White Phosphorous Bubble

There is the "news" we get here in the bubble, and then there is the news that the rest of the world gets. We wonder "why they hate us," we ponder the resistance of "Old Europe" to our foreign policies and we wallow in the half-truths and take solace in the hidden from view implications of our American Empire.

We, as a people, just don't know.

The assessment of Americans by the rest of the world usually puts us into one of two types.

One is that we are hypocrites, vulgar in our tastes and appetites, willing to kill and consume indiscriminately, preaching love of the Lord and democracy while breaking all of the Commandments and political principles we espouse. We are selfish, self-important and self-serving. Ultimately, we say whatever it takes to get whatever we want.

Two is the forever smiling bumpkin...unreflective, childish in our tastes and appetites, unaware of the killing that goes on in our name. Our undereducated, simplistic minds cannot process the complexities of the world. We preach backwards religious principles that put us squarely in the 14th Century. We reject science and philosophy, wallow in anti-intellectualism, revel in adolescent sex and violence. Ultimately, we are kinda stupid. Fat, happy and stupid, that is.

Of course, we can find Americans who fit either category. But the truth is more pernicious. Americans are simply not told. Not told the truth...the truth about most everything. Those who know really have to work at...seek it out...read the foreign press and watch foreign news. They have to understand "psychological operations," and how news is created in editorial meetings. They have to study American history and read book after book. They cannot rely on public education to equip them...not anymore. They have to look beyond the bubble.

That bubble is being pressed upon by an Italian documentary on the use of a chemical weapon in the massacre of Fallujah. We used new, improved napalm--white phosphorous. Called "Willy Pete" by soldiers, it disperses a fiery, deadly cloud...burning everyone it touches, cannot be extinguished by water due to it's acidic, chemical composition and blisters the lungs. It melts flesh. It asphyxiates those who simply breath it's toxic cloud. It was used in the attack on Fallujah.

Now, this is news to most Americans...that is, if they see the footage now circulating on the web--not on any US media outlet, of course. And that's the problem. Americans who don't seek it out will never see this footage...of women and children burned by the chemical agent used throughout the Fallujah "campaign." They will not see the charred flesh, the unburned clothing. It often burns flesh, but not fibers. They will not see the dead animals...choked by the clouds of Willy Pete that never burned them. They don't know about the civilian causalities. They do not know that it is a chemical weapon at all. They don't know.

The world knows. Iraqis know.

Now, it was reported at the time...mostly by Dahr Jamail...an independent American reporter who has done the best, unembedded work coming out of embedded Iraq. Only those who turned to alternative media knew it when it happened. Now the facts are out there...swirling around Europe and the world. Still, the mainstream media will not show the footage and the horrific consequences of our invasion of Iraq. Causalities are hidden. Civilian death numbers are under-reported...but, then again, the Pentagon ordered Iraqis to stop counting civilian deaths long ago. We can't see the returning coffins, or any real footage of the daily battles, the wounded and killed that pile up every night.

How would a good, God-fearing Midwesterner react to this footage? We will never know, because the media is complicit. It is mostly useless, even after the steroid injection of Katrina. Since the end of Vietnam, the media has slowly morphed into a propaganda arm of the military-industrial complex, of the pharmaceutical-industrial complex, of the prison-industrial complex. This invasion had a non-permeable membrane around it. The bubble was completed during the 2000 Election, and the truth doesn't seep into the mainstream bubble anymore. The world knows about the 2000 Election. About the oil pipeline in Afghanistan. And on, and on, and on.

Americans are basically good people. I've traveled enough to know that. But they just don't know. They are not given the facts or the awful truth about the outcomes of their consumption, their votes and their leaders' decisions. They don't know how their own political system works. They just don't know. The people who should be telling them don't. Mainstream journalists have access to the same information the alternative media does, but they ignore it. They rely on political leaders to set the story, to make the news agenda. They follow. They wave the flag. And the bubble grows.

If you know, and you are an American...please tell someone who doesn't. It's all we have...to tell each other, to send links and make copies. The bubble will not be popped by a dozen Italian documentaries. It has to be compromised from within. Watch the footage...send it to someone who wouldn't even know it exists. Let's pop this damn bubble.

The Memorial to End All Memorials?

The Wall. The Vietnam War memorial. Whenever I go down to The Mall that long, angled epitaph to a tragic war calls me, and brings me to tears. To my mind, it's the only monument worth visiting over and over again. It never fails to cause reflection...whether is my face on the shiny black surface, or my mind pondering the sad, almost criminal, history of American warmaking since the end of World War II.

I'm not too old, but I do recall the controversy surrounding the design of the monument...a stark, simple construction that did not celebrate the war. Nor did it judge it. A design by a young Asian American woman--Maya Lin. A design that attracts scores of visitors. A memorial that invites them to pull the name of a fallen loved one off the wall with a piece of paper and a pencil. A memorial that invites reflection.

The most striking feature of the monument is the descent...from the high point of the walkway downwards, deeper and deeper against an ever-towering list of names. Eventually, the names dwarf you. You feel small against the backdrop...a roll call of lives lost in a war that had no victory, a conflict that was never declared...a fight we didn't have to pick. A war that was started by a Texan, based on bogus claims of dangerous attacks in the Gulf of Tonkin. Of jingoism about a decades-long war against evil communists who wanted to end our way of life. A war that made military contractors rich...like his buddy's company, Bell Helicopter. A war that eviscerated a generation.

This latest visit came two days after Veteran's Day. Flowers and wreaths abounded. The pall was palpable. And I cannot help but well-up each time I see someone searching for a name...finding it...and beginning the process of taking back the simple reminder of who they were...taking a copy of their name off the wall. But the tears flow more when I think about the names not on that wall. The names of the 1.5 million Vietnamese who died. Of the women and children, of the Christmas Day Bombing and Rolling Thunder. Or the "Strategic Hamlets" that had to be "destroyed so they could be saved."

I am an American. I mourn the loss of fellow Americans. I mourn the loss of the 2000-plus who've died in another lie-driven, profiteering adventure...this time in Iraq. But I think, too, of the 100,000 Iraqis who've died. The radiation they'll have to live with from depleted uranium ammunition, and the generations who will never forget the use of white phosphorous weapons.

We got lucky with the Vietnamese. They have centuries of practice fighting off invaders. They are forgiving given the circumstances. But we were a passing fad compared to centuries of dealing with the Chinese. Somehow, I think our luck has run out. I cannot forgive our "leaders" for sending our countrymen to die, and I don't expect the Iraqis will forgive us anytime soon for demolishing their country, their lives and torturing their brothers and fathers and sons.

The Wall calls me every time. This time, it sank in that we refuse to look at this memorial for what it is...a caution...a warning...a marker that will stand as a testament to the repetitive cycle of a history unexamined.

Coincidences, Conspiracy Theories and You

Conspiracy Theory. It's the epithet par excellance of our modern political environment. It's crushes debate, walls off the truth into an intellectual ghetto and undermines any collection of facts that point to nefarious decision-making by those in power.

Funny, though, that every day people are charged with criminal conspiracy in courthouses across America. When two or more people plan to rob a bank, hold up a liquor store or defraud a government agency they are charged with conspiracy. But, somehow, when we talk of this sort of planning at higher levels--among politicians, military types, policy-makers...the word conspiracy is code for crackpot delusion.

Why?

Perhaps because it defuses, obfuscates and hides the fact that most things happen for a reason. Yes, I know...chaos theory...but decisions do get made, plans do get concocted and those choices are often implemented. Here in the WoB, I've found the utmost resistance to any implication that events might be part of plans, plots and power plays that transcend mere incompetence, belie stupidity or foolhardiness. People are so invested in this city, it's importance and the rhetoric of democracy that they cannot imagine that people entrusted with protecting us, caring for us and leading us might actually care little about deaths, looting the treasury and the ill-effects of their devious ways. People are invested. They cling to denial. They can't handle the truth.

That's why I am not a conspiracy theorist. I'm a coincidence theorist. I like to look at facts and odds-busting coincidences, tell anyone I can and let them draw their own conclusions. I could give big picture tie-ins. Patterns are there...and have been for decades. The same thing seems to happen over and over again. Dots can be connected.

But let's discard the conspiracy theory epithet. Remember W saying immediately after 9-11 that we need to stop spreading "dangerous conspiracy theories?" Wow, wasn't that a bit excessive?

No.

By putting that label out there, those who see one flaw after another in the official conspiracy theory...that 19 foreigners were able to pull off 9-11...puts them on the Grassy Knoll with Oliver Stone pointing in a different direction based on where they heard the shots coming from. They are kooks, now.

So, let's deal in coincidences. Let's just look at facts and see what they tell us. Here's an example of a coincidence theory. The Taliban was in negotiations to build a pipeline for the Caspian Sea oil and gas reserves in 1999-2000. They went to Houston. Shortly thereafter, the deal fell through, the Taliban pulled out. Chevron and Unocal were the big players in that venture. Condi Rice was on the board of Chevron and their Central Asian expert. Afghan President Hamid Karzai was a special consultant to Unocal. So was our special envoy to Afghanistan after the Taliban fell, Zalmay Khalilzhad. Both paid by Unocal. Almost immediately, Unocal started building a pipeline in Afghanistan that would go through Pakistan and out to the Indian Ocean. Our troops protected the route...troops that could've been hunting down Osama. The British press exposed this. Unocal stopped, but restarted under an offshore subsidiary. Wow, what a set of coincidences.

Or the coincidence that the guy--John O'Neill--who was the FBI's point man on Al-Qaeda, broke open the USS Cole bombing and had developed a flow chart of names and plans that pin-pointed the next attack to lower Manhattan, to the World Trade Center, was pushed out of the FBI and offered almost immediately therafter the chief security job by the WTC. Frustrated by his inability to get someone to pay attention to his warnings and railroaded by his beloved FBI, he took the big payday at WTC. He knew what was coming. He knew quite a bit. His body was found in the rubble of the WTC. Not demolished into tiny bits. They found his body. And it's also interesting that the company in charge of security for the WTC was partially owned by Marvin Bush. Wow, more coincidences.

I could go on, and on, and on.

But I leave it to you to look for yourselves. Look for coincidences. For facts that defy odds. Like the odds that the first death from the anthrax attack was the guy at American Media who made the decision to run a photo of the drunken Bush twins on the cover of the National Enquirer. Wow, what are the odds?

Many people know something strange is happening. The CIA-Leak scandal shows some conspiring in the Veep's office, right? The conspiracy to commit torture seems obvious now, right? But keep your eye on coincidences. Look for facts and draw your own conclusions.

Julius Caesar may have said, "E Tu Brute." Perhaps it was the first conspiracy theory. But it wasn't the last. Still, let's not fall for the easy write-off, the language of denial. Let's connect a few dots. It'll actually make more sense than the official conspiracy theories we are fed everyday.

NSA's History Lesson

Those of you who think the last century proves humanity to be a stinking genepool of war and violence, that we're warlike, trigger-happy beasts itching for carnage...take heart! It may not be so. I advocate studying history...the history of the 20th Century's wars and our current adventure in Iraq. That is, if you can find the history, the facts and the story of the machinations that generate conflicts.

If you rely on the National Security Agency to come clean about such things, you might be disappointed. This week it was revealed that the NSA blocked an NSA historian from releasing key information about the Gulf of Tonkin Incident and the "comedy of errors" that convinced Congress and the American people to follow LBJ into that tragic, if profitable, war in Indochina. Of course, this important story faded quicker than an Anthrax investigation, and the "trusty NY Times" buried the lead. But, now you know.

Why, you might ask, would the NSA be concerned with covering up this "ancient history"? It's axiomatic that Americans care little about the past, know little of our own history and, sporting the attention span of a gnat, move onto the next celebrity scandal du jour with simple ease. Or the ease of a simpleton.

What danger is there in letting out a bit more evidence that the Gulf on Tonkin was mere pretext for a foregone conclusion...the war in Vietnam?

Oh yeah, repeat that line.

What danger is there in letting out a bit more evidence that the Gulf on Tonkin was mere pretext for a foregone conclusion...the war in Vietnam?

Get it? Whether one looks at the Downing Street Memo, or the Project for a New American Century. Or the Cheney Energy Commission. Or, back in 2002, Andrew Card talking about "not rolling out a new product in August," when asked why they waited until September to make the case for the invasion of Iraq. Or, after month after month after month of ignoring it, what is finally all over the media...the falsified, jury-rigged intelligence about WMD in Iraq. What you'll see is that this current war was a product, a scheme...a long-hatched plan to make it happen, regardless of any threat posed by Saddam or the findings of the UN. It was manufactured, like any other product sold to American consumers.

The problem the NSA astutely identified was that the Gulf of Tonkin offers a sort of blueprint for a war case based on lies or faulty evidence (you'll have to decide that for yourself) and the war lust of those entrusted by the military-industrial complex to create new markets for their products. Or those seeking natural resources to sell back to us. Or both. It gives a whole new meaning to the phrase "market forces." The White House even had a group--the White House Iraq Group--designed to sell the war to us all.

The NSA's desire to stop the release of their own historian's findings--which really take the soft interpretation of the Tonkin Incident as more folly than foul play--illustrates the overarching control of information that this Administration relies on to steer clear of culpability, and to steer us as they see fit.

Historians, fighting the national security culture of national security secrets, have to reverse engineer these cover-ups to get at the truth. In other words, we have to look at rationale for secrecy, not just the secrets themselves. We need to explore motivations. We need to make sense of it all.

If we do, if we truly examine some of the forces that lead to wars, we will find a pattern. Since the beginning of the 20th Century, wars have--by and large--been manufactured. We are basically agreed about the Manchurian Incident in China (1932), the Nazi invasion of Poland and there is a troubling consensus emerging around Pearl Harbor. The Burning of the Reichstag was damn fishy, wasn't it? Jury still out on the true source of that one. The Nazi sure made out on that deal, didn't they?

There is, of course, the Spanish-American War. Yes, late 19th Century...but "Remember the Maine?!" Oh yeah, historians agree...it wasn't bombed by Spanish/Cuban enemies. Shall I go on? There are a dozen little hot wars during the Cold War that have flakey causes.

Then, we goaded Saddam into attacking Iran...after arming him and secretly arming Iran. A two-fer! We goaded Saddam into invading Kuwait...practically invited him...thanks to April Glaspie and the illegal arming of Iraq by Bush the First. Then came the Gulf War and false claims of Iraq troops massing on the Saudi border, babies being unplugged by incubators and a litany of "Saddam is the Son of Hitler" articles by...drum-roll please...Judith Miller!

There is secrecy to penetrate. And there are lessons to be learned by studying not only the facts of history, but the motivations for secrecy. The motivations, for instance, around Bush the Second clamping down on the release of records from Reagan-Bush, Bush-Quayle and even from Clinton-Gore. Iran-Contra still has untold stories...at least untold by mainstream media. Keeping a lid on new records, or historical findings...keeps us in that axiomatically American place--a collective ignorance of history. It keeps the "them" in power. It obfuscates patterns to all but the most tenacious, perhaps even paranoid, of researchers. It keeps the media from revisitng the past.

But why not be paranoid? We see over and over again that "they" are trying to hide something.

I'll keep reverse engineering. I have to. It's my heartily-embraced lot in life. It sustains my idealism about mankind to know that we have to be guided into wars by special interests, by interested parties, by war-profiteers and by inhuman leaders.

Next up? Why did the CIA try to keep hidden millions of documents about Nazis being imported into America under the guidance of Allen Dulles? The Congress passed a law finally forcing the release of those millions of documents.

Ah, finally some light, bedtime reading! Auf Wiedersehen!

Scami-Flu

Okay everybody, let's get scared!

Buy Tami-flu...the bird flu is coming, the bird flu is coming.

And, by the way, the patent for Tami-flu is held by Gilead Sciences. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was chairman of Gilead before he became Chief Operating Officer of War Profits Inc., a.k.a. the Pentagon. He still has millions of dollars in stock holdings in Gilead. Gilead is going to make bank off the bird flu scare and the billions in tax dollars our President proposed spending yesterday.

Ain't it beautiful?

So, how many times have you heard this connection mentioned over the last few weeks? Exactly.

But the bird flu story has been non-stop for a month. And that with only a couple hundred people dying because they cavorted with infected birds in the close-quarters conditions of Southeast Asia--where tomorrow's dinner is often found walking around your front door today. Yes, many birds are being culled. Yes, it's popping up around the world. No, it hasn't been transmitted from human to human. Yes, it has to mutate to be dangerous. Any questions?

Now, let's stop and think about this for a minute. Remember when the flu was just a really bad cold? When people stayed in bed, drank gallons of orange juice, popped aspirin and then got better? Before flu shots...shots loaded with mercury-laden Thimerosol. Thimerosol is made by Eli Lilly, and Ken Lay is on the board of that company. Past Lilly luminaries include Poppy Bush, Dan Quayle, Mitchell Daniels. Thimerosol will be used to preserve all the vaccines that we build up to deal with bird flu, if we come up with a vaccine for bird flu. There's a lot of money is sickness.

Or the fear of sickness.

And it's that fear factor this Administration has used over and over again to stoke profits for one corporate contributor after another. Fear of a collapsing energy market, stoked by outages in California--bullshit outages created by Enron!--led to huge corporate gifts from American taxpayers. Duct tape and plastic sheeting for Home Depot. Hundred of billions of dollars for the Military-Industrial Complex out of the fears from 9-11, of false WMD claims for Iraq, of false 9-11 claims about Saddam. Billions in profits from fears in the oil market. Take a minute and think about that one---profits rise to record levels every quarter since going into Iraq---at that time, home of the second largest oil reserves in the world. What?

And then there's Social Security, and bogus claims of SUV safety and on and on.

Fears about the flu are the latest scam. So, go out and stock up on Tami-flu. Donnie-boy needs a golden parachute once he's done irradiating Iraq and our troops, torturing people in former Soviet-style gulags in Eastern Europe, creating profit center after profit center for Dickie-boy's Halliburton. His time at Gilead will have been a mutually beneficial relationship should we forgo reality and keep marching to the drum-beat of fear...a fear my cohorts in the media love of play on...and on, and on.

No matter what happens over the next few years, everyone in this Administration will come out golden. Some may need pardons, but all will need Swiss bank accounts. And we all may take a healthy dose of mercury in a flu vaccine should the miracle of evolution mutate bird flu into a real threat. Or by the miracle of "Intelligent Design" for our Evangelical Republican friends.

However, the golden parachute crowd doesn't need that mutation...they've already caused the primary mutation behind all of this. They've inspired us as a nation to evolve into scared lab rats, stuck in a maze, searching for some cheese and directed along the path they set out for us. Our grand experiment in democracy has evolved into mere experimentation.