democracy was functioning on the continent. Mbeki said those making war on Iraq contended that they had taken up arms to transform that country into a democracy. The proposition was that democracy could be imposed -- "in much the same way that one can force-feed a person on a hunger strike".
"Presumably the argument is that whether a person ingests a bowl of rice voluntarily or does so because he or she is force-fed, the fact remains that they have eaten a bowl of rice." Mbeki added: "I am not certain that the institution of a democratic system can be approached in the same way that we approach the consumption of a bowl of rice."
He said the central question that needed to be answered was how the rule book of democracy should be applied in Africa.
The chief spokesperson for Zimbabwe's opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) was arrested in Bulawayo on Monday, the party announced. The circumstances of Paul Themba Nyathi's were unclear, said MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai's spokesperson, William Bango. Nyathi is a member of the party's national executive and an MP.
Earlier on Monday a magistrate released the MDC's vice-president Gibson Sibanda (59) who had been held for a week in a Bulawayo jail on allegations of trying to "overthrow the government by unconstitutional means". more...
Again and again, however we know the landscape of love and the little churchyard there, with its sorrowing names, and the frighteningly silent abyss into which the others fall: again and again the two of us walk out together under the ancient trees, lie down again and again among the flowers, face to face with the sky.
This morning, catching up on the latest events in Iraq, I listened to BBC world affairs editor John Simpson on the radio. Travelling in a Kurdish convoy including Kurdish Democratic party (KDP) leader Massoud Barzani's younger brother Wajeeh, and accompanied by two carloads of U.S. Special Forces, Simpson offered a full report without revealing very much at all.
Simpson's talent is peculiarly British. Though secretive, the BBC and its sister, Sky, somehow manage to convey a greater sense of immediacy, time and place than do their network counterparts. Though they give little away, they do not appear to lie.
This evening, I assume Simpson's bandaged and plastered, reflecting on more of that which he will not be sharing with us. His convoy was bombed by a U.S. plane, killing 10 to 18 people and wounding many others [including Wajeeh Barzani]. The Guardian carries a report from Simpson at the scene:
"This is just a scene from hell here," Mr Simpson said. "All the vehicles are on fire, there are bodies burning all around me, bits of bodies all around ... the Americans saw this convoy and they bombed it. They hit their own people."
Interrupted by an American soldier, he told him "shut up. I'm broadcasting ... Oh yes, I'm fine - am I bleeding?"
The soldier was heard to say: "Yes, you've got a cut."
"I thought you were going to stop me," Mr Simpson answered. "I think I've got a bit of shrapnel in the leg, that's all."
He also apologised for being so "excitable". "I am bleeding through the ear." His translator was also seriously injured, he said.
The report ends with the ubiquitous disclaimer, "There was no immediate confirmation of the incident from US or British officials." Who'd expect anything else?
Amid further denials from invading forces, the Guardian also reports a convoy of Russian diplomats coming under heavy fire north of the capital. Russia's ambassador to Baghdad, Vladimir Titorenko, was one of the members of the convoy heading for Syria, said a spokesman for Russian president, Vladimir Putin, with whom U.S. national security adviser Condi Rice will be meeting in an attempt to mend strained Russo-American relations.
The BBC's Simpson describes his "scene from hell". One would expect John to be more circumspect in has description of Hades. Amid reports that yesterday's U.S. tank sweep through suburbs of Baghdad killed 1,000 Iraqi defenders, one has to ask whether hell is subjective, can be measured by degrees, or is present only when those 'on our side' are affected.
Was the tank 'battle', wherein thirty-seven vehicles met 'fierce resistance' and slaughtered hundreds, hell or a turkey shoot? The invaders lost not one member. There is a serious imbalance here, a fracture of logic.
The invasion of Iraq continues to be a slaughter, a massacre of tens of thousands by a hyperpower wielding an arsenal that cannot be countered by conventional means. Enjoying absolute superiority in the air [where U.S. tech-savvy has engendered a false sense of invincibility], any Iraqi convoy lured into the open by advancing U.S. ground troops is incinerated by the most fearsome weapons known to man.
That is hell. Long lines of charred vehicles containing the smouldering corpses of people 'carbonized' in the blink of an eye, the wounded left to wish death on themselves.
As has been pointed out on many occasions, the U.S. appears incapable of digesting the thought of sustaining losses. Their victims, since WWII, have been Third World and developing countries. North Korean and Chinese analysts must be rubbing their hands in glee, certain that their hour will come.
For all their military might, the U.S. cannot win in the Middle East. U.S. strategists show a remarkable inability to understand cultures different to theirs. Yet, their generals are not dumb. One senior general after another has been at pains to explain that no war can be won from the air.
In the wake of Rumsfeld's disastrous meddling with Pentagon invasion plans, the men on the ground have fought to secure adequate protection for their troops.
As U.S. forces struggle to take their first Iraqi city, they continue their battle to secure Saddam International Airport, a facility repeatedly reported as having been over-run. Until reinforcements arrive, they stand little chance of conquering a Third World country wherein the 'enemy' has nowhere to run to, nowhere to hide.
Surprised by Baghdad's near-fanatical defence by ill-equipped defenders from many countries, they have now decided to 'back off' Baghdad until cities such as Basra have been captured. The fact of the matter is that U.S. and British troops are bogged down in Basra, Karbala, and Baghdad and have taken to shelling civilian areas, inflicting terrible casualties.
Responsibility for high civilian deaths and the inability of U.S. ground forces to take Iraqi cities must fall with the force of a JDAM on Rumsfeld's desk. His meddling has given rise to the current desperate and precipitate attempts to bring about a collapse of Iraqi resolve.
The weather is swiftly becoming intolerable for U.S. soldiers. The Iraqis know that if they can hold out a month longer, they will have invading forces on the back foot. Should their defences crumble, meaningful resistance to U.S. occupation will come only after the so-called 'war' is over.
As in Afghanistan, where the Taliban and al-Qaeda melted into the mountains, leaving only civilians to be slaughtered, the Iraqis understand, as did the Boers, the importance of living to fight another day.
Televised, this is a war like no other. Yet, its horror cannot be rendered onscreen. Human shields working on a rotation basis out of South Africa have been deeply affected by their experiences in Baghdad and Rene Horne, e-tv's reporter in the capital since the outbreak of war, sounds on edge and very tired. She continues to report from the front despite the sound of heavy artillery, aircraft and bombs rendering her virtually inaudible.
Alternative Views...
...top blogging from dissenting voices In following this, the first step on a long road to global military domination, I've come across many writing from a similar point of view. Most recently, and sharing George Partington's enthusiasm for his regular, incisive analysis and ability to 'read between the media', I've appreciated Kurt Nimmo's work and clear style. Blogging Another Day in the Empire out of New Mexico, Kurt's a photographer and one hell of a writer. The graphics for this evening's two posts are ripped from a site with which he appears to be affiliated, Rense.
As far as writing goes, The ReachM High Cowboy Network Noose is another blog one can't pass up. I can't yet put a name to the articulate voice hammering out news and insightful analyses from this prolific source of links and text but give me time. The guys with the most provocative name on the Web must be a British-based collective calling themselves Tora Bora. Subject to the 'now-to-be-expected' vitriol of the brainless cretins making up the global right, this informative, entertaining, and chatty blog is a welcome breath of fresh air in an atmosphere clouded by acrimony. More strength to its keyboards.
Sour Grapes
-----Original Message----- From: chris van der Westhuizen <[deleted]@icon.co.za> Sent: Sun, 06 Apr 2003 00:42:40 +0200 To: mgolby@mweb.co.za
Subject: Shit
All You have is anti American rhetoric, Wake up man USA is the saviour of the world. Everybody including Africa want their money expertise and assistance even Europe but have no savvy when it count , no backbone. It about time America kick some ass and sort out the mess this world is becoming. Look at Africa since colonialism stopped one and all the independent states became a bugger-up. So what's left????????????
Exactly what we have today, Chris. When Iraq threatened an 'unconventional' response to the capture of Saddam International airport, it was surmised by an astute general that, rather than send the remnants of the Republican Guard out in suicidal convoy, U.S. forces might be faced by what he called a 'human tide', i.e. civilians marching to the airport en masse.
There was no human tide at Saddam International but there appears to be one washing up on the shores of Middle Eastern and Arabic Internet news sites. Doing the reputation of the Internet and Web no good at all, American dominance of cyberspace has resulted in a veritable oil slick of suffocating bigotry and racism flooding news-site comment facilities. Reeking of the redneck hatred found in the sibilant racism still seething through the radical right, it's a vicious, thoughtless assertion of a sick nationalism believing in its choke-hold on global morality.
Yes, it's indicative of a U.S. dominance of the Web, but it's not confined to the United States. The Web and the downside of globalisation have spread far and wide. Strangely, although the Nationalist Party SADF were let down by the CIA when they did their dirty work for them by invading Angola in 1976 [initiating and perpetuating a 30-year civil war], most of the virulent comments supporting the invasion of Iraq emanating from South Africa, in the press and on the Web, appear to do so from the detritus of the apartheid regime. My friend Chris, above, could be such an example.
Rednecks appear incurable or recidivist by nature and resort to an incoherent apoplexy with remarkable ease. I trust Chris will recover his sense of self shortly and without too much pain. I am sure he will find himself passing for normal again in the not-too-distant future.
Me? I enjoy the foam-flecked diatribes of those incapable of reason or feeling. That they wish the deaths of others says much of the bankrupt nature of their impotent rage. That their consciences drive them to meaningless flames is a sign of hope for all of us.
With the exception of a paragraph tagged on to offer an unlikely alternative, i.e. sanity, openDemocracy's Paul Roger's delivers yet another well-considered summation of likely prospects for a conflict destined to shape our global future. A Thirty-year War highlights the dangerously short-sighted greed and arrogance of a Bush administration pushing a vile agenda. Besides sowing the death of millions, it is a greed perhaps best quantified in terms Americans are better suited to understanding, i.e. rapacious financial avarice.
The Guardian's Polly Toynbee backs Rogers's thesis and looks at the immediate implications for Europe of Bush's flirtation with a danger he doesn't understand. These being the early days of the New American Century, it's business as usual with Powell heaping scorn on the EU and UN, laying the foundations for further massive 'reconstruction' contracts to go the way of fat-cat U.S. businesses already bloated by cronyism and economically dangerous tax breaks.
Toynbee says: "Colin Powell's sweep through Old Europe yesterday delivered a direct snub to any serious role for the UN rebuilding Iraq. The background roars from the president's stomach-churning speech in North Carolina were a display of patriotic histrionics to appal the world."
She continues:
The UN can do humanitarian, but not a single US soldier will wear a blue hat. Instead General Jay Garner and his battery of 24 Pentagon-approved Americans will run every ministry, with a tame Iraqi exile each. Contracts will not be awarded by a UN fair procurement process: why give the French or Russians anything? A new Iraqi government will be US and Israel-friendly: what happens when the Iraqis don't vote that way is just blanked out of their minds.
It gets worse. John Bolton, assistant secretary of state, visiting the Royal Institute of Foreign Affairs in London, was already musing publicly on a coming pre-emptive strike on Iran. Russia is building Iran a nuclear capability that could give it weapons within months, he said. Better to knock it out first - a necessity as soon as it is spoken. For Iran faced with Iraq as a US satellite on one side with Israel's nuclear power on the other will respond to this pincer threat. The director of the Royal Institute listened to Bolton aghast. US conviction that a free Iraq will spread light and freedom all about it is not shared by those who know the region.
Nor does most of Europe believe in Blair's happy ending. Indeed, Powell killed it in Brussels yesterday. Since it has taken until now for the Germans and French finally to say in public that they hope Saddam will lose the war, there is hardly a close rapprochement on either side. Here the Blair-bridge vision halts.
The postwar landscape looks bleaker by the day, international law fractured, the UN bust. The only optimism comes from triumphalist White House hawks or from the Downing Street dream factory - though their visions are quite different. Elsewhere it is hard to find observers who feel anything but alarm at what is yet to come. Look back at Afghanistan, controlled by warlords still, severely underfunded and under-policed, all reconstruction money still spent on basic feeding, a place forgotten as the world moves on. Will Iraq fare much better? more...
Hell, it gets even bleaker than that. Bush apologist CNN faithfully reports PNAC rent boy and former CIA director James Woolsey speaking to a group of drug-addled students in California yesterday.
Woolsey described the Cold War as the third world war and said "This fourth world war, I think, will last considerably longer than either World Wars I or II did for us. Hopefully not the full four-plus decades of the Cold War." Woolsey has been named in news reports as a possible candidate for a key position in the reconstruction of a postwar Iraq. He said the new war is actually against three enemies: the religious rulers of Iran, the "fascists" of Iraq and Syria, and Islamic extremists like al Qaeda.
Yeah, be scared. Be very, very scared. Ever heard Richard Armitage speak? My God. Have you ever seen the brute? A cross between every pimp-roller's nightmare of an NYPD cop in the interrogation room and a Serbian warlord, he is every bit as frightening as Woolsey and articulated the same Rumsfeld-ian sentiments early on in CNN's TV coverage of the Invasion of Iraq. Armitage's 'argument' was for preventing a repeat of 9-11.
He told the world the U.S. would have to batten down and bolt the doors were such an attack to be repeated. Hell, our immediate response was "Imprison yourselves now. We don't care. We'll die happily, in disease and hunger, rather than be bombarded to bits by bombs and bullshit." Yeah, quite a piece of work, that Armitage.
openDemocracy's Rogers echoes Europe's frustration at the U.S. Right's fundamental inability to grasp the disastrous consequences of their Iraqi invasion on the region. He believes it results from "...a naive belief that such a western-dominated order can be sustained, perhaps stemming from apparent past successes in working with local elites." I'd say it's a 'blind' rather than a 'naive' belief. It is a collapse [rather than capitulation] into the arms of militant radicals and should be seen as a turning point in Woolsey's WWIV.
Importantly, though, Rogers identifies three developing trends ignored, underplayed, or underestimated by Bush strategists.
The US mistake lies in failing to recognise three key trends. The first is the demographic process that has resulted in many tens of millions of young people who are increasingly marginalised from economic participation. This is compounded by the second trend, the effect of secondary and tertiary education on millions of people across the region, giving them a much clearer understanding of what is happening. Such people all too frequently see their ruling elites as benefiting at their expense as well as being inextricably linked with the US and other western states. The third trend is the existence of new channels of communication like al-Jazeera that present the realities in the Middle East in a way that has not hitherto existed. more...
These three trends add up to the age-old truism that you can kill millions, but you cannot kill an idea whose time has come. Rogers's assessment of the global impact of policies that will ultimately bring the curtain down on the U.S. as a hyperpower would make fascinating reading.
Focusing on the Arab world, he cannot be faulted for promising deep and long-lasting enmity fuelling the rise to prominence of further Bin Ladens, Husseins and Sharons. Why stop at thirty years, though? This war is set to last the century and, as technology binds the haves and have-nots ever closer, we are all becoming unwilling participants in and witnesses to George Bush's global dance of death.
What most don't realise is that the Bush administration does not only exhibit a flagrant disregard of foreign lives, cultures, governments, dispensations, and power blocs. It doesn't give a shit for its own people or the constitution governing it. Somehow, this last attribute is its greatest crime and it's what scares me most. They are out of control and most Americans are letting them get away with murder.
Just as Gulf War II has shown the alternative and Arab media to be more reliable sources of information and analysis than multi-national corporates, Dave Winer sees links to The New York Times articles going south after a month. As a sop to those with half a mind investigating the limited neuronal activity of the near brain-dead mouthpiece of GOP ambivalence and doublespeak, the powers that be at the Times do publish several excellent commentators.
Today's op-ed, The War Americans Don't See by Rami Khouri, is such an example [and the last time I link to, rather than quote, The New York Times]. Here's hoping those with the spondulics required for a subscription continue to spread such writers' words. Otherwise, no loss. No loss whatsoever.
In the wake of Khouri's article, a note on anti-Americanism. It's an allegation frequently levelled at me, as was the charge of anti-Semitism when I wrote exclusively of the Intifada.
If the United States constituted the Bush administration and those supporting it, I would plead guilty to being anti-American. However, last time I looked, a significant percentage of Americans opposed the invasion and occupation of Iraq by rabid Rightists and millions were taking to the streets. Thousands continue to write of and speak out against their government's duplicity and cynicism.
As the BBC shows far more extensive footage of Saddam's happy walkabout with top officials than does CNN [confirming his soon-to-be truncated wellbeing]; tapes made by today's two female suicide bombers prior to undertaking their desperately tragic, last-ditch mission, and reasoned speculation of the threat of Saddam's sorely depleted forces using 'unconventional' means, Americans' sceptism of their leaders is proving itself well-founded.
Bush has shown himself to be a Western Sharon. His invasion of Iraq, the forthcoming taking of Iraqi cities by siege or force, and the scorn with which he has treated his detractors show him to be a low-rent, cheap-jack gangster. A loathing of such thugs and their flunkeys does not represent an endorsement of terror by them or those who use such terror to subjugate their own people, i.e. Saddam Hussein, Mad Bob Mugabe, and countless others relegating Baby Bush to the minor leagues.
I've grown up believing rule by fear to be antithetical to American belief and principle. I still do.
I walked down the hallway | And I heard his door slam, | Turn, turn, turn again. | I walked down the courthouse stairs | And I did not understand, | Turn, turn to the rain | And the wind.
Mrs. Johnson is the daughter of a longtime political rival of Mr. Tyler's, but she says her intentions were purely patriotic. "I thought that since it was a fairly new sign and it was so pretty, this would welcome people into this town," she said.
The dispute between the Johnsons, who are Republicans, and the mayor, who has served off and on for the last 25 years, may hark back to the 1978 election. Mr. Tyler won at the polls on Election Day, but then his opponent was declared the winner on the strength of 51 absentee votes. Later, Mr. Tyler accused his opponent's ally, Frank Hegyi, of tampering with those ballots; a judge agreed with him, tossing the ballots out and declaring Mr. Tyler the winner. Mr. Hegyi is Diane Johnson's father. Read article...
Two women, two rigged elections, two George Bushes, two bloodbaths...
...too much.
And I played my guitar | Through the night to the day, | Turn, turn, turn again. | And the only tune | My guitar could play | Was, "Oh the Cruel Rain | And the Wind."
The broad, yellow streak referred to contrasts the U.S. Army's courageous Guadalcanal campaign, immortalized in James Jones's The Thin Red Line, with President George W. Bush's and others' stunning political, intellectual and moral cowardice.
It also refers to the infamous 'red line' drawn about Baghdad by invasion forces and publicized by their media flunkeys. It supposedly demarcated the area within which Iraqi forces should have resorted to chemical and other 'weapons of mass destruction', the fictitious excuse Bush used for the U.S.' illegal onslaught on Iraq. After fifteen days of unrelenting U.S. bombardment using weapons containing depleted uranium [DU], no Iraqi 'weapons of mass destruction' [or evidence of such weapons] have been found.
The reference to two women derives from the two ladies in question being involved in cases of alleged electoral fraud, each fulfilling her role as 'the power behind the throne', so to speak.
Just in case...
Quoted out of context, the following passage is pertinent:
"When compared to the fact that he might very well be dead by this time tomorrow, whether he was courageous or not today was pointless, empty. When compared to the fact that he might be dead tomorrow, everything was pointless. Life was pointless. Whether he looked at a tree or not was pointless. It just didn't make any difference. It was pointless to the tree, it was pointless to every man in his outfit, pointless to everybody in the whole world. Who cared? It was not pointless only to him; and when he was dead, when he ceased to exist, it would be pointless to him too. More important: Not only would it be pointless, it would have been pointless, all along."
I walked down by the river, | I turned my head up high. | I saw that silver linin' | That was hangin' in the sky. | Trails of troubles, | Roads of battles, | Paths of victory, | We shall walk.
US aircraft hit a Red Crescent maternity hospital in Baghdad, the city's trade fair, and other civilian buildings today, killing several people and wounding at least 25, hospital sources and a Reuters witness said. The attacks occurred at 9.30am (0630 BST) and caught motorists by surprise as they ventured out during a lull in the bombing. At least five cars were crushed with drivers burned to death inside, Reuters correspondent Samia Nakhoul said; patients and at least three doctors and nurses working at the hospital were among those wounded. more...
Do yourself a favour. If you've in any way lost sight of what this war is about, read Mark Franchetti's article, US Marines turn fire on civilians at the bridge of death. It reminds me of Michael Herr's Dispatches. It also reminds me of why I fight war and those promoting it.
Suddenly, as we approached ambush alley on the far side of the bridge, the crackle of AK-47s broke out. Our AAVs began to zigzag to avoid being hit by a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG). The road widened out to a square, with a mosque and the portrait of Saddam on the left-hand side. The vehicles wheeled round, took up a defensive position, back to back, and began taking fire. Pinned down, the marines fired back with 40mm automatic grenade launchers, a weapon so powerful it can go through thick brick walls and kill anyone within a 5-yard range of where the shell lands.
I was in AAV number A304, affectionately nicknamed the Desert Caddy. It shook as Keith Bernize, the gunner, fired off round after deafening round at sandbag positions shielding suspected Fedayeen fighters. His steel ammunition box clanged with the sound of smoking empty shells and cartridges.
[...]
Across the square, genuine civilians were running for their lives. Many, including some children, were gunned down in the crossfire. In a surreal scene, a father and mother stood out on a balcony with their children in their arms to give them a better view of the battle raging below. A few minutes later several US mortar shells landed in front of their house. In all probability, the family is dead.
[...]
Then the Iraqis fired again. This time the rocket plunged into the vehicle through the open rooftop. The explosion was deadly, made 10 times more powerful by the ammunition stored in the back. The wreckage smouldered in the middle of the road. I jumped out from the rear hatch of our vehicle, briefly taking cover behind a wall. When I reached the stricken AAV, the scene was mayhem. The heavy, thick rear ramp had been blown open. There were pools of blood and bits of flesh everywhere. A severed leg, still wearing a desert boot, lay on what was left of the ramp among playing cards, a magazine, cans of Coke and a small bloodstained teddy bear.
'They are fucking dead, they are dead. Oh my God. Get in there. Get in there now and pull them out,' shouted a gunner in a state verging on hysterical. There was panic and confusion as a group of young marines, shouting and cursing orders at one another, pulled out a maimed body.
[...]
A decorated Gulf war veteran, he used to complain about having to come back to Iraq. 'We should have gone all the way to Baghdad 12 years ago when we were here and had a real chance of removing Saddam.' Now Pokorney, Jordan and their comrades lay among unspeakable carnage. An older marine walked by carrying a huge chunk of flesh, so maimed it was impossible to tell which body part it was. With tears in his eyes and blood splattered over his flak jacket, he held the remains of his friend in his arms until someone gave him a poncho to wrap them with.
[...]
Two tanks and three AAVs were placed at the north end of the third bridge, their guns pointing down towards Nasiriya, and given orders to shoot at any vehicle that drove towards American positions. Though civilians on foot passed by safely, the policy was to shoot anything that moved on wheels. Inevitably, terrified civilians drove at speed to escape: marines took that speed to be a threat and hit out. During the night, our teeth on edge, we listened a dozen times as the AVVs' machineguns opened fire, cutting through cars and trucks like paper.
Next morning I saw the result of this order - the dead civilians, the little girl in the orange and gold dress. Suddenly, some of the young men who had crossed into Iraq with me reminded me now of their fathers' generation, the trigger-happy grunts of Vietnam. Covered in the mud from the violent storms, they were drained and dangerously aggressive. In the days afterwards, the marines consolidated their position and put a barrier of trucks across the bridge to stop anyone from driving across, so there were no more civilian deaths. They also ruminated on what they had done. Some rationalised it. Read article...
"There will be no outcome to this war that leaves Saddam Hussein and his regime in power. Let there be no doubt, his time will end, and soon. The only thing that the coalition will discuss with this regime is their unconditional surrender."
Donald Rumsfeld - American Warlord
Fear for all on the battlefield, now and for the rest of their lives. As for those who bring about the need for such conflict, aggression, fear, courage and carnage, I hope they burn in Hell. That goes for all those swallowing the swill dished them by the shameless U.S. media whores.
With certainty, I believe the U.S. will not become bogged down in intractable warfare in Iraq. Bush and his Hell Squad might, in fact, attempt to protract the invasion phase leading to occupation. This would further the U.S. national agenda [instil fear], boost his re-election chances [everybody loves a commander-in-chief in uniform], and extend the war to Syria, Iran and neighbours [far easier to extend an existing campaign than dream up reasons to initiate fresh initiatives].
Who the hell knows what they're doing? These people are capable of anything. As said in an earlier post, Bush will not allow the U.S. to lose this particular scrap. He cannot. It's the first step on a ladder reaching to heights that fill the fevered and demented dreams of the twisted minds shaping the cabal. He'd rather nuke Baghdad.
He would do it with the backing of most Americans. What's more, he and every leatherneck crazy, running drunk and nekkid down the corridors of power on Pennsylvania Avenue, knows it.
With 70% of U.S. citizens blind to the future, how long will it take the Arab world to realise their continued existence poses the West its single greatest problem? How long will it take before they realise this initial strike is not about any particular country's regime, assets or strength?
To the sick minds of a people divorced from reality, mugging the globe like a bowery bum on a bad night is not a problem. They believe they can do it. Their people are pliant and they face little or no resistance.
Much as I admire those Americans marching and speaking out against their Satanic regime, I fear their efforts constitute too little, too late. Whatever the outcome of the 'master plan' set in action by this symbolic but bloody invasion, Americans will never again be trusted.
The amusing, unaffected and comforting xenophobia of the British media is becoming increasingly strident and it is flecked with fear. The Yanks are no longer the dumb and boorish bozos they once were. Commentators show an increasing appreciation that these are dumb, armed and extremely dangerous bozos.
Don't take my word for it. Read the British press. Beneath the always sophisticated veneer of supercilious patronage, an insightful hysteria is building.
The feeling underlying the countless British-written articles now flooding cyberspace seems to be "They've gone way too far and we're stuck in the mire with them. Blair is for the stake, we'll bale out as soon as possible, and we'll crawl back to the EU as though nothing's happened."
But it's too late. Britain has served Bush's purpose, lending a necessary initial weight to his criminal onslaught on an ancient and holy land.
Cyndy pointed me to an article by former UNSCOM chief inspector Scott Ritter. I like Ritter. He pulls no punches and shoots from the hip. Being a macho spirit myself [beneath my facade of delicate sensitivity], I understand people like Scott.
I understand that the twelve-year Marine with an understanding of Islamic rage is dead wrong in the argument he makes for America's imminent defeat. Like Ritter, I believe America has lost the peace. Unlike Ritter, I believe such a loss serves its long-term interests more than it undermines them.
As stated in an earlier post, and copied by ray, a person I admire for his annoying ability to intuit situations and outcomes,
The success of Richard Perle's and the Project for the New American Century's long-term agenda relies on America's 'defeat' in the Gulf, the instillation of global loathing, and a grudging acceptance that the 'little criminal bastards' will take what they want. Once Americans are driven to accept conscienceless murder as the order of their New World, and supported by tens of millions of unthinking U.S. citizens, the monsters driving U.S. foreign policy will stop at nothing, dominating through fear and intimidation. America, the new Evil Empire inured to criticism by the isolation of the damned, will rule the world and its resources. And, to the small satisfaction of billions, it will occasionally suffer the consequences of doing so.
Well, until it fucks with Africa that is. The nut of it is that those looking to the future from the Oval Office are not out to win friends or influence people. They're out to take what they believe to be theirs by Divine Right.
I do not believe America will lose militarily in Iraq. It will lose militarily elsewhere and it will lose in a way that will make Scott Ritter weep copious tears, tears born of realising his limited comprehension of the evil clouding Washington.
In the context of this invasion, Ritter's conclusions are simplistic. In the longer term, he is horribly and sincerely correct. America will lose the greater war [UBL says so] and we will all be affected by its descent into a hell now being prepared for it.
When will this be? I don't know. Expansionism is a slow process. Having followed this story for a long while, I tend to collapse time. It will happen but I don't know when.
I hope I'm as wrong as I can possibly be but the U.S. administration has given me no reason to doubt my suspicion of it to now. It's been a weight around my psyche for a long time and, as I sometimes do, I tire of it. I cannot continue focusing on an indefinite darkness in an attempt to discern the light shaping its course and nature.
I'd rather be reading and spending more time with my family. I had a song swimming in my head yesterday. It was Jacques Brel's Ne me quitte pas. Sentimental? Yes. Rod McKuen's English translation told me where I want to be right now:
But if you stay / I'll make you a night / Like no night has been / Or will be again / I'll sail on your smile / I'll ride on your touch / I'll talk to your eyes / That I love so much...
Queasy, eh? But the full lyrics, especially performed in his revue, Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris, form an undercurrent that segues within. I want the upside that goes with the downside. I am in the sound of that song. Brel tells me so.
Prompted by my own feelings and journey and steered by events since 2001 and before, I've had more than my fair whack of touching evil. It rubs off onto one and I no longer have any desire to fight it. I don't have the wherewithal or the strength. Following the light, living in the now of watching these long hours of horror unfold, and doing whatever I can for the homeless guys on our street corner are about all I'm capable of at the moment.
Yeah, well, I guess that's it for now. Time for a break. Time to hurt. Time to hold all those thrown together in bloody carnage by syphilitic, brain-dead butchers close to heart. Time to find the sun, the sea, people. Time to find a path of victory.
There's plenty of good stuff out there. There has to be... eh?
But among the dead that were left on the hill | Was the boy with the curly hair. | The tall dark man who rode by his side | Lay dead beside him there. | There's no one to write to the blue-eyed girl | The words that her lover had said. | Momma, you know, awaits the news, | And she'll only know he's dead.
![Table Mountain, Cape Town... nightlight [SATOUR]](https://web.archive.org/web/20040917075059im_/http://pagecount.burningbird.net/images/tmount06.jpg)
![The much-cherished FARRAGO award [for being blog-rolled] originated not five-hundred yards from where, some four decades ago, I first opened my eyes and saw the ocean.](https://web.archive.org/web/20040917075059im_/http://pagecount.burningbird.net/images/broll.gif)
![Burnt Norton? [Painting by Victor Abramov]](https://web.archive.org/web/20040917075059im_/http://pagecount.burningbird.net/images/bday2.jpg)
![...flowers that are looked at? [Painting by Victor Abramov]](https://web.archive.org/web/20040917075059im_/http://pagecount.burningbird.net/images/bday1.jpg)
![What might have been and what has been | Point to one end, which is always present. [Painting by Victor Abramov]](https://web.archive.org/web/20040917075059im_/http://pagecount.burningbird.net/images/bday.jpg)
![Bush seeks global conflict, fragmentation, and domination of Middle East and Asia [Graphic: James Neff]](https://web.archive.org/web/20040917075059im_/http://pagecount.burningbird.net/images/korea.jpg)
![U.S. policy is to smash and fragment Iraq [Graphic: James Neff]](https://web.archive.org/web/20040917075059im_/http://pagecount.burningbird.net/images/iraqqwar.jpg)
![Israel's role and interests in the Middle East are pivotal to the U.S. global agenda [Graphic: James Neff]](https://web.archive.org/web/20040917075059im_/http://pagecount.burningbird.net/images/palestine.jpg)
![Nuclear proliferation threatens U.S. hegemony [Graphic: James Neff]](https://web.archive.org/web/20040917075059im_/http://pagecount.burningbird.net/images/nukes.jpg)
![Palestine: A working model of Divide and Rule [Graphic: James Neff]](https://web.archive.org/web/20040917075059im_/http://pagecount.burningbird.net/images/palestine1.jpg)
!['Terminate with extreme prejudice.' [Civilian]](https://web.archive.org/web/20040917075059im_/http://pagecount.burningbird.net/images/tanks.jpg)
!['Only the Americans could build a place like this in the middle of the jungle. Only the Americans would want to.' [Willard]](https://web.archive.org/web/20040917075059im_/http://pagecount.burningbird.net/images/palacemain.jpg)
!['The heads? You're looking at the heads. Yeah, sometimes he goes too far, you know. He's the first one to admit it.' [Photo-journalist]](https://web.archive.org/web/20040917075059im_/http://pagecount.burningbird.net/images/camera.jpg)
