Before You Vote… Register! Before you Register… Think! Before you think…. The Dangers Of Thinking It started out innocently enough. I began to think at parties now and then — just to loosen up.  Inevitably, though, one thought led to another, and soon I was more than just a social thinker. I began to think alone — “to relax,” I told myself — but I knew it wasn’t true. Thinking became more and more important to me, and finally I was thinking all the time. That was when things began to sour at home. One evening I had turned off the TV and asked my wife about the meaning of life. She spent that night at her mother’s. I began to think on the job. I knew that thinking and employment don’t mix, but I couldn’t stop myself. I began to avoid friends at lunchtime so I could read Thoreau and Kafka. I would return to the office dizzied and confused, asking, “What is it exactly we are doing here?” One day the boss called me in. He said, “Listen, I like you, and it hurts me to say this, but your thinking has become a real problem. If you don’t stop thinking on the job, you’ll have to find another job.” This gave me a lot to think about. I came home early after my conversation with the boss. “Honey,” I confess, “I’ve been thinking…” “I know you’ve been thinking,” she said, “and I want a divorce!” “But Honey, surely it’s not that serious.” “It is serious,” she said, lower lip aquiver. “You think as much as college professors, and college professors don’t make a lot of money, so if you keep on thinking, we won’t have any money!” “That’s a faulty syllogism,” I said impatiently. She exploded in tears of rage and frustration, but I was in no mood to deal with the emotional drama. “I’m going to the library,” I snarled as I stomped out the door. I headed for the library, in the mood for some Nietzsche. I roared into the parking lot with NPR on the radio and ran up to the big glass doors… They didn’t open. The library was closed. To this day, I believe that a Higher Power was looking out for me that night. Leaning on the unfeeling glass, whimpering for Zarathustra, a Poster caught my eye, “Friend, is heavy thinking ruining your life?” it asked.  You probably recognize that line. It comes from the standard Thinkers Anonymous poster. Which is why I am what I am today: a recovering thinker.  I never miss a TA meeting. At each meeting we watch a non-educational video; last week it was “Porky’s.” Then we share experiences about how we avoided thinking since the last meeting. I still have my job, and things are a lot better at home. Life just seemed…easier, somehow, as soon as I stopped thinking. I think the road to recovery is nearly complete for me. Today I made the final step. I registered to vote as a Republican. EDITORIAL NOTE AND APOLOGY:  We sort of sucked you into reading this thing because we felt confident you’d find it worth while when you savored the tart neo-con-tweeking twist at the end. This rye tongue-in-cheeky classic was sent to us by our Ashville-residing, in-house philosopher, Dr. Leonard Carrier.  It’s authorship is currently “unknown”.  If anybody can inform us whose was the brilliant mind that penned this frolic with the inspired polemic punch line, please inform us so we can send him—at least—our affirmations, thanks and a Democratswrite.com t-shirt.

	ISRAEL’S IMMORAL WAR

This editorial is the view of  Contributing  DW Correspondend, Leonard Carrier, and it absolutely and totally represents the position of the DW’s Foreign-Policy Editor,  Dusty Schoch.

Former intelligence official Yossi Alpher recently claimed that Israel’s ferocious assault on Lebanon was “disproportionate to the incident, but proportionate to the threat.” This is the argument most commonly used by Israel’s apologists, including our own Bob Shieffer on national TV (“Face the Nation,” July 16), who vigorously supported Israel’s right to “defend itself” against a senseless “provocation” by Hamas and Hezbollah. This tactic is reminiscent of Israel’s claim in 1967 that their attack on Egypt “pre-empted” an imminent Egyptian attack on them. Whether or not Egypt really planned such an attack is still murky. But the consensus is that pre-emption can be considered a legitimate species of self-defense. But the key to any claim of pre-emption is imminence. This was the element that perhaps justified Israel’s attack on Egypt in 1967, but was missing in the United States’ invasion of Iraq in 2003. This made the invasion of Iraq a preventive war, not one of pre-emption. Since Hezbollah was not about to invade Israel, this also makes Israel’s war a preventive war. The difference between pre-emption and prevention is often glossed over, but it is important. With pre-emption, one has to be reasonably certain that another nation, or group, is on the verge of mounting its own attack. With prevention, an attack is made because of the possibility that, some day down the road, a nation or group will destroy you.

Perhaps not all preventive wars are immoral. But some certainly are. In 1941 the Japanese initiated a preventive war on the United States. They did it to neutralize the U.S. navy so that they could preserve military and economic hegemony in the Pacific and the Far East. The United States was building B-17 bombers that could someday threaten that hegemony by bombing Japanese cities. So the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. If you think, as I do, that launching this preventive war was immoral, then you must universalize and think that all such wars conducted for economic and political reasons are immoral. Hitler claimed self-defense when he launched his attack on Poland in 1939. He claimed he did it to gain lebensraum and to prevent the possibility of France and England taking military action against Germany and destroying the German economy. But this was also an immoral, preventive attack, initiated purely for economic purposes and for the gaining of land.

I believe that the U.S. attack on Iraq was an immoral preventive war. It was initiated to control Iraq’s oil and to leave a “footprint” in the Middle East. It was waged on the possibility that Middle East oil would some day be used as a strategic weapon against us. It was waged for economic reasons. Apologists for the American attack on Iraq would resist generalization from other cases. They would make an exception for a nation whose intent is to promote democracy, free markets, economic development, and human rights; whereas, other nations are bound by rules that rightly bind non-superpowers. The problems with this exceptionalist defense of America’s right to might are several. First, it’s dubious whether free markets promote democracy and human rights. Second, genuine democracies might be hostile to free markets and prefer nationalization to global trade. Finally, it is unclear how waging a destructive war will bring any of the good things intended to fruition. In Iraq, all we’ve seen from our preventive war is a widening of the violence.

How does this pertain to Israel’s preventive war on Hezbollah and Hamas? Clearly, neither of these organizations offers any physical threat to Israel—certainly not of the same magnitude as the threat Israel offers to them. If Hezbollah or Hamas felt threatened by the possible extinction of their Lebanese or Palestinian citizens, either by death or subjugation, would we sanction an attack by them on Israel (say, with nuclear weapons that they had obtained from Iran)? My answer would be, no, and that such an attack on Israel would be immoral. If we generalize on this, then Israel’s attack on Southern Lebanon is also immoral. If the Israelis say, as they have, that they must clear Southern Lebanon of Hezbollah militants, then their war is being fought for the same reasons that the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and the Germans invaded Poland. They need the extra land for their own protection. If we think that the Japanese and Germans waged immoral wars, then the same must be said for Israel.

The only way I see for Israeli defenders to respond is to make an exceptionalist claim, in the manner that the United States government attempts to do for Iraq. They actually do this by pointing out that they are the only democratic state in the Middle East (save for Lebanon, whose democracy is now in tatters), and that the Arabs surrounding them are uncultured fanatics who are stuck in the middle ages. Bernard Lewis has been making this claim for 50 years, and has been deflecting all criticism of Israel’s policies as being “anti-Semitic,” forgetting to mention that Arabs are Semites, too. Even if we ignore the implicit racism involved, I don’t see any moral force in this exceptionalist claim. Israel is not a superpower, despite possessing nuclear weapons, and it clearly does not want the same democracy enjoyed by Israelis to be enjoyed by Palestinians, as we have witnessed with its treatment of Hamas. Despite the fiery rhetoric, there is no solid evidence that any Arab leader ever threatened to eliminate the state of Israel. All the Arabs and Palestinians have been asking for, through several peace initiatives up to the Oslo accords, has been a fair distribution of land—land that Israel apparently does not want to relinquish. In fact, the land that Israel is now clearing in Southern Lebanon, up to the Litani River, has been sought by Israel for some time. It was Ben-Gurion’s dream to have that as Israel’s northern border, but up until now it could not be done. My conclusion is that Israel’s preventive war is being fought for economic and political reasons and for more land, not really for self-defense; and therefore, like the U.S.war in Iraq, it is an immoral war.

*(Dr. Leonard Carrier received his B.A. and M.A. from the University of Miami in ’56 and ’58, respectively, and his Ph.D from Stanford in 1967.  He taught at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia and the University of South Florida (Tampa) before spending the rest of his teaching and research career (29 years until 2000) at the University of Miami. )

UTAH…

THE *OTHER   “ U ”  SOLUTION

by Dusty Schoch, Foreign Policy Editor

PREFATORY NOTES:

Before I outline the simple solution to the perennial  Middle Eastern problems which Bush diplomacy is busily evolving into World War III, let me first lay down some basic realities  for foundation:

FORGET WAR’S CAUSE AND FOCUS ON SOLUTION

     In order to focus on the “solution” to the war, and the perpetual threat to American security due to what our statesmen are calling “terrorism” and “insurgency” (although in Europe, when Hitler was doing to France what we are doing to Iraq and Afghanistan they called it “resistance”), let’s totally ignore the question of whether we are allied with Israel and occupy Iraq because we will clearly be extinct as an industrial nation if and when Arab oil goes to $150 a barrel.

      If Israel fulfilled Arab demands and dreams, evacuated Israel and gave it back to the Arabs it was stolen from, there would be no need for America to arm  and otherwise assist Israel with their Bible Wars with Islam for their jointly- (by God) “promised land”.

If America became the diplomatic instrument of Israel’s withdrawal from the promised land, anti-western sentiment in the Middle East would quickly evaporate and the sane industrial world could then return to the insanity of pumping and burning fossil fuel until hell freezes over (about 12 years from now if NASA scientists are right on their global warming models).

But regardless of ugly oil, uglier Halliburton, global warning and ecological Armageddon, here is a simple way to defuse the nuclear time bomb now ticking in the Middle East where Iran, Pakistan, Israel and other fundamentalist-crazy states (including America) are all on their individual paths seeking the U- solution (*Uranium fission bombs) to the perennial puzzle of how the world will end . . .

THE OTHER   “ U ”  SOLUTION …
“New Israel”  and “Mormonia”

It’s so, so simple.  Give Israel Utah.  I mean…exactly half of it—in return for leaving Israel and giving it back to the Arabs from whom it was stolen.  Every iman in every mosque in Islam would be burning incense to America instead of plotting ways to erase us infidels from the face of Allah’s earth.

Tongue in cheek?  Only in a single sense: I bite my tongue trying to suppress the smile that inexorably contorts my face as I envision the attempts of neo-con corporate American fat cats trying to find a fallacy in the patently legal, democratic and doable  plan I herewith propose:

IT’S  COST EFFICIENT

The cost of annual military and other aid to Israel to the U.S. is in the multi billions of dollars. The cost of the war on terrorism which resulted from our alliance to Israel is in the trillions, not to mention the loss of American soldiers in the tens of hundreds and the loss of  innocent Islamic lives in the tens of thousands.  All this expense in terms of dollars and lives will end the moment Israel packs up and moves to …Utah.

The U.S. is a democratic republic and we have laws permitting the majority of us to take property from the minority of us for the benefit of the majority.  It’s called the power and doctrine of “eminent domain”.

Applying the doctrine of eminent domain, we take the State of Utah and subdivide it into two equal halves, one part going to each of two fundamentalist theocratic states: The Zionist Jews and Mormons, to become, respectively the twin-sovereign states of New Israel and Mormonia (or  possibly “Mormania”).

Israel, as and where it is, is a country 8,019 square miles in size (smaller than New Jersey), and it has only 6.4 million people (only 75% of whom are Jews and will want to endorse the U-Solution).

Utah is the 13th largest State with 84,904 square miles.  Can you imagine Zionist Jews opposing an exchange like that.. 8,019 miles for 42,400 (a 500% plus gain in real estate)?

Utah has a salt lake very much the same as the Dead Sea. It boasts of 11,000 miles of fishing streams, 147,000 acres of lakes and reservoirs (water shortage being Israel’s perennial nemesis), and twenty-fold the arable land Israel has.  Sounds more like “promised land” to me than that slab of sand the League of Nations foisted on their desperate refugee peoples a half century ago.

Why not get together and help ordain God’s promise to our Jewish progenitors?  This time, if we promise to  give them half the state of Utah, and subsequently fulfill that promise, who could thereafter ever dare again say the “promised land” thing in the Old Testament was myth?…or that the wars since waged to consummate that gift were….genocidal?

An equitable split and distribution of water and other resources would—and should– be given to the newly-declared and SOVERIGN NATIONS OF NEW ISRAEL AND …MORMONIA.

What’s in it for the Mormons of Utah?  Well, for starters, we (taxpayers) pay them what their condemned property is worth, and the cost of their relocations on the other side of the border of the twin-sovereign theocratic states. It would only be, say, Katrina and New Orleans times 2, 3 or—at most—4…and nobody gets drowned.

To boot (and this will end all Mormon resistance), they can have back their polygamy they had to give up to be a civilized American state back in 1848 (when America ran Mexico out of the territory), because, just like our Native American Indian reservations, their state will henceforth (like “New Israel”) be sovereign.

And on the Israeli side… Instead of being “driven into the sea” as in Arabian dreamland, Israeli’s would be taking more like a Humvee-escorted trip to the docks followed by a luxury cruise to the New Promised Land in Utah, U.S.A. No more Hamas, no more TNT-jacketed Islamic adolescents in the malls, no more PLO, no more Hezzbola, no more sleeping beside the M-16, no more….war.

Just consider the perfect logic and symmetry involved in this Utah Solution.  About a half century ago, Israel declared itself a state and a war began which, with small breathers, has lasted…and escalated ever since until we’re looking forward to its being historically denominated  the first theater of WWIII.

Israel is an exclusive (that’s what “Zionism” implies) theocratic state and  was formed by the immigration of religious refugees who had been persecuted in Europe a half century ago.  Utah is a de-facto theocratic State  established a century before Israel,  inhabited and run primarily by Mormons who were refugees from religious persecution in the East (eastern America).

From the very first (1848-9), the Utah Mormons , these followers of latter-day prophets and saints, were “Zionistic” in that they wished to be and remain separate from all other religions, and “then some”. The “then some” is one of the few things that separates the Mormon form of religion and theocracy from the Zionist State of Israel:  The Mormons from the first intended–and still plan–to take over the whole of the United States and convert (proselytize) its religious followers to the Mormon faith…one by one (in case the biker boys in black haven’t already informed you of that in your living room.)

Our country is already replete with several “independent and sovereign” native American nations….so what would be the harm of two more?  In this Utah Solution, the dreams and aspirations of fundamentalist and separatist Jews and Mormons can be fulfilled…in spades.  The Mormon’s quest from the start was to establish a theocratic state where the Mormon Church ruled in lieu of any secular government.  They’re practically there already, as those of you who have followed their polygamy history can attest.  Mormon polygamy was outlawed by the Mormon Church on the books before the secular State of Utah was formed, but Mormon (albeit fraught with clerical divisiveness) polygamy is not punished in the State of Utah because the state prosecutor can’t possibly put 10 percent of its “Big Love” populace in prison.  Utah is, then, for all practical purposes and intents, a theocratic state. Making them “legal” would be our trumping card to play in the “U-Solution” game.

Natural negatives in the Plan?  (Now I promised to forget the oil, so I’ll here make no mention of Halliburton and American oil companies losing their foothold in and strategic military airbases near that dark milk-and-promised-land-honey petrol  that powers our SUVeee’s and our Hummmmveeee’s. I’ll stay focused on target:  away from causes and fixed on “solutions” to the present war in the Middle East.

So…What about the holy turf…you know, the Wailing Wall and other material and territorially-fixed icons and assets in the Jewish Zionist theocratic portfolio?

EASY:  We transported London Bridge to Arizona didn’t we?  Can you hear Palestinians saying “no” to our diplomatic call for a religious quid-pro-quo whereby Israel packs up and drives itself into the sea (in boats bound for Utah) in return for our being permitted to haul away a few stones betwixt and before which they like to deposit their messages and tears and pray?

As for Temple Mount, other shrines and holy places?  They have never been strictly the property of Islam, Israel or Christendom.  Such have always been mythically mosaic and  religiously communal property as involutedly-complex as the several Troys layered one upon the other through time and historic apocrypha.

When America and the Middle East are negotiating this deal, with the final Exodus of Israel from Islam being on the table, the concessions our Arab brethren  will make can scarcely be over-optimistically presaged.  I’d wager anything but my remaining years, that in that wondrous Utah Solution, our Persian purveyors of petroleum would happily set the price of crude indefinitely so low that we could purchase and burn enough of it in  the next decade to cause  environmental havoc sufficient to materialize the myth of the flood and  inundate with Katrina’s clout the truly-promised land of New Israel.   I readily confess one cheek is quite protuberant  as I propound this final…truth.

Now, everybody…altogether….Gooooooooooooooo…..  Utah!!!!   (the Solution, that is)

Dusty Schoch
July 30, 2006

HIGH POINT ALL-AMERICAN DEMOCRAT SINGS FOR…AND PARTIES WITH THE SUPREMES! © 2006 photo by R.R. Schoch, all rights reservedTony Griffey Tony Griffey Wow’s U.S. Supreme Court in Private Concert(A politically “sidebar” account of a recent visit to our Supreme Court by H.P. Singing Star, Tony G. and Democratswrite co-editor, Dusty Schoch)*The Story the High Point Enterprise refused to publish… by Dusty Schoch (DW Foreign Policy Editor) Fantasia…who?  Now think about it:  Would we rather have a citizen of our town become an American Idol, or be a true American Hero and ambassador of good will for our Old North State and our Furniture City of  High Point?  Well, Tony Griffey has just done that for High Point, and after he did it, the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court gave him special commendations, and even had Tony’s mother take a bow, in the concert hall of the Library of Congress in our nation’s capitol. This past May 24th (2006), yet another  “American Idol” was crowned on the Fox TV show. On the previous Wednesday (May 17), at the invitation of U.S. Supreme Court Justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg,  Tony Griffey and a select troop of fellow international performers of classic music rendered a wonderful and complex program of classical music from Ravel  to Rogers and Hammerstein before the most auspicious panel of jurists (our U.S. Supreme Court)  and dignitaries in Washington,  D.C. And why do I apply “American Hero” instead of “idol” to Tony as a result of all this?  Because Tony Griffey, has once again generously served, honored, and honorably served  his home town and  Country by freely sharing his musical gifts for love instead of money. I say “once again” because it’s the second time this dedicated High Point Democrat has given performances for the good of his local and national communities in the past six months.  I’m proud to say I was a witness–and in a minor way involved—in both events. The first was in High Point.  As a volunteer, I conducted the legal aid clinic in High Point’s Open Door Ministries Shelter, where last year I learned the budget there was failing to provide the funds necessary to remediate an extensive mold problem they were contending with.  I no more than mentioned the situation and the shelter’s roughly $10,000 shortfall in its winter tills to my friend Tony one week, and learn the next that he has arranged with Shelter manager Steve Key to make the H.P. shelter the sole beneficiary of Tony’s solo Christmas concert which took place at his First Baptist Church on December 21.  Long story short – Tony’s love offering of his talent on that night cured our town’s shortfall in funds and then some, thanks to love offerings received for his inspired performance that night. For a commission  affording only travel expenses and honorarium, Tony Griffey heeded his nation’s call, prepared and rehearsed an extremely complex musical program on his own considerable time (and expense), and contributed the better part of 3 days in completing the social and performing parts of the non-public musicale. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg this year directed the U.S. Supreme Court-sponsored concert called “Music at the Supreme Court”.  You didn’t read about it because it is officially an “unofficial event” for the Supreme Court  and the media is cordially uninvited. This accounts for your having to glean this story from my humble, but eye-witness accounting (and photography, I might add.)  The Musicale was inaugurated in 1988 and arranged in its early years by retired Justice, Sandra Day O’Connor, who was graciously in attendance last Wednesday. Tony and Justice Ginsburg go back some years as friends and mutual fans. Each has a photograph of the other in his/her libraries (see photo of Tony proudly standing by Ruth’s photo of Tony in the library of her U.S. Supreme Court chamber).  Few international performers are able to boast that Justice Ruth Ginsburg personally flew (with her husband) to Santa Fe, New Mexico for the sole purpose of attending a single operatic performance.  Ginsburg is especially fond of Tony’s portrayal of the lead-character  role in the opera, “Peter Grimes”. Tony’s D.C. performance was complemented by the accompaniment of his virtuoso pianist  friend, Margo Garrett, who despite (privately) professing to “at least 3 mistakes”, fooled the erudite crowd into perceiving her performance as embodied perfection. From his penultimate composer, Samuel Barber, Tony purposefully rendered “I Hear an Army” for the closed audition of the Supreme Court of the U.S., with the members thereof and  an estimated 500 dignitaries as friends and entourage of the court (not counting the innumerable and ubiquitous Secret Service gens d’armes interspersed in the moderate-size but elegant concert hall) in attendance. Tony’s tenor performance, which  was comprised of 9 songs from five different composers, was preceded by violinist celeb Jennifer Koh, with Reiko Uchida on piano. A colleague, soprano, Harolyn Blackwell followed Tony with  songs from Mozart, Bernstein and Rogers and Hammerstein, concluding with the latter’s “Out of My Dreams”. To wind up the show, Harolyn Blackwell surprised Ginsburg with beginning, as a response to unequivocal encore applause,  the song “Tonight”  from  Broadway’s  “West Side Story”.  Halfway through the second stanza Tony emerges and the audience is enraptured by the delightful duet that follows, capping the show and totally capturing the hearts of the audience—especially Ginsburg, who informed her audience that  she, quite delightfully, had been supplied no advance notice of Tony’s encore preparation. Clearly ebullient with the energy infused by the collective wonders of the musicale performances, especially the Griffey/Blackwell surprise encore,  Chief Justice John Glover Roberts, Jr. took the podium and, after praising Justice Ginsburg for her fine program constructing, made a series of very entertaining comments. The entrée to his closing remarks informed the audience that by coincidence his youngest daughter had just entered the performing arts.  He continued and drew howls of approval when he confessed the child had just completed her second six-week term of piano lessons and had virtually mastered the “chop sticks” concerto. During the introductory on-stage colloquy  between Justice Ginsburg and Chief Justice Roberts, the Justices had Tony’s mother, Joyce Griffey  stand up in the audience and accept notice and  commendations for her son’s performance, during which interlude the Justice, heaping accolades on her Democratic friend, Tony Griffey,  mentioned that Tony and his mother hailed from the “Furniture Capital of the World…the N.C. City of High Point.” SIDEBAR OF INTEREST: The  photo (here captioned “R.B. Ginsburg and the © 2006 photo by R.R. Schoch, all rights reserved Bear”) involves an exchange taking place after the concert, during Justice Ginsburg’s personally guiding us through the Supreme Court and into her private chambers.  As I snapped that photo, Justice Ginsburg was responding to a question one of Tony’s friends  posed to her. The friend was looking at a collection of  whimsical memorabilia on one of Justice Ginsburg’s library tables and posed some query about the medium-sized teddy bear which sat most prominently among the creatures displayed on the same table.  After a moment’s reflection, Justice Ginsburg said,  “I keep the bear there to remind me not to take myself so seriously.”   Quite remarkable and indelibly memorable.  I and the rest of Tony’s entourage were  proud to have been  beneficiaries of such a rare glimpse into the unofficial  musings of this  exceptional jurist, and national asset. Tony Griffey has once again given the City of High Point good reason to be grateful and to be proud.  I think I may have answered my lead (above)  question, at least to my own satisfaction.  As between “American Idol” and “American Hero”….I think I’d rather have an American hero for a fellow High Pointer and friend.   Quite frankly I think High Point could  rightfully claim that their Tony Griffey is both. © 2006 photo by R.R. Schoch, all rights reserved Tony and retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor at the reception, Library of Congress ballroom. Let’s all be grateful to Tony G (and the Supremes!) for putting the City of High Point in some extremely noble and illustrious light.  And, in case no one else bothered to say it for us all , Tony,  thanks.  The High Point Open Door Ministries thanks you; the Supreme Court of the U.S. thanks you, and your fellow citizens of High Point and N.C. thank you for doing your thing—and,   for making us proud. Dusty Schoch May 29, 2006 *“ENTERPRISING” EDITORIAL FOOTNOTE:  For those of you who subscribe to the H.P. Enterprise, please note that this article was originally written by me for publication by the Enterprise immediately after Tony G.’s performance before the Supreme Court in the Concert Hall of the Library of Congress. The story was entirely a national exclusive as the world’s press corps were specifically excluded from this private concert of the Supreme Court and some 900-to 1200 select dignitaries and friends of the Court. The photos illustrating this DW exclusive will never appear in any other media. Within a week or so of  submitting the present accounting of Griffey’s concert before the “Supremes”, High Point Enterprise editors  published on their front page a picture of a woman in a filling station selling the new State-Sanctioned lottery tickets, sporting a T-shirt which read: “Dine at Muffie’s Smorgasborg….Where you will enjoy our spread.”  This picture story (lottery tickets at Muffie’s) took up half the paper’s front page. Soon thereafter, the Editors of the High Point Enterprise decided the story of High Point native international celebrity singer Tony Griffey’s  (webstie: Anthonydeangriffey.com) command performance before and partying with the Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States was, in their estimation, not newsworthy.  I hope this gives some of you readers out there a rough idea of why I cancelled my subscription to out city’s only newspaper.

	A VIET NAM WARRIOR SPEAKS OF THE WAR IN IRAQ   By: Michael Kevin Murphy *

Dear Dusty (and Democratswrite.com):

What a terrible mess our civilian “leadership” has made of our recent and continuing adventure in Iraq.  It boggles the mind that these people are so naive as to think that we had both the moral authority, the need, and the ability to unilaterally transform what is still a near Medieval society into a 21st Century democracy at all, let alone in a reasonably short period and without great loss of life and National honor to say nothing of the cost in dollars.

Having said that though, we must not fail to honor and remember  in our thoughts and prayers those who have selflessly given of themselves by service and dying in uniform to do their duty  by supporting  that misguided leadership, a leadership that in large numbers successfully evaded real service in uniform when they were of age years ago but despite that  lack of spine and sense of responsibility to our country now feels they have the wisdom to commit to battle those who are willing to so serve.  That is so much more than arrogance; a dangerous “smugness” is more like it perhaps.  God help us all.

The photo (above) of the wife who slept next to her husband’s casket, a fallen Marine, is, perhaps, the most powerfully moving image I have ever seen. I cannot look at it without crying.  If most pictures are worth a thousand words that one picture speaks volumes of a life cut way too short and its impact on those left behind. It really shows so much more than words can describe or explain that I won’t even try to.

*Mr. Michael Kevin Murphy is an attorney in Virginia, and a B.E.A. correspondent  of long standing. Mike served with the U.S. Army in Viet Nam during the period which straddled the 1968 Tet Offensive. He was commanding officer of an infantry rifle company in the Mecong River delta and  his badges and decorations  include the U. S. Parachutist Badge, the U.S. Combat Infantryman’s Badge, the Vietnam Ranger Badge (Biet Dong Quan), the U.S. Bronze Star Medal, thirteen Air Medals, and the Vietnam Gallantry Cross.

NEO-CONTENTIONS  V

The Political and Polemic Correctness of…

HATING GEORGE W. BUSH

PREFACE: DW Readers may wish to review the July 25 article entitled “Why I Hate Bush” by DW In-House Historian and Philosopher, Dr. Leonard Carrier. In this exchange, that article is taken to task by conservative, Michael Holdcraft, Colonel, USAF, retired.

Michael Holdcraft has sent DW the following cover letter as a preface to his criticism of the previous DW article written by Len Carrier.  Contrary to Mr. Holdcraft’s opinion, DW is pleased to print both his letter and his rebuttal.  The object of Mr. Holdcraft’s criticism, Len’s “Why I Hate George W. Bush,” has also been reprinted below.  Len Carrier believes that all of Holdcraft’s objections are spurious, and he has refuted them in an article which follows Holdcraft’s.  In the meantime, since Mr. Holdcraft has elected to include his email address at the end of his criticism, Len reasons that this constitutes an invitation to DW readers to reply to Mr. Holdcraft on their own.

Col. Michael Holdcraft says…

Mr. Carrier has personally asked me numerous times to submit my comments on his article to your web site.  He says your site is fair-minded and would print it.  I told him there is no way you would print my comments because I question his motivations in writing the article, political motivations in my opinion. I don’t question Len’s hate for the President, but do question his reasons.  He has only one reason to hate the President and that reason is he is a “Republican’.  It is my firm belief that if Mr. Bush were a Democrat, Len would be solidly behind and supporting every decision he has made.  My reply also challenges Len to prove any of the statements he has made by producing facts to back them up.  He hasn’t yet done that because he can’t.  You won’t print my comments because they directly question almost all of Len’s accusations in his article. I believe his article as well as most of the articles I see on your web site are all politically motivated, and therefore you cannot print my comments because they directly challenge all the left wing propaganda you have published to date.

Sincerely,

Michael D. Holdcraft, Colonel, USAF, Retired

HOLDCRAFT FURTHER HOLDS FORTH:

 Why I Hate George W. Bush

By: Len Carrier *

           It’s been a long time coming. I used to say that hate was a useless emotion, and that we ought to concentrate on the act and not the actor.  But I can resist no more.  We have a president who is a cowardly, macho-talking bully.  He is a child of privilege, never having had to work a day in his life.  He is a former alcohol drinking, cocaine using, woman abusing, draft-dodging, mama’s boy who was allowed to get away with every affront he gave to civil decency.  But that’s not why I hate him.

            I hate him because he has lowered the status of our country in the eyes of the world by his shocking behavior in office.  I hate him because he invaded Iraq for no good reason and thereby caused the deaths of nearly 3,000 U.S. military and tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians. I hate him for giving tax cuts to the wealthy, while ignoring the poor. I hate him for saying he was an environmentalist while promoting bills that pollute our rivers and coastal shores.  I hate him for squandering the surplus that Clinton left us and putting our children and grandchildren in debt.  I hate him for more than 1 million lost jobs since he took office. I hate him for putting an inept crony in charge of FEMA and letting New Orleans sink into the mud. I hate him for saying he’d fire the person who leaked the information about a covert CIA operative, and then back-tracked when he found out it was Dick Cheney. I hate him for sitting on his thumbs while Israel bombs innocent civilians in Gaza and Lebanon. I hate him for vetoing stem-cell research to pacify the crazies on his religious right. I hate him because he has spied on Americans without warrant.  I hate him because he has allowed torture of prisoners in defiance of the Geneva Conventions.  So, go ahead, call me a Bush hater.  I’ve got good reason.

DUSTY ADDS…

 And while you’re at it (calling Len a “Bush Hater”, like me) don’t you dare call us ipso-facto “Un-American”,  or “Un-Patriotic” or say we’re “aiding our terrorist enemies” or “undermining our brave soldiers” for  cutting down this fascist cretin of a president.  G.W. Bush is an “American” as Adolph Hitler was a German.  We’ll both survive our respective fascist regimes.  And if you don’t agree with Len Carrier and me on our having good reason to hate this president, just pick and research one of the reasons Len lists—Bush’s lies.  It’s an easy experiment to perform to get a quick historic “feel” for the world’s perception and consensus on Bush in the truth category. Here’s what do:  Go to your computer and pull up Google for a search engine. Type in just two words:  “Bush lies” .  There will follow references to over 50 million articles in which those words are juxtaposed at least once. A perhaps  more alarming thing is evident  when you Google in “Hitler lies” and  you only get 8.2 million, and we’ve had over 50 years to accumulate data on his, the biggest lies ever told….that is B.B.  (before Bush).

*(Dr. Leonard Carrier received his B.A. and M.A. from the University of Miami in ’56 and ’58, respectively, and his Ph.D from Stanford in 1967.  He taught at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia and the University of South Florida (Tampa) before spending the rest of his teaching and research career (29 years until 2000) at the University of Miami. )

Dr. Carrier’s Response to Holdcraft:

Michael Holdcraft has taken me to task for my DW submission, “Why I Hate George W. Bush.”  His response is typical right-wing boilerplate, which consists mainly of twisting another’s words into a different shape so that they can be more easily managed.  For instance, I asserted that Mr. Bush was “…a child of privilege, never having had to work a day in this life.”  Holdcraft twists this into saying that I consider Bush’s lassitude a crime, and that it’s only certain rich people—but not Ted Kennedy—whom I deem guilty of this offense. He also goes on to say that Mr. Bush worked “in the oil business,” so what I said must be false. But this is all nonsense. Being born rich is not a crime, but it does give us some insight into why he proposes tax cuts for the wealthy, since they are his kind of people.  As for Bush’s working in the oil business, he did no real work, and the company he controlled was a failure.  It was through his father and other wealthy connections that he managed to get windfall profits by selling his ownership in another failed venture—the Texas Rangers baseball team.  Give me millionaires like George Soros and Bill Gates any day.  They actually worked for their money and didn’t have it handed to them in behind-the-scenes deals.

            Holdcraft also asks for evidence that Mr. Bush is a coward and a bully, as well as being a “woman abusing, draft-dodging, mama’s boy.”  Being a draft-dodging coward is fairly easy to support.  Bush got into his Texas Air National Guard unit because of his father’s connections.  It’s on the record that he leap-frogged over others who were also waiting for such an appointment, and that allowed him to avoid the draft.  The fact that he went AWOL from his unit before serving his commitment, plus his father’s comment that Bush found flying F102s “threatening” is evidence that he experienced SLOG (sudden loss of guts)—a pilot’s term for cowardice. That’s also on the record.  If Holdcraft doesn’t believe it, he can read Hugh Scott’s book, George Dub-ya Bush:  The Phony Fighter Pilot. As for abusing and bullying women, it’s also on the record that a woman in Texas who knew Bush since high school said that he verbally abused her and was in the habit of using derogatory language when talking to women in bars.  It’s also a fact, taken from a biography of the Bushes, that George didn’t get along with his father, and that his mother had to take him in hand.  Bush himself does not deny that he abused alcohol, even while serving in the National Guard, and he refuses to deny that he also used cocaine. So I’m hard put to know what Holdcraft’s definition of “civil decency” could be if he thinks that Bush’s transgressions are not an affront to it.

            As I said in my article, these aren’t–or weren’t–my reasons for hating Bush.  There are lots of people who match my description who aren’t worth hating.  I say they weren’t my reasons for hating him, because it’s unclear now whether Bush is suffering from some mental impediment.  This possibility was explored by Dusty Schoch in a
DW piece that appeared after my article did, and I did a DW follow-up on it, as well.  If Bush really is the victim of a physical disability, perhaps brought on by previous alcohol abuse and an inherited susceptibility to Graves’ Disease, then he is no longer a fit candidate for hatred, and he should instead be pitied.  For purposes of responding to Holdcraft, however, I’m going to assume that Bush is fully rational and knows what he is doing.  Acting under this assumption, here is my refutation of Holdcraft’s attempt to show that our president is not a fit object of abhorrence.

            I said that Bush had no good reason for invading Iraq.  Holdcraft claims that Saddam’s flouting of UN Resolution 687, plus his hindering UN weapons inspection teams for 11 years after Gulf War I was reason enough to invade.  To see how nonsensical this is we have only to point out other countries that have failed to obey UN resolutions.  One such country is Israel.  If ignoring UN resolutions were reason enough to invade a sovereign country, then an invasion of Israel would have been justified. But we would all agree that such an invasion would be completely unjustified.  Holdcraft also conveniently forgets that Iraq had been allowing UN inspection teams free access to sites just before the invasion.  The only reason they were not allowed to do finish their job was that Bush announced that he was invading.  Holdcraft also forgets that Bush gave Saddam 48 hours to leave Iraq with a large part of his fortune.  Saddam refused, but this shows that it was “regime change” that Bush had in mind, not weapons of mass destruction.  What Bush wanted was a docile government in Iraq—mainly to ensure access to Iraqi oil.  If Holdcraft still believes in the WMD scare, then he must also believe in goblins and gremlins.  Hence, Bush had no good reason for invading Iraq—unless Holdcraft thinks that it’s a good enough reason to invade a country just because we don’t like its leader.  If that were the case, then most of the world would have good reason to invade us!

            Another reason I listed for hating Bush was his being the cause of the deaths and injuries inflicted on our military, and also on Iraqi civilians.  Holdcraft counters by saying that the great majority of deaths were caused by terrorists.  This is sheer rubbish.  It was recently reported by Lancet magazine that our war against Iraq has resulted in the deaths of as many as 790,000 Iraqis—either by violent actions of coalition forces, or because of the uranium depletion in our bombs and the contamination of their water supply.  As bad as Saddam was, he never got results like that.  Holdcraft is also wrong to say that “terrorists” caused all our military deaths.  Here he’s buying Bush’s line that anyone who fights back against our forces is a terrorist. But guerrilla militias, not terrorists, caused most of our military deaths. Terrorists are those who target noncombatants for the purpose of instilling fear in a population and thus reducing its will to fight. This more accurately describes our “shock and awe” campaign of bombing civilian population centers, and not insurgent reactions against our occupation forces. Holdcraft is simply ignorant of the meaning of the word, ‘terrorist’. Despite Holdcraft’s rhetoric, Saddam was not engaging in a “reign of terror” when we invaded his country.  What our invasion did, however, was to set forces free that led to a sectarian fight that Thomas Hobbes would have described as a “war of all against all.”  It was Bush’s bravado that began this killing.  He didn’t have to pull the trigger that unleashed these horrors.  But he did pull it, and he is deserving of hatred for it.  That hatred is also spilling over onto all Americans—with all those surviving Iraqi civilians now having good reason to hate us all.

            Holdcraft also thinks that reducing taxes on the wealthy is a good thing, claiming that the middle class got its tax cut, too.  This is absurd.  The largest tax reduction went to the people who didn’t need it—those with the upper 2% of income.  The middle class got peanuts, and the poor got their programs cut.  The war in Iraq is draining our resources to the tune of billions of dollars a month, and we’re borrowing from China and Japan to pay the bills.  And Holdcraft thinks this is a good thing?  Lyndon Johnson promised to give us guns and butter during the Vietnam War. He delivered neither.  Bush is going down that same road, oblivious to the fact that he is bankrupting our nation for the good of his “base”—the corporations that profit from tax cuts and war.  The U.S. Air Force has just asked for $50 billion extra for next year’s budget. Where is this money coming from? One of the axioms of economics is that there’s no such thing as a free lunch, but Bush and Holdcraft apparently think they can just crash the cafeteria line.

            Holdcraft also thinks that the damage done by Hurricane Katrina was not Bush’s fault. But Bush appointed the directors of FEMA and of Homeland Security.  They showed themselves to be inept, especially FEMA head Michael Brown, who was being congratulated by Bush for doing a good job just at the time that he was doing a miserable job.  The person who makes the appointments to key disaster organizations should ensure that the people chosen are qualified.  Bush picked unqualified cronies to do the job, and so it’s his fault that the Katrina disaster turned out to be far worse than it could have been.  Also, if the Corps of Engineers had been given the funds they requested to reinforce the levies, the 9^th ward might not have been inundated.

            Holdcraft also defends Bush on the question of leaking the name of a covert CIA agent to the press.  Bush’s promise to fire the leaker was soon forgotten when it was revealed that Karl Rove might have been one of those who blabbed to the press.  Holdcraft claims that Valerie Plame was not a covert agent, only a CIA employee.  He should check his facts.  The release of Ms. Plame’s identity threatened the lives of her overseas contacts, plus it removed her from undertaking any further undercover assignments.  Holdcraft doesn’t mention that releasing her name was an act of petty spite to get revenge against her husband, Joseph Wilson, who exposed Bush’s lie about Iraq’s obtaining uranium from Niger.  The fact that a Grand Jury has indicted a White House aide—Dick Cheney’s right-hand man, I. Lewis Libby, for obstruction of justice, shows how serious a blow this was to our intelligence gathering efforts.           

Holdcraft thinks I engage in half-truths bordering on slander.  He should read the newspapers more often.  Everything I’ve said has been said over and over again by journalists and analysts.  All I’ve done is put the pieces together.  What I’ve been doing is engaging in dissent, something that it is incumbent on every American to do when he believes that his government is in the wrong.  Holdcraft claims that one must stifle such dissent because it “…undermines confidence in our government and its leaders.”  Yes, that’s exactly what it is meant to do.  Holdcraft is confused when he says that for a citizen to accuse a president, “proof” of a crime must be produced.  He should read the Constitution.  It is up to Congress to draw up Articles of Impeachment if it thinks that that a president is guilty of “high crimes and misdemeanors.”  If a president is impeached, then it is up to the Senate to try innocence or guilt.  They are the ones who need “proof.” As a citizen, one has a constitutional right and obligation to speak out.  It is only when citizens are able to speak freely that governments are held accountable.  Holdcraft would rather muzzle free speech in the name of authority.  He should be living where they have a monarch instead of a president, but perhaps he thinks he is already living there.

Leonard Carrier

November 1, 2006

Posted in Bush, Bush Lies, Political | Leave a comment

Fixing the Middle East…

says Professor Leonard Carrier, would be “simple”.

I say it’s not, and furthermore, I’m beginning to wonder if fixing either the Middle East or what’s left Of America is worth it.

(An Exchange of Views between Len Carrier and Dusty Schoch on The Escalating violence in the Middle East)

FIX THE MIDDLE EAST

By Leonard Carrier
…A Simple Plan
How can we stop the escalating violence in the Middle East? I offer a simple plan that can be implemented by President Bush immediately. I propose that our president tell the Israeli government: (1) to stop its attacks on Lebanon, withdraw its forces, and announce a unilateral cease fire, (2) to lift the siege of Gaza, (3) to apologize for killing civilians in Lebanon and Gaza, (3) to repair damage to the infrastructure Israel has destroyed, (4) to release Palestinian women and children held in Israeli prisons, (5) to start negotiations immediately to end the occupation of Palestine by removing all the settlements on the West Bank, offering a compromise on the governance of Jerusalem, and discussing proper compensation in lieu of a right of return for those people displaced by the Israeli state. Would such a plan work? Of course it would. All our president has to do is threaten to cut off our annual $2.5 billion tax-funded aid to Israel if does not do these things and instruct our UN representative to propose economic sanctions on Israel, as well. The only reason Israel is pushing the envelope in over-reacting to attacks on Israeli soldiers is that our government has stood on the sidelines and allowed them to do it. Will Hamas and Hezbollah then stop their terror attacks. Of course they will. Once Israel does what our president tells it to do, and the Palestinian state approaches nearer to realization, the militants would be marginalized and the Israeli state would be secure. Why hasn’t our president even considered such a plan, a plan that would put him right up there with Mohandas Ghandi as one of the world’s greatest peace makers? My take on it is that he continues to get very bad advice, and he doesn’t know how to stop following it.
Len Carrier *
*(Dr. Leonard Carrier received his B.A. and M.A. from the University of Miami in ’56 and ’58, respectively, and his Ph.D from Stanford in 1967.  He taught at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia and the University of South Florida (Tampa) before spending the rest of his teaching and research career (29 years until 2000) at the University of Miami. )

By: Dusty Schoch

You say:  “A Simple Solution”….I say “A Clean Break” and finally I ask:   How fired up are you to “save” America?

It makes perfect sense, Len.  But the simpler fact is nothing Israel does is done without  advance U.S. covert approval.  Syria is one of our prime targets in the Armageddon Rapture promised-oil operations manual. Israel’s rockets are now hitting really close to that border.  “A Clean Break” is still the covert U.S. policy and Cheney is still implementing Wolfowitz’ plan that executes the Wurmser’s Clean Break.

I’m just about to the point Marlow says Kurtz reached in Heart of Darkness… “Exterminate the Brutes”.  Or at least a corollary of it:  Let them exterminate each other.  Sons of Isaac and Ishmael have been doing this forever. We are allied with Israel and the alliance is clerically and corporately-driven imperialism, one for the honey (as in milk) and two for the dough (oil), three to make ready (Jews+Christians+Corporations) and “go cat (cataclysm) go”.

 Evangelical Christians are now openly (turn on your TV) espousing this war as end-time pre-destined Armageddon.  It’s Christian/Jewish Zionist Rapture Herrenvolk. Bush is their collective crusading “Captain”.  No one’s going to stop this juggernaut unless it’s the clerics…or rather a revolt among the true followers of Islam and Christ.  The scariest part of this global clerical insanity is that the Jews and Christian fundies think they can play these end-time games in a pro-active way and Jesus and/or his Father will come and clean up the mess when it’s over.  I don’t think the creative writers of Old  or New Testament  scripture foresaw or factored in the 100,000-year half life of plutonium fallout.

Your proposal is sane and on the money, but totally fairytale. U.S. aid to Israel is given precisely to wage the on-going war with Palestine…and beyond.  The vestige of hope (dwindling) I have is still in having the clerics declare peace.http://democratswrite.com/articles_by_democrats/page31.htm

Great dreaming,  my friend, but it’s wake-up time. I’ve smelled the coffee.  We both, however, need to drink it and get creative.  Our country is in the hands of pseudo-Christian crusaders, just as Germany in the late 30’s. Our demagogic exploiter  is every bit as crazy as Hitler; every single bit. He has bankrupted our country and ended every major alliance we have save England, and England’s not a major military ally. We’re in deep shit and the only shovel we’re holding is a nuclear button for self-destruction. Our nation today stands as a macro-cosmic Jihad warrior shouting in the Global mall…”Do it my way or it’s Holocaust Highway”.  I’m almost to the point of getting philosophic about it. I am (sincerely) looking at property in Panama.  I am seriously searching for a 60-foot sea-worthy hull. I am a resident alien.  I am salivating for the safety and sanctuary of the open sea.

How long, Len, should we rage against the dying of something?  What is left of America? Let’s write about that.

Turn on your TV and read your paper. Please show me something of our society (besides a minority of scattered souls who remember the American dream the way we do) you want to preserve.  I think the glorious ride may be over.

A country dies when it’s dreams evaporate. We’re a nation of very ignorant and heedless hedonists. We’ve shipped to other shores our productive and creative labor and work ethic; we’ve exchanged ambition for entitlements;  We’ve converted Jesus, Prince of Peace to  Christ the crusading Zionist conqueror.

Three  decades ago we made the world’s best electric and other appliances, the best cars, furniture , textiles …everything. We now make nothing but weapons of mass destruction,  and nuclear WMD’s and delivery capability is our only card to play now in international power games.  These uglier-than-even-us Arab sheiks have more power and wealth under their sand than we do because of the new “oil standard” of wealth in this  new, hell-bent for eco-armageddon global culture of ours.

All the remaining power-hitters on this dying globe are now moving their mighty military minions  to the Middle East as forecast in “The Road Warrior” movie….to secure their share of “the juice”.  We’re pretty much, Len, you, I and a dwindling mini-minority, a vanishing species in this country. Watch what the x-generation is generating…It’s all narcissistic warring of all against all. The nightmare scenario we heard about in sociology 101, that converted Rome to ruins.

GWB showed us his colors in his first 4 years and was re-elected (almost). We can’t blame the Supreme Court….enough of us voted for a fascist dictator to take his election to court. He “won”.  Blue (thinkers) are now the minority among a burgeoning sea of righteously-ignorant red that swells like earth’s own, and for the same globally-warming reasons.

I’m serious, Len. Let’s write about an issue that might, in the debating, turn things around:  What’s left of America worth saving?   NASCAR?  A porn industry whose annual gross would redeem the national debt in a decade?  A population of SUV-driving kiss-my-polar-ice crack heads? A union of evangelical (crazy) Christians and state which has converted the Christian Church to the most dangerous lobby since Exxon/mobile and tobacco?  NASSA allied  science that concentrates 2 percent  studying the heavens and 98 percent on how to more efficiently and accurately decimate earth?

When I was a kid, Len, High Point, my home town, was furniture capitol of the world. More furniture was made within 50 miles of my door than everywhere else in the world. We called our furniture club “The String and Splinter Club” because we were also one of the world’s great textile centers.   All my industrial buddies (sons who inherited these industries from their industrious dreaming dads) have sold out. They did it piecemeal (one “line” of products at a time) to lower the profile of their Enronian personal-profit plans. The were finally all “constrained” to do it because it was the only way to compete in the global market.  Now I’ve suggested we rename our club the “Lint and Dust”  Club.

Corporate-run industry of all kinds has turned cannibal.  Corporation gobbling up corporation. Unlimited power at the top sucking the blood of the laboring corpus until the labor languishes and the productive burden is shipped to leaner and hungrier shoulders in sweatshops abroad.  Predatory marketing prevails as the new American paradigm.  Wallymart fist assassinates Kmart, and then feeds off its own and the life blood of its foreign labor.  Wallgreens strategically moves its stores right next door to its competitors in areas that cannot support 2 stores, and the bully thrives and the moms and pops die, and all the City Councils’ young cannibals endorse the process because it’ll expand the tax basis.

TV portrays and emulates the new cannibalism with cut-your-neighbor’s throat celebrations in the  so-called “reality” shows, where art is eliminated and the object is –always—screw your neighbor before he screws you. The new “American Idol” is elected in a process whose 98-percent effort is exerted in humiliating the 3000 artistic  souls who competed for the “honor”.

Welcome to the war of the worlds, the war of all against all. You can’t choose sides because there are none in reality any more. The corporations ultimately machinating the war in the Middle East are transnational.  Money has no borders. Money has no allegiances. Money is naturally akin to the most noxious element on earth…Mercury. Money, like “quick silver” gravitates and adheres to itself. It can molecularly bond with any element and in so doing renders the resulting compound manifold times more toxic than itself.  Money like mercury is now in our teeth and brain.  It can assume any shape and seep into cracks and crevasses  too small for the human eye to detect and interdict.

In a nutshell, here’s what’s happening in the Middle East and nothing simple’s going to alter it:

Two decades ago the world’s biggest bullies, U.S. and Russia saw the Sheiks get out of line, mark up the crude barrels and flex their muscles on the sheer (and correct) conviction that, since there were two nuclear bullies out there, neither would have the balls to take over the milk and honey juice  under Arab sand.  Afghanistan was the proving ground. That country was targeted by Russia because it could provide a pipeline for importing  the juice when and if either power took over the Middle East.

America defeated Russia (and their pipe line pipe dream) in Afghanistan as Communist Russia defeated the U.S. in Viet Nam.  Our stinger missiles pretty much did the trick, coupled with our C.I.A. schooling of bin Laden and his Al Qaeda warriors.
That was in 1992. With Russia’s failure, rose American/Israeli combined religious and corporate ambition.

 Today there is no real difference between clerical and corporate America, as the wedding of Evangelical Christianity to corporations via the TV broadcast media  is now consummated.

Eight years pass during which the Zionist Jews actively preach and teach (via U.S. think tanks, Institutes and Foundations) the methodology in taking over the Middle East, calling it a “re-ordering process”, and this plan was inherent in the “Mein Kamph” of World War Three, which has been under way since 9/11/01. “A Clean Break” is the Mein Kamph of which I speak, and it was tendered to and rejected by a sane Netanyahu in 1998.  This new Middle Eastern order was, by Netanyahu seen for what it was, a thinly-veiled plan for U.S. invasion and take-over  at the symbiotic instigation  of their little Jewish puppet state…Israel.

You could make a case for WW III’s having begun  in 1948 with the declaration of Israeli statehood, as every battle for the maintenance of that statehood was fought and won with U.S. Military machinery, training and aid.

England may have been instrumental in the formation of Israel, but America has been wholly responsible for its establishment and maintenance.  This reality is not a secret in the Middle East, or anywhere else in the informed world.

But, defense  of Israel has never been a “friendly” or selfless undertaking from American standpoint.  They are our friends now because they are our only port of unrestricted call in the middle of the alien-Islamics’  oil fields. They are our Kurtz in the heart of  Islamic petroleum darkness. At one time, we were the Marlowe’s, conscientiously trying to bring crazy-Kurtz Israel around to quitting its genocidal games with its Arab neighbors. But this was mission impossible from the date of inception (48).  You can’t displace Arabs  in the heart of Islam with Jews and sit back and say, “It’s a done deal”.  The Hatfields and McCoys of the Old Testament will never ever be a done deal.

But that doesn’t militate against the Clean Break plan of Middle Eastern oil take-over. It in fact makes the plan
Doable.   It’s the virtual back bone of the plan.  So long as Israel is playing its “Fort Apache in the Bronx” game in the heart of petro darkness, there will be turmoil, and where there is warring turmoil, the U.S. will have an excuse to maintain its military allied presence.  It takes an I.Q. of at least 60 to master this Middle-Eastern math.

But you must keep your eyes on the doughnut and not the hole. The hole is 9/11, Homeland Security, Saddham, al Qaeda, bin Laden, Hezzbolla, Hamas, Zionism, Rapture, Armageddon and most of all …TERRORISM.   The doughnut is oil.  The JUICE.  The juice is the corporations’ currency and currency is the corporations’ life blood.

From Netanyahu’s rejection of “A Clean Break” in ’98 to the Bush Doctrine of 2001, was only about 3 years.
The war to take over the Middle East needed a pretext, and 9/11 became it.  We all know the rest of the story.

The “Bush Doctrine” that “justified” the U.S. invasions sequentially of Afghanistan and then Iraq, was simply an execution of the Wurmser’s Clean Break.  It was machinated through the A.E.I. (American Enterprise Institute) and more precisely, via David Frum’s recording of Richard Perle’s dictation of the essential phrase (Bush Doctrine) in GWB’s address to Congress that declared WWIII – That being, that “America would tolerate no nation harboring terrorists”.  That doctrine was the  carte blanch—and pretext– to invade any country in the world, including all Arab countries, but excluding essentially no sovereign  nation. The details are still documented  in the July 2003 Vanity Fair.

 These “institutes” and “foundations” are funded with the money their shareholders have in stock and other wealth. These institutes (A.E.I., the Wurmsers’ pet Hudson Institute ,P.N.A.C, etc.) hire as their “objective” policy-preaching gurus, and think-tank leaders,  old-guard politicians who are re-cycled in and out of corporate and political chairs like Dick Cheney and G.W.B.,  i.e. in oil-drilling business or oil-refining failure one day and elected politicians the next.

These corporations are running the world and currently waging war to control the juice (oil/energy). Who ever controls the energy controls the wealth. The “hole” is terrorism, WMD’s, assaults by so-called “insurgents” on Israel and American soldiers (actually invaders and internationally criminal occupiers of Iraq and Afghanistan).

In the process of waging their war for the “juice”, and through their virtual control of the media and the fundamental religions in America (now merged with corporations as said before), the corporations have, in classical Orwellian (1984) fashion brainwashed and anesthetized America’s “red” citizens and with fear and  repetitions of the “big lies” (WMD’s, wanting to “democratize” Iraq, etc.) have lobotomized a weakling, waning and lazy nation into believing that killing 60,000 civilians (in Iraq and Afghanistan) without provocation can be…for any reason…justified…even rendered “righteous”.

The corporations have succeeded in America in gaining a nation’s endorsement of and participation in unprovoked genocide…for the purpose of securing the juice.

With all the evidence in…that the WMD’s etc. were lies, and the war was in fact “unjust” and for the oil, and that the Vice President’s own corporate boss (Halliburton) was engineering the war for the juice and sale of the juice, we Americans re-elected these criminals.

America has become a criminal fascist nation. We are, alone, waging World War III to secure control of the Middle East. Bush’s little bitch Tony B and his GB soldiers don’t count as a meaningful “sovereign” ally. We have none.

We could stop Israel’s bombing of Palestine and Lebanon instantly (as Len Carrier suggests) simply by threatening to terminate our fiscal support of Israel without which they couldn’t survive, much less wage war.  We don’t do this because Israel’s war is necessary for ours to continue. The next target in the “Clean Break” war plan is Syria…and/ or Iran…after which we (and our Bush royal relatives in Saudi Arabia) will own both the juice and the juice pipeline.  Then it will be most probable that the proverbial Armageddon manure will hit the Middle Eastern fan…all depending on whether Russia and/or China will let us get away with grabbing the juice without paying a price that can only be calculated on a nuclear-powered calculator.

And in case you haven’t read the papers, Russia and China are already gearing up for their allied response to Corporate America’s (not overly) covert plan to commandeer the juice machine.

The question remains, Len, can you think of any reasons to get fired up about saving a country that would let this sort of thing happen…at best…out of ignorance? If I were young enough to join and participate actively in a physical revolution, I would at least attempt to start a movement whereby the blue states (actually all the intelligent and educated metro areas of America) would secede from the red (the rural, ignorant and religiously right).  In effect, the red states, in re-electing Bush were voting to continue America’s evolution from benign democracy to fascistic imperialist. When is it the “right time” to man the life boats when you know you’re sailing on  Titanic? Have you checked on property values in Panama?  Sailing…anyone?

Dusty
July 18, 2006

LEN’S (BEAUTIFUL) FINAL RESPONSE…
A VOICE OF COURAGE and
A BREATH OF HOPE

Dusty sees the world as it is.  I see it as I would like it to be.  I think that Dusty would like it to be the way I would like it to be, but he sees no hope of getting there from the way it is.  He paints a grim but fairly accurate picture of our present foreign policy:  an imperialistic venture fueled by the corrosive combination of greedy corporations, military war-mongers, and fervent Armageddonists.  I say fairly accurate because I don’t think that we’re calling the shots with these present Israeli military ventures.  The United States and Israel have different interests. It just so happens that these interests now coincide.  We want a strong military ally in the Middle East as a counterweight to Syria and Iran so we can grab the oil; and they want us to stand aside so they can complete their takeover of the rest of Palestine. In both our countries the hard-liners have taken over, and we’re now at their mercy. So my simple plan is really not one I expect Bush to implement.  He’s too far gone down the wrong path.
But that doesn’t mean we should give up pointing out the right path–although my preference would be Paris over Panama if it ever came to that–because I think our country is worth fighting for.  I used to say that we get the government we deserve, but then a friend reminded me that I’m not getting the government I deserve, and Dusty is not getting the government he deserves, and there are lots of Israelis who aren’t getting the government they deserve, either. So what do we do about it?  I say we keep reminding people that we’ve gone through bleaker periods in our history–like the Great Depression and World War II–and we’ve come out of them. We should keep insisting that our Constitution says that our the government is constituted “of the people, by the people, and for the people,” with no mention at all of big business.  We keep exposing the corruption and the war-profiteering of corporations; we tell the Bible-thumpers to get out of politics and get back in their churches and synagogues; we refuse to be called “anti-Semitic” when we point out the immoral actions of the Israeli government; we keep reminding our elected officials that they are supposed to be serving us and not themselves and their fat-cat cronies.  And when these officials don’t listen, we set up a hue and cry and drive them from office.
Right now the militarists, the fat-cats, the hegemonists, the pious religionists, and the smug Wall Street types have the upper hand. But remember that it’s always supposed to be darkest before dawn.  Winston Churchill said it best: never give up–never, never, never, never.
– Len Carrier

Dusty, Signing Off…

Thanks, Len for the breath of courage and fresh air.  At Valley Forge I’d have  been  the shivering boy just about to sneak away back to his  Shenandoah valley home, and you’d have been….Well, Thanks, General.  I’ll try and bundle up and keep watch another fortnight.  But I have to say, you’ve got me thinking about Paris…that thought may keep me warm these nightmarishly bleak nights.

Dusty
July 18, 2006

	THE ECONOMIC CORE OF WAR… Part II A British Writer/Scholar Helps us Peel “The Onion of War”… To its Corporate Core

By Leonard Carrier – contributing writer/philosopher *

Does anyone think there’s a dime’s worth of difference between Joe Lieberman and John McCain? Between Dennis Hastert and Nancy Pelosi? Not much that I can see. We’ve finally come down to it: no real difference between our major political parties. So it really doesn’t make any difference whether you contribute to the DNC or to the GOP, vote for your mainstream Democrat or your down the line Republican. You’re going to get the same sort of government no matter what. What sort of government is that? Well, it’s no longer the government “of the people.” It’s the government of multi-national corporations, a government that doesn’t care about its children, its seniors, or its working class. It’s a government that is out to subjugate other countries, either by financial bribery or by force. How do we change this? How do we go back to the principles of our Constitution and Declaration of Independence? The first thing to do is not vote for any candidate who puts corporations first, people last. It’s not hard to figure out which candidates not to vote for. They’re the ones who have the big bankrolls from those aforesaid corporations.

[Dusty to the Democratic world:  Dr. Carrier sent this to me, subscribed “curmudgeon”.  I (sincerely)  say:  “Carrier for President”  (and/or Presidente, given his benevolent bent on illegal immigrants) curmudgeon or not. ]

	THE ECONOMIC CORE OF WAR… A British Writer/Scholar Helps us Peel “The Onion of War”… To its Corporate Core