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Repeat after me: “Emperor Bush is Nekked”

 

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A Winter’s Confession

 

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Bush exclaims “WE DON’t Torture”

Dear B.E.A. and friends,

 

The “B.E.A.ppreciative” bait for your attention refers to the gratitude we should constantly feel, I think, for the thoughts and sharings of people like Leonard Pitts, who, despite our country’s being presently led by a fascist cretin cowboy, won’t give up on America. Pitts keeps getting better and better. This is for those who might have missed his 11/11/05 column on the subject of Bush’s most recent incantation of Orwellian nightmare, where the “Big Brother” of 1984 prophesy has become the Neo-Con Bush/Fox Media Message of the new millennium….

 

The incantation I’m referring to is, of course, Big Bro’ Bush’s calling black “white” in his most recent and shameless lie: “We Do Not Torture”…

 

War’s still our only enemy, and Bush is still waging it…with our children.

 

Best,

Dusty

11 14 05

 

Now for Leonard Pitts (who’s a whole lot sweeter than I am on the subject of Bush’s treason) and the breath of hope I—hopefully you– derive from reading the political prose of one who refuses to forget what America used to be because he still apparently believes we can restore and preserve that dream.

 

In My Opinion

We’ve slipped from the moral high ground

By Leonard Pitts Jr.

Well, I guess that settles that.

”We do not torture,” President Bush said on Monday.

Never mind all those torture pictures from Abu Ghraib.

Never mind all those torture stories from Guantánamo Bay.

Never mind the 2002 Justice Department memo that sought to justify torture.

Never mind reports of U.S. officials sending detainees to other countries for torture.

Never mind Dick Cheney lobbying to exempt the CIA from rules prohibiting torture.

”We do not torture,” said the president. And that’s that, right? I mean, if you can’t believe the Bush administration, who can you believe? No torture. Period, end of sentence.

But . . .

What does it say to you that the claim even has to be made?

SECRET PRISONS

Bush spoke in Panama on the last day of a five-day swing through Latin America to promote free trade. He was addressing controversy over secret CIA prisons in foreign countries. America, Bush reminded us in case it had slipped our minds in the 20 minutes since he last reminded us, is at war.

Guess that would explain all the dead people. And yes, war is not a nice business under the best of circumstances. It is less so when you fight a stateless enemy that strikes from shadows.

But we’ve been at war before, nasty, brutish wars, one war with civilization itself on the line, yet somehow, we always managed to be the good guy. That is not to say our soldiers and sailors and fliers were always good, immune from committing atrocities. It is not to say our officials were always good, untouched by dirty deeds done in clandestine ways. Finally, it is not to say our cause was always good, free from the taint of imperialism or expedience.

But we — the collective we, the official we, the face shown in light of day we — were the good guys.

It occurs to me that maybe I’ve larded that statement with so many caveats as to drain it of meaning. I’m not trying to be cute. Rather, I’m trying not to sound naive, while at the same time getting at something important:

We were the nation of moral authority, the nation of moral high ground, the nation that lectured other nations about human rights. And you know what? People believed us. They rush to our shores because there is freedom here, yes, because there is opportunity here, yes, but also because we stood for something, which was more than the tin-pot tyrants who ran their countries could ever say.

What a difference a presidency makes. ”We do not torture,” he said.

When I heard that, my first thought was a one-liner: He’s been torturing me for years.

But you know, this just ain’t funny.

BETRAYED VALUES

In the name of fighting terror, we have terrorized, and in the name of defending our values, we have betrayed them. We have imprisoned Muslims in America and refused to say if we had them, why we had them or even to provide them attorneys. We have passed laws making it easier for government to snoop into what you read, who you talk to, where you go. We have equated dissent with lack of patriotism, disagreement with treason.

And we have tortured.

Yes, Bush says we don’t do that kind of thing but, to paraphrase Groucho Marx, who you going to believe, him or your lying eyes?

We ignore our lying eyes, I think, because we are afraid, because we saw what happened Sept. 11 and we never want to see it again.

I’d never suggest we ought not fear terrorism. But we should also fear the nation we are becoming in response. We should fear the fact that we have abrogated moral authority, retreated from moral high ground, become like those we once chastised.

”We do not torture,” says the president.

I can remember when that went without saying.

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Black Hawk Stung “Al Quaeda attack…or Friendly Fire” Stop, look and listen, before yesterday’s news of another “Black Hawk” helicopter’s downing and another two American pilot’s dying flies past us faster than the Stinger Missile that shot them down yesterday (Oct. 2) at 8:15 AM (Holy Land time) over al-Bu ‘Ubayd area of our newly-annexed oil-producing territory known to the Western world since its British manufacturing as “Iraq”. A “sting” in grifter (con-artistry) parlance is where the bad guys take advantage of other bad guys by offering them the chance to be bad to others. That’s what just happened in Iraq, and it just cost us another 2 American lives and one more 5.9 Million-Dollar Black Hawk helicopter. Does that make us the “bad” guy? Read on and decide for yourself. Who and what caused the death of these two servicemen and the loss of yet another UH-60L, 5.9 Million-Dollar Black Hawk helicopter? Fox News will say “Al Quaida” terrorists did it. I say we did it. This and most of the other “Black Hawks” downed in Iraq are shot down with friendly fire…at least, with fire-power invented, manufactured and delivered into the hands of serial killers, by friends…by us in fact. Here’s the history we need to study and remember lest it keep repeating itself: The “shoulder launch” missiles in the Middle East theater are “Stinger” missiles. We manufactured these cunning helicopter heat-seeking robotic killers and gave them (through our C.I.A. covert war mongers) to the Mujahideen in Afghanistan in the years 1990-92 to humiliate and defeat the Russians and the communist government they left in Afghanistan after the Russian retreat. The C.I.A. tried to buy them back but we left between 300 and 600 of them there. The C.I.A. (America) gave these missiles to bin Laden and in effect to Al -Quaida and 10 years later took Russia’s place in the Middle East stupidly attempting to occupy two Moslem states where the people will forever gladly die before tolerating Infidel intruders. Al-Quaida, our former allies against “evil” Russia, now hub our “axis of evil” as we switch places with Russia in the effort to secure Iraq’s oil and secure (against) a pipeline pumping that crude milk and money-honey across Afghanistan into our old enemy’s cars and heaters. We’re sending up U.S. servicemen for Al Quaida skeet practice using our own Black Hawk shot-guns. When will we ever learn? If we can see how things like “Stinger” killing machines (WMD’s) come around because we make them go around, will we be smart enough to bury our nuclear war hawks before they come home to roost? Dusty Schoch High Point NC Nov. 3 (the Day after), 2005

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McLuhan’s Monster: The Merger of Media and Money Madness in America In the Wake of Babel’s Tower

 

Al Cambell’s recent essay observing how America’s addiction to having it’s news media and other appetites satisfied “now” at the expense of what we used to do: e.g., logically and responsibly plan for future events, such as predicted hurricanes, terrorist attacks and SUV-generated gas shortages, inspired me to reprise some earlier ruminations of my own on collateral topics: What’s really happening to America’s former “character” and what parts do our addictions to media and money play in the mix?

 

It’s not like we got to this point without fair warning. Some of the most profound truth in cultures is found in their mythology, both religious and secular; other truths are found collaterally in scientific disciplines. Two of these I see converging today are the Biblical story of Babel’s Tower, and Marshall McLuhan’s (media philosophic commentator) prophetic warnings about the emergence of the media in our culture…popularly called “McLuhan’s Monster” by academics since he expounded his caveats at mid Century Twenty…that “The Media were BECOMING THE MESSAGE.

 

I say there’s reason to believe that both prophesies have been fulfilled in recent times…both Babel’s terrible Tower and the birth and maturation of McLuhan’s Media Monster. Al Campbell’s article made me ponder bottom lines…common denominators. Behind the “Madness” of our war on terrorist phantoms in Iraq, and the near-anarchal para-apocalyptic mess we find ourselves in with Katrina and her sister in our Gulf, is there any semblance of a central flaw….a crack in the tectonic shelf of America’s former E-Plurbus Unum terra firma? I think there might be. I think Al came close with his synthesis of the situation as being defined by our creeping addiction to “immediate gratification”…both in our public and private lives. We want to SEE IT, EAT IT, UNDERSTAND IT, HAVE IT, OWN IT, FLAUNT IT, GO THERE, BE THERE ….N O W! And by God (primarily Judeo/Christian) if we can AFFORD IT, IS IT NOT OUR DIVINE RIGHT TO …HAVE IT?

OK, if we and our media and our politicians are all becoming critters of immediate impulse and gratification, is there anything in our chaotic courses that we can put our hands out and touch…and thereby have the hopes one day of manipulating back into place…into a place of sanity? I think, maybe so. What are the seeds of America’s Madness which if found and…perhaps genetically re-engineered (or maybe simply sprayed with Round-up) might provide saving grace for a Culture in an Increasing State of Shock?

 

I submit it’s a potentially fatal mixture of Media Might, and Corporate-Driven Money Madness. In short, McLuhan’s Monster and Human Hubris (Greed). In view of our shrinking ….AND WARMING….AND INCREASINGLY WIND-BLOWN WORLD, we’d better heed the seeds of warning.

 

MAD IN AMERICA
(Turning now to where the Rubber no longer
Hits the American Road)

 

What is, actually “Made in America” these days…? Only two things for sure- (1) those little foil stickers on the bottom of every thing we buy at WalMart that say “Made in China” and (2) the paper our Hong Kong-bound books are printed on – including the book with that old story of Babel’s Tower in it … that prophetic parable first uttered over 2000 years ago that today warns that if we humans keep trying to make things bigger and better (and easier), one day, our greedy and luxury-driven industrial revolution might lead us to a time and place when and where we can’t even understand what each other are saying. Are we there already?

 

Remember your “Personal Banker”? 
We are all now PIN-heads.

 

Have you recently tried calling your “personal banker” maybe to find out what’s in your checking account ? If so, you’ve discovered that , your “personal banker” has no name. In fact, he has no blood, bone or any other signs of sharing life with you. He is, in fact . . . IF you can remember your PIN number, and IF you find the toll-free number that allows you to call your local bank’s (mine is in in High Point NC) customer-service department in Tupelo (can we rename that ” cussed-service”, maybe?), and IF you can ferret your way through the punch-key code that robotic voice gives you, and IF you can recall and correctly key in the 10 sequential numbers of your account . . . a digital cyber-chip , made of silicon and silver whose quantum of cognitive quality makes Dick Cheney seem charismatic. By the end of this experience, you will have discovered that , though your dollars and bank account may in fact be “made in America”, they are serviced elsewhere… out there in the neverland of corporate cyberspace, somewhere north , east , south and/or west of the Tower of Babel.

 

“G.E. Brings Good Things to…New Deli”

 

A recent case in point. Sue – my very sweet and trusting step mom recently re-did her entire kitchen — Filled it completely– floor to ceiling with brand new appliances – all of which were , of course “Made in America” – - fine modern machines made by trusted old-brand National industrial heroes like Whirlpool , Matag and our own , still “bringing-good-things-to-life” U.S. o f A. icon, General Electric. Of course, Sue ordered all her new stuff from our equally home-grown home supply super-store in High Point (not Home Depot, but rather the “other one”).

 

When the remodeling was done and the delivery guys (who did actually have blood and bone) came and installed her new stove , refrigerator and dishwasher (all G.E.) , Sue was beside herself , surrounded by all that new glistening reaffirmation of American innovative technology … the wherewithal and embodiment of her lovely life of industrially-engineered comfort and leisure. Surrounded and buttressed by all her spanking-new American appliances , Sue wasn’t at all shaken initially when her dishwasher and refrigerator wouldn’t work, because, they failed to drain and cool (respectively or respectfully) , thinking she’d “just call down to the store and they’d come and fix things”. Memories of current “Maytag” commercials flashed on the screen of her nonchalant noggin as she dialed up her local appliance megastore.

 

She held her own while navigating through the computerized telephone maze which connected her finally to yet another flesh-and-blood primate. This “customer service” man , addressing the non-draining dishwasher first, said “No problem – let me connect you with the GE repair department”. Seconds later, a heavily -accented middle-eastern male voice comes on the phone and , after identifying himself and taking the dishwasher’s symptomology from Sue, informs her as follows (in an authoritative – but soothingly-exotic version of English that brought to mind the Gandhi character Ben Kingsley played in the Made-In-England movie of the same name): ” Your dishwasher (assures Gandhi) is not broken. Merely it is most probable dysfunctional temporarily because it is not used to its environment.” Whereupon, my step mom, of course says…”What????”…And the Gandhi-guy on the other end haltingly continues…. “Just leave it to be. When the machine is adjusted to new environment… a few days only it will take …. it will swallow the water and it will be fine…Not to worry.”

 

Sue, thought this pronouncement (not-to-mention pronunciation) a little strange, but when an appliance is made from parts emanating from a dozen venues around the globe…why be concerned if the repairman (and his remedy) seem a little . . . exotic? And maybe those various alien parts in her dishwasher needed time to adjust to the temperature and humidity-controlled climate of her new Carolina kitchen.

 

So , Sue resolves to give her dishwasher time to “adjust” to its new environment, and , calling the store again, addresses the problem of her refrigerator’s refusal to refrigerate. This time the very same virtual humanoid at the mega-store she talked to about the dishwasher answered and declared that Sue was “in luck”. This was the second call on a un-cool GE fridge he’d handled that week, and he knew just how to fix things. He had personally called the repair department for General Electric… “Did I tell you they’re in India ? ” , he asked her. “In India?” , says Sue – thinking “No wonder that guy sounded strange… and took so long to answer-we were talking on satellite .” “Why is the GE repair department in India?” , she asks, naturally. “Well, it’s not really the repair department– just the customer service part of it. GE can afford to have them talk to you long distance because they work for $10 a day in India, and the union workers in the States get paid more than that an hour.”

 

“I see”, says Sue, “but what about the fridge ?” “Oh, that one’s easy”, says the store guy. “I called and talked to the guy in New Deli myself when a customer last week had the same problem and the Indian guy just told her all she needed to do was put stuff in .” “Put stuff in?” , Sue pursues. “Yeah,” the guy continues, “The Indian fellow says that the new GE refrigerators won’t cool unless they sense that they have food inside them, and so you have to put your food in so they will decide to cool.” “Really”, quizzed an increasing incredulous North Carolinian customer named Sue, who by then couldn’t resist ruminating on the odds of an environmentally-traumatized dishwasher and an on-a-food-strike refrigerator having been delivered to her by an All-American General Electric Company on the same day.

”But don’t do what that other lady did”, continued the store guy , still relaying to Sue the New Deli guy’s remedy for her refusing refrigerator … “That lady tried to trick her refrigerator into working by filling it up with magazines… and it didn’t work.” By this time, Sue, feeling herself somewhat Alice-one-toke-over the-looking-glass-line , said, “Maybe it (the refrigerator) would prefer newspapers …. I have a lot of those”. And she wasn’t altogether kidding. Certainly the store guy wasn’t, because he responded , sincerely and artlessly , “No m’am. I’m sure that won’t work …The Indian guy said for sure the refrigerator needs food. You need to fill it with food and than call me back if the refrigerator won’t cool it.”

 

By now , any sane reader will think this story is being made up. That at least part of it has to be a joke. Sorry, my comfortable compatriots. The sad (if comical) story is , the story is true. Every weirdly worrisome word of it. As things turned out, my step mom, Sue, finally came out of the Indian ether and called General Electric’s corporate home office (some place…you never know where you’re actually calling these days). When the “all-American” (i.e., $18/hour) boys heard Sue’s story, they had the store send out union-card-carrying blood and bone American repairmen that very day, and within minutes, the fuse and o-ring required by the GE fridge and dish-washer were installed , and the rebellious machines were contentedly cooling and draining their food and water like GE and the Heavens had ordained.

 

But speaking of “ordained”: More than a comfortably few prophesies in the Good Old Book seem to be being ordained of late. Our blind, heedless greed and endless quests for affluence, leisure and dominance of our natural environment (not to mention our neighbors’) may have finally led us again to the top of that tottering tower of mythical Babel. Some how, to some degree, that filthy lucre (the Dollar) and perhaps increasing human laziness and narcissism are involved. But as far as who’s ultimately to blame (or to become responsible ) for this creepingly ubiquitous state of American affairs is a little harder to pin down. Maybe we can go back to that ancient Myth in Genesis (11:4-9) for clues. When mankind’s pride , heedless striving and ambition got to the point that he offended his maker, what did that Ultimate Authority (in the story) ultimately do? He made it impossible for men to continue building their structures- stopped them dead in their progressive tracks and scattered them to the four corners of the globe by …making them speak different languages…

 

Is that what all this . . . madness in American means? Has the ultimate cosmic authority commenced another remedial intervention in our collectively dysfunctional lives? If so, we need to be aware: Men, speaking in “different tongues” simply can’t help each other fix things. Over the phone, the internet, through the media , or at a Middle Eastern Summit. From the terrifyingly-toppled twin towers to my step mom’s tiny refrigerator, this trend poses a chilling question: Where is this shrinking world – this swelling separateness – this so-called “globalization” taking us? I don’t think we’re likely to find the answer in calling General Electric via New Deli. I think that , eventually , we’re going to have to look inward, and maybe take a few steps backwards , in the direction of a time and place where in fact, truly good things were brought to life …by Americans, for Americans . . . in America.

 

AMERICAN CORPORATIONS HAVE EXPORTED….AMERICA

 

Unsupervised, unsanctioned, unfettered corporate American corruption and greed buttressed by political collaboration and co-conspiracy and greed have brought us here. Hallibuton’s Pentagaon-machinated attack on Iraq was only the most recent in a long evolution in the Corporate scuttlings of the American ships of industry and state. Corporate piracy of the Enron ilk is but the tip of our Titanic ice berg of outlaw corporate fascism.

 

The Kevlar-lined suits at the top of all the corporate worm hills all have Harvard and MIT-trained MBA “margin men” blueprinting all their plans of corporate fleecing from the RJR-Nabisco “Barbarians at the Gate” to the still-unresolved scandals of Enron and on-going ravages of Cheney’s Halliburton.

 

Self-serving corporate management has exported substantially all of America’s jobs to China and has stolen untold quantities from the tills of our domestic companies and their workers’ retirement investments, not to mention our own Congressionally-pilfered Social Security funds. The solution offered by the Bush neocons is to punish those corporations with further corporate welfare and their criminal leadership with perpetual income tax cuts, and to continue buying products made in China with counterfeit U.S. Dollars.

 

The damage in terms of lost competence and capabilities we are reeping in this process is now trickling down like Reagan’s Republican economics even to the federal and local governmental bureaucracies responsible for the obliteration of New Orleans. The first ten thousand callers from that disaster area were in all likelihood put through by some automaton telephone robot to an emergency service assistant in New Deli.

 

McLuhan’s Monster:

 

The Media as Frankenstein Fabricator of
America’s (Fictionally) Monstrous Character

 

Because no one listened to Marshall McLuhan’s warnings about the way the media were changing the character of America, his worst prophesies have been ordained. The media have “become the message” as McLuhan frenetically forecast in the early 60′s.

 

But McLuhan was really ruing the unlocking of the barn door when the cattle had already gone…The alleged transmogrification of television was but a geometric expansion of what the film industry had already done to and for American “character”. A strong case could be made for the proposition that some predominantly Jewish immigrants invented the American “character” -and perhaps saved America and the free world in the process. These progenitive, essentially European, film artists immigrated America’s West Coast between the two wars, and for combined motives of self-preservation and prodding America away from its isolationism to become big-brother defender of the free world, created the image of America that united diverse populations of previously warring Irish, German, French, Italian, Spanish and African peoples into the image of…well, John Wayne. John Wayne’s character, as Maureen O’Hara, would subsequently proclaim to Congress, became America’s character – either commanding platoons of eager “Sea bees” or heroically assaulting the sands of Iwo Jima.

 

Up until the tandem threats of the Kiser and Hitler, America appeared to the rest of the world just as it was… a refuge for immigrant fugitives and rebels who followed European pilgrims to America for reasons as diverse as their genetic roots. Even before the first 4th of July, America had no “national character” other than the proud mongrel essence that eventually gave metropolitan melting pots like N.Y. City labels like “hell’s kitchen.” And because it was a haven for rebels and “rugged individualism”, America’s diversity spawned further diversity and rugged individualism. It took a depression and two world wars for America to acquire a “face” recognizable to the rest of the world, and the face was not established by traditional books or news print. The face of America assumed its unique character on the silver screens of Hollywood.

 

BEFORE TV, HOLLYWOOD WAS US

 

Without the images of John Wayne, Rosie the Riveter and similarly waspish Hollywood effigies of the American G.I. and fly-boy “Hero”, it is unlikely America would have learned to beat its mongrel heart with the strength and endurance it took to leap from the ashes of Pearl Harbor and storm the Beaches of Normandy on the way to Berlin’s final bunker. Certainly, to win the wars against the enemies of freedom, in America “all gave some, and some gave all”, but that clever and cohesive core of kosher movie makers artistically-and effectively– gave America and the world the first clear (if essentially-contrived) image of America’s “face”. Post his image today on the corner of any 50 culturally-distinct metropolises in the world, and in as many tongues they will salute “John Wayne”. The same cameras subsequently codified and exported America’s peacetime image in the equally waspish forms of Mickey Mantle and Marilyn Monroe.


THE MEDIA (TV) BECOMES THE MESSAGE
TV’S BOSSES-THE CORPORATIONS–CONTROL THE MESSAGE

 

McLuhan’s Monster is Born

 

But then came the mid-century emergence of Television, and Hollywood’s position as America’s image-artist was challenged. Actually, with the passing of the art/media torch from Hollywood to …ubiquitous Television, a cataclysmic conversion of American’s character occurred. The artistically-inspired face of America passed from the hands of fond and symbiotic Hollywood moguls to a menagerie of Mr.-Hyde-mad–monster TV producers (inanimate, corporate “networks”).

 

Before TV, the worst rebels Hollywood artists created for our-and the world’s-imitation and adulation were the relatively benign (if still waspish) bike-braving Brando, and switchblade-shwashbuckling James Dean. Following the sadly short Halcyon days of Ozzie and Harriot, our Loving Lucy and Mayberry’s mythically “simple” society, the artists who once controlled the evolution of America’s image were replaced…as was America’s morality itself, by dollar-driven corporations intent on fashioning whatever image of America their Neilson Ratings dictated. No longer were artists sitting around creating beautiful images of how things in America COULD be, if only we continued to love, and strive…Rather, writers and producers were being told to write what would sell sponsors’ product. Madison Avenue “margin men” came up with the catastrophic concept of “demography”…. “Don’t give them all a single image of truth and beauty they can rally round…Give them what sells.” At this point, America ceased evolving as an integrating culture and began disintegrating into demographically-dictated sub-cultures. Whitie could watch the Andy Griffith Show, and later the more realistic All in the Family, and the dollar-demographers would spin off Jeffersons for the blacks and Chico for the Hispanics. This part of the media paragigm shift from silver to cathode-ray screens was arguably salutary in that diversity had been the culturally primordial stuff from which the initial character of “America” had been mined by the minds and souls of those pioneer Hollywood movie makers who were truly the romancers of American’s mythically monolithic demeanor. Watching Carrol O’Connor struggle with the funny fruits of his own bigotry was …good for white and blacks, and watching the Jefferson’s discover that previously “white-type” power can corrupt…currently black Americans, was a sharpening experience at both ends of the diversity stick.

 

So, what part of McCluen’s sinister prophesy has been ordained in monstrous fashion by the American media, and how has this served to transmogrify America’s image of itself and the world’s image of America? The answer to this question would afford an answer to Michael Moore’s plaintive opening querry in Farenheit 911… “Has it all (from the election heist in Florida to the War in Iraq) been a dream? The answer is the same because the cause is the same. It was all a dream. There were no WMD’s and no bin Laden/Saddam connections. The lies were told and the media printed them, and the media’s message changed the face and character of America.

 

The power of the media to dictate the form and content of art has been pivotal in the evolution of America’s now Frankenstinian image. The cataclysm that has made this the reality is composit-a composit of the evolution of American citizen-driven democracy into an oligarchical corporate despotism, and the evolution of the media’s prime medium from silver screen to electron machine. The music industry provides an illustration in microcosm: The illustration is relevant, because the “sound image” of America has been almost as integral as its visual counterparts in providing the world its image of American character. Before syndicated corporations bought up the air waves, there were literally thousands of family-owned (human) broadcasting stations where an artist could be heard…and “discovered” by his naturally-selecting audience of empathetic ears. Now there are literally a handful of music monopolies and our radios now blast only what these musak moguls decide the public will hear. Our children are for the most part today in our ….cars. In the cars, are the radios. Six mega-companies dictate what comes over the air, and what comes is what sells. It’s no longer a matter of artistic discrimination, because the masses are given only six options, where, in the days of their parents, there were thousands. If Bob Dylan or Paul Simon were teenagers today, their music would perish in a New York or L.A. coffee house. Diversity is for the most part …dead…and if Darwin was even close to being right, and McLuhan only 5% on the money, diversity, a vital element in any system of successful evolution….is now missing from the equation by which our American character continues to evolve.

 

ARTISTIC EVOLUTION SCREACHES TO HALT

 

In the place of diversity today, the media gives us various forms of “non-art”. On the visual side, the “reality show” epitomizes the Frankenstein-monster evolution of America’s media-spun character. The corporations currently dictating television programming have discovered that it is “dollar efficient” to wholly eliminate art from television, as, appealing to the baser audience instincts, sexual infidelity, humiliation and mahem pay greater dividends. Thanks to the “dollar efficiency” of the Jerry Springer paradigm, the rest of the world is now forming its image of America by watching its perversity in the form of wholly artless “reality TV”. In place of former art and diversity, the American media has put America’s perversity on parade…because it sells. During the crucial years the Al Qaeda was making its early sorties into the basement of the Twin Towers, the media busily enabled a lame Republican party to effectively demean and ultimately displace an American president-along with his party- by publishing video and audio tapes of his extramarital dalliance.

 

THE CORPORATE MESSAGE IS … WAR

 

When Al Qaeda finally succeeded in toppling the twin towers, a media-conscious president was more concerned with completing his TV Video op in a grade school reading class than contending with the mortal enemies of Amerians under attack. Bush’s inspired speech before Congress, and the entire “War On Terrorism” were, in practical terms, products of a media-driven society. Bush didn’t write his speech, or even formulate the globally-encompassing policies pronounced therein… Rather, he read–as any other media “talking head–from a teleprompter screen….a speech written by a media-savy speech writer ( David Frum), dictated in terms by a corporate-driven adviser named Richard Pearl. In turn, what force drove Richard Pearl, to drive David Frum to drive the teleprompter tech to put all those words of war before our Congress, and before us through, again, our TV screens? … The clear answer to this rhetorical question is, of course the Corporations, like our V/P’s own Halliburton has, through support of the Neo-Con Military-Lobbied and complexed Republican party has led us to a war for urgently-needed oil-and hense-dominance in Iraq and ultimately the entire Middle East.

 

The answer to this final question provides us both a conclusion and a cruelly ironic modicum of hope as we wind up our search for America’s image , and how it’s managed to devolve from John Wayne to a Machiavellian (or Straussian) Frankenstein monster in a short half century… The media. When Bush began to market his war in Iraq as a war on Al Qaeda-connected terrorism and WMD’s, the media published this corporate-contrived fiction without due circumspection or question, because the story sold.

 

SURVIVAL OF FREE (PAPER) PRESS PROVIDES VESTIGE OF HOPE

 

But, although the TV medium (E.G. Neo-Con Republican run Fox) has enabled the transmogrification of the America’s image from heroic to monstrous…more benign (greener) branches of the media tree may well have started reversing the process and restoring America’s image to one we can live, and even grow with. For example Vanity Fair, in July of 2003, published Sam Tanenhaus’ avante-guarde revelations concerning the Cabal which successfully managed the silent coup in our Pentagon which led us to wage our Neo-con Zionist-inspired wars in Afghanistan and Iraq on the pretext of declaring a war of reprisal against terrorists.

 

As said before, lies were told and the media printed them, and the media’s message dynamically changed the face and character of America. But the change in America’s perceived character was based upon lies, and therein lies our room for hope. The change in America’s true character has been as fictional as the lies and misinformation on which the perceived change was founded. When and as the media discover and collectively reveal the truth, America’s true character and face can-and will-emerge.

 

Vanity Fair’s bellwether article courageously published the evidentiary core of Michael Moore’s mainstream movie production, which (film) despite neo-conservative attempts to stifle its broadcasting, has succeeded in giving America a facelift, beginning with a twenty-minute standing ovation in France, and sallying forth with box-office attendance by Americans sufficient to bode a renaissance of truth and diversity in America, and the restoration of her former character and destiny to join and perhaps eventually again lead the international brotherhood of states and souls in search of freedom, global harmony and peace.

 

RAGE WITH US

 

So, Freedom-remembering and loving Americans everywhere, unite with Al Campbell and me. Pick up your pens and your computer key boards and rage against the lying of the Right. Even with Bush’s neo-con packed Court, we’ve still got freedom of the press. The paper press remains–now expanded by the www Internet-as our final vestige and buttress of truth and hope for remediation. One day, God willing, McLuhan’s monster will be felled and the twin towers of American industry and productivity will be re-designed by one of our brave and willing pens.

 

Dusty Schoch
Sept. 24, 2005

 

Posted in America, American Economy, Capitalism, Political | Leave a comment by Editors Posted in Political | Leave a comment by Editors Posted in Political | Leave a comment by Editors

Peeling the Onion… Is Nuclear War at the Core? The New Sino-Russo “Alliance” U.S. as  Unifying “Common Enemy”

 

This article contains first: alarming excerpts from Aljazerra and LA Times News artlcles (with web citations) on the subject of Russia’s and China’s recent jointly-operated war games, along with China’s threats of launching nuclear war if the U.S. actively opposes its Taiwan takeover (if any takes place).  Following those media excerpts are letters of shared alarm and comment exchanged by B.E.A. writer/founder, Dusty Schoch (author of the here-posted “Peeling the Onion of War…”) and B.E.A. correspondent, Professor  Leonard Carrier, Ph.D (Stanford, ’67) , Professor of Philosophy Emeritus, University of Miami.*

Algazeera News:

“First Sino-Russo war games begin”

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/E15F03BD-6A03-4C77-AB34-5FDD34764D26.htm
Wednesday 17 August 2005, 4:55 Makka Time, 1:55 GMT

 

“Russian navy ships and long-range bombers are heading to a Chinese peninsula jutting into the Yellow Sea for the first-ever joint military exercise between the two countries.

 

While the exercise involves a mock intervention to stabilise an imaginary country riven by ethnic strife, Moscow and Beijing say the exercise starting on Thursday – set to include some 10,000 troops from land, sea and air forces – are not aimed at any third country.”

 

LA TIMES:

China, Russia Flaunt Forces in Joint Military Maneuvers

 
11:35 AM PDT, August 16, 2005 latimes.com <http://www.latimes.com/> : World News <http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/>

By Mark Magnier and Kim Murphy, Times Staff Writers

 
“BEIJING — As they prepare to join forces for their largest military exercise in modern history, China and Russia have billed this week’s maneuvers as a cooperative fight against terrorism. But they’re also sending a message to Washington, analysts say: Don’t push the two former Cold War adversaries too far.

 

The eight-day exercise, which is set to begin Thursday, will be the most extensive since Beijing and Moscow fought together against U.S.-led forces during the Korean War half a century ago. Originally billed as a modest exercise when proposed last year, it has grown in scope to include nearly 10,000 troops using a range of sophisticated weapons systems….”

 

From the WWW:            http://chinascope.org/july05/innews02.pdf…..

 

“Chinese general warns US over attack”: By Alexandra Harney in Beijing and Demetri Sevastopulo and Edward Alden in Washington
Published: July 14 2005 21:59 | Last updated: July 15 2005 00:03

 

 

China is prepared to use nuclear weapons against the US if it is attacked by Washington during a confrontation over Taiwan, a Chinese general said on Thursday.

 

‘If the Americans draw their missiles and position-guided ammunition on to the target zone on China’s territory, I think we will have to respond with nuclear weapons,” said General Zhu Chenghu’ “….

 

DUSTY’S LETTER TO LEN CARRIER 8/26/05

 

Len,

 

 I’m afraid it’s not joke. China and Russia are reported today to have combined over 7000 troops in a joint military operation. It got all  of ¾ inch  coverage in my newspaper. I pulled this (the above) from the net. LA Times 17 hours ago.  700 missles are aimed at Taiwan;  Direct threats of nuclear war if we defend Taiwan. Russia and Chinese troops in joint tactical maneuvers; Bush again asleep at the switch.  We’ve finally managed to re-wed Russia and China through their common enmity…of us.  The only war that can take place between us and them is nuclear, and the only nuclear war possible is preemptive.  Russia and China together could survive a U.S. retaliation…with an efficaciously thinned population.

 

You’re the philosopher, Len. What are you thinking and feeling as the world is going mad, and madly toward nuclear armegeddon?

 

I’ll attach the tact  I’m going to take on my Reverse Jihad proposal-i.e. “Peeling the Onion to the Core and Declaring Peace”.  I don’t know anything to do but write.  I’ve contacted the Interfaith Alliance (interfaithalliance.cor) and the World Conference of Religions for Peace. (WCRP.org)  and find that they work together. My friend (High Point Attorney Ray Bretzman) suggested the Alliance, and I am in the process of sharing with them… “The Onion…” proposal for peace, and calling on them for assistance in its initiation.  Politicians are not going to do a damned thing to avert war in the Middle or far East.

 

Maybe the clerics can.  In any case, that’s where I’m going to throw my energies at this point.

 

Best, Dusty

 

PS Let me know what you think of my onion peeling.  Don’t be nice. If you have a better idea, share it. 

 

LEN CARRIER’S RESPONSE TO DUSTY 8/27/05

 
Dusty,

 

    Thanks for sending your thoughts on the historical peeling of the onion. You’re right, of course, that the persecutors and the persecuted exchange places in the dance of history.  Those in power, whoever they are, always seem to abuse that power.  Social Darwinists would just shrug and say that it’s just “nature, red in tooth and claw” being applied to human relationships, and that we can’t escape our genetic heritage–even if it means the destruction of civilization.

 

    Still, as David Hume noted, human nature not only contains elements of the serpent, but also of the dove.  If you took a poll and asked ordinary people whether they preferred peace or war, I’d bet that 95% would opt for peace.  Except for fighting in self defense, most of us don’t want to hurt other people.  So why do we do it?  I put the blame squarely on governments that say and do anything to remain in power.  There’s no difference on that score among the U.S., Russia, China, Israel, or any other country.  Everything they do, they do in the name of self-interest.  And, in doing so, they usually get things horribly wrong because they are short-sighted about their respective interests.  So you’re right that you can’t depend on the politicians to keep those interests from clashing.  They can’t see the forest for the trees.

 

    Your alternative is to form an alliance of religious leaders.  There are difficulties I see with this approach, although it’s certainly better than that of depending on our political leaders.  First, there’s the problem that religions are usually called on to support the existing political structure.  With a few notable exceptions, Hitler’s Germany had the support of organized religion in that country.  Today in the United States, religion is being used by the Bush administration to support his so-called “war on terror.”  Second, I have doubts about the power of a religious alliance to get things done.  Pope John Paul spoke out strenuously against our invasion of Iraq–to no avail.  In other words, the moneyed, corporate interests got their way.  It doesn’t help when the main-stream media falls into lock-step with the administration and cherry-picks the news.  In the case of Iraq, it was a systematic job of brain-washing the American public so that those in power could do what they wanted.  Third, there is also the difficulty of getting leaders of different religious movements to agree to work for peace together.  It doesn’t help for Franklin Graham to call Islam “an evil religion,” and it’s just crazy for Pat Robertson to call for Hugo Chavez’s assassination–even though I’m sure that many members of his 700 club would secretly agree with him.

 

    I hate to sound pessimistic, but I don’t see much to be happy about in the present world situation. That doesn’t mean I’m giving up trying to add my voice to others, such as yours and Dan’s, in trying to inject some rationality into the national and international debate.  It doesn’t help that our government is one in which corporate interests call the shots. And when big business and the government work together to rule the country, that’s the definition of ‘fascism’.  What I’m counting on is that ordinary people will finally speak with a common voice and tell the politicians–both Republicans and Democrats–that they’re tired of the lies, tired of the killing, tired of the fat-cats running things, tired of the posturing and threats, tired of preventive wars, tired of the ballooning deficits, and tired of the pandering journalists and TV talking heads.  When that day comes we might elect leaders whose forte is diplomacy and not threats–that’s if we haven’t killed one another off by then.

 

    By the way, I think that those war maneuvers involving Russia and
China, and the missiles pointed at Taiwan, are a direct consequence of our own bellicose foreign policy.  If the Chinese think that we are now going to engage in preventive wars, then they want to be ready for it.  I personally think that China is going to settle its differences with Taiwan without a fight; but I also believe that if Taiwan declares its independence, then the Chinese will retaliate in some aggressive fashion.  That’s one fight I don’t think we should get involved in.  The Chinese have long considered Taiwan as part of China (the other leg of the chicken–the first being Hong Kong).

 

I won’t give up on hoping that your Interfaith Alliance project bears fruit.     Keep up the good fight. -

 

Len

 

*(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. This is Dr. Carrier’s first contribution to Democrats.write and we collectively and sincerely hope he will grace us with many more. )

 

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THE ONION OF WAR… PEELING IT TO THE CORE AND DECLARING PEACE

Although history is one of our greatest teachers, and though mastering it affords us the opportunity to keep it from repeating itself, I think that history in the final analysis is like the onion. The more you peel off layers looking for truth, the more layers of former illusion you will discover. Finally, it seems, as you peel down the layers of history or science to discover the core of “truth” within, the cores turn out to be alive and growing, and as such, are incapable of exact measurement or analysis.

 

In our life time, for example, the Jews have been victims of the holocaust of WWII and a myriad of other travails and persecutions. Peel the onion of their history down to their origins (their own Genesis/Exodus/Leviticus accounts) and it appears the original tribes of Israel were among the world’s first genocidal peoples, who, under the license and directive of their “God”, entered into lands occupied by others whom they serially and systematically slaughtered on their holy trek to secure and dominate the real estate promised them by their God in a special covenant which excluded all but them.

 

Displaced and homeless Jews persecuted in Europe displaced-and rendered homeless–as much as 85 percent of the resident Islamic population of the region which became the State of Israel in 1948, a state formed by an ad-hoc caucus in which none of the displaced Islamic residents had a single delegate.

 

The citizens of the United States were liberators and saviors of Europeans in 1945, but two hundred years before were “insurgents” who murdered the agents and soldiers of the ruler to whom they had sworn fealty. During the two centuries before that, they invaded , murdered, imprisoned or otherwise displaced scores of native American cultures, all in the names and sakes of their primarily Christian cultures and creeds.

 

Bin Laden is a C.I.A. ally, trainee and protégé in America’s covert alliance with Afghani insurgents in 1982 and the heart of Evil’s Axis when he remains allied with those same insurgents as they turn their war-frenzied gaze from the retreating Russian infidels to the incoming infidels…those increasingly-militant allies of Israel…you guessed it…oil-drilling, sheik-hand-holding, wealth and resource-seizing America. Us.

 

Saddam is American’s ally and oil-bargaining buddy in 1980 and our arch enemy in ’93, and moreso (allegedly) in 2003.

 

The “peeled onion” point: Read history long enough and there are no consistently “good” or “evil” entities among the several nations and peoples contending with one another. The “liberator” of today is the aggressor of tomorrow.

 

The United States built its seminal wealth by stealing assets of aboriginal cultures and subsequently developing those assets and resources by the use of slave labor. At the end of this growth process, and the civil war to humanize and anneal it, America became strong enough to act as liberator of the free world, and twice within a single century. With that success came the recognition, the gratitude and indebtedness of the rest of the world, and with it the power no other nation had to this point in time ever attained. The question yet unanswered by history’s perennially-peeling onion is… Will America’s near absolute power wind up corrupting America absolutely?

 

Every nation — like every individual human–when viewed chronologically (through significant time in their historic “lives”) is a patchwork quilt. There are some pretty and “good” patches, and some ineptly-sewn, sloppy and even ragged patches. The moral of the American movie (“The Making of an American Quilt”, starring Wynonna Ryder) was quite beautiful: Let’s judge each other as we do our communally-sewn patchwork quilts-not on the basis of any individual patch, but on the basis of whether, taking it as a whole, on a cold and dreary winter’s night when we wrap it about our shoulders…does it keep us warm?

 

Saint Francis of Assisi put it poignantly when he confessed there was no way he could ever have come to be viewed as “saintly” had he not first lived as one of the world’s most reprehensible sinners.

 

If America in this Middle Eastern conflict, or more broadly, in its apparently increasing determination to condemn and wage war on Islamic peoples for the criminal acts of some of their radical fundamentalists, has gone astray as a peace-loving nation, America as a nation is not necessarily lost. American and all peoples and nations are better viewed in the contexts of the sum of their historically mosaic parts. It’s not only what we’ve done that will define us in the future, but rather what we do today and hereafter. The American Quilt, like the onion, continues to grow even as I write.

 

The point I was hopefully leading up to here is this: Some time, somewhere along the karmic-patchwork progression of history we’ve got to get off the wagon of cause and effect, climb down from the pulpit of “who threw the stone first” and simply draw a line in the sand and say this: “It doesn’t matter who threw the stone first. There will be no more stones thrown. From this point on, there will be no preemptive aggression. Men may defend their lives, but they will defend with the use of force only after every means of international diplomacy and peaceful resolution has been exhausted. They will be intolerant of nothing but intolerance and untruth. They will cease justifying aggression in the present with the aggression of their opponents in the past.”

 

We must unite in a cease fire. And finally, if the source or seeds of the problems of aggression are centered or being fostered within the walls of religious institutions and ideologies, then that is where the peace effort must be focused and exerted. If a Jihad exists within Islam which advocates the taking of innocent lives, then the Jihad must by some means be extinguished. If a plan is underway within the walls of either Judaism or Christianity (or both in conjunction) to fulfill putative Biblical prophesies of Armageddon’s end-time wars in order to either lay the way for the second coming of a prophet or procure by force land reportedly promised to Jews and/or Christians of which they are not presently and legally seized, then the plans for actively ordaining such prophesies must by some means be extinguished.

 

We will not solve the problems causing wars by assigning unreal causes (religious prophesy) for those wars. If a cow is trampling an innocent child, that cow needs to be restrained, albeit sacred or sacrificial. If there are Jihads or undeclared wars of Zionist ambition (or either Armageddon or Rapture fulfillment) underway, then those responsible must be approached, counseled and dealt with.

 

But to whom do we turn for such a change? Will it be our politicians who dare to “meddle” with the onion’s core (theological/theocratic) problems within Islam, Christianity and Judaism that may be the prime movers or at least co-efficient causes of the conflict in Middle East? If in fact anti-Western Jihad and anti-Islamic Zionist sermons are being preached in the Mosques, Maddrasses, Churches and Synagogues of our world, will our politicians be willing or able to initiate any meaningful change, given the historically inveterate jealousies and divisions between clerical and secular powers within diverse cultures? Tony Blair’s efforts in this regard in Great Britain following the terrorist bombings of the subways have thus far backfired and been condemned by Islam as failed efforts on the part of a secular infidel to pervert the interests of Islam for the benefit of the Satanic U.S./G.B. coalition.

 

But it is clearly the subversion of fundamentalists of the several faiths by the demagogic secular leaders of presently warring cultures that has led us into this war with terrorism. Bin Laden is essentially a secular power-mongering demagogue and opportunist who became a successful terrorist by perverting Islam and manipulating impressionable, depressed and devout fundamentalist Islamic followers to become tools for his secular agenda, and as such to perform as self-sacrificial “I.C.B.M”‘s (intercontinental ballistic Muslims) against the West. It is widely believed in the non-Western world that the Bush leadership has harnessed, through similar Machiavellian stealth, the fundamentalist Christians of America to falsely perceive (and thus elect and support) him as a “Christian warrior” in spite of the fact that the same oxymoronic posture was first assumed by Adolph Hitler in 1938.

 

Given the efforts on the parts of secular (political) leaders of both sides of the terrorist struggle to exploit their respectively-faithful fundamentalist supporters and activists, it is naïve to look to politicians to institute or mediate any détente or separate accord of peace among the religious leaders of their respective constituencies and/or armed holy warriors.

 

I say, therefore, it is the responsibility of our religious leaders, quite independently of our politicians, military personnel and secular leaders, to assume the responsibility. It is their clear and present duty to weave and take up the banner and find a way to unite with one another, collaborate with one another, cooperate with one another and declare peace with one other. Innocent people are dying in Iraq, England and around the world. Thousands perished on American soil on 9/11. This killing violates shared tenets of Christianity, Judaism and Islam alike. The leaders of all faiths have independently agreed and declared as much, but they have not yet done so together, in pro-active concert with one another. They have all espoused peace from pulpits ensconced in secure and separate quarters within the militarily-gated communities of their secular kings, ayatollas, presidents, prime ministers and their respective nation states.

 

Bin Laden’s version of Islam is false and itself a perversion and sin against Islam. The great majority of Islam’s clerical authority has openly and formally condemned terrorism carried out in the name of Islam. Our attack on Iraq was a violation of Christian and Jewish Commandment and is clearly the antithesis of Christ’s clear teaching; but where-anywhere-from the Vatican to the Church of England to the Southern Babtist Convention–is there any righteous Christian condemnation of Americas aggression? Where in the Christian faith, in the entire institutional “Body of Christ” is there evidence of anything but endorsement and complicity in America’s admittedly preemptive aggression in the Middle Eastern Holy Land of Christians, Jews and Islam

 

The followers of Christ, Mohammed and Islam all have a common progenitor and patriarch. His name was Abraham. Although they have different names for Him, they worship a common God, because they all agree there is but the One.

 

Mark Twain once said (ironically in retrospect), “Everybody talks about the weather, but no one does anything about it.” Amazingly enough we now have. No one disputes global warming presently exists. There’s apparently nothing humans can’t accomplish with their God-given inventiveness and collective ingenuity.

 

By the same space-age token, there was once a time one might have safely and sanely said, “let’s not worry about history, because earthly life and history will go on…like an onion, which–even while one is peeling it–may continue to grow.” But since Einstein and our ability to harness-and unharness-the atom, it appears there is definitely a way people can today stunt and potentially terminate the growth of all life on their planet, including that precious onion of man’s historic progress hidden in his larder, carefully wrapped up in possibly the finest patchwork quilt in the universe.

 

But-before that happens–I propose an international summit for the negotiation and drafting of a united Global Declaration of Peace by the clerical leaders of Christianity, Islam, Judaism and all the other religions of world. We know where our Captains of War are today. But where are our Princes of Peace? What are they waiting for? I hope and pray it’s not simply Armegeddon and/or the Rapture. If and/or when God might intend those events to occur, He certainly has not appointed any of us to engineer or pro-actively pursue them.

 

Come forth, Billy and Franklin Graham– your pulpit was not built, nor does it belong, in the White House. Come forth Benedict XVI; the Vatican is no longer Papal puppet to any throne. Come forth Rabbis and Imans; Come clerical descendants of Isaac and Ishmael– your Sharons and sheiks have no final sway in what you must do and say.

 

You-all of you-hold…and manipulate…the theological needles and threads of sermons being woven in the patchwork quilts of your pulpits…not Bush, not bin Laden, not Sharon, and not any of the secular leaders of this world.

 

With those “theological needles and threads”, what practical stitching must be accomplished-as a practical minimum-by these brave clerics of our revolutionarily new world order of peace? Without attempting to cite the plentitude of peaceful statutes and verses within the Old and New Testaments and Koran, the necessary ingredients are…elementary:

Declaring Peace:
Practical Patch Sewing at the Onion’s Core

(I.C.P. Axioms, Corollaries and Addenda)

The Intercontinental Congress of Peace (I.C.P.) will be assembled for the pre-declared purpose of adopting and integrating into its Interfaith Declaration of Interdependence and Peace (I.D.O.I.A.P.), inter alia, both a pledge to maintain and abide in peace, and a definition and joint condemnation and universal clerical prohibition of “terrorism” as hereinafter defined, all according to the following axiom, corollaries and addenda:

 

A X I O M : TERRORISM IS ANATHEMA and refers to: one human’s intentionally injuring or killing another human except in self defense.

 

F i r s t C o r o l l a r y : Attacks on either military personnel or civilian populations are never justified as “self defense” unless those personnel or populations are at the same time themselves actively engaged in the process of committing terrorism. Accordingly, all pre-emptive injurious attacks on human beings constitute terrorism, and this includes attacks on non-human targets that injure humans in the process.

 

S e c o n d C o r o l l a r y: The attacker is deemed to have intended the natural consequences of his acts. If a skyscraper 120 stories high is attacked and destroyed after the attacker has inspected and found vacant every room and closet therein save one which was inadvertently overlooked, he is a terrorist if a single human in the unfound closet is injured.

 

T h i r d C o r o l l a r y : Before the conclusion of the Intercontinental Congress of Peace, an Interfaith Declaration of Interdependence and Peace should be signed by all Clerics in attendance, who immediately upon adjournment will return to their places of religious worship and spiritual communion and preach and disseminate by all means conceivable and available the sermons and resolutions that peace has been declared and shall thereafter be invariably the required behavior of all members of the various religions with permanent excommunications from their respective bodies of all who thereafter violate the collective, Interfaith Declaration of Interdependence and Peace.

 

F o u r t h C o r o l l a r y : An invariably integral portion of each sermon will be recitations and avowals that the Clerics of all the religions assembled at the I.C.P. were responsible for the united adoption of the Declaration of Interdependence and Peace, and as such, that both they and their faithful following are perpetually entitled to all other faith’s according to both them and their partners in faith: peace, love, friendship, truth, respect, and inclusion in prayers.

 

F i f t h C o r o l l a r y : All clerical leaders who have attended the I.C.P. and signed the I.D.O.I.A.P. have walked the walk. It is thereafter mandatory that each of them, for the rest of their lives continue to both walk the walk and talk the talk of peace. Part of that duty may involve acts of civil disobedience in instances where secular leaders thereafter commit acts of terrorism or attempt to induce others to perform acts of terrorism.

 

A d d e n d u m: Consonant with its letter and spirit, it is recalled and noted that America’s first and foremost collective resolution, its July 4, 1776 Declaration of Independence, was itself an act of civil disobedience. It is suggested that that which at the time was deemed moral and just for the sake of taxes and equal sway in British Parliament, is as well, if not clearly more compellingly founded (by the declaring consensus) upon the will and recorded commandments of infinitely higher authorities and allegiances.

 

You do not need the blessing, authority or permission of any politician or statesman in your midst. If declaring and waging wars and defending their peoples in wars is their primary focus and duty, declaring peace is yours. You do not need the protection of their warriors. Buddha did not seek the permission or protection of the warring lords in his homeland. Gandhi did not seek refuge. Martin Luther King stepped to the front of the many lines he drew in the deserts of bigotry and hatred. Moses and Mohammed heeded only a single voice, which was certainly not secular. Jesus Christ made of His life and blood a sermon of peace, and rendered none of it to Caesar.

 

It is your sermons-united in peace– that will save us from this war…not their swords.

 

Which of you will hear and heed this call to come forth and enlist as representatives of your faith and as pilgrims of peace and attend the world’s first Intercontinental Congress for Peace? Which will sojourn to Switzerland and subscribe to the world’s first Interfaith Declaration of Interdependence and Peace?

 

Which of you will come forward (and to Switzerland) in response to this challenge and call and be first to call the rest to a summit of peace among a coalition of clerics in the world? Which of you will become signatories of the world’s first Declaration of Peace?

 

War is the only enemy

Dusty Schoch
August 15,2005

 

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