More Obscenity from the Third Galaxy

[I hope you ready to hear more about the kind of obscenity I find more obscene than the kind your normal Arrogant citizen gets upset fantasizing about.

That is, I’m not talking about the occasional [gasp!] bare breast or [horror!] anything that reveals that the human body is that of a sexual being which comes in two basic patterns with a number of variations in shape, size and behavioral patterns.

Using democracy to destroy democracy is obscene. Thank God we don’t live in the Third Galaxy. Despite what people like Jeff Cohen and Thom Hartmann might tell you, things like that described below certainly don’t happen in our world and certainly not in America!]

Based on intuition, it was claimed earlier here, that the Bankers of Illuision were instrumental in clearing Ronald Rexona’s path to power. The path which eventually led to his assumption of the role of Supreme Hole of Arrogance and, for a brief but terrible time, the de facto ruler of the entire Third Galaxy.

Recently, interesting details have been found among the third level footnotes of the 21st Edition of the Absolute Truth. This enormous document became available to ordinary researchers when the Alien Veggies deposed Rexona and, in effect, outlawed war as a mode of solving our disagreements as national units.

Three weeks before his war against Sandy Aridya the popular news commentary show, the Phil Donahue Show was cancelled. An internal memo from the network reveals the reason, “This kind of program cannot be shown in a time of war…presents too many guests who are skeptical of the war and Mr. Rexona’s motives.”

It may seem like a small thing, but the invasion of Sandy Aridya, along with Terrible Tuesday are two things which more than any other set in motion a chain of events which transformed Rexona from an incompetent chief executive to what he finally became.

It was part of a pattern of deception and disinformation and outright cooperation between the Bankers of Illusion and the Rexona administration to keep the Arrogant citizenry passive and ignorant.

The Bankers did it for money, which is why some call them “media whores”, and Rexona did it for power, which is why he is called a “hole”.

The most popular, effective and, not least important, cheapest way to mislead, deceive and dis-inform is to finagle with “Hot News”. It’s sort of like drowning out criticism with a battery of klaxon horns.

For example, a court ruled that Rexona had broken the Groundlaw in ordering illegal wiretaps on Arrogant citizens, a rational person might think that it would be news and pertinent in this context that this was a federal crime with punishment up to $10000 and/or 5 years in jail.

What happened though is that the story got 10 seconds on national television and disappeared completely the following days. It was never mentioned that it was a crime carrying with it a long prison sentence.

The reason that the story died is that a old story about a grisly, unsolved murder took over the airwaves. All of a sudden, there was a man on the other side of the world who was a prime suspect in the rape-murder of a little girl some 10 years ago.

This story broke, by pure coincidence, on the very same day as the court gave its verdict in the wiretapping case. It was immediate “Hot News” gobbling up 3, 4 and 5 minute time slots on national television and, in effect, pushed the wiretapping story into oblivion.

Did I say coincidence? The fact is Rexona’s agents wiretapped the phones of the very court that was making the decision in the case about illegal phones! How’s that for chutzpa?

The Rexona government knew when the decision was going to be made public and, on a whim, dispatched on just four hour notice agents from Homeland Security to bring this suspect back to Arrogance just in time to blow the story about the court’s decision off the airwaves.

This was just a single example of a pattern of abuse where Rexona, having abrogated to himself the right to do something illegal “in order to combat Terraism” and “for the sake of Homeland Security” used it instead as a tool to get information about politicians and journalists which was used to blackmail, intimidate and even destroy their careers.

Something Really Obscene!

[Yesterday’s report from the Third Galaxy rambled about the supposed obscenity of the human areola, a concept so completely foreign to our world I find it hard to understand why El-Ishman wanted to transmit it.

Today our unemployed angel presents us with a yet another rant about something that would really be obscene, that is if it applied to us here on Earth.]

…in brief, if our leaders manage to send us all to hell, they have planned and expect to sit nice and cozy in the sort of “undisclosed location” that Dick Pennyburton gallivants off to now and then when he wants to get away from the wife.

They live, we die – THAT is obscene!

If Ronald Rexona really screws things up Big Time – and it looks like that’s just about the only thing he does really well! If he screws up Big Time and escalates his incompetence all the way up to and maybe even beyond nuclear world war, do you know what happens?

He scuttles down the rabbit hole along with several thousands of pre-selected people, flacks, hacks, courtiers yes-men and -women, apple-polishers and accomplished ass-lickers – in brief, his government-within-a-government. That is to say when the shit hits the fan, the Supreme Hole, accompanied by a lot of major and minor holes plan to remove themselves to Chambers of Secrecy buried deep and get on with their lives.

One of these locations, deep, self-contained and enormous, is located in Virginia under Mount Weather. They not only have movie theaters, tennis courts, shopping malls, swimming pools and Jacuzzis, they even got a lake down there and places Ronald Rexona can ride his mountain bike! Hell, for all anybody knows, they might even have a golf course!

If push ever comes to shove, it’s here they plan to sit and further plan world conquest, while sipping the occasional dry martini.

Meanwhile, Mr. Nascar Dad, Ms. Soccer Mom, Joe Six-pack and all the rest of us not rich enough to avoid paying taxes, us citizens who paid not only paid for their underground condominiums but also the expensive toys to blow things up with, what about us! At best, we get to find out what it’s like to live under the iron fist of martial law. At worst, we get to play “duck and cover” under the kitchen table as the flash of an airburst burns the clothes off our bodies.

Or, if we are lucky, we can enjoy the exquisite pleasures of acute radiation poisoning as our skin sloughs off and we literally puke our guts out on to the floor in puddles of blood for one to six weeks before we die in utter agony.

The most likely scenario, of course, is a major terraist attack by the minions of Ahsawyah been-Lately who, by some lucky fluke, somehow manage to slip through the nearly non-existent Home Security Defenses our leaders have spent a hundred billion dollars on since Terrible Tuesday when the bad guys dropped twenty tons of horse-shit on us from hot-air balloons.

The difference between establishing dictatorship in a fascist state and a democratic republic is that in a fascist state you only need one Reichstag Fire – in a democratic republic you need at least two or three. In both cases, you need the acquiescence of about 35 % of the population and in neither case is dictatorship announced as anything other than the defense of Freedom and Democracy.

Do you have other suggestions for this class of obscenity?

What's Obscene?

´[A brief ramble from some guy in the Third Galaxy – it’s amazing how screwed up they were! It is fortunate we are more rational on our world]


People got different ideas about what is obscene.

Back in Poosah City, where I grew up, they got their underwear all tied in up in knots because of an “accident” that once happened during the half-time entertainment at this big football game. They were dancing and singing and the cup fell off the lady’s bra exposing [O, My God!] her breast! The horror was double bad compounded by the fact that there was no pasty on her nipple!

It was an outrage!

Arrogant citizens were incensed over the fact that hundreds if not thousands of young children were psychologically maimed for life by having seen a dark areola in the middle of a chocolate colored breast.

The thought of imagining the perversions which those poor children would engage in later in life caused the heads of several citizens to literally explode!

On the other hand, perhaps it’s me who’s out to lunch here! Human babies have been suckled on nipples for at least 6000 years and I have to admit the human race seems to be a rather perverted species of minimal collective intelligence. Maybe this is the reason!

Yes! That’s it! It is common knowledge that breast feeding pretty much went out of style in the Blighted State of Arrogance during the 20th century and as everybody knows, Arrogance is the most peace loving country in the world! There must be a connection!

Yes! That’s it! Why else would we promote world peace by invading only when we are forced to or imagine that some day someone might attack us! Why else would we spend a trillion dollars to build up a nuclear arsenal, with delivery systems to match, that could destroy the world a hundred times over? Why else would we spend more on developing the most really super ways to kill people both quickly and slowly than all the rest of the world combined?

Why else, if not because we are the most peace-loving country in the world and what can be the explanation for that but the fact that, for the last few generations, most of our citizens, as babes, never suckled at a woman’s breast!

You make think I’m nuts and maybe I am! But still, I think there ought to be a law that women should have to wear pasties on their nipples, just in case of accidental exposure. Hell, maybe men ought to be made to wear them also, at least fat, old men like me!

Uh, excuse me, folks, just a moment while I get my tongue straightened out, it seems it got stuck in my cheek!

POP!!!

Ah, that’s better!

Illegal Alien Threat to Storm the US!

[Today’s post is but a little bee in a blog swarm on the first anniversary of Katrina’s visit to the US. I got sucked into it by Shakespeare’s Sister through the good graces of Mr. Raven]

Illegal alien threat to storm the US!

Border Patrol and Coast Guard are on high alert!

Minutemen fear being “swamped” by illegal alien flood!

President Bush fully prepared for dramatic photo-op!

The storm, “Ernesto”, is suspected of intent to attempt entry the United States in the guise of a hurricane. His name alone would qualify him as an illegal alien and the fact that he's first stopping over at Cuba means that we cannot exclude that this is not in someway connected with a terrorist plot instigated by the communist regime.

“We’ve seen a lot of tricks before, but this really wets the cake!” said government spokesman, Rusty Blowhard, “but we expect the Border Patrol and the Coast Guard to foil any plans of this, uhm, what I must, at the risk of sounding a bit politically incorrect, call a real wetback.”

“There’s been talk that he’ll try to come ashore on the west coast of Florida,” continued Mr. Blowhard, “but we suspect he may try for the soft underbelly of America and drift in over New Orleans.”

We heard from an unnamed White House official that the fact that Ernesto is now being called a “tropical” storm is yet another example of how the liberal press continues to not take national security seriously. We also learned that it would be a bad choice for him to try for New Orleans, as the President is already on his way there for a photo-op in connection with the anniversary of his big sister, Katrina’s visit last year at this time.

“Mr. Bush is much better prepared this year if Ernesto decides to show up anywhere near Louisiana.” said the official, “The President is prepared to lift one, two or even several sandbags, as long as the cameras keep clicking.

“Something Mr. Bush has learned from one of the 65 books he has actually read this year is how to tune his guitar, so he’s itching throw in some hot licks to keep up the spirits of refugees should the Superdome need to be used for rest and recreation again like last year.

The picture below shows how Mr. Bush plans to entertain with a rendition of “How high’s the water, Mommy?”

[the picture was taken from the Political Humor web-site]

The grimace on the nice lady’s face is because he has not yet grasped the concept that a G chord should be taken on the third and not the fourth fret. Just one strum on the guitar is enough to make a grown woman cry, as you can be seen in the picture.

“However, the decal of the President’s Seal is guaranteed waterproof, so we’ll have no problems there!” said the unnamed White House official.”

__________________________
Note: the satire (if you think you noticed any) stops here.

The basic problem at the root of the New Orleans/Katrina disaster is an environmental one which can be summed up in one word: WETLANDS.

The deposit of silting over thousands of years, these marshy swamps and mangroves along the coast acts as a natural buffer, or “speed bump”, against wind speed and storm surge.

Three miles of wetland lowers a storm surge by more than a foot.

The degradation of the wetlands is complicated and has been going on for several generations. Its causes can almost all be attributed to human intervention and mismanagement.

The disappearance of the wetlands really doesn’t have that much to do with the Bush administration. This doesn’t mean that anything this administration is likely to do is likely help in this or any environmental matter.

A River Reverie by Helen Talmadge

Today, I present to you once again a poem of a lady I introduced you to not so long ago, my aunt, Helen Talmadge, who now lives in a nursing home in Ocala, FL.

If there is one thing I could have wished it would have been to have been acquainted with her work in my youth and not have had to wait until I was well into the late afternoon of my life.

The picture is of Roskilde Fjord and was taken with one of these new-fangled cell phones by this guy I work with. Although not a river, it captures something of the mood of this gentle poem.

I stood beside the river as
the sun was going down,
And as I watched, the lights winked on
all about the town.
The ducks brought their ducklings to
nests along the shore,
Amid sporadic quackings settled
down to sleep once more.

An oar splashed in the water
as a boat drifted by --
The first star of evening
was shining in the sky,
And for a single moment my heart
was filled with simple peace,
For there is a benediction in
moments such as these.

Have You Stopped Beating Your Wife?

I wrote but two days ago that I would be posting more reports from the Third Galaxy, but something reminded me of an interview on Danish television I saw some time ago with Colin Powell, the former Secretary of State. The interview startled and puzzled me not a little at the time.

The interview took place in Denmark and Powell was interviewed by a Danish journalist who normally works on the Washington DC beat.

Much of the interview revolved around Powell’s involvement in the invasion of Iraq, his speech to the UN which persuaded the Security Council to pass the resolution which his boss, Mr. Bush later twisted to use as justification for preemptive war, invasion, occupation and total mismanagement of that unfortunate country.

Mr. Powell was sorry about his role with the UN resolution, but he managed to make it sound like that he had been given bad information without actually saying so and thus gave no opening for the journalist to call him on it. He also admitted that many mistakes had been made in handling Iraq. Somehow he made it sound like they were things that no one could have foreseen...

Powell admitted that the image of the American government had suffered but maintained that it was unavoidable. When you are the most powerful you have to take the lead whether you want to or not and some, perhaps a lot of people are going to resent this.

Then the journalist pitched his final question of the evening. He asked Powell if, knowing what he knew now and how things had developed the past three years, would he still have advocated an invasion of Iraq.

Powell’s answered with question: Let me ask you isn’t the world a better and safer place now that Saddam Hussein is no longer in power? This is a “Have you stopped beating your wife?” class of question meant to stop debate and it did.

The obvious answer is of course, no, not at all, in no way is it a better place and certainly not safer – not for us in Denmark and not in the USA and most certainly not for the people who live in Iraq and the rest of the Middle East.

Powell’s question was not made up on the spur of the moment. It is a “talking point”. A journalist who works in DC is familiar with them. Why he did not dare answer is something the journalist would have to answer himself. But I can surmise that it is exactly because the journalist works out of DC and therefore was afraid.

If he embarrassed the Great Man and Senior Diplomat Statesman, his access to politicians in DC could wither or at best become more formal. He might even find himself under more direct attack, like the Irish journalist who asked Mr. Bush real questions as if she expected to hear, if nor honest, at least real answers.

If politicians are allowed to wheel out their threadbare, retread talking points unchallenged, what is the use of it? We might just as well have Soviet journalists lobbing softballs to members of the Politburo.

This is very much like the sort of thing that happened in the Third Galaxy. Journalists became more and more talking bobble heads, lobbing soft balls. In the end it became almost and then in fact an act of treason to ask any government official, let alone Ronald Rexona, a real question as if expecting a real answer.

But these were just a couple of foreign journalists. American journalists are brave, investigative and hard hitting. The fact that 95% of the media is owned by 5 mega-corps and that news is seen as a form of entertainment does not affect them in their work.

That is why Americans are the best informed people in the world!

Not a Conspiracy

There is a misunderstanding that the rise of Ronald Rexona to power in the Third Galaxy, culminating in ascendancy as the Supreme Hole of Arrogance, was the result of nefarious scheming and world wide conspiracies.

Nothing could be further from the truth and for once I have to ask that you really believe that I mean what I say.

There was no conspiracy, at least no more conspiracy than that of a pack of wild hyenas gorging themselves on some poor creature.

True, there was a lot of scheming and much of it was quite nefarious, but really nothing more than the sort of thing that comes natural to any arrogant asshole.

No one is surprised when a plate of food forgotten in the refrigerator is found to have acquired multicolored fur of fungus, no one thinks that bacteria “conspired” to destroy food. Everyone understands that it is a result of the dynamics of a situation.

Similarly, one should be surprised that when certain types of people get their hands on the levers of governmental power things will develop in certain ways because assholes everywhere operate from a set of Prime Directives which is 1. “Get Mine”, 2. “Get Theirs” and, when the shit hits the fan, 3. “Cover My Ass”.

Power leads to increasing arrogance which leads to ignorance. An arrogant asshole fixates on what it wants and getting more of it, ignoring every thing else. Avarice and greed feed its sense of entitlement, that it has the right to take what it wants, which also accentuates the drift from power into ignorance. Ignorance obviously leads to incompetence and incompetence to disasters, the size of which are proportional to the amount of power. The greater the power, the greater the ignorance, avarice, greed, incompetence…finally, when the shit does hit the fan, the “cover your ass” reaction kicks in.

“Cover you ass” includes such things as denying a mistake was made. If that is not possible, then it was someone else’s fault or deception, preferably an enemy. If there are no suitable enemies, then a lesser hole than ones self must take the fall.

Look at what happened after Terrible Tuesday, when the terraist minions of Ahsawyah Been-Lately carried out their attack on the Towers of Power, dropping tons of warm horseshit from hi-jacked hot-air balloons. Thousands died in that attack, trampled to death on the stairways, even jumping from upper storey windows in order to escape the stench.

Instead of uncovering the incompetence and ignorance in government agencies, not to mention Ronald Rexona, who ignored all warnings of the impending attack – all the little holes scrambled to cover their ass and thus covered that of Rexona.

Instead of asking how it was possible to smuggle 20 tons of horseshit into the country, a feat which could only be compared to smuggling in 20 alien terraists and having them take courses in flying hi-jacked hot-air balloons – instead they ranted on and on about how Ahsawyah been-Lately “hates our freedom”.

Shortly thereafter, Rexona declared “War on Terra” and attacked Sandy Aridya, a country that nothing whatsoever to do with Terrible Tuesday or any dealings with either Ahsawyah or Boo-Boo Wankerman. The reasons for the invasion and maintaining the occupation changed over the years until it became “bringing freedom and democracy, “staying the course” and “fighting them over there so we won’t have to fight them here”.

The real reason could be found scrawled on the walls of public restrooms:

If there’s one thing Arrogance hates
It’s dictators in oil-rich states
We shoot them with rockets, bullets and bombs
And watch it on tele-vi-zhun

Which could be kind of funny except for the fact that hundreds of thousands of people were killed, maimed and tortured in the process which profited no one except for the companies with government contracts to supply all the necessities for making war, everything from laser-guided bombs to meals-ready-to-eat and defective body armor.

These adventures were about to end Ultimate Total War and nuclear hell bombs were actually being unleashed when the strange ships of the Alien Veggies appeared in the skies of the Third Galaxy and put an end to such foolishness.

But there was never any question of a conspiracy, just greed, arrogance and ignorance.

Returning to the Third Galaxy...

I need to return to posting reports from the Third Galaxy again, those snips of poetry and small tales I receive from an unemployed angel residing there, Man-u El-Ishman.

The fact is, I find it simply too depressing to write about how events are unfolding in our world. True, what happens in the Third Galaxy is not a picnic in summer sunshine, but at least I know that, in the end, everything turns out all right for that poor world, when the Alien Veggies in their strange ships suddenly appear in their skies.

Alas, such a happy turn of events is most unlikely to happen in our world!

If we, so to speak, turn our world into a shit-bucket, it will remain a shit bucket and the lives of our children will obviously be, the kind of lives you have to live when you live in a shit-bucket.

Therefore, for the sake of those who have not been following this blog very long, I will repeat a disclaimer I made in one of my earliest posts:

These small tales and glimpses of events refer to occurrences which may someday happen (or perhaps are happening even now!) in a universe parallel to our own which is known to me as the Third Galaxy. Therefore, although somewhat adherent to the facts (such as they are) they have virtually nothing to do with our own world.

The reader would make a grave error to infer that events and characters delineated here are a parodies of people, places, states or events in our world – nothing could be further from the truth! Such a thought is not only ridiculous, it is probably illegal – or soon will be.

It is not my intention in any way, shape or form to satirize, make fun of or ridicule any person, living or dead, in the real world (with the possible exceptions of Attila the Hun and Otto the Orkin Man).

My sole justification for presenting what is found in these few pages is, in some small way, to contribute to the prevention of such things ever happening in our world.

El-Ishman often refers to the poems it transmits to me as being composed by someone it calls “an unknown poet”, the reason being that “known poets” have a tendency to disappear in the Third Galaxy, especially after Ronald Rexona becomes the Supreme Hole. However, as this piece supposedly comes from a collection known as “The Arrogant Prophecies”, I strongly suspect that Ichabod Rain was responsible for this piece and that El-Ishman, for its own reasons, is being coy with me.

The flower burst into the night,
a blossom budding bleeding stubs of sick delight.
All who see it lose their sight,
madly rage and praise the “Majesty-of-Might”.

Some S.O.B. has got a scheme
to make love live upon a diet of whipped-cream!
Perhaps you say, “It’s a mad-man’s dream!”
I swear to you: I’ve seen it all on my TV screen!

Let me tell you what they’ll do:
first they kill “some-arabs” and then “some-jews”;
Ham-bar-Ger exclaims, “That’s not so nice!”
I see him smile as he slowly turns down the lights.

That is why we seldom do
really see the killer’s face on the evening news...
But please, try to remember this:
All the bombs are in the hands of terrorists!

The Second Time Around....

[This might have been yet another poem from the unknown poet from the Third Galaxy, but it happens to be something composed in my own home in 1999.

On the other hand, if I am that unknown poet or he I – what is the difference? Words are the words they are, no matter who speaks them. The only authority a speaker has is in the understanding, if any, his or her words generate, not only in the listener, but also in the speaker.

Those of you who have allergies and break out in brain-rash and blue funk at the mention of words like “Lord”, please bear with me, the drift of this work is not quite what it may appear.

In a sense, this was composed in homage to Dr. Zuess and his “Harold the Elephant....who was faithful, one-hundred procent....Things ought to be like that, they really ought to be like that!”

I:

What would happen if the Lord
Came back to Earth in a Model T Ford?

What if he got up in the driver’s seat
And shouted: “It’s time for us all to meet
At the town-hall square at the end of the street!”?

“Everyone’s invited, so come as you are,
From post-office and jail, out-house and bar,
Heroes and cowards, and wino’s and stars;
Whoever, whatever, however you are;
Come! Come! Come as you are.”

From mountains so high valleys so deep --
They come, they run, they crawl, and they creep.
They jump and they shout,
they fall on their knees...

Where ever you look – they’re filling the streets...
happily waiting to wash his feet...

Of course, I reckon some would say:

“That’s not what we learned in church last Sunday!”
“The preacher says he must come in a cloud!”
“And look like that guy on the Turin Shroud!”
“With a rainbow around him and a sword in His mouth!”

“He’s supposed to divide the sheep from the goats!”
“And then send the wicked down to hell – to roast!”
“From where arises the smell of burning flesh!”
“Which sweetly reminds us of their eternal death!”
“As we savor our own blessedness!”...

II:

What would happen if the Lord
Came back to Earth in a Model T Ford?

What if the Lord really did come
Like it’s said he would come – like a thief-in-the-night?

What if he came in a way – so dumb,
That it served us, served us good and right,
Caught us with our pants-down, so to speak,
So that everyone felt like a stoopid freak?

What if he came, alone, to each
And every soul – to quietly teach
a simple heresy?
(the one I cherish in my heart!

What if he said the reason he had to die
Was not God “hiding-sin-from-his-sight”,
But, our own “deeply ingrained, apish delight
at the sight of blood...”

– could that be right?

What God taught Abraham was this:

“Blood cannot coerce the Love-of-God,”

When the angel grabbed old Abe by the hand,
In his Innocence, God thought:
“They will repay my trust – with love!”?

(– but, of course, we wanted...blood...)

III:

What would happen if the Lord
Came back to Earth in a Model T Ford?

What if they taped it live – for CNN?
(and he looked like Popeye the Sailorman?)
“I am what I am and that’s all that I am!”

Could you put your trust in a talking head?
(or any kind of tele-celebrity?)
“Read my lips...”

Still, all objections aside,
What if he said on teevee – live:

“I turn the wheel and I grow the trees
And I will do justice, just as I please,
With the greatest as well as the least of these...”

“Give me your hearts and give me your trust
And I’ll give you all my undying love.
I am nothing more (or less) than your
common humanity...”

IV:

What would happen if the Lord
Came back to Earth in a Model T Ford?...

Do you think even that could stop these wars?

[I have long been fascinated by the parallels and the differences between the stories of the binding of Isaac and the murder of the Christ. This is not to explain why I wrote it, but rather why it takes the turns that it does.]

A Rant: What News is News?

I have often puzzled in a vague sort of way about something upon which others seem to have spent more serious thought – the way it is with the “news”.

What puzzles me is how Iraq has suddenly disappeared, so to speak, from the radar screen, at least here in Denmark.

Here in Denmark, all through spring and early summer there had been a constantly increasing drumbeat about what is quaintly called “sectarian violence” that is the smoldering civil war and train wreck in slow-motion that is the breakup of Iraq.

Suddenly, even though July was the worst month for violence and number of people killed in Iraq and August doesn’t look any better, Iraq is no longer news.

The keys to this change would seem to be Gaza, Lebanon and the Big (Terror) Bust in England. Why this happens, I don’t know, but it started with a build up. First, there was the election in the Occupied Territories of a new parliament which did not deliver the sort of democracy which been assumed would now bloom after the demise of Yasir Arafat. Instead Hamas received a resounding majority and one would think from the reaction that Sean Fain had gotten the majority in the English Parliament.

A naïve person like myself would think well, Hamas is many things, with a range of views, the obvious thing would be to encourage those elements of Hamas interested in a commitment to parliamentary work and the compromise it requires. The Hamas had a tremendous backing from their landslide victory and real political capital to draw on so they had more maneuver room than Fatah ever could have.

Obviously, what was obvious was not obvious to either the Israeli, American and European governments. They all came down hard on the Hamas making demands which played into the most radical elements of the Hamas and strengthened their hand.

Thinking back, it’s kind of obvious now why what was obvious was obviously not (obvious).

Any show of a wish to work with the Hamas in a parliamentary way would mean compromise for us as well as some acknowledgment that the Palestinians actually have a number of legitimate complaints which also must be addressed.

Therefore the money stopped, wages to government employees could not be paid, violence broke out between Fatah and Hamas broke out. We sat back and watched, with a faint hope Fatah would win. They didn’t.

Then came the incident in the Gaza where an Israeli soldier was kidnapped from a border control point and the IDF responded with overwhelming force, destroying infrastructure, arresting half of the Palestinian Parliament.

Suddenly everything went to hell in the north. A couple of Israeli soldiers are taken prisoner in a raid which cost the lives of several Israeli soldiers. But everything is smothered in the enormous “shock and awe” response of the IDF which had been in planning for at least a year waiting for a provocation of this sort from the Hezbolah. In the month-long war so much is destroyed, deaths in the thousand plus, infrastructure destroyed, environmental catastrophes and the IDF lost way too many soldiers and with it the aura of invincibility.

A fragile cease-fire has now been established and these “birth pangs” are supposed to be the start of a New Middle East and the growth of democracy in the region. This is also obvious, if you are blind as a bat.

That reality of course is that Iraq is still out of the news cycle, we have sidled closer to a major attack on Iran, most likely involving the use of nukes and with that a giant step towards World War.

It must not be.

There Was a Time...

[In the late afternoon one does not often write the kind of poem one once wrote in the early morning glow. As with old wine, there often comes a bitter and yet not always unattractive aftertaste. It think this one is just as good as any of that stuff I sometimes post of that unknown poet from the Third Galaxy.

Just as I was writing this, I had to pause to help a dragonfly out of my living room that decided it had to tell me something -- it was quite large, it's colors were green speckled with white and black]

There was a time I could have picked the flowers
which grow upon
the burning mountains of the distant sun!

There was a time I would have fought the most
desperate dragons
and conquered them, each and every one.

There was a time that I could fly so high,
beyond the sky!
But I was afraid of something, or was it someone?

There was a time I could write on bits of paper
and even walls.
My lines rhymed so fine and it was such fun!

There was a time. But now it takes me so long
to tie my shoelaces
and yet they come so very quickly undone…

There was a time but now I sit and watch
the sharp grains
Of sand in my hourglass – how quickly they run!

There was a time – but time that was does,
cannot exist!
There is only that which is – all else is none!

But still, still and yet, there was a time,
there really was!
Yes! A time! Yes, and time to come!

[For those of you who may have interest in such, the meter of these couplets is iambic 7-5 or, a line of septameter followed by pentameter, or 5-2-5, or a sort of syncopated hexameter -- whatever, I think it passes well to the mood of this small piece ]

The Elephant and the Ant, a Terrible Parable

The saying goes, “An elephant never forgets”, a saying on the same order as, “Bumble bees can’t fly, but since the bumble bee can’t read it goes ahead and flies anyway*”.

It’s true enough that elephants never forget -- but they often have a hard time remembering, which can almost amount to the same thing...

An elephant is standing quite still on a forest path, trying to recall what it was it was about to do. Elephants know that standing still is one of the first steps towards remembrance.

It’s a busy daytime jungle and many things are happening. One of the things happening is an ant on its way to some Very Important Ant-Business. As it happens, the path along which this ant is walking runs right into the elephant’s foot.

BAM!

If the ant had been a human, it would have fallen on its butt! However, as an ant has six legs it is only slightly puzzled.

Many creatures, even a few humans, would just say, “O, something in the way, better walk around it!” This particular ant, being almost human in its self-importance, took the obstacle quite personally. It saw it as both an affront and an insult to the Dignity and Honor of itself in particular and ants in general.

“Sir, why do you stand in my path? I demand that you remove yourself at once! I am an Ant-on-Very-Important-Business! I fear to think of the consequence should I fail to meet my appointed round and you are found to be the proximate cause!” The foot, of course, said nothing in reply...

“Sir, silence is also a form of response, signifying, in most cases, disregard, negativity and contempt! If I do not hear a response from you, I can only conclude that you are not only discourteous and unmannered but uncouth and disrespectful as well! Know you not that I am on the business of the Queen Herself!”

The foot, of course, as well as the elephant, heard nothing of this one-sided dialogue. But, the elephant did come to think that perhaps it might as well continue its walk down the forest path, as it simply could not remember what it was that it had intended to do. So, the elephant took a step forward.

The ant, received this event with great exuberance and joy.

“Ah,” it said, “I see you have come to your senses!” The ant then began its first steps to complete its Business for the Queen Herself.

It was at that precise moment the elephant remembered that it wanted to evacuate its bowels. In short order, approximately fifty pounds of elephant poop dropped, “pla-dask!” on the ant!

For many creatures in the forest, this may have been a boon and even for ants in general.

But, it was not a good thing for this Very-Important-Ant as it was squashed and expired at once under the load of elephantine excremental exuberance.

The moral of this story is: “Don’t make threats to things bigger than you and if you do, don’t hang around when the shit comes down!”

_____________________
*Although a good story, it's not true that bumble bees should not be able to fly. The aeronautical engineer who came to that conclusion failed take into account that bumblebee wings cannot be compared to airplane wings. Bumblebee wings are neither smooth nor rigid -- these and other facts give the creature much more lift than comparable airplane wings.

The Agency, a Slight Case of Anthrax...

[Something that disturbs me and that not a little is the intravenous propaganda given the American Public through programs which, although ostensibly fiction, are presented in a format which gives the feeling of documentaries. What follows is reworked from a long critique I did in 2002 on an episode of the “The Agency”.

Please note the date. Apparently some people already knew that it was time to start fluffing the American public to accept the planned invasion of Iraq which Mr. Codpiece had decided he wanted for his very own special un-birthday present even before he placed his hand on the Book of the Holy Idaho and swore to uphold the Constitution…]

I’d never seen the “The Agency” until by chance I saw the August 6*, 2002 episode which grabbed my attention and made me aware of the extent and lengths to which mainstream media will go to influence the casual viewer.

An analysis of a single segment in a popular television series would normally have little to do with either the so-called “War on Terrorism” or the Second Iraqi War, which was later sold to us after Our Leader finished his second extended vacation on what he calls a “ranch”, but in reality is just a few hundred acres of Texas brush.

The plot of the episode revolved around a spray can of anthrax which was to be smuggled in to the US by an “Iraqi” diplomat in a diplomatic pouch.

The agents, working like clones from the old Mission Impossible television series, snitched the “Iraqi” diplomat’s bag by giving him something which made him barf uncontrollably. Alas, the pouch contained only paper – the anthrax was coming in by an entirely different route!

The program actually never said it was an Iraqi diplomat. However, the casual viewer was obviously being manipulated to be left with the exactly that impression.

That is why I took the time to write this brief analysis of the episode.

The program segment I saw and which I assume applies to the series as a whole, was intended to leave the casual viewer with good feelings about the CIA in general and in particular an understanding that Iraq posed a threat to the US – a threat of biological and/or chemical terror.

The episode opens with a scene showing a lot of dead dogs and a couple of dead kennel owners...the camera pans over the twisted bodies...

We soon learn that they all died of anthrax! Men in pearly white moon-suits muck around the kennel a bit, and then we hear a simulated TV news show where a talking head blabs on about a bit of metal that was found in the kennel wreckage which (surprise, surprise!) can only be the nozzle of an anthrax sprayer. The show is off and running!

After the opening scene we are fed a rapid series of sound bites “known facts” sprinkled with half truths and outright lies.
For example, we hear, “We sent anthrax spores to Iraq in the Reagan years...” however the faceless voice drones on to say that the reason was that Iraq could develop vaccines they might need in their war with Iran. The truth is that we sent more than 40 other biological/chemical agents to Iraq, including such sweet bugs as botulism and West Nile along with equipment and computers needed in developing ballistic missiles and atomic weapons...

“We sent the anthrax spores in the mail [but we don’t do that anymore]...” True enough, and the message is that we don’t bumble along like that anymore. If you follow the spin “we” are now up to Mission Impossible level.

Then a half-truth, “Clinton bombed Iraq to divert attention from the Monica Lewinsky affair...” – my personal memory banks tell me that although this charge was made when two factories were bombed in Africa. We bombed Iraq not once but many times during the Clinton Administration but these were in different contexts.

The “bombing of Iraq” was important to the plot as among those killed in “television Iraq” was the wife and daughter of the bad-guy in the episode, “Zimmer” from the German “Zimmer-Hofmann” terrorist gang [= Bader from the Bader-Hofmann here!].

Then we are informed, “This anthrax was altered to make it antibiotic resistant...” The spin here is that is was Iraq that had developed this super weapons-grade pathogen. The truth is that it is American research which has developed the best (as far as we know) method to aerosolize anthrax spores. Of course all American research in such deviltry is only undertaken in self-defense and we’d never ever use it, just like we’d never use the atomic bomb.

Clearly, “The Agency” is a highly manipulative program designed by media whores to mold public opinion. With good cause I assume that it is an example of the Patriotic Propaganda the media offered to produce for the government shortly after 9-11.

This purpose of this episode was to inoculate the casual viewer with the opinion that it is necessary to “stop Iraq” before they “spray us with anthrax in Washington DC”.

The script was both well and professionally written and the actors were top notch in their roles and if it was something from the Third Galaxy, I would give the whores a standing ovation. The Bankers of Illusion should be proud of themselves!

__________________
* The series only ran two seasons with 44 episodes. This episode was first aired November 8, 2001 with the title “A Slight Case of Anthrax and I saw it almost a year later in Denmark. This doesn’t change much in what I have to say. In fact, I am more impressed! Bravo!

More Americans Can...

I don’t like polls. I don’t trust them and when they call and ask if they can have five minutes of my time, I usually answer, “No!” in a creatively rude, sometimes even crude way and my wife will cuss me out a bit if she hears it because “The caller is probably just some poor student trying to work their way through college…”

I figure that’s enough for some folks to call me un-American, but then I don’t particularly care what the kind of folks who’d care or wonder if I was un-American think of me anyway.

All of the above is just a rhetorical introduction to a Zogby poll which that incorrigible iconoclast, Bob Harris, over at This Modern World drew my attention to:

More Americans can name two of Snow White’s seven dwarves than can name two justices of the Supreme Court. (75% against 25%)

More Americans can name the planet where Superman was born than can name the planet closest to the sun. (60% as opposed to 37%)

More Americans know the Three Stooges than the three branches of the American government. (74% as opposed to 42%)

More Americans can identify the protagonist of J. K. Rowling’s success series than can the Prime Minister of England. (57% as opposed to 50%)

More Americans know the name of Homer Simpson’s son than can name one of the Greek Poet Homer’s epic poems (60% as opposed to 20%)

More Americans could name the latest winner of “American Idol” than could name the latest person to be confirmed to the Supreme Court (20% as opposed to 11%)

Bob’s take on this is that now we know why we have troops in Iraq when Ahsawyah been-Lately was two countries to the east.

My take is of course more in keeping with the realities of the world we now live in:

I was both puzzled and disturbed when Edward R. Murrow said that television was a fantastic medium for public information. This is of course obvious, but what I don’t quite comprehend is why he apparently thought that was a good idea. I suppose his and Fred Friendly’s success in starting the avalanche which destroyed the career of Joe McCarthy went to his head.

True, the Founding Fathers who crafted their vision into the American Constitution felt that an informed public was vital to sustaining a democratic republic. However, with only two parties to choose from, how hard can it be to decide which one to choose, especially with the quality, erudition, talking points and sound bites spun into our minds by television bobble-heads and pundits?

True, it was nip and tuck for a while, but the sort of educational [= subversive] programs I was exposed to as a kid have mostly disappeared. True, there is still NPR, but it is hardly a danger anymore. Fortunately, today’s television is devoted almost entirely to creating entertaining illusions whose purpose is to keep us from changing channels during the advertisements.

In creating the constant need for new thingies and hunger for new crunchy munchies, advertisements in turn are responsible for the both the American negative savings rates as well as the galloping epidemic of obesity and blubber – all of which is good for the economy of our proud mega-corps and therefore good for America!

Rambling in Emily Dickinson Mode

[Warning! What follows is an Emily Dickinson inspired philosophical ramble on themes religion is supposed to address. It is stated at the top of this blog that some posts here would entertain such subjects. However, since I know that many people are terribly allergic to both philosophical and religious discussion and break out in nervous tics and brain rash at the mere thought, I thought it prudent to give the reader fair warning up front...]

The emptiness of space between the stars is thicker than soup compared to what we know about what makes it all go around and around with such intricate finality.

When I was a child and saw the motes of dust dancing in sunlight beams sneaking through the blinds to shine upon my bed, my mind was filled with wonder – I imagined I was seeing worlds uncounted.

Life is full of pain and, if there’s a cure, we sure as death haven’t found it yet.

Some say, “The answer is right in front of you, as plain as the nose on your face – a flower opening between each breath…” It could be, I guess, I won’t deny it out of hand in any case, but still and yet, can there be an answer when we rarely hear the Question posed by life itself:

When all is said and done and all has gone to dust – did anything ever really happen?

[my ramble changes now changes to Emily Dickinson mode…]

When I died, I thought I heard someone cry
and I thought – “Why?”
and then – “Who is this who cries for me?”

Then suddenly I realized that it was me.
But still, I wondered – “Why should I cry
and why these tears in my eyes?”

The setting sun leaves no light and it seems vain
that we should rage against the night!

Will the Question be answered with Silence?
Will angels lift me in choirs?
Will demons come to drag me down to eternal pain?
Is Eternity an “Emptiness filled with Joy”?

[back to (almost) normal mode]

When I decided long ago to accept whatever comes as it comes – was I kidding myself? I wonder.

Indeed, for what is it that I cry?

Is it for things left behind, for that which comes or for that which can never be?

Perhaps I am afraid that I will forget the taste of life.

Without that taste, all will fade and surely love itself will surely fade.

Without love of what value being?

Awareness would then be empty and a total lack of meaning must needs ensue.

The love of being aware is the pinpoint upon which all life turns and towards which all sentience yearns.

The Coming War(s)

Can you read between the lines?

Can you unravel the skein of spin, find the red thread and watch it squiggle between the disinformation and lies?

It really isn’t all that hard, all you really need to do is listen with an open heart, a discerning mind and look behind the Glowing Words our leaders use when they would bedazzle us.

Madmen are leading the human race by the nose to trade in the paradise this earth could be on a pot of garbage.

The coming war on Iran is just a beginning and the link here to Juan Cole’s Informed Comment is but one of many I could use. I chose this one because retired CIA analyst on Arab affairs, Ray Close, is obviouslyknows more than a whacko blogger like me.

This is what it boils down to: just as plans for the invasion of Lebanon were a least a year in the making, waiting for a suitable provocation, so have the plans for a major attack on Iran been cooking on the back burner for at least two years. These plans are waiting for a suitable provocation.

A striking feature of the war-on-hold in Lebanon is that all involved parties are claiming victory. Instead of puking all over my laptop screen, I will let the mighty Bilmon speak for me:

“This is the kind of simian hooting and chest beating that makes me wish I'd been born into a more respectable species -- like the hyenas or the slime eels or the dung beetles.”

The reader may well wonder why I get my bowels in an uproar over war on Iran. Iran is the apex of the Axis of Evil. The best one can say about their president is that he’s more spaced-out than our president. You can have your doubts about whether Mr. Bush really believes in the End Times, Rapture and Second Coming. Mr. Ahmadinejad, on the other hand not only believes in the Muslim variant on the Apocalypse, he apparently thinks he is a major player in The (Ultimate) END Game.

The given reasons for the coming war will be that Iran has provoked us, that we have intelligence at least as reliable as that we had on Iraq and that Iran is already has Bombs. THEREFORE, much as we regret having to do so, we’ll have to use nuclear bombs in our attack on Iran.

These bombs will be called “tactical nuclear weapons” or the more technical sounding “B61-11 nuclear bunker busters”. Giving them names like this makes them much safer to use than “atomic bombs”!

Because Our Cause is Right and Just, there will be no danger of escalation into a nuclear exchange. Countries like Russia and China will all poop in their pants knowing that we are not afraid to nuke countries that displease us. Therefore they and others will disarm, destroy their nuclear arsenals and bow down to America, asking her to maintain the World Peace.

The Prisoner With No Name

[It is important to understand that torture, except for the occasional freelancer, does not occur in a vacuum. Like anything else, torture requires infrastructure which in turn requires the political will of a government. Such infrastructure includes among other things laws and/or executive orders which may or may not be secret, secret police and/or special police or military units, means of disposal of torture’s collateral damage and institutional means to deny that torture is taking place or claim its necessity for such things as national security when denial is precluded by exposure.

There is an odd double standard in the use of torture in that, although secret, it needs to be common knowledge. The reason for this is that the purpose of torture is to control a population or a subset of a population through terror, i.e. torture is state-sponsored terrorism.

Another quirk in the use of torture is that the reluctance of governments to admit let alone rectify mistakes is somewhat magnified. Because of the secrecy and lack of oversight, it is both tempting and easy to sweep “mistakes” under the rug, so to speak. Here is an example of what can happen received from my un-employed angel from the Third Galaxy]


Although they are not supposed to, the prisoners sometimes talk about how they got here.

That is how I happen to know something about prisoner number RF-8669. The guards only refer to him by his number and leave out the letters as if 86 was his last name and 69 his first – it’s the military way, you know, to put the last name first.

Mr. 69 86 has been here for a long time, longer than anyone else, so no one remembers when he came. He’s been here so long he’s forgotten the name he had before he came.

Somebody suggested to him once that “RF” perhaps stood for the initials of his real name in hopes that it might jog his memory. Mr. 69 86 just smiled and said in his soft, gentle voice, “No, I don’t think so, if it stands for any thing at all, it stands for “Royally Fucked”.

It’s not clear to me just how he forgot his name. Was it the years of not speaking it or hearing it spoken, a beating from the guards or a combination of both, it’s hard to say.

The guards here are not all that bad usually, unless they’re drunk or are having problems in their private lives, but it does happen, although it’s against regulations, that somebody gets the shit kicked out of them. That’s not just a turn of phrase you know, it really is possible to get the shit kicked out of you. Myself, I’ve been pretty lucky and have never had anything worse than a couple of cracked ribs.

Although he can’t remember his real name, Mr. 69 86 has crystal clear memories of how he got here. I’ve heard him tell about it with my own ears, so I know it’s true.

Of course Mr. 69 86 had a trial – nobody ends up here without a trial! In his case though, he never learned when the trial took place. Yes, you understand me correctly he was not present at his own trial! The given reason was that it was a matter of National Security.

Not only that, but he doesn’t know who, or in fact if anybody represented him at the trial. Again, it was because it was a matter of national security.

What was he charged with? Who testified against or for him, were there in fact any witnesses, was there a prosecution or cross examination – he was told nothing of these things, not even what his sentence was. All of these things were matters of National Security.

He knows three things: there was a brown manila envelope, he received a sentence and the sentence can be appealed. What was in the envelope, what his sentence was and where, how and through whom he could make an appeal – all these things he is not allowed to know as they are all matters of National Security.

All that Mr. 69 86 remembers of his life before he came here was that he was a taxi driver, where, he does not recall. He had a fare and suddenly his cab was surrounded and stopped by masked men in uniforms and unmarked dark cars. He and his passengers were taken from the taxi, taped and hooded. Many things followed, of which he has little recall, until he was informed of the trial and sentence.

An odd case one would think, that of Mr. 86, but many here can tell similar stories, although few have all the elements of his.

It’s a terrible thing not to know your own name and one of us, thinking Mr. 86 was out of earshot mused, “If you don’t know your own name, do you still have a soul?

But Mr. 86 heard, and quietly, almost unnoticed came over to our group, looked each one of us in the eye and repeated the question in his quiet whisper, “Does a man with out a name have a soul? Hmmn, smart question you have there, young fellow!”

He lowered his gaze for a few moments then lifted his face. A tear trickled down one cheek, but his eyes glowed as with a light from within and he said, “I think the answer is yes!”

Summer and Sunlight, Helen Talmadge

Today you get a poem which for once was not composed by that tiresomely unknown poet from the Third Galaxy. Instead I will treat to a lovely piece written by a little 93 year old lady who lives in a nursing home in Ocala. Before all my 93 readers rush to send me a poem thinking I will post it, let me hasten to add that I only post poems by little 93 old ladies if they happen to be my aunt, Helen Talmadge.


Of the hundreds of poems she has written, this deceptively simple poem is my favorite. I first read it about ten years ago and it only gets better. As poorly as I explain my own and the poetry of the unknown poet from the Third Galaxy, perhaps I should refrain from commenting on hers.


Perhaps, but I can’t resist pointing out that the speaker in this poem starts with “summer and sunlight” then settles for less and less until finally it is a “bit of paper sailing” away from her. One of these “bits of paper” sailed all the way to my little blog where, in theory, it can be seen by millions of people.


Dear hearts, SUMMER and SUNLIGHT , written by Helen C. Talmadge, please give the lady some applause!

I want a boat while there’s
still summer and sunlight --
it’s bright sails all afloat
in the soft summer breeze.

The boat must be little
for our lake is little --
it’s shadowed and shaded
and it’s sheltered by trees.

If I can’t have a boat
that someone can ride in,
then I’ll whittle one
from the dry bark of a tree.

To its mast I’ll fasten
a bit of white paper
and I’ll sit on the bank
while the wind blows it from me.

Playning the (Ultimate) END Game

My goal today is to take a closer look at what Mr. Joel Rosenberg is selling and some basics on how to play the (Ultimate) END Game and make a lot of money selling the end of the world…

A man does what a man has to do so I put on my goggles, tinfoil hat, 36x sun-block, said my prayers, doused the soles of my shoes with holy water and ventured onto the website of Mr. Joel Rosenberg, speaker to presidents, advisor to prime ministers, and “almost a prophet” (according to Joe Scarborough)

I dove right into his web-blog which is modestly proclaimed as an “Analysis of the latest events in the US, Israel, Russia and the Mid-East”. The opening phrase I saw, worthy of a seasoned FOX pundit, starts with the pungent question, “Is Iran planning an apocalyptic strike on Israel…” ?

Ah, such a talented and time dishonored way to start a smear or inject a meme into public discourse without having to take any responsibility if somebody calls you on your bullshit, “Well, I didn’t make a statement, I just asked if the fellow was still beating his wife. What harm is there in a question?” All of which translates to, “I was just rumor mongering, any harm in that, huh?”

Here is my take on the meat [more like gristle, actually] of Rosenberg’s spew:

It seems some say the End is coming and that fellow in Iran, you know their president, the one who seems to be a few cards short of a full deck – well, some say he is going to start a war. It seems that Iran, some say, already has a number of atomic bombs and is going to take out first Israel then America. That is why some say that Iran started this Israel/Lebanon conflict in the first place – in order to test Israel’s resolve as well as her military capabilities! As a matter of fact, Mr. Bad Iranian is equivalent to Hitler and liberals are equivalent to Neville Chamberlain.

At least, that is what some say.

Now that is one clever fellow, that Iranian guy and I sure am sorry I said he wasn’t playing with a full deck!

It sure is good that Mr. Rosenberg took time from his busy schedule to go to the White House and warn Mr. Codpiece about these dangers which some say the CIA and the other so called intelligence agencies seem to have missed completely!

Now that he has real good information on what is really happening in the world I’m sure the Commander in Chief will do the right thing and make a real super duper Decision!

If you want to go take a look at Mr. Rosenberg’s website, please go ahead. You’ll have to google yourself to find it, not because I have anything against Mr. Rosenberg and his, uh, ideas, but I think maybe you need to exercise your fingers some – at least that’s what some say.

A word of warning, his site plays some really lousy background music, the kind that makes you grind your teeth. I suppose that is meant to give heathens, pagans and other assorted un-believers a foretaste of what “gnashing of teeth” means. Anyway, turn off the loudspeaker on your computer if you go there, that’s all I’m trying to say.

The collage I used yesterday and put up there near the beginning of this post is from one of the of the 2,520,000 hits I got googling “End Times”. I paste it here again for your edification and to give you a few pointers in how to play The (Ultimate) END Game.

First, take a look at the figure at the bottom center of the collage. Do you see that shadowy figure in the middle of the flag of the European Union? THAT is none other than the Big Boogey Man of the (Ultimate) End Times Game. If you can guess his name, you get 666 points!

None other than Mr. Beast himself, it is he who will come before, after or at the same time all the real good, card carrying Christians get Raptured up to the Big Colander in the Sky to sit with the Great Potato and clap hands for joy as all the rest of us small spuds down here get either mashed or french fried or both at the same time by His Son the Holy Idaho!

But why the European Union flag?

(I was hoping somebody would ask, so I had to do it myself!)

It is an indisputable End Times Game Basic Fact that if Mr. Beast does not appear as leader of the United Nations he will lead the European Union. One or the other, it doesn’t really matter as both of these organizations are plots by Satan in his own devilish personage to deceive us and cheat Jesus of as many wretched souls as he can get – and according to the contract he’s got from the Old Man, it’s almost all of us.

On the other hand (and in the End Times Game you need more hands than a Dancing Shiva), on the other hand, Mr. Beast could also be a leader of the Muslims, because, as all good little End Times gamers know, the religion of Mr. Mohammed also came from Satan.

As a matter of fact, Mr. Beast could come from anywhere, be the leader of any country, except of course the United States. If you even ever think, even for a split second, that Mr. Beast could be an American or be the Leader of Freedom and Democracy, you forfeit your Game. You go straight to hell, you don’t pass GO, you don’t collect two hundred dollars and it won’t help to yell “Jesus!” because you are DAMNED, dammit!

The (Ultimate) END Game

Some people [i.e. I, myself and me] are beginning to think it gets a bit thick around here with posting so much material channeled from the Third Galaxy about a land of Arrogance and a leader named Ronald Rexona who always smells like roses no matter what kind of shit he pulls [“Rexona” is a brand of deodorant soap in Denmark, by the way…].

Frankly though, I am simply flabbergasted and almost speechless at some of the stunts Mr. Codpiece still manages to pull off without the good round of applause he so richly deserves for putting on such a awful show at taxpayer expense.

What passes for his reality is sometimes so off the wall and so much exceeds the inanity of my satires about the Third Galaxy [that is, if they really were satire – I really do get that information from an unemployed angel, honest!] that I sometimes wonder if I’m here or somewhere in the Third Galaxy posting about what goes on in this world!

Mr. Codpiece recently invited a certain Mr. Joel Rosenberg to come to the White House to advise him and his staff on the Middle East. Now that could be cool. It’s been six years, but good advice might still be of some help. However, my sources tell me that Mr. Rosenberg is yet another soldier in the army of frogs croaking about today’s world events, how they have been foretold in the Bible and precede the Second Coming of the Holy Idaho.

This is from the Fat Lady by way of Lurch at Main and Central:

…now it's apocalyptic writers like Joel Rosenberg [who] council him on Middle Eastern policy. Next thing you know he’ll be channeling Tolkien while insisting the Middle East is really Middle Earth and the bad Arab du jour is actually Sauron in disguise. I’d be laughing right now if so many people weren’t dying. [my emphasis]

The last phrase is a point made in an earlier post here. If it was just a small gaggle of loonies holding tuning forks to their foreheads in order to get aligned with cosmic vibrations like the “Heaven’s Gate” people did, I could probably care less. Sure, one bright morning they all took an overdose of sleeping pills, lay down and died, but except for the ones who loved them, they didn’t hurt anybody.

Mr. Codpiece though is playing a game here that could get real serious. Just imagining a little bit how serious it could get is enough to give a fellow a case of turkey trots. If we really do blow this planet to shit, there is just about as much chance that the Holy Idaho is going to take us up to His Colander in the Sky to live with the Great Potato as the chance is that the Heaven’s Gate people really got to ride in that spaceship.

Actually, the chances are probably a lot less. If I understand our friend Jesus rightly, his dad doesn’t exactly cotton to folks who destroy his vineyard and slaughter his sheep...

Much of the material I post oozes with apocalyptic awareness and foreboding. But the point is that it is not something I want, look forward to or desire to come about. I post about these things because I can see that some very despicable people are telling the all too many Americans who will listen, “the Bible says” we are the last generation, that this war, that war, this earthquake, that volcano, global warming, storms, the dieing oceans, aids – all these things are prophesized in the Bible, that it’s all part of God’s plan for the salvation of a few lucky souls who said the magic prayer and made Jesus their very own personal savior and rock star.

That is complete bullshit.

It's just a game they are playing, pretending to know things of which they know nothing, pretending to speak for the Eternal, but it's a game, The (Ultimate) END Game which could have serious consequences for us all.

The Bible is not a screenplay, we are not the actors in it and this is not the last scene of the Fifth Act – not unless we make it so!

[Random praise for Mr. Rosenberg's political insight]

[which nearly makes me think I misjudged the quakity if his wisdom]

UPDATE: Did I say “quakity”? Was that a typo for “quality”, or a serendipitous creation of a new word, as in a “quack doctor”, but then it should be the “quackity of his wisdom”, that is his wisdom is that of a quack.

Big Bust, day two...

Well, I don't know if I forgot to take off my tinfoil hat this morning when I got up or not, but at least it appears I am not alone in my attack of "cry wolf" cynical suspicion. I also heard some things on the Danish radio this morning that made my antenna quiver.

Here are links to the best comments/updates I know of:

Juan Cole with his always on target Informed Comments

Bilmon with his always incisive and well formulated observations

Psychotic Patriot who is hopping mad about this and also has one from American Progress

Lurch at Main and Central who has a scary background piece for those who can't comprehend that there is a general drift towards a war with Iran.

Update: 12:13 PM Basically, we can deduce that the Codpiece Administration has and is in fact using this event to manipulate public opinion and smear Democrats for being weak wimps in the War on Terror, GWOT or whatever the most recent Orwellian phrase is being used in talking points, but which translates as not supporting the Codpiece Administration’s wars of aggression, those in progress or those in planning.

The tragedy is that there is a real danger from these groups and cells – but practically nothing our administration has done has addressed the problem in meaningful ways. Homeland Security has been used for political purpose and gain from day one.

Big Bust!

Big bust in England!

First twenty, now twenty four arrested and some suspects still at large. Heathrow closed much of the afternoon. It was THE news here in the Happy Little Kingdom of Denmark today.

What to make of it? I really don’t know. It’s really not too smart to comment on unfolding news because you’re liable to end up sitting with your foot in your mouth and egg on your face. But that’s never bothered talking heads on television, so why should the Crazy Bird care. He’s so out to lunch he might consider a cream pie in the face to be dessert.

It’s only the fact that it is coming from England that I don’t react completely hard-line cynical. British Intelligence still has and deserves some respect and isn’t laughed off as an oxymoron.

If the Brits really have a case here, this is how to fight terror, investigation, police work – that is where to put the money and, hopefully, get the least bang for the buck.

Unfortunately, as an American, I suffer from “Cry Wolf” syndrome. Just as I am collating the news in my little bird brain, Mr. Codpiece appears on the screen, “This is a [pause to think the multi-syllable word through] his-tor-i-cal event which reminds us that America is at war with Islamic fascists…” [that’s as close as I can recall]

Unfortunately, I remember a couple of years ago when the Bush Admin (surprise!) just before the election blew smoke about a terror cell in England. Unfortunately they forgot to warn Brit Intel about it and the terror rats scurried for cover and half of them got away. Sooo, as a cynical old man, I suspect the Brits may have had to go into this action earlier than they would have wished.

However, it is a bit long to November, ahhh – but not that long to September when the Labour Party holds its annual convention and Mr. Blair is expected to be in trouble. unless of course unforeseen event(s) arise and cause Mr. Blair to once again molt into a fearless leader.

Again I apologize most abjectly for my skeptic cynicism, but somewhere in my shattered mind there is this ridiculous feeling that this is a preliminary to the run-up to (preventative) war with Iran.

No, I only wear my tin-foil hat while I sleep!

Woman is the Fountain

Here is a little thing from a different corner, a song-poem composed waaay back in 1970 by the Great Indian for his Sunflower Woman...

Woman is the fountain, the fruit and the vine,
her man is a mountain, there, all the time.
If woman was a mountain, with her head in the sky,
her man would be a fountain...bursting with pride.

Bright lights in day time, candles at night,
strike matches for candles, candles at night.
Candles in day time, candles at night,
some candles in day time...have lasted all night.

Leaders are cheaters, the beaters of men,
they write as they beat us, our debt to them.
They are fighting for peace, is what is said,
I wish that they could find their own peace instead.

I saw you were handed the dirty end of the stick,
I saw how you were stranded by bad arithmetic.
I saw how you were branded for one little slip.
When the world is open handed, I’m sure you will fit.

Woman is the fountain, the fruit and the vine,
her man is a mountain, there, all the time.
If woman was a mountain, with her head in the sky,
her man would be a fountain...bursting with pride.

The the first bars of the melody, by the way, lean heavily on "Counting My Blessings", from the movie "White Christmas" and written by Irving Berlin. I find this kind of amusing for some reason, not that I'm a dirty old man or anything...

Happy Ground Zero Day, Ms. Nagasaki!

Today is the anniversary of the day Fat Man floated down from the sky to give Ms. Nagasaki such a warm embrace, a hug and a kiss she nearly ceased to exist.

It may seem a bit incongruous as well as early to be talking about Terrible Tuesday almost five years ago in New York, but something that puzzled me even then was the suddenness the hole in the ground in New York came to be known as “Ground Zero”.

Normally, “ground zero” refers to the point on the ground where a nuclear bomb explodes, or directly under it if it is an air burst. There are only two real ground zeros, one in Hiroshima and the other Nagasaki. (I exclude the test in New Mexico)

On that Terrible Tuesday in New York, two passenger planes full of jet fuel oil slam into buildings, balls of fire, smoke, dramatic videos shown again and again, almost three thousand real people die, in explosions, flames, smoke, crushed under falling debris, jumping to a hopefully quicker and less painful death…

It was terrible, but it wasn’t two planes, two flashes of light and two hundred thousand dead and dieing the agony of acute radiation poisoning, it wasn’t atomic bombs, it wasn’t weapons of mass destruction – so why do we react as if it were and call it “ground zero”?

The fact is we have a national shame to which we have never faced up. To paraphrase James Carroll, a shame and dread was defined in the deepest part of the American psyche. We did things towards the end of the Second World War that human beings should not do. We torched a dozen cities, created firestorms that raged for days and it was done mainly to prove it could be done. If there had been a few pounds more of enriched uranium or plutonium, there would have been two more planes in the sky, two flashes of light and Kokura and Niikata would also have become ashes in an instant.

Such is the momentum of war and the evil it evokes in the human heart. The problem is that America has never been able to face what was done in those August days. That is why we fear that also we will be bombed and our cities laid to ruins. It’s a simple and common mechanism, among individuals as well as nations. The Belgians cannot recognize what they did in the Congo, the Japanese what they did in Korea and Chins – the list is long and includes most nations with a history of any length.

But I am an American and it’s America’s sins which concern me, not those of others. America is afraid that one night she will be destroyed – that is why we have so many thousands of nuclear warheads and the means to deliver them anywhere in the world on the whim of a moments notice, that is why we spend more on military hardware than the rest of the world combined and yet we are still afraid.

In comparison to our power, 9-11 was barely a pin-prick, but it brought the nightmare to life and now we stumble, an angry giant smashing, destroying and killing hundreds of thousands of people innocent of the crime against us. Instead of the extended police action to bring the criminals to justice our leaders, in their incompetent arrogance continue to bumble and muddle, edging us closer to a world war.

It doesn’t have to be that way!

War Zones Maintain World Peace!

[People ask me sometimes (or is it just that nagging voice in the back of my head?) why I post so much about the terrible events in the Third Galaxy, transmitted to me by an unemployed angel there who lets itself be known by the odd name of “Man-u El Ishman”.

The answer is quite simple: it’s just so depressing at times just to keep oneself even vaguely oriented as to what is going on in our world or think about the shit that looks like it’s coming down the tube. By referring to the Third Galaxy, I remind myself that not only could things get worse before they get better – they could get worse and not get better!

On the other hand, if you ignore the insane logic behind the War Zones and look at it in its own context, you find that its internal consistency tempts you to let you mind fly away to La-La Land and go with the flow…]


"...Few people really understand the wonder of the War Zone Act and how it not only made possible but is instrumental in maintaining the World Peace.

Of all the things Ronald Rexona has done to promote and protect the security of the United State of Arrogance, this alone would have secured him lasting honor and the love of all our loyal citizens.

When earlier leaders talked about peace, they only meant that there were no wars at the moment. Because of their total lack of planning, wars occurred without proper preparation. This was very bad for economy and has, in the past, been the direct cause of much economic suffering companies producing weapons have had to endure.

It is an accepted truism that war is good for the economy. However, that is not true when wars are allowed to happen haphazardly. Too many wars followed by few or perhaps no conflicts at all result in boom-bust, inflation, depression, lack of labor followed by unemployment, strikes and even worse forms of social unrest.

With carefully controlled War Zones, our military is kept occupied at a steady level they can cope with which keeps their skills well honed. Because they are kept fit and trim to fight, the result is a well-documented reduction in battlefield casualties as well as loss of material.

The benefit of reduced casualties is obvious, but less intuitive is how reduced loss of material could benefit our weapons manufacturers. But the fact has been proven conclusively through extensive cost-benefit analysis which too complicated to describe here. However, the short explanation is that when a piece of weaponry, such as a tank or airplane, is destroyed before its useful lifetime has expired, factories have to gear up and produce a new tank or airplane before it was scheduled. This in turn creates bottlenecks in the flow of production, putting us back in the situation mentioned earlier regarding the negative value of wars just happening “off the cuff”, so to speak.

Ronald Rexona was once asked how he came upon the idea for War Zones and he replied, “Well, you remember when that city, Blue Ptomaine, got flooded by that monster storm? Well, when we saw how it gave a good chance to do some badly needed urban renewal. But I got to thinking, why wait for an Act of the Great Potato – if we plan things ourselves we can get rid of slums and undesirable elements with having so many real nice property destroyed like what happened in Blue Ptomaine.

The bottom line is that our factories are able to produce more efficiently, are able to plan ahead and have new models ready in time for deployment on schedule. Before the innovation of War Zones, it was only toy manufacturers getting tooled up for Christmas who were able to enjoy this kind ability to schedule production many months ahead."

[Before and after picture of War Zone LB 86-69 (a.k.a. "Guanocow", pls. note the effieciency of the "slum clearance" aspect of the operation!]

The Crazy Bird -- Revisited

As my faithful readers know, I experienced a break with reality in January, 1973.

On the one hand, I might say that I spent three days in a kind of hell. On the other hand I have to say that it is an experience I deeply treasure because, although I said that it was a “break with reality”, in a very real sense, it was also a break into reality.

The fact is, most people have a fragile grasp on reality and that is why most of us are so easily manipulated by the Bankers of Illusion (i.e. media, adverts, political and religious charlatans, et. al.).

The reason that most of us have a fragile grasp on reality is that we tend to base our identity on what I might call our “every-day mind”, as if it were the core of our being – which it is most certainly not! This is what lies behind the asceticisms and mind-breaking techniques found in most religions with contemplative traditions, whose purpose is to enable us to learn that which is humanly possible of Reality.

Unfortunately, it is also what which religious charlatans of every stripe and outright totalitarians exploit in order to break and then control people.

What is the core of our being? Some questions cannot be answered directly and this is one of them. The answer(s) are found in the context of what one is as a total human being. However, I will go so far as to say that I refer to the core of our being when I speak of our “common humanity”.

All that said, some of which perhaps I had best left unsaid, most of my poetry since then refers in one way or another to that experience. The song poem which follows is one of them and also is my signature.

I'm just a crazy bird, I have a hard time touching down,

It's hard for me to keep my feet there on the ground.

It's hard to find me with the unaided, naked eye

When I'm singing my songs up in the sky!

But, that I'm up there – could there ever be any doubt?

Where ever you go down there below

You hear some poor boy in his agony shout:



CRAZY BIRD! O, CRAZY BIRD!


Won't you sing your song for me?

I'm just a poor boy headed for eternity...

I know I said eternity – I might just have meant something else!

This earth can be a heaven – this earth can be a hell!





I'm just a crazy bird, I sing about the things I love the best:

The leafy trees, the windy breeze. the eggs down there in my nest!

I try so hard to sing it all at once, God knows how hard I try!

To sing of all that lives and loves and loves and grows and dies!

When you walk through the fields all on a summer day

And the rye and wheat is standing, nodding,

Golden white in the summer heat:



CRAZY BIRD! O, CRAZY BIRD!


Won't you sing your song for me?

I'm just a poor boy headed for eternity...

I know I said eternity – I might just have meant something else!

This earth can be a heaven – this earth can be a hell!




[On the first level, “crazy bird” refers to the song of an actual bird, whose song gave me some solace that winter afternoon so long ago. For years, I thought it was a meadow lark, but it must have been a European blackbird. Perhaps I should exercise my poetic license and say it was both and neither of them – at the same time!]