A Year of Living Selfishly

Drama. Life unfolds in a dozen different ways, with a dozen different dramas. Life as a cable box, switching from one channel to the next, one a soap opera...another a news channel and another a sitcom. Some are melodramas, some comedies...and some are hugely important events that happen in real time, but seem strangely distant from the personalized soap operas we linger on.

It was over a year ago that I lingered on one channel--my personal soap opera channel.

Prior to the cliffhanger I've been hanging on to for the last 14 months, awaiting the denouement that will never come, I was a channel surfer extraordinaire. The sitcoms and the news were my favorite personal programs. But it was the news...the massive changes, the undeniable lies and the tidal currents of history, the events that affected me and the human future...that's where my attention span seemed endless.

It's who I was. Who everyone knew me as...the historian, the skeptic, the human drama king. My attention to detail and dedication to deciphering the sour notes in the cacophony of media voices kept me busy. Very busy.

Then I was distracted. No, I was obsessed. Consumed with a new drama...my personal melodrama. My life fell to pieces. I fell to pieces.

She may have done what she did partially because of my news-show couch potato lifestyle. Perhaps I should've been more focused on the other channels of my life. Perhaps I should've been watching my soap opera more, and I would've been surprised less. Or not surprised at all. The plot twist that felt more like a knife twisting in my heart...maybe it would not have happened.

But it did. And my laser-like gaze turned away from the news and from the unfolding of history and rested squarely on the details, the characters and the melodrama of my personal pain. I obsessed. Now all the details of that betrayal are...like the ins and outs of modern history, of fascist ideology, of the CIA and US foreign policy, and of 9/11 and the advance of American empire...accessible to my computer-like memory. What made me a formidable historian made me a pitiful person.

But I still was awake. Barely, at times, but still conscious of the news and the world. Yet, I stopped paying my full attention to our national truth debt. I left 9/11 alone. No more soliloquies. No more recitations. No more passionate pleas to people to just take a look. Just my pain.

Last week...a week of Charlie Sheen and V for Vendetta...I was hit with the larger context and a staggering amount of perspective. I was hit with my own wallowing selfishness. I lost some of the obsession with my personal melodrama because I faced, once again, the desperate human drama that trumps all else.

While I selfishly thought of myself over the course of a year, others were working hard. Working against their own self interest by taking risks...risking the sort of marginalization that ends careers, brings ridicule and dares the establishment to knock them down. Over the course of that year, the cable box of my life ran new productions...created new programs that go further than ever. Further in showing, with startling images, tireless investigations and bold veracity, the full extent of the lie that our national life and the world's geopolitical life continue to be based on.

But I wasn't watching. I ignored the full schedule of programming on the cable box of my life

Last week, Charlie Sheen came forward to put the lie of 9/11 to the test. To force the media to stop cowering. And I woke up. I got activated. All those facts and questions and anomalies came flooding back. So, I shifted my gaze and looked once again into the abyss. People have been doing amazing work. Compiling video, gathering the stray facts...demanding answers.

My melodrama seems, in light of their efforts, a bit melodramatic. My year of living selfishly must relent. At least a bit. That soap opera, with it's startling revelations and love and pain and hurt, will still be with me. It's still running on that channel. But I am surfing again. Or, I am just deferring the obsession with that pain for the less personal, but no less important, pain of being lied to as an American, of having tens of thousands of innocents killed in my name and seeing our Constitution and the well-being of our soldiers and the world put in jeopardy.

I still hurt. But there is more pain for me to feel. And that pain requires my attention. It requires my mind and my ability to collate data. I have to change the channel...at least long enough to see what else is happening.

Charlie Sheen Scores a Tipping Point

Four years of waiting has come to an end.

Although millions of people, dozens of alternative media figures, a handful brave scholars and experts and few former government officials have labored away at the filling the gaping holes in the official conspiracy theory of 9/11...the mainstream media has ignored the questions that remain locked away in our collective unconscious. Nagging doubts. Strange coincidences.

All are verboten. Unpatriotic. UnAmerican.

The labels don't dissuade many who toil in anonymity or proclaim with mainstream-muzzled bullhorns. But those labels are an effective death sentence for anyone in the public eye.

Newsreaders, reporters, journalists, historians...entertainers. The leap they make is off a giant cliff...into the troubled waters of career death, of ridicule and marginalization. They might be consigned to the Grassy Knoll of history.

But it takes someone with visibility and titanium balls to break through. To force the media to face the toughest of questions. How could the laws of physics be abrogated? How could short-term smoldering fires do what dozens of long-term raging fires could not? Why did W just sit there? How could the BBC find hijackers alive and well years after the attacks?

How? Why?

Enter Charlie Sheen. Yeah, Charlie f'ing Sheen. An actor. Yes, he's successful. Likeable. Intelligent. Good genes. I mean, I wouldn't break up with Denise Richards. Look at her, for Christ's sake. That takes balls.

Charlie's got 'em.

This week he went of the Alex Jones Show and, in so doing, was the first person to put himself on the line to ask the question...Why doesn't the official conspiracy about 19 highjackers add up?

This may be the tipping point I've been waiting for.

CNN's Headline News has a show--Showbiz Tonight--and they've been all over it all week. Three nights in a row of coverage. Fair coverage, I might add. It's stunning to a self-hating media whore like myself. This is huge. HUGE! On Thursday and Friday, A.J. Hammer (another brave soul, I might add) led off the broadcast with the story and interviewed Alex Jones...twice! Jones might not be the palatable advocate to lefties...he's an unabashed Christian, he's for gun rights, he's against abortion...but he's squarely against this Administration and has compiled hundreds of articles, documents, interviews. He's the effective leader of the movement to re-open the 9/11 story and to find out what really happened. A.J. Hammer put his career on the line and let Jones say the unsayable. As a denizen of the mainstream media...please hear me...this is the bravest thing I've seen in two decades. Running the risk of drinking hemlock on camera...that's bravery.

But Charlie got it off the ground.

Sheen called Jones and said he wanted to go public. And he did. In our celebrity and fame driven culture, Sheen knew what this would do. And it did. CNN didn't cower. It didn't ignore. And it's started a firestorm on the internet. FOX News has even begun to trash Sheen and the sycophant bloggers are attacking Alex Jones as a liberal. Dude, listen to Jones...he's no liberal.

Jones, according to Sheen, has quite a following in Hollywood. People know. People all across the country...not just the "liberal elite" of Hollywood. This crosses party lines and ideology. I think we all know, somewhere in the back of our minds, that something stinks. That things just don't add up. And think of how the stink as risen to a wrenching stench since that fateful day.

Something's gone wrong in America.

But we all live in fear...fear of being labeled. I cannot peddle my litany of facts in my job. I can't propose stories about this. I simply can't...not if I want to eat.

We all have that pressure. Sheen does...but not so much. He could be opening the door for his fellow performers and people in the media to finally speak up. God knows, we need someone to speak up.

This could, though, be the tipping point. The domino that starts a chain reaction of media coverage, of more celebrities coming forward...of more media figures treading on the dangerous ground of career suicide.

As I look back at American history, I see so many times when a tipping point was passed by, and our country has mutated a little bit more with each missed opportunity. Our country is becoming unrecognizable.

This, though, may be it. Do some research, watch Loose Change...and ask the questions. Support Charlie's gambit and don't stop asking...force others in the media to ask...before we let what could be the final tipping point pass us by.

More End Times...Let's Get Raptured!

I just want to point out Maureen Farrell's latest article to those who read my last posting.

It's stunning stuff.

If we could just convert Christians to Christianity, this would be a great place to live and a far more peaceful world. Alas, they seem to ignore the four Gospels in favor of the Old Testament, Paul and that bizarre afterthought called Revelations. Funny, though, you'd think the words of Jesus...you now...the red words...would take primacy over all others.

Revelations about the Whore of Babylon

Revelations 17:13
These have one mind, and shall give their power and strength unto the beast

It was 1976, and I was just seven years old. The Evangelical movement was taking flight and it was built on an apocalyptic foundation. The Book of Revelations was pure, predictive truth and the rise of the Beast--the Whore of Babylon--and ensuing the Second Coming wasn't a matter of if, but when. And "when" was soon.

That year a neighbor "witnessed" to my mother and she began taking us to Fairway Baptist Church. It was an all-encompassing experience. Sundays, Wednesdays, weekend retreats and a school I would attend for half of 3rd grade. I was paddled for not completing Bible verses. I was taught a glowing rendition of American history. I was not allowed to wear my Star Trek shirt or Star Wars socks---graven images, you see. It was quite an experience.

Our pastor--Pastor Paulson--was a charismatic former CIA agent. I'm not kidding. And we were fed the diet of the day: the Number of the Beast, Hal Lindsay's Late, Great Planet Earth, preparing our souls for Rapture, the evils of the United Nations, the role of the USSR in Armageddon.

On Wednesdays, the children would play Jesus-themed games and the adults would learn more about the ins and outs of the End Times. Occasionally, we'd all pile into the main church and watch a movie. Movies about the Last Days...about relatives and friends disappearing in the Rapture, the Mark of the Beast on foreheads and the bloody reign of the Beast. One image stands out...of those who refused the Mark being denied food, medicine and, eventually, their heads by the Beast's guillotine.

It was powerful stuff.

My mother bought a portrait of Jesus, 5 feet by 3 feet...with long, flowing sandy blond locks, a full beard...in profile...looking upwards. You know the image...Jesus as roadie for Lynyrd Skynyrd. It hung in the living room. It dominated the decor of our family room as only a Southern Fried Roadie of God could.

I deprogrammed myself slowly, over time. I asked about dinosaurs and how all those insects fit on Noah's Ark. The answers begged more questions. My questions led me to science and to history. Eventually it led me to philosophy. Although I was re-Baptized out of my Southern Italian Catholic beginnings in front of 500 people and wearing nothing but a white robe, I was not a believer. At least not for long. My rebellious temperament wouldn't permit it.

But I know. I was part of it. I get it. Which is why today, here in the Whore of Babylon, I find myself explaining all the craziness of the Red States and the Bush Administration and Evangelicals to those who just don't get it. To those who haven't had Revelations envelop them like a wet blanket. To those who've been Blue State thinkers and intellectuals and media-types. To those who don't know the Book of Revelations.

Revelations 17:18
And the woman which thou sawest is that great city, which reigneth over the kings of earth

The irony that I've come here to make my way and work in the media is...well...revelatory. This is my second time here. My own personal second coming, I guess. The first time I engaged the Whore, seeking out some of her riches. But all my passes led only to some dry humping. No penetration. Perhaps because I was quietly and subconsciously appalled by her. I didn't want in. This time? I'm trying in my own small ways to battle the Whore. And maybe I've found my "calling"--to explain the role of Revelations in all that is happening. To explain it to those who don't know.

The End Times provides the Administration with its base of support. Christian Zionists see the invasion of Iraq, the return of the Israelites to the Biblical boundaries of their God-given land and the destruction of the Al Aqsa mosque as keys to fulfillment of Prophecy. Evangelicals love that George talked to God to get the go-ahead to invade Iraq. The historical home of Babylon is key. The Whore of Babylon, to them, will come out of this toppling of Saddam. Muslims have taken the place of Godless Communists as the key player to set in motion Armageddon. The end of the Cold War and fall of communists was a downer since Evangelicals thought they were the "Great Bear" that would come out of the North to the great Battle to End History.

But this Administration, which meets with 30-40 Evangelical leaders every couple months to consult on Mid-East policy, knows how to use the language of the End Times. They know how important Revelations is to their base. Their base, which defaults to "George has a good heart" when faced with a litany of destructive policies...policies in contradiction to their own professed beliefs...cannot let go of the neck of history now that they've got a stranglehold on it. Now that Prophecy is finally coming true.

Here I am, in the middle of a hard-facts culmination of those things I was taught as a child. It's amazing, ironic and, somehow, symmetrical.

Enter Kevin Phillips. Phillips was the GOP strategist who helped the GOP begin to take the South in the late Sixties and early Seventies. He worked for Nixon. He was a scion of Republican strategists. Phillips has since emerged as our best political analyst and a great historian. The Cousins' Wars is the best American history book I've ever read. Ever. The Politics of Rich and Poor and American Dynasty are the two most important books on contemporary American politics I've ever read. And now he's done it again. In his latest, American Theocracy, Phillips dissects the intersection of Evangelicalism, End Times thinking, national debt and war. Phillips gets it. He's been following the role of religion in American politics for years. He understands the power of the Babylon-Iraq connection and the desire of so many Americans to see Biblical prophecy fulfilled.

So, I am not alone. Someone else gets "it." That violent, scary "it" that will chew up thousands of lives in the attempt to catalyze history and induce the End Times and the Second Coming. That "it" which drives the anti-gay voters and the pro-Bush sycophants. That "it" which does an end-run around the Democrats directly to the hearts of the Heartland, where churches teach Old Testament fire and brimstone and New Testament millenarianism. That "it" of Joshua and Paul...and not much of Jesus. That Heartland that believes America is God's instrument.

Revelations 18:3
For all the nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies

But Phillips is a academic, a rational observer...a genius of political analysis. Far more than I could hope to be. There is one thing he, quite understandably, doesn't illustrate. That the Evangelicals are themselves aligned with the Whore of Babylon. That Evangelicals need only read and re-read their Revelations to see that, if Prophecy is true, then Bush and his team of Neo-Cons are false prophets. That the great city ruling over the world as a neo-Roman Empire is DC and that we are a great force for evil. They are so divorced from their Christianity that they ignore Jesus' teaching in Matthew. We kill innocents. We worship the money changers. We do not feed the hungry, or show mercy on the sinner. But we speak the name of Jesus and all is permitted in his name. But none of his admonitions about love and turning the other cheek or loving those who hate us...none are obeyed.

We kill indiscriminately in the service of a growing empire. A Romanesque empire, I might add. We are pushing RFID tags and forms of identification that could, to the reflective Christian, function very much like a Number of the Beast. We take other's lands, their resources and their lives. All the while, our leader speaks of peace and Jesus and God, takes away rights...God given rights...and does the opposite of what he proclaims.

The Whore of Babylon is here. The false prophet is here. The Beast is rising here.

The irony of this for me is that I don't care for Revelations. I don't care much for American Protestant Christianity. I don't embrace monotheism...or any theism for that matter. But I truly understand the power of these ideas and the bloodthirsty hope of some Christians to nudge history in the direction of Prophetic fulfillment. While many Blue State intellectuals marvel at the ineptitude and illogic of this Administration, I see the skill and logic of their propaganda. I see the meetings between Iran-Contra all-star Eliot Abrams and Evangelicals on Mid-East policy as logical. They have a base. They speak their language and manipulate their faith like a power tool to achieve their wholly un-Biblical aims. They've sent messages through Bob Woodward about George's war councils with God. They use unreflective support of Israel and the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank as a prophetic, political tool. They have Revelations on their side.

They've been called Mayberry Machiavellis...by the first Faith-Based Initiative Czar...who left totally disillusioned by his experiences with the Administration. For them, these religious messages are tools...nothing more. As Leo Strauss, father of the Neo-Con philosophy, put it (I'm paraphrasing): Noble Lies must be told by the elites to the masses, for the masses cannot govern themselves...cannot make rational decisions. The most effective Noble Lies are those based on religion. Religion sways the masses like nothing else.

But intellectuals, media-types, Blue Staters and Democrats don't understand. They don't understand the power of Revelations and the End Times in the thinking of Evangelicals. So no one, save Phillips, sees this clearly. But I go further. For the Prophecies they embrace and the unfolding of history they crave are double-edged swords. Revelations, the New Rome, the Whore of Babylon...these things, according to their own Bibles, are manifest here.

In America. In Washington, D.C. In their own hearts. We've found the enemy...and it is us.

Pletka's PNAC Conspiracy Theory

The great dismissive of our times is the term "conspiracy theory."

It closes off debate. It paints anyone who doesn't buy the propaganda, questions the anomalies of official cover stories...anyone who connects the unconnected dots...as crazy, paranoid cranks cavorting with Oliver Stone on the grassy knoll of history.

Enter Danielle Pletka. As VP of Foreign and Defense Policy Studies for the Neo-Convicted American Enterprise Institute, she's a high-level propaganda hack for American empire. Moments ago she drew the conspiracy theory sword and cut off the truth at the knees. Appearing on C-SPAN's call-in show, Washington Journal, she fielded a call about PNAC's founding document, "Rebuilding America's Defenses." The caller asked her about the document's plan for the Middle East and call for a "New Pearl Harbor" to set in motion the massive increase in defense spending that we've actually seen since the ascent of Bush the Second. PNAC's founders are at the highest levels of the White House, the Defense and State Departments, the Iraq and Afghanistan occupations...and even at the American Enterprise Institute.

The caller's question was, in Ms. Pletka's world, part of a conspiracy theory. She said that the PNAC document was "thoughtful," and that any mention of the "Pearl Harbor" reference was itself a "conspiracy theory." She said that there was no mention of Pearl Harbor in the document.

And there is the conspiracy. A conspiracy of silence about the game-plan for empire that led to Iraq, to the pre-emptive strike doctrine...to the radical turn in world events we've seen since all those PNAC signatories took over the executive branch. No major news organization has told the people about it. And now, Ms. Pletka gets away with denying what is in black and white. It's a conspiracy theory to refer to words that are, even today, posted on the PNAC website! And because her counterpoint on the show, some typical jerk-off from the Center from American Progress, probably hasn't read the document...or is another cowering critic who fears the conspiracy theorist moniker...the truth did not come out. That poor caller is now a conspiracy theorist, too. Even though he was grounded in the facts.

So, let's look at that "conspiracy theory" in action. Let's look at the highpoints of that piece of work, so to speak. It was written in 1998-1999.

PAGE 4:
Likewise, the Clinton Administration has continued the fiction that the operations of American forces in the Persian Gulf are merely temporary duties. Nearly a decade after the Gulf War, U.S. air, ground and naval forces continue to protect enduring American interests in the region.

PAGE 14:
In the Persian Gulf region, the presence of American forces, along with British and French units, has become a semi-permanent fact of life. Though the immediate mission of those forces is to enforce the no-fly zones over northern and southern Iraq, they represent the long-term commitment of the United States and its major allies to a region of vital importance. Indeed, the United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.

PAGE 17:
Over the long term, Iran may well prove as large a threat to U.S. interests in the Gulf as Iraq has. And even should U.S.-Iranian relations improve, retaining forward-based forces in the region would still be an essential element in U.S. security strategy given the longstanding American interests in the region.

PAGE 19:
As a supplement to forces stationed abroad under long-term basing arrangements, the United States should seek to establish a network of “deployment bases” or “forward operating bases” to increase the reach of current and future forces. Not only will such an approach improve the ability to project force to outlying regions, it will help circumvent the political, practical and financial constraints on expanding the network of American bases overseas.

PAGE 51:
Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor. Domestic politics and industrial policy will shape the pace and content of transformation as much as the requirements of current missions.

PAGE 60:
Space itself will become a theater of war, as nations gain access to space capabilities and come to rely on them; further, the distinction between military and commercial space systems – combatants and noncombatants – will become blurred. Information systems will become an important focus of attack, particularly for U.S. enemies seeking to short-circuit sophisticated American forces. And advanced forms of biological warfare that can “target” specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool.

The real conspiracy is the conspiracy of silence about this and the other glaringly obvious dots that remain unconnected. Pletka is a propagandist of the first order, using lies and subterfuge to hide the agenda she and her cohorts are implementing every day all around the world. There are conspiracies, my friends, and some are in full pubic view.

Saddam was Better

It's time. The criticism of our invasion and occupation of Iraq has been tempered by the caveat: "But the world is better off with Saddam gone."

It's bullshit.

The evidence overwhelmingly shows the opposite. Iraqis were better off with Saddam. Saddam's neighbors were better off with Saddam. The world was better off with Saddam. And the US and our national security? Better off with Saddam.

Let's take the Iraqis. Over 100,000 dead. More dying everyday from bombings...by us and by the particulars in the civil war we unleashed. Up to 30 Iraqis per day are kidnapped, their families extorted for ransom. We've incarcerated thousands of Iraqis, most without charges and many have been tortured...some tortured to death. We've even used Saddam's most infamous prison camp for his political enemies--Abu Ghraib. Their economy is in shambles. And we've privatized much of it...even selling off their farming sector to US multinationals. So, what remains of their economy is not even their own. Oil production and revenues are down, way down, from the highly regulated Oil for Food period.

We've used a vicious chemical weapon--white phosphorous--to incinerate insurgents and innocents alike. We've spread even more depleted uranium around that ravaged country. The decade of birth defects that we left behind after the first Gulf War will only grow and persist. We've bombed the infrastructure into rubble. Yes, a great opportunity for Bechtel and Halliburton, but a day to day struggle for electricity and water. The rights of women, so strong under Saddam's anti-Shia reign, is in full reverse, particularly in the south..where women are being forced to wear veils.

Saddam killed his own people. We've done that.
Saddam jailed and tortured his own people. We've done that.
Saddam used chemical weapons on his own people. We've done that.
Saddam lorded over one of the most Westernized states in the Middle East, with a thriving, educated middle-class population...friendly to the US and willing to buy large amounts of weaponry from US defense companies...and willing to attack Iran at our behest. We haven't done that.

Now Iran is all over Iraq, with a thriving Shia political movement in the South. A ready-made ally. We enabled that. Saddam's Iraq had been a bulwark against the influence of Iran. No more. Saddam's animus toward Iran was almost as great as his animus towards Al Qaeda and the Saudi Wahhabis who helped to make it. Iraq was a terrorist-free zone for decades. Okay, he harbored a couple Palestinian terrorists...paid a few suicide bombers' families. But so did Saudi Arabia. The Saudis did more, paid more, than Saddam ever did. The plight of the Palestinians is a part of every Arab nation's thinking. But not Al Qaeda...which was the special friend of the Saudis and the Pakistanis. Not Saddam.

Saddam's place in the center of the Middle East...fully contained, WMD-poor, militarily neutered, unfriendly to Al Qaeda...was a lynch-pin of stability for the region and the world. Like containment during the Cold War, but better. Saddam's lack of power to affect the region was complete. We had him in a national prison, and his oil was flowing out. The day to day lives of Iraqis were far better. They had water, electricity...and no car bombs. The imprisonment and executions of his regime are found in most of our Arab allies. Saddam's crimes were no greater than those of our sycophants. No surprising, since he was Poppy's sycophant for years, the CIA's friend when he came to power...and our ally against Iran.

So, the America people are caught up in a war against "terror."

Afghanistan was the incubator, thanks to the Pakis and the Saudis and our own CIA. Now, we've created a new incubator. With Saddam gone, Iraq has become the new Afghanistan. If you are worried about "Them," you should be outraged that we turned Iraq from a bulwark to an incubator. And then there is the oil. The invasion and occupation of Iraq has gamed the oil market, driving up prices and hitting the average American in the wallet.

Sure, Saddam was tyrant.

And the Saudi Royal family? Or the military dictatorship of Pakistan. Or the dysfunctional democracy cum authoritarian regime called Egypt? How about our new friend Libya? Or the Central Asian "Stans" we've got bases in?

The argument that Saddam was a dictator and therefore had to go and, therefore, the world is better off...Iraqis are better off...is utter and complete bullshit.

But the facile Democrats don't say it. Pundits don't say it. Why? They are afraid. They are afraid of "cozying up to a dictator," to advocating Saddam. You mean, like the Reagan and Bush the First Administrations did? C'mon people, wake up!

Wake up and see the reality that the Iraqis face...the death squads and the poverty and the criminality and the civil war and the torture and the radiation. And look at the geopolitics. Look, and say it.

There, I've said it.

Here I sit, waiting for the bolt of lighting...the recriminations...or the FBI.

Fun and Games and War

War! Good God ya'll, what is it good for?

Profits. Domestic political control. Distraction. Artificial scarcity in the oil market. Shaping a New World Order.

Many reasons, really. It just depends on your perspective and goals.

Rebuilding America's Defenses, by the Project for a New American Century, lays it all out in easy-to-read type.

But how do you go to war with an enemy that poses no risk, doesn't attack you or an ally...one that is neutered, contained and unable to mount a real challenge? Kinda like mugging a hobo, or robbing an invalid...it's hard to justify.

The evidence is clear...the Bush Administration tried within hours to pin the 9-11 attacks on Saddam Hussein. We have confirmation of that from multiple sources, including Donny Rumsfeld's own handwritten notes. We saw and heard the speeches that pounded out a drumbeat of Saddam-Osama-9-11, a repetitive tempo that sounded like the shrillest Euro-techno. Over 60% of Americans believed in the never-proven connection. Currently, up to 90% of our troops in Iraq believe it. As Dick Clark would say, "It's got a nice beat, and you can dance to it." Yeah, dance on the graves of over 100,000 innocent Iraqis. Innocent of 9-11, that is.

But even with all that, the Bushies couldn't convince the world or the UN. They knew there was no connection. Most knew that there were no WMDs, and that Saddam was not threat.

So what to do?

It's called "Fun and Games."

Have fun with negative intelligence assets. Play games with the truth. Put both together to goad your enemy du jour into attacking you, or trying to attack you, even if it is really just self defense. Fun and games means you can spin whatever events transpire from the fun and games to your advantage. You know the facts, the media is co-opted and controled...the people are at your mercy. Like the Gulf of Tonkin incident. Push...goad...manage...spin, and get your war.

Then comes this.

The British law professor who broke the Downing Street memo just broke a new memo. Because there are still good people in the power structure, he was given...leaked...the new memo which he calls the "White House Memo."

This memo comes from notes taken during a meeting, about five days before Colin Powell's completely debunked speech before the UN, about Iraq. In that meeting Bush told Blair that they had a date to begin invasion penciled in. Support from the UN, if not forthcoming from the bullshit Powell would shovel in less than a week, would come from a special plan to paint a U2 spyplane in UN colors and fly it over Iraq until Saddam fired on it. Once he fired on it, Bush would have his invasion cue.

Think about that for a minute. And think about the fact that you haven't heard that in our mainstream media.

Sorry, folks...but that's how it works. Vietnam, the first Gulf War and April Glaspie and the illegal arming of Iraq by Bush the First. And more. Much more. But there is only so much we can process at any one time. I do, however, direct you to Operation Northwoods...a plan in 1962 to fake a shoot-down of a plane full of students and engineer terrorist bombings in Miami and DC to create support for an invasion of Cuba.

This is not theory. This is fact. In black and white. The rules for fun and games and war. Rules that most don't know or understand or are even willing to consider. It's hard to explain, I guess. Some have tried. But the gamemasters know...and our ignorance is their bread and butter.

Fun and games, my friend. Fun and games.

Let's Get a Few Things Straight

Today's America is a confusing America. The world is even more confusing. It's hard to know what's acceptable in our Imperial State and our world-spanning empire.

It's not acceptable to write a letter to a local newspaper's editorial page calling for the end of the Bush Administration. A Veteran's Administration nurse did that. After dealing with casualties from Iraq and watching the horror of Katrina, she wrote a letter. Then the FBI showed up, confiscated her computer and told her she was under investigation for sedition.

It's not acceptable to pay off your credit card debt. A retiring couple in Texas paid of a JC Penny's card and they were investigated under Dept. of Homeland Security guidelines.

It's not acceptable to read a book on the rise of radical Islamic movements. Henry Rollins did that on a plane ride to Australia and he was questioned by authorities.

It's not acceptable to write and sing anti-war or anti-government songs, no matter how metaphorical those songs might be. Morrissey did that, and he was brought in for questioning.

But...

You can cavort with an organization linked to a spying scandal in the Pentagon. Our US representative to the UN John Bolton did that. He just gave a speech at AIPAC laced with threats to Iran and a warning that strategic bombing is both fun and easy to do. AIPAC--the American-Israeli Political Action Committee--had a mole in the highest levels of the Pentagon. Their man--Larry Franklin--was investigated, charged and sentenced to 12 years for passing secrets to AIPAC. No one from AIPAC will serve jail time.

So, just to re-cap...the Empire is a capricious place where anyone can be investigated to doing seemingly trivial things. But, if you are on board with Empire and actively working to spreadit or stop those expressing discomfort with said empire...knock yourself out. Spy, bomb, lie...go for it. You might have some legal trouble, but we are only two years away from the end of Bush's second term...so those pardons are just around the corner.