Now it’s official. General McChrystal has been placed in the pantheon of American icons, sanctified next to the likes of Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, and John Wayne. He now aligns with the many American gods that are manufactured as fast as a Big Mac or an Egg McMuffin. Heroes like these are not human. They only play the image of what America wants them to be, but mostly they reflect the self-delusion of the American culture, a bubble where we are morally superior, smarter, and therefore richer.
This month The Atlantic magazine published an article, “Man Versus Afghanistan,” elevating General McChrystal to the heights of a Julius Caesar, the man who determines the course of history and who can rebuild Afghanistan into a democracy as prosperous as many imagine America to be, or as Rome was before it crumbled into history’s dust.
Kaplan describes General McChrystal as a man who “has never submitted to fate” (p. 26). With such a job title for McChrystal, we might believe that he can also leap over tall buildings in a single bound. As our newly anointed Superman, the general sleeps four hours a night, runs eight miles, and eats one meal a day. McChrystal is America: the country no longer conceives new ideas because its vision is blurred by lack of sleep; the country can only run mechanically one foot in front of the other because it no longer innovates; the country eats its daily meal devoid of taste and nutrition.
In his story about General McChrystal, Kaplan takes the predictable and enjoyable job of describing the apparent virtues of the general whose “physical regimen…itself expresses an unyielding, almost cultic determination.”
By attempting to create a cult hero of McChrystal—the Army of One—Kaplan enjoys the easy road of fantasy and fanaticism while the rest of us scratch our heads and ponder. Why the hell did the Bush administration spend trillions of dollars and thousands of American lives to invade Iraq, a country that had nothing to do with the 9/11 attack, nor had WMDs, nor harbored terrorists until after U.S. troops invaded. Despite this, Kaplan boldly states his preference for imperial war—“The 2003 invasion of Iraq, to which I subscribed,…”—as he bizarrely twists this invasion into “Balkan antecedents.”
Yet we wonder. Now that the U.S. has spent trillions of dollars, thousands of American lives, almost ten years in Iraq and Afghanistan, and more than one million civilian lives, when are we finished? What’s the goal? What results do we expect? When the U.S. leaves Iraq and Afghanistan, will these countries be stable? What’s to stop them from simply returning to despotic, theocratic regimes?
Kaplan doesn’t consider any of these questions. Not once does he mention America’s dependence on oil and, consequently, its dire need to occupy much of the Middle East to ensure a stable supply. Instead Kaplan bloviates about how the most powerful military in the world can overcome fate thanks to the likes of General McChrystal who lacks sleep. Kaplan ignores the atrocities by former Vice President Dick Cheney, who now brags on mass media how he authorized the same sort of torture as Afghan and Mexican authorities use for power and plunder.
Kaplan describes a few characteristics of Afghanistan, which we find also in Mexico and other third-world countries, such as, “the country is so decentralized,…it is extraordinary complex, with different tribal and sectarian reality in each district.”
Likewise, Mexico’s history and current situation reveal how it has always plodded along with a weak central government. Each region in Mexico has always had its autonomous leaders (caciques), which, as in Afghanistan, have become drug lords reaping billions of dollars in the drug trade. As these drug lords gain wealth, they carry more power than their federal governments. The large profits of such unrestrained businesses are able to usurp governmental authority. This has happened in both Afghanistan and in Mexico. Whether they sell opiates, cocaine, or oil, the successful businessmen ply their power to increase their wealth and to impose their own politics, usually fundamentalism to the point of fascism, and ignore the freedom and development of the less privileged classes. The scenario resembles the U.S. Republican agenda.
Kaplan writes, “McChrystal believes that the ‘ideological piece’ of al-Qaeda is ‘truly scary’: that a new brand of totalitarianism—al-Qaeda the franchise—is running amok and motivating small secretive groups around the world, and that victory in Afghanistan is necessary to deliver a ‘huge moral defeat’ to it” (p. 62).
Clearly as we invade and occupy foreign countries in order to control their resources, the more they will resist. Instead of fighting for reliable oil supplies, America must do what it does best: innovate and create renewable sources of energy.
If certain bellicose Americans were so concerned about moral defeats or moral responsibilities to carry the imperial burden and set the world straight, why didn’t the Bush administration invade the dictatorship of North Korea or China, or any other unjust government? Like many other neoconservative knuckle draggers, Kaplan refuses to state the crass and simple truth that the U.S. occupies Iraq and Afghanistan in order to secure stable oil supplies and, above all, to keep our enemies from taking control of the vast wealth the petroleum reserves represent. Making this clear to the otherwise beguiled, American middle class would only shatter America’s moral self-image, albeit mostly self-delusional.
If the U.S. were so altruistically concerned about saving other countries from dysfunctional governments, why not invade Mexico? Instead, under the Merida Initiative, we continue to pour billions of dollars ineffectively into the Mexican government, which morally defeats the U.S. because the Mexican government takes bribes from the various drug lords and explicitly supports the Sinaloa cartel over the others. As Mexico slips over the edge of complete anarchy and unbridled capitalism, the U.S. blindly funnels money without oversight as to how it is used.
Just as the U.S. props up a corrupt and crumbling Mexico, so too, it supports the Karzai government in Afghanistan, a mere racketeer operation. As Kaplan quotes, “’Afghanistan was a cakewalk in 2001 and 2002,’ says Sarah Chayes, former special adviser to McChrystal’s headquarters. ‘We started out with a country that hated the Taliban and by 2009 were driving people back into the arms of the Taliban. That’s not fate. That’s poor policy’” (p. 64).
The U.S. merely empowered the mujahedeen commanders to transform into gangster-oligarchs and drug lords under the American-supported Karzai. So long as the U.S. occupies Afghanistan, the people will enlist and fortify al-Qaeda and the Taliban as a form of resistance to protect their country. That’s exactly what Americans would do if they were invaded.
In the midst of all-out war between competing drug businesses in Mexico, the U.S. Homeland Security Department can only sit on its hands as billions of dollars of illegal drugs cross the border along with hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens while millions of dollars of weapons are exported to support the Mexican chaos. Among the illegal aliens crossing the southern border, how many are al-Qaeda operatives carrying various types of WMDs? Let’s ask Homeland Security Chief Janet Napolitano.
Mexico and Afghanistan rank among the desperate third-world countries. Both countries enjoy strong religious traditions permeate through every fiber of their cultures, if not making them outright theocracies. As God’s dark humor goes, this means that corrupt men rule in an arbitrary legal system with authoritarian misconduct. Like Afghanistan, Mexico has a weak government, unable to control its own military and police, much less the marauding drug gangs grabbing power and wealth. Such weak governments have little to offer their people and are unable to restrain the barbarous greed of unbridled businesses such as monopolies and drug cartels.
In the U.S. a central debate rages. Made wealthier than the Democrats by corporate lobbyists, the Republicans are especially eager to keep government small, even weak, and to oppose regulating the otherwise unchecked greed of big business such as the healthcare industry, Big Oil, and Wall Street bankers. These elitist groups in America argue that large corporations should have more power than government—as if businessmen volunteer selflessly for the development of society. This political ideology, known as neoliberalism, calls for the rule of a small, wealthy social class—the patricians and the ruling political nobility.
This debate rose to a new height when the majority right-wing Supreme Court justices voted to overturn two important precedents about the First Amendment rights of corporations. The mostly extremely conservative Supreme Court ruled that the government may not regulate corporations’ spending for elections. As President Obama said, this court ruling gives “corporations more power to drown out the voices of regular Americans” in political debates where already most have lost their sense of citizenry in the face of mammoth businesses. Now more than ever before, big business can buy the votes of congressmen and senators in the form of campaign contributions and additional investments in political advertisements.
This new, highly political ruling by the Supreme Court moves the U.S. another step closer to a complete coronation of power for 10 percent of the population that owns 80 percent of the nation’s wealth. This class power and inequitable distribution of wealth represents one of the defining characteristics of third-world countries like Mexico and Afghanistan. Now the U.S. Supreme Court has delivered more power to the corporations while weakening the government’s ability to check corporate greed in the best interests of society.
All over the globe, the rulers of third-world countries from Arabia to Zimbabwe squander and squelch the good will of the broader lower classes. Out of some 200 sovereign countries on the globe, more than half operate with hugely inequitable distribution of wealth, where the vast majority of people live on poverty-line income, live with hardly a chance of education, and consequently live without much self-determination. Ironically, the larger social classes at the lower end of the income ladder are the ones who bear more children who, in turn, have fewer chances of education, and less freedom and autonomy.
Often the lower classes become so beguiled by the media, especially the likes of Fox News propaganda, that they ignore their own place in society and their rights. Instead they behave as if they are part of the highest social class, supporting the political interests of right-wing patricians. Perhaps by playing the part, they sense the tingling sensation that maybe they are affiliated with the wealthy at least for a moment, even as many are paid to badger Democrat congressmen at city hall meetings or choose to participate as Tea-Baggers and White Supremacists revolting against the government instead of taking part in the political system to defend their rights as regular citizens. The same is true for the middle-class, born-again Christians who vehemently oppose abortion, demanding that the government regulate individual women’s choice. At the same time, these confused activists oppose government regulations on the very industries—such as healthcare and banking—that devour them financially.
Meanwhile, a tiny social class rules society. The elite enjoy the power and privileges of education, usually secular, and of wealth. Given this inequality, corruption, and arbitrary rule, the governments of most third-world countries are weak. These governments often lack adequate social infrastructure to provide the broader population, the lower class, with healthcare and an education unfettered by religion, which would allow them freedom to choose more clearly about life-defining decisions such as reproduction, careers, and life-style in general.
Instead as, in Mexico, most of Central and South Americas, in Afghanistan, and in most of the Middle East, religious doctrine proves to be the most available form of education, and its authoritarian rules dictate almost all aspects of individual life, rendering the lower class submissive and ignorant. This, in turn, benefits only the wealthy class.
The various policies of the Republican Party in the U.S. serve no purpose for regular Americans. The American right wing has never worked for the best interests of the middle class. Born-again Christian fundamentalists generally want the government to dictate all aspects of an individual’s personal life from abortion to sexual orientation, and at the same time, they want to reduce government regulations over corporate power. From their contradictory belief system, we discover how their goals resemble closely the same theocratic ideology prevalent in countries like Afghanistan and Mexico. The Republican agenda also includes deceiving Americans to justify invading, occupying, and rebuilding Iraq and Afghanistan while ignoring the simple fact that the real purpose these wars is mainly to control the world’s largest oil reserves.
Like the government in Mexico and Afghanistan, the U.S. government is weak. President Obama struggles against the overwhelming industrial power of the defense contractors pushing to sell more invasions while the Big Banks and insurance companies lobby to reduce regulation. As in Mexico and Afghanistan, the U.S. is in the grip of a right wing whose goals are to increase theocratic authority and ensure “less government.” As an icon of America, General McChrystal is fighting a war of morality which only lightly veils a war for power and plunder, while enjoying meals void of nutrition, sleepless nights that blur vision, and long runs on empty.
Showing posts with label iraq war. Show all posts
Showing posts with label iraq war. Show all posts
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Friday, April 24, 2009
In the Case of Iraq, a War Story Might Best Take Place on U.S. Soil
In the last few days, reports appeared about how the Pulitzer committee awarded their prestigious prize to topics like the luxury bordello scandals involving elected officials, Thomas Jefferson’s various mistresses, and international sex trafficking, among others.
No doubt these subjects are important and sizzle in the public mind, yet something feels missing—a shoe lace untied, a hole worn through a pocket by a house key, or that war lasting more than 7 years now.
The Pulitzer committee grants awards for socially redeeming art, beautiful music, or fine writing that pierces the veil of deception in high places. Plenty of journalists and writers have accomplished this on the subject of Operation Iraqi Freedom, focusing not on the sizzling sex scandals but on the more primitive forms of brutality and rape in the chaos of a destroyed country.
Does this explain why the war topic was passed over this year, the seventh of a long war?
The Pulitzer was founded on values of professional journalism and artistic merit. Has it turned its eyes to new, more important subjects than the U.S. invasion of another country?
If you consider how mainstream media and journalism have botched so many opportunities to pierce the veil of high-power deception, you’ll not be surprised that a prestigious prize for journalism shows a lack of interest in Iraq, war, soldiers and civilians dying. After all, how many newspapers, or congressmen for that matter, risked dissent from the W administration during the wake of the hyped-up, politically exploited, hysterical 9/11 reaction?
Plenty of novels and nonfiction books criticized the war and risked public outrage and the lethal label of “un-American” during the period when the native authority of W and Cheney commanded support for their own cleverly crafted, massive destruction and public deception. In this sense, the Iraq war took place more right here in the U.S. than in the bombing missions and in the Humvees where blood spills out to this day.
Perhaps Americans at home just don’t have the stomach to think of the war anymore—though the war was, and still is, fundamentally right here at home. The battleground is in the American political arena. Now more than ever, this becomes clear as the reports pile up to prove, without a shadow of a doubt, that the war was planned long before the causus belli –the justification and the opportunity that presented itself in the form of the 9/11 attack.
America’s political system failed—and so did its journalism. Collectively, reflecting our country’s culture, we Americans wanted to find a fast solution to an otherwise complicated situation. Suddenly faced with difficult decisions and questions, we clung tightly to our Bibles, searching for quick answers and whispering curses to the Muslims in a “crusade,” as W often called it. We did not want to analyze the facts before we reacted. We wanted to follow a leader, regardless of how nefarious and duplicitous the power brokers played their hand in a twisted plan.
Ironically, these officials, W and Cheney, were not even elected officials, rather just appointed hastily by a small group of extremists at the Supreme Court. This is why the real battleground has always been right here at home. It began as a struggle for the power to impose an ideological belief on a democracy. By grasping the power to command, the extreme American ideologues overreacted, waged a war of political passion, and thus fulfilled the greatest wishes, plans, and prayers of the likes of Osama bin Laden.
So, a nonfiction book, and especially a novel about the war, might best be situated at home, not in the smoking battlegrounds where the bombs explode. This war is all about political ideology that affects every aspect of American culture and economics. This war is not about WMDs, not about a brutal tryant, not about evil terrorists, and not about the security of our nation.
No doubt these subjects are important and sizzle in the public mind, yet something feels missing—a shoe lace untied, a hole worn through a pocket by a house key, or that war lasting more than 7 years now.
The Pulitzer committee grants awards for socially redeeming art, beautiful music, or fine writing that pierces the veil of deception in high places. Plenty of journalists and writers have accomplished this on the subject of Operation Iraqi Freedom, focusing not on the sizzling sex scandals but on the more primitive forms of brutality and rape in the chaos of a destroyed country.
Does this explain why the war topic was passed over this year, the seventh of a long war?
The Pulitzer was founded on values of professional journalism and artistic merit. Has it turned its eyes to new, more important subjects than the U.S. invasion of another country?
If you consider how mainstream media and journalism have botched so many opportunities to pierce the veil of high-power deception, you’ll not be surprised that a prestigious prize for journalism shows a lack of interest in Iraq, war, soldiers and civilians dying. After all, how many newspapers, or congressmen for that matter, risked dissent from the W administration during the wake of the hyped-up, politically exploited, hysterical 9/11 reaction?
Plenty of novels and nonfiction books criticized the war and risked public outrage and the lethal label of “un-American” during the period when the native authority of W and Cheney commanded support for their own cleverly crafted, massive destruction and public deception. In this sense, the Iraq war took place more right here in the U.S. than in the bombing missions and in the Humvees where blood spills out to this day.
Perhaps Americans at home just don’t have the stomach to think of the war anymore—though the war was, and still is, fundamentally right here at home. The battleground is in the American political arena. Now more than ever, this becomes clear as the reports pile up to prove, without a shadow of a doubt, that the war was planned long before the causus belli –the justification and the opportunity that presented itself in the form of the 9/11 attack.
America’s political system failed—and so did its journalism. Collectively, reflecting our country’s culture, we Americans wanted to find a fast solution to an otherwise complicated situation. Suddenly faced with difficult decisions and questions, we clung tightly to our Bibles, searching for quick answers and whispering curses to the Muslims in a “crusade,” as W often called it. We did not want to analyze the facts before we reacted. We wanted to follow a leader, regardless of how nefarious and duplicitous the power brokers played their hand in a twisted plan.
Ironically, these officials, W and Cheney, were not even elected officials, rather just appointed hastily by a small group of extremists at the Supreme Court. This is why the real battleground has always been right here at home. It began as a struggle for the power to impose an ideological belief on a democracy. By grasping the power to command, the extreme American ideologues overreacted, waged a war of political passion, and thus fulfilled the greatest wishes, plans, and prayers of the likes of Osama bin Laden.
So, a nonfiction book, and especially a novel about the war, might best be situated at home, not in the smoking battlegrounds where the bombs explode. This war is all about political ideology that affects every aspect of American culture and economics. This war is not about WMDs, not about a brutal tryant, not about evil terrorists, and not about the security of our nation.
Thursday, August 7, 2008
Church of Later Day Neocons
Fighting Guerrilla Warriors with Conventional Tactics All for the Sake of Godly Profits
“War on terror” coins a sacred phrase in the Iraq crusade. Karl Rove, high priest of spin, led the neocons’ faithful choir through the doctrinal hymns, especially regarding Bush’s military mission.
Now the Sanctified Church of Later Day Neocons has anointed John McCain to take the pulpit for the steadfast congregation, a political party on a mission from God, bowing down to corporate avarice at the detriment of public interests. The neocon party promises to maintain stilted, stodgy status quo of old, slogging industries. Though, what we need these days is Yankee ingenuity, innovation, and invention--the heart of American entrepreneurism in government and in business.
Except for Secretary of State Rice, the ex-oil executive automaton, this special cabal of wealthy, white codgers has woven a web of myths so thick that everyone believes the country is divided between the red and the blue: the virtuous, righteous party versus the diabolical, liberal socialists. Behind the neocon marketing hype, the issues draw a real line between rich and the bleeding middle class and the economic policies that shove the poor deeper into debtor’s slavery while the wealthy reap the profits from the uneducated, gullible middle class.
At least twenty percent of Americans still believe that Iraq had something to do with the 9/11 attacks. As many Americans also believe they pay fewer taxes than Europeans who enjoy high quality public healthcare and education through university level.
I know firsthand by attending a German university. Otherwise, coming from a blue collar background in America, I never would have been able to afford an education. I lived and worked more than twenty years in Germany and France and paid fewer taxes than we do in America. I pursued the American dream where it was available.
Considered an enlightened saint among the neocons, Milton Friedman claimed that unregulated industries operate most efficiently. Contrary to this twaddle, we have witnessed how unbridled Savings and Loan banks imploded under Bush Sr. in the early 90’s. Corporations can and will destroy themselves by greedy feeding frenzies as we watched in the scandals like Enron and Anderson Consulting. Lack of government intervention, a lack of political will and leadership in America generally allows this trend to continue.
Once the Berlin Wall fell, hollow winds blew through the streets of Soviet Union’s communist ideals and gave the captains of American industry free reign to practice arrogant forms of unrestrained and turgid capitalism at the high costs of public interests.
After disastrous Reaganomics were implemented, Bush Sr. became president, campaigning on a promise to reduce taxes which he later increased in a desperate attempt to reduce Reagan’s inflamed deficit, and pushed Friedman policies, voodoo economics, further, allowing certain industries to gorge on consumers’ savings accounts, wolves on meek lambs. Bush Sr. cooled the corporate feeding frenzy that turned into a blood bath by paying over $120 billion in public tax funds to bail out the Savings & Loan crisis in the early 1990’s.
So, rather than maintain a Keynesian mixed economy in which government calms corporate passions for predatory profits, the neocon doctrine allows industries to devour gullible consumers until streets flow red with blood. Unimaginative industries, banking, healthcare insurance, and energy, resist innovation and change. The only way left for them to make profits is by praying on consumers' ignorance. Only then does government intervene by giving the status quo industries, which lack any innovation, a transfusion of tax payers’ money.
America’s government has become a mere socialized emergency room for industries that overdose on the crack cocaine of greed. Tax payers now pay industries to cure them of their own addiction to larger and larger profits and executive salaries.
As if ambitious to outdo dad, President Bush Jr. drove Milton Friedman’s free wheeling economic policies like a freight train on a downward spiraling track until it finally crashed into the limits of melting consumer credit cards and fraudulent, bloated mortgages. Bush Jr.’s administration will hand out hundreds of billions of tax dollars to subsidize the mismanagement of credit card and mortgage banks while their CEO’s carry their multimillion dollar paychecks to the bank, laughing all the way. Meanwhile middle class workers lose their homes at a neck breaking rate.
In so far as incompetent politicians sell their souls to corporate contributions and voodoo economics and consequently mislead this country into destruction and mayhem, the guerrilla Islamist warriors, like Osama bin Laden, are accurate in assessing the US as corrupt and decadent.
McCain’s campaign promises continue the neoconservative holy crusade for the Iraq War which directly affects the economy. The differences between Obama and MacCain are blatantly clear. Whatever McCain says about the economic fiascos of the mortgage crisis, the credit card crisis, or the Iraq War, Obama has an opposite view and innovative solutions.
The 2008 election is about diametrically opposing views between the Keynesian versus the Friedmaniac policies. In 2008 we also choose between the neocons’ imperial war to impose corporate turgid status quo over a sovereign nation for the sake of its oil reserves versus the innovative solutions in such industries as healthcare, banking, energy, and war.
Corporate Campaign Contributions – Industrial Domination
Tied to the unparalleled power of the Israeli lobby money and to the huge corporate defense and energy contractors, Bush and his chums have been operating only in terms of conventional warfare. Influenced by corporate campaign money, they only think in terms of corporate interests. This involves no bid contracts and the use of expensive, sophisticated weaponry that applies best to the warfare of one sovereign nation against another and not to guerilla warfare.
In other words, the stodgy political church of Bush and McCain is less interested in armor to protect the individual soldiers on the ground, fighting house to house. That sort of activity represents social welfare to individual human beings, brave soldiers. Armor for body and Humvee hardly increases profit margins in comparison to a billion dollar B2 bomber.
Following Bush’s footsteps, McCain embraces this same agenda. If Bush says, “stay the course in Iraq,” McCain says, “stay there a hundred years.” If Bush says timetable to pull out, McCain dittos the Anointed Decider. McSame has developed his economic and war policies from his ties with big business lobbies and not with the interest of the American people. Like Bush, McCain abides by unregulated big business as indoctrinated by Milton Friedman since the Reagan years.
This is the reason why Bush invaded Iraq, a sovereign nation. “It’s just business,” as he would say, “nothin’ pers’nal.” He could have pointed his finger at any piece of fresh meat and the American people were eagerly drooling to revenge the 9/11 attack.
The golden opportunity, the casus belli,a perfect justification for war arrived. The neocons knew exactly which war to wage, the low hanging fruit of the world’s second largest oil reserves. Despite many warnings of the 9/11 attack, W did nothing to restrain the well known Islamist guerrilla warriors, as indicated in his August 6, 2001 Presidential Brief, which he chose to ignore.
According to Ron Suskind's new book, Way of the World, Bush chose to ignore and deny clear intelligence that Iraq had no connection with al-Qaida and no WMDs:
The neocons had long ago planned to knock off Saddam Hussein since the day he nationalized Iraqi oil. They have well documented this fact. Take a look at PNAC. It’s always been about the oil and a drive for global dominance backed by a fanatical Judeo-Christian fundamentalism. We cannot act too surprised when former Fed Chairman Allen Greenspan explained as much in his biography after he left his cushy government job where he practiced the Milton Friedman rituals devoutly in his bathtub, enlightened by flickering candles.
Invading Iraq made great financial and political sense at least for Dubya and his Friedman disciples from Podhoretz to Falwell and Pat Robertson. Defense and petroleum contractors made boat loads of profits, thus fattening the coffers for Bush’s 2004 campaign. Beyond campaign money, the Bush family as well as members of his neocon church, including Cheney, Powell, Rice, Rumsfeld, and so on—they own millions of dollars in stocks with defense contractors and petroleum companies such as the Carlyle Group and a long list of others.
Cheney’s stock options at Halliburton skyrocketed, once the company landed those no-bid billion dollar contracts. Unless you’ve read up on this subject, you wouldn’t recognize the names of these companies, except for maybe the ones that advertise regularly on TV like Exxon, Boeing, Lockhead… By paying for multi-million dollar ads, they were able to stifle freedom of media journalism for at least as long as it took to get Neil Cavuto, comedian Bill O’Reilly, and Wolf Blitzer a whoring chance to sway public opinion to wage an imperial, conventional war against a loosely organized network of guerrilla fundamentalists.
Waging Conventional War Is Good for Re-elections
Bush desperately needed to increase his plummeting popularity score after the Supreme Court appointed him to the presidency by overturning the 2001 election. He could only win a second term in office if he initiated a major war against a well defined country. Iraq was a ripe target with an army impoverished by decades of sanctions. US history shows that no president has lost a second term election after declaring a war in the first term. Now the same scenario plays out for opportunist, citizen McCain who playfully sings his own song, “Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran.”
This is how the American industrial military complex works. It’s become a cookie cutter process for presidents since the Mexican American War when the Thornton Skirmish arose between the U.S. and Mexican militaries, handing President Polk a justification of war against Mexico in 1846. The sinking of the USS Maine gave Teddy Roosevelt a trumped up reason for the Spanish American War just as the Tokin incidenthelped justify the Vietnam War.
This is how the American industrial military complex has operated at least since the Mexican American War (1846). President Eisenhower knew this and warned us about it. However, at the slightest incident, the unschooled masses repeatedly jump on the bandwagon for nationalistic pride, all too willing to take a blind patriotic ride to hell while all the way handing the pillaged profits to the robber barons of war. Is there a cure for the American middle class’s credulity?
Well, everyone could turn off the boob tube and read some books other than the Bible. In France and Germany, they’ve developed a remedy to some extent. It’s called a damn good secular public education system, one that does not muddle science and reason with religious poppycock like creationism, End Days, and all the hooey about holy lands.
Guerrilla Warriors, Not Iraqi Armies
There’s a little problem, though. The groups--groups plural--that perpetrate terrorist activities in the name of Allah are non-conventional warriors. They harbor loyalty to no sovereign nation but to a fundamentalist creed similar to White Supremists or the 700 Club. The US military could never bomb the terrorist groups involved in attacking US and European cities. The US could never invade any one country and expect its leaders to surrender and end the “war on terrorism.”
If attacking any main source of the trouble makers would solve the problem, then they would have to bomb Saudi Arabia because 15 of the 19 terrorists were born, raised, and indoctrinated there. The Devine Decider didn’t invade Saudi Arabia for the simple reason that, unlike Saddam Hussein, the royal family of Saud are long term allies and reliable petroleum suppliers since Franklin Roosevelt made the deal with King Saud in 1945, essentially saying, “We’ll support and protect your tyrannical monarchy so long as you deliver the crude.” It seemed like a good deal at the time, but times change.
The American industrial military complex makes less money in the labor intensive guerrilla wars than they do in wars that require sophisticated, manufactured weaponry. It’s basic business strategy to maintain high profits—to hell with the reasons or the outcomes of the war. Defense contractors earn much smaller profits in guerrilla warfare which requires labor intensive work in urban settings with ears to the ground. In his books, Robert Baer makes this a central argument. Using bombers, sophisticated equipment, missiles,...it's the only thing that makes business sense.
The guerrilla war we face has no one leader, no one country, no standing army. Our enemies in this so-called war on terrorism do not wear uniforms. They are guerrilla warriors who use any means possible to harm their enemies. They use bombs, booby traps, and hijacked airliners because they have neither conventional weapons nor armies. They made this point abundantly clear when they bombed the World Trade Center’s basement in 1993, not to mention earlier bombings of American assets in many places like Tanzania and the Congo.
Any one with a pulse could understand this as early as 1983, when a terrorist cell blew up the US Marine barracks in Lebanon. Likewise most intelligence agents operating in the Middle East knew that a persistent, organized movement of Islamist guerrilla fighters bombed the U.S.S. Cole in 2000. In his many books on the subject Robert Baer describes how he tracked militant Islamists. They had been a well known enemy decades before 9/11/2001.
Bush Jr. would have us believe that these guerrilla warriors hate America and its freedom. He never bothers to consider the simple economic situation in which only the small royal families control the opulent oil wealth in most Arab countries and they do not give a fig to diversify their own economies and develop their own people.
Unemployment (over 35% in Saudi Arabia) and poverty enrage Muslims. Fanatical anti-American religious training helps to set an unemployed, hungry, angry, idle man down a path to murder and mayhem, as was the case for Mohammed Atta and others. Most any religious group provides this sort of narrow education. Just watch Pat Robertson on his evangelical TV show, the 700 Club, or visit one of Jerry Falwell’s Liberty Universities to witness how the later day church of neocons indoctrinate our own credulous youth.
Among Bush’s many mutating reasons for invading Iraq, he finally claimed that it was America’s moral duty to create a democracy throughout the Middle East. For a year or two around 2003, he had most American yahoos believing this. It is another part of the neocon catechism.
Another one of Friedman’s mind boggling theories is that once a country’s economy begins to operate in a capitalistic fashion, it will inevitably become a democracy. Likewise, so the theory goes, if a country becomes democratic, it naturally seeks to implement a liberal capitalism. Neither has proven true in the real world. As a totalitarian regime, China thrives on capitalism. We buy products from totalitarian capitalist China because their regime encourages, nay, enforces, sweatshop labor. It's why US corporations outsource American jobs; labor is cheaper in authoritarian regimes.
Contrary to Pope Friedman’s crack-pot ideas, once given the vote for a democratic government, several countries have recently voted against democracy in favor of theocracy, Islamist regimes like Hamas in Palestine, Hezbollah in Lebanon, or President Gull in Turkey who has an Islamist background. Like the Catholic dominated politics in most of South America, many Islamic countries are theocracies.
Given the theocratic proclivities of President Bush, he too would like to see America governed by some inerrant, one and only Biblical interpretation and not by its Constitution. "We need common-sense judges who understand our rights were derived from God," --As quoted in Understanding the President and his God
Guerrilla warfare is messy and much more difficult to win than invading a crumbling nation. For this reason it never benefits individuals like Bush who intend to expand their personal, political, and financial success at the detriment of national security and economic stability.
As we learned in our own War of Independence and, likewise in Vietnam, guerrilla warfare is extremely messy, costly, and bloody. Contrary to Rumsfeld’s infamous statement that “democracy is messy,” it is the insurgency and the guerrilla fighters that clog the wheels of industry. The Russians learned this when they invaded Afghanistan and it cost them the collapse of their already frail economy. And these schmoes would have us believe that Reagan caused the fall of the Soviet Union.
“War on terror” coins a sacred phrase in the Iraq crusade. Karl Rove, high priest of spin, led the neocons’ faithful choir through the doctrinal hymns, especially regarding Bush’s military mission.
Now the Sanctified Church of Later Day Neocons has anointed John McCain to take the pulpit for the steadfast congregation, a political party on a mission from God, bowing down to corporate avarice at the detriment of public interests. The neocon party promises to maintain stilted, stodgy status quo of old, slogging industries. Though, what we need these days is Yankee ingenuity, innovation, and invention--the heart of American entrepreneurism in government and in business.
Except for Secretary of State Rice, the ex-oil executive automaton, this special cabal of wealthy, white codgers has woven a web of myths so thick that everyone believes the country is divided between the red and the blue: the virtuous, righteous party versus the diabolical, liberal socialists. Behind the neocon marketing hype, the issues draw a real line between rich and the bleeding middle class and the economic policies that shove the poor deeper into debtor’s slavery while the wealthy reap the profits from the uneducated, gullible middle class.
At least twenty percent of Americans still believe that Iraq had something to do with the 9/11 attacks. As many Americans also believe they pay fewer taxes than Europeans who enjoy high quality public healthcare and education through university level.
I know firsthand by attending a German university. Otherwise, coming from a blue collar background in America, I never would have been able to afford an education. I lived and worked more than twenty years in Germany and France and paid fewer taxes than we do in America. I pursued the American dream where it was available.
Considered an enlightened saint among the neocons, Milton Friedman claimed that unregulated industries operate most efficiently. Contrary to this twaddle, we have witnessed how unbridled Savings and Loan banks imploded under Bush Sr. in the early 90’s. Corporations can and will destroy themselves by greedy feeding frenzies as we watched in the scandals like Enron and Anderson Consulting. Lack of government intervention, a lack of political will and leadership in America generally allows this trend to continue.
Once the Berlin Wall fell, hollow winds blew through the streets of Soviet Union’s communist ideals and gave the captains of American industry free reign to practice arrogant forms of unrestrained and turgid capitalism at the high costs of public interests.
After disastrous Reaganomics were implemented, Bush Sr. became president, campaigning on a promise to reduce taxes which he later increased in a desperate attempt to reduce Reagan’s inflamed deficit, and pushed Friedman policies, voodoo economics, further, allowing certain industries to gorge on consumers’ savings accounts, wolves on meek lambs. Bush Sr. cooled the corporate feeding frenzy that turned into a blood bath by paying over $120 billion in public tax funds to bail out the Savings & Loan crisis in the early 1990’s.
So, rather than maintain a Keynesian mixed economy in which government calms corporate passions for predatory profits, the neocon doctrine allows industries to devour gullible consumers until streets flow red with blood. Unimaginative industries, banking, healthcare insurance, and energy, resist innovation and change. The only way left for them to make profits is by praying on consumers' ignorance. Only then does government intervene by giving the status quo industries, which lack any innovation, a transfusion of tax payers’ money.
America’s government has become a mere socialized emergency room for industries that overdose on the crack cocaine of greed. Tax payers now pay industries to cure them of their own addiction to larger and larger profits and executive salaries.
As if ambitious to outdo dad, President Bush Jr. drove Milton Friedman’s free wheeling economic policies like a freight train on a downward spiraling track until it finally crashed into the limits of melting consumer credit cards and fraudulent, bloated mortgages. Bush Jr.’s administration will hand out hundreds of billions of tax dollars to subsidize the mismanagement of credit card and mortgage banks while their CEO’s carry their multimillion dollar paychecks to the bank, laughing all the way. Meanwhile middle class workers lose their homes at a neck breaking rate.
In so far as incompetent politicians sell their souls to corporate contributions and voodoo economics and consequently mislead this country into destruction and mayhem, the guerrilla Islamist warriors, like Osama bin Laden, are accurate in assessing the US as corrupt and decadent.
McCain’s campaign promises continue the neoconservative holy crusade for the Iraq War which directly affects the economy. The differences between Obama and MacCain are blatantly clear. Whatever McCain says about the economic fiascos of the mortgage crisis, the credit card crisis, or the Iraq War, Obama has an opposite view and innovative solutions.
The 2008 election is about diametrically opposing views between the Keynesian versus the Friedmaniac policies. In 2008 we also choose between the neocons’ imperial war to impose corporate turgid status quo over a sovereign nation for the sake of its oil reserves versus the innovative solutions in such industries as healthcare, banking, energy, and war.
Corporate Campaign Contributions – Industrial Domination
Tied to the unparalleled power of the Israeli lobby money and to the huge corporate defense and energy contractors, Bush and his chums have been operating only in terms of conventional warfare. Influenced by corporate campaign money, they only think in terms of corporate interests. This involves no bid contracts and the use of expensive, sophisticated weaponry that applies best to the warfare of one sovereign nation against another and not to guerilla warfare.
In other words, the stodgy political church of Bush and McCain is less interested in armor to protect the individual soldiers on the ground, fighting house to house. That sort of activity represents social welfare to individual human beings, brave soldiers. Armor for body and Humvee hardly increases profit margins in comparison to a billion dollar B2 bomber.
Following Bush’s footsteps, McCain embraces this same agenda. If Bush says, “stay the course in Iraq,” McCain says, “stay there a hundred years.” If Bush says timetable to pull out, McCain dittos the Anointed Decider. McSame has developed his economic and war policies from his ties with big business lobbies and not with the interest of the American people. Like Bush, McCain abides by unregulated big business as indoctrinated by Milton Friedman since the Reagan years.
This is the reason why Bush invaded Iraq, a sovereign nation. “It’s just business,” as he would say, “nothin’ pers’nal.” He could have pointed his finger at any piece of fresh meat and the American people were eagerly drooling to revenge the 9/11 attack.
The golden opportunity, the casus belli,a perfect justification for war arrived. The neocons knew exactly which war to wage, the low hanging fruit of the world’s second largest oil reserves. Despite many warnings of the 9/11 attack, W did nothing to restrain the well known Islamist guerrilla warriors, as indicated in his August 6, 2001 Presidential Brief, which he chose to ignore.
According to Ron Suskind's new book, Way of the World, Bush chose to ignore and deny clear intelligence that Iraq had no connection with al-Qaida and no WMDs:
Then, in the fall of 2003, the White House decided that a letter should be fabricated, dated July 2001, from the Iraqi to Saddam Hussein establishing a link to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S. "And the letter should as well say that Saddam Hussein has been actively buying yellowcake uranium from Niger with the help of al-Qaida," Suskind says.
The neocons had long ago planned to knock off Saddam Hussein since the day he nationalized Iraqi oil. They have well documented this fact. Take a look at PNAC. It’s always been about the oil and a drive for global dominance backed by a fanatical Judeo-Christian fundamentalism. We cannot act too surprised when former Fed Chairman Allen Greenspan explained as much in his biography after he left his cushy government job where he practiced the Milton Friedman rituals devoutly in his bathtub, enlightened by flickering candles.
Invading Iraq made great financial and political sense at least for Dubya and his Friedman disciples from Podhoretz to Falwell and Pat Robertson. Defense and petroleum contractors made boat loads of profits, thus fattening the coffers for Bush’s 2004 campaign. Beyond campaign money, the Bush family as well as members of his neocon church, including Cheney, Powell, Rice, Rumsfeld, and so on—they own millions of dollars in stocks with defense contractors and petroleum companies such as the Carlyle Group and a long list of others.
Cheney’s stock options at Halliburton skyrocketed, once the company landed those no-bid billion dollar contracts. Unless you’ve read up on this subject, you wouldn’t recognize the names of these companies, except for maybe the ones that advertise regularly on TV like Exxon, Boeing, Lockhead… By paying for multi-million dollar ads, they were able to stifle freedom of media journalism for at least as long as it took to get Neil Cavuto, comedian Bill O’Reilly, and Wolf Blitzer a whoring chance to sway public opinion to wage an imperial, conventional war against a loosely organized network of guerrilla fundamentalists.
Waging Conventional War Is Good for Re-elections
Bush desperately needed to increase his plummeting popularity score after the Supreme Court appointed him to the presidency by overturning the 2001 election. He could only win a second term in office if he initiated a major war against a well defined country. Iraq was a ripe target with an army impoverished by decades of sanctions. US history shows that no president has lost a second term election after declaring a war in the first term. Now the same scenario plays out for opportunist, citizen McCain who playfully sings his own song, “Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran.”
This is how the American industrial military complex works. It’s become a cookie cutter process for presidents since the Mexican American War when the Thornton Skirmish arose between the U.S. and Mexican militaries, handing President Polk a justification of war against Mexico in 1846. The sinking of the USS Maine gave Teddy Roosevelt a trumped up reason for the Spanish American War just as the Tokin incidenthelped justify the Vietnam War.
This is how the American industrial military complex has operated at least since the Mexican American War (1846). President Eisenhower knew this and warned us about it. However, at the slightest incident, the unschooled masses repeatedly jump on the bandwagon for nationalistic pride, all too willing to take a blind patriotic ride to hell while all the way handing the pillaged profits to the robber barons of war. Is there a cure for the American middle class’s credulity?
Well, everyone could turn off the boob tube and read some books other than the Bible. In France and Germany, they’ve developed a remedy to some extent. It’s called a damn good secular public education system, one that does not muddle science and reason with religious poppycock like creationism, End Days, and all the hooey about holy lands.
Guerrilla Warriors, Not Iraqi Armies
There’s a little problem, though. The groups--groups plural--that perpetrate terrorist activities in the name of Allah are non-conventional warriors. They harbor loyalty to no sovereign nation but to a fundamentalist creed similar to White Supremists or the 700 Club. The US military could never bomb the terrorist groups involved in attacking US and European cities. The US could never invade any one country and expect its leaders to surrender and end the “war on terrorism.”
If attacking any main source of the trouble makers would solve the problem, then they would have to bomb Saudi Arabia because 15 of the 19 terrorists were born, raised, and indoctrinated there. The Devine Decider didn’t invade Saudi Arabia for the simple reason that, unlike Saddam Hussein, the royal family of Saud are long term allies and reliable petroleum suppliers since Franklin Roosevelt made the deal with King Saud in 1945, essentially saying, “We’ll support and protect your tyrannical monarchy so long as you deliver the crude.” It seemed like a good deal at the time, but times change.
The American industrial military complex makes less money in the labor intensive guerrilla wars than they do in wars that require sophisticated, manufactured weaponry. It’s basic business strategy to maintain high profits—to hell with the reasons or the outcomes of the war. Defense contractors earn much smaller profits in guerrilla warfare which requires labor intensive work in urban settings with ears to the ground. In his books, Robert Baer makes this a central argument. Using bombers, sophisticated equipment, missiles,...it's the only thing that makes business sense.
The guerrilla war we face has no one leader, no one country, no standing army. Our enemies in this so-called war on terrorism do not wear uniforms. They are guerrilla warriors who use any means possible to harm their enemies. They use bombs, booby traps, and hijacked airliners because they have neither conventional weapons nor armies. They made this point abundantly clear when they bombed the World Trade Center’s basement in 1993, not to mention earlier bombings of American assets in many places like Tanzania and the Congo.
Any one with a pulse could understand this as early as 1983, when a terrorist cell blew up the US Marine barracks in Lebanon. Likewise most intelligence agents operating in the Middle East knew that a persistent, organized movement of Islamist guerrilla fighters bombed the U.S.S. Cole in 2000. In his many books on the subject Robert Baer describes how he tracked militant Islamists. They had been a well known enemy decades before 9/11/2001.
Bush Jr. would have us believe that these guerrilla warriors hate America and its freedom. He never bothers to consider the simple economic situation in which only the small royal families control the opulent oil wealth in most Arab countries and they do not give a fig to diversify their own economies and develop their own people.
Unemployment (over 35% in Saudi Arabia) and poverty enrage Muslims. Fanatical anti-American religious training helps to set an unemployed, hungry, angry, idle man down a path to murder and mayhem, as was the case for Mohammed Atta and others. Most any religious group provides this sort of narrow education. Just watch Pat Robertson on his evangelical TV show, the 700 Club, or visit one of Jerry Falwell’s Liberty Universities to witness how the later day church of neocons indoctrinate our own credulous youth.
Among Bush’s many mutating reasons for invading Iraq, he finally claimed that it was America’s moral duty to create a democracy throughout the Middle East. For a year or two around 2003, he had most American yahoos believing this. It is another part of the neocon catechism.
Another one of Friedman’s mind boggling theories is that once a country’s economy begins to operate in a capitalistic fashion, it will inevitably become a democracy. Likewise, so the theory goes, if a country becomes democratic, it naturally seeks to implement a liberal capitalism. Neither has proven true in the real world. As a totalitarian regime, China thrives on capitalism. We buy products from totalitarian capitalist China because their regime encourages, nay, enforces, sweatshop labor. It's why US corporations outsource American jobs; labor is cheaper in authoritarian regimes.
Contrary to Pope Friedman’s crack-pot ideas, once given the vote for a democratic government, several countries have recently voted against democracy in favor of theocracy, Islamist regimes like Hamas in Palestine, Hezbollah in Lebanon, or President Gull in Turkey who has an Islamist background. Like the Catholic dominated politics in most of South America, many Islamic countries are theocracies.
Given the theocratic proclivities of President Bush, he too would like to see America governed by some inerrant, one and only Biblical interpretation and not by its Constitution. "We need common-sense judges who understand our rights were derived from God," --As quoted in Understanding the President and his God
Guerrilla warfare is messy and much more difficult to win than invading a crumbling nation. For this reason it never benefits individuals like Bush who intend to expand their personal, political, and financial success at the detriment of national security and economic stability.
As we learned in our own War of Independence and, likewise in Vietnam, guerrilla warfare is extremely messy, costly, and bloody. Contrary to Rumsfeld’s infamous statement that “democracy is messy,” it is the insurgency and the guerrilla fighters that clog the wheels of industry. The Russians learned this when they invaded Afghanistan and it cost them the collapse of their already frail economy. And these schmoes would have us believe that Reagan caused the fall of the Soviet Union.
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Conspiracy Theories
The media, TV journalists in particular, continue to leave some important questions lying dormant beneath the dusty cover of “conspiracy theory.” Why did W decide to invade Iraq while 15 of the 19 terrorists of 9/11 came from Saudi Arabia? Why is Saudi Arabia a cradle for such terrorists?
Years ago, when W still had some credibility, he and his Roving gang could ridicule anyone who spoke against his actions. Whenever brave souls dared to question the Divine Decider, he and his cronies dismissed the dissenters as nutcase conspiracy theorists. And they continue to do so even after the Iraq War has officially run its miserable course to disastrous guerrilla warfare and our economy whimpers.
UFOs
Back in September 2004, Senator Bob Graham, (Florida Democrat) a former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, accused the Divine Decider of covering up evidence that might have linked Saudi Arabia to the Sept. 11 hijackers.
Graham made the accusation in his book, Intelligence Matters, and repeated it at news conferences. Republicans called the accusations "bizarre conspiracy theories," and Saudi officials said they were unsubstantiated and reckless.
In his highly informative book, House of Bush, House of Saud, , Craig Unger criticizes the Bush administration for allowing so many Saudis, including the relatives of bin Laden, to leave the country quickly, while all other flights were grounded, without being questioned about the terrorist attacks. Unger cites FBI and Police agents as witnesses.
In his book, Saudi Arabia Exposed, John Bradley, who lived and worked as a journalist in Saudi Arabia, interviews several bin Laden relatives who rode on the very same plans that the FBI and the White House deny ever existed.
These UFO’s, such as the small LearJet 35 from TIA, among others, that flew bin Laden relatives and Saud family members from the USA quickly on 9/14, represent just the tip of an iceberg of cover ups that conceal the special treatment for the Royal family of Saud.
Money Walks
Once upon a time there was a Prince Naif bin Fawwaz Al-Shalaan, with a diplomatic passport and a family Boeing 747, who transported cocaine often from Columbia to France. DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency) Agent Raffanello says some of the drug profits have been used to fund terrorism. The Prince transported up to two tons of cocaine. In order to shake the charges against him, he threatened French business interests of cancelling huge defense deals in an effort to persuade the authorities to drop the investigation. The Saudi Royal Family united to help their Prince out of the jam. Case closed.
Yes, Saudi Royalty is above the law. They are the law. After all they control trillions in petrol-dollars. Any surprise that they are close friends with Bush Sr. and Jr.? The family dynasties are joined at the wallet in oil interests.
Once upon another time there was a Prince Turki bin Nasser, the Royal Saud family's principal contact with the British defense industry, who allegedly received about $32 million worth of luxury benefits paid for by BAE Systems, the largest British defense contractor. British authorities opened a case of serious fraud against the Prince. To pressure the British into dropping all charges, Saud Royalty threatened to cancel billions of dollars in defense deals for combat aircraft. Case closed.
Many other cases haunt the halls of the Saud family palaces.
In London police arrested a 41-year old Saudi, close friend of Saud Royalty, for sexual assault against an 11-year old girl. London police were forced to release the man who claimed diplomatic immunity. The Royal family of Saud supported his return to Saudi Arabia and complained that the London media was putting him on trial, not the courts. Saudi authorities would not allow police to question the man further. Case closed.
Back in Riyadh, the Saudi government owns the media and uses it to smear any and all opposition.
Justice for All
For the regular guy on the street, apart from soccer matches, the only form of public entertainment is a beheading. If you ever vacation in Saudi Arabia, you’ll learn to recognize this occasional diversion by the way people leave their cars parked chockablock in the streets near a city’s chop-chop square where authorities carry out the executions. Of course, members of Saudi Royalty are virtually exempt from this system.
In partnership with the Saud Royalty, Wahhabi fundamentalists run the justice system. The country still applies a strict form of Shariah law, which includes public beheadings for, among other offenses, murder, drug trafficking, apostasy, rape, and adultery—and occasionally thieves’ hands are amputated. More than 50 beheadings take place per year...in a country the size and population of Texas.
The Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency reported that crime among young jobless Saudis rose 320 percent between 1990 and 1996 and more than 136 percent by 2005.
Slums such as Kerantina in Jeddah and Al-Suwaidi, a southern district in Riyadh, are two of many homes to prostitutes, drug traffickers, and booze peddlers among the poor and destitute. The gap between the haves and have-nots has grown at least as fast as the population. Unemployment rises above 35 percent.
Terrorist Incubators
As these slums grow, so too the pressure for the young and unemployed to seek retribution for the inequality and hopelessness. The slums, like the provincial countryside of tribal villages, have predictably become fertile breeding grounds for Islamic radicalism and perfect for guerilla warfare.
These slums provide little sources of culture, education or entertainment other than drugs or the fundamentalist Wahhabi schools where young men receive their Islamist indoctrination. Many documented terrorists graduate from hard-line radical schools such as Imam Mohamed Bin Saud University. They learn to hate the West for many reasons, including supporting the tyrannical monarchy which hordes the petro-dollars. Resentment grows naturally against the Saudi government because its inequality, arrogance, and greed is rubbed in the faces of the poor every day. Hatred for the West arises from a natural logic that the Royal family of Saud exercises its abusive power because the West supports them as reliable suppliers of America's most intoxicating drug. Meanwhile Big Oil uses its financial power to maintain status quo, restraining alternative and cleaner sources of energy.
The combination of radical Islamic doctrine, hatred of the West, poverty, and a perceived pro-Western ruling elite has created a schizophrenic monster in the very heart of the country. This combination delivers a powerful recruitment tool that the likes of Al-Qaeda could only pray for.
And for some reason, we were led to believe that 9/11 was only about an irrational religious war.
Years ago, when W still had some credibility, he and his Roving gang could ridicule anyone who spoke against his actions. Whenever brave souls dared to question the Divine Decider, he and his cronies dismissed the dissenters as nutcase conspiracy theorists. And they continue to do so even after the Iraq War has officially run its miserable course to disastrous guerrilla warfare and our economy whimpers.
UFOs
Back in September 2004, Senator Bob Graham, (Florida Democrat) a former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, accused the Divine Decider of covering up evidence that might have linked Saudi Arabia to the Sept. 11 hijackers.
Graham made the accusation in his book, Intelligence Matters, and repeated it at news conferences. Republicans called the accusations "bizarre conspiracy theories," and Saudi officials said they were unsubstantiated and reckless.
In his highly informative book, House of Bush, House of Saud, , Craig Unger criticizes the Bush administration for allowing so many Saudis, including the relatives of bin Laden, to leave the country quickly, while all other flights were grounded, without being questioned about the terrorist attacks. Unger cites FBI and Police agents as witnesses.
In his book, Saudi Arabia Exposed, John Bradley, who lived and worked as a journalist in Saudi Arabia, interviews several bin Laden relatives who rode on the very same plans that the FBI and the White House deny ever existed.
These UFO’s, such as the small LearJet 35 from TIA, among others, that flew bin Laden relatives and Saud family members from the USA quickly on 9/14, represent just the tip of an iceberg of cover ups that conceal the special treatment for the Royal family of Saud.
Money Walks
Once upon a time there was a Prince Naif bin Fawwaz Al-Shalaan, with a diplomatic passport and a family Boeing 747, who transported cocaine often from Columbia to France. DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency) Agent Raffanello says some of the drug profits have been used to fund terrorism. The Prince transported up to two tons of cocaine. In order to shake the charges against him, he threatened French business interests of cancelling huge defense deals in an effort to persuade the authorities to drop the investigation. The Saudi Royal Family united to help their Prince out of the jam. Case closed.
Yes, Saudi Royalty is above the law. They are the law. After all they control trillions in petrol-dollars. Any surprise that they are close friends with Bush Sr. and Jr.? The family dynasties are joined at the wallet in oil interests.
Once upon another time there was a Prince Turki bin Nasser, the Royal Saud family's principal contact with the British defense industry, who allegedly received about $32 million worth of luxury benefits paid for by BAE Systems, the largest British defense contractor. British authorities opened a case of serious fraud against the Prince. To pressure the British into dropping all charges, Saud Royalty threatened to cancel billions of dollars in defense deals for combat aircraft. Case closed.
Many other cases haunt the halls of the Saud family palaces.
In London police arrested a 41-year old Saudi, close friend of Saud Royalty, for sexual assault against an 11-year old girl. London police were forced to release the man who claimed diplomatic immunity. The Royal family of Saud supported his return to Saudi Arabia and complained that the London media was putting him on trial, not the courts. Saudi authorities would not allow police to question the man further. Case closed.
Back in Riyadh, the Saudi government owns the media and uses it to smear any and all opposition.
Justice for All
For the regular guy on the street, apart from soccer matches, the only form of public entertainment is a beheading. If you ever vacation in Saudi Arabia, you’ll learn to recognize this occasional diversion by the way people leave their cars parked chockablock in the streets near a city’s chop-chop square where authorities carry out the executions. Of course, members of Saudi Royalty are virtually exempt from this system.
In partnership with the Saud Royalty, Wahhabi fundamentalists run the justice system. The country still applies a strict form of Shariah law, which includes public beheadings for, among other offenses, murder, drug trafficking, apostasy, rape, and adultery—and occasionally thieves’ hands are amputated. More than 50 beheadings take place per year...in a country the size and population of Texas.
The Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency reported that crime among young jobless Saudis rose 320 percent between 1990 and 1996 and more than 136 percent by 2005.
Slums such as Kerantina in Jeddah and Al-Suwaidi, a southern district in Riyadh, are two of many homes to prostitutes, drug traffickers, and booze peddlers among the poor and destitute. The gap between the haves and have-nots has grown at least as fast as the population. Unemployment rises above 35 percent.
Terrorist Incubators
As these slums grow, so too the pressure for the young and unemployed to seek retribution for the inequality and hopelessness. The slums, like the provincial countryside of tribal villages, have predictably become fertile breeding grounds for Islamic radicalism and perfect for guerilla warfare.
These slums provide little sources of culture, education or entertainment other than drugs or the fundamentalist Wahhabi schools where young men receive their Islamist indoctrination. Many documented terrorists graduate from hard-line radical schools such as Imam Mohamed Bin Saud University. They learn to hate the West for many reasons, including supporting the tyrannical monarchy which hordes the petro-dollars. Resentment grows naturally against the Saudi government because its inequality, arrogance, and greed is rubbed in the faces of the poor every day. Hatred for the West arises from a natural logic that the Royal family of Saud exercises its abusive power because the West supports them as reliable suppliers of America's most intoxicating drug. Meanwhile Big Oil uses its financial power to maintain status quo, restraining alternative and cleaner sources of energy.
The combination of radical Islamic doctrine, hatred of the West, poverty, and a perceived pro-Western ruling elite has created a schizophrenic monster in the very heart of the country. This combination delivers a powerful recruitment tool that the likes of Al-Qaeda could only pray for.
And for some reason, we were led to believe that 9/11 was only about an irrational religious war.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Publisher's News Wire: Mojave Winds
Publishers News Wire
Mark Biskeborn's New Book Concerns Difficulties Faced by Iraq Veterans
Published: Thu, 21 Feb 2008, 11:57 EDT
By Angela Polchat Staff Writer, Publishers Newswire
IRVINE, Calif. -- Mojave Winds, (ISBN: 978-0-9801383-0-6), a novel by Mark Biskeborn, highlights the growing social impact on Iraq War veterans returning home, and their struggles to reintegrate to the civilian world.
The recent book by author, Mark Biskeborn, "Mojave Winds," has been met with wide acceptance, attracting a great deal of attention with its controversial storyline:
A combat veteran returns from the Iraq War, struggles to readapt to normal life, only to find conflict in the United States as well.
The new Stop-Loss law imposes unprecedented hardships on soldiers now. The prolonged combat missions increase tensions complicating soldiers' return to daily life- post-traumatic-stress, divorce, child custody, financial dread, and unemployment. These and other calamities unravel soldiers' nerves when they finally do get to come home. This book demonstrates the public concern over what happens when trained warriors show up on the streets.
With the flare-ups of domestic terrorism within U.S. borders, this book also reminds readers that the battles have now made their way to the United States as well. Fighting the enemy 'over there,' does not exclude fighting them here.
In the past two weeks, over 20,000 new visitors have flooded the author's website, http://www.markbiskeborn.com. This includes his online blog discussing the issues facing soldiers on extended missions. The impact of these American policies has received a sudden influx of new public attention. Traffic has also spiked from searches relating to the calamities of prolonged military tours of duty and concern for domestic terrorism.
The rapid spread of interest in Mojave Winds has been felt in the publishing world as well. The book was selected as a feature for the Southern California Writers Conference held in San Diego this past weekend. The prestigious International Thriller Writers conference in New York will feature Mojave Winds (thrillerwriters.org). The Writers Digest newsletter also features Mojave Winds (writersdigest.com) as the author will attend the Writers' Digest conference in L.A., 28 May.
The author, Mark Biskeborn, has been a contributing author for several blogs, especially The Smirking Chimp, and has received a swarm of letters and comments from his regular weekly writings. Mark is currently scheduled to appear at the International Thriller Writers Conference and the Maui Writers Conference this year. Amazon Shorts has featured several of his short stories recently.
As a result of Mojave Winds unprecedented sales success and rapidly growing popularity, several mainstream publishing houses are considering author Mark Biskeborn while he works to complete his next novel.
Mojave Winds is now available through Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, and many other booksellers, as well as the Author's own site.
The current state of affairs and the highly volatile political discussion concerning the legality of the Stop-Loss policy, the calamities that returning U.S. veterans now face, and the concerns over domestic terrorism continue to fuel public interest in the book. While the book is considered fiction, many of the issues discussed in its chapters are anchored in current affairs in the U.S. and world news events.
About Mojave Winds and Mark Biskeborn:
Mojave Winds, a novel by author Mark Biskeborn, depicts the difficulties protagonist Kris Klug faces; a returning Iraq War veteran, he struggles to integrate back into the civilian world. He suffers from flashbacks from his war experience, the drastic difference in civilian life, and the effects of post-traumatic stress. He also is shocked to discover that the war has followed him back home to the U.S., as a series of events puts him in the cross hairs of domestic terrorism. Despite the high-tension stakes, with an Islamist gang at his heels, he meets a classical dancer, Sheila, whom he finds especially intriguing while crossing the Mojave to Las Vegas.
The author is a long time resident of California, and has also lived and worked many years abroad. He has contributed many non-fiction articles, essays, and book reviews to magazine publications and blogs. He also has had several short stories featured recently on Amazon Shorts. He is now completing a sequel novel, Follow the Sufi's Ghost, for release in winter, 2008.
For more information on the book or the author, or to order online, visit http://www.markbiskeborn.com or call 949-293-2016.
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