The seedy of Lebanon

I probably shouldn't mention this matter at this time, given the continuing horrors in Lebanon. Frankly, I haven't yet developed my thoughts; what follows is too vague and ill-formed to qualify as a hypothesis, or even as a coherent narrative. That said...

Have you noticed the oddities surrounding certain "Lebanese businessmen"? I am beginning to wonder if an underground Lebanese "mafia" plays an unrecognised role in current affairs...

An earlier post discussed the Lebanese-born Richard Rainwater, a billionaire financier who profits from calamity. Perhaps the greatest calamity he helped to inflict on the world is the presidency of his good friend and financial partner, George W. Bush. Daniel Hopsicker has linked a Rainwater enterprise with the "drug jet" owned by the scam company Skyway.

I asked Hopsicker why a man like Rainwater -- who has made a frightening amount of money from oil, real estate, and cell phone technology -- would take the risk of witting involvement in the drug trade. Hopsicker considered my question naive, as perhaps it was.

The drug jet was discovered on the tarmac of a Mexican airport, under circumstances which still seem mysterious. Someone alerted the Mexican authorities -- which have been known to look the other way, if paid to do so, in other drug smuggling cases. Those same authorities allowed the pilot of the DC-9 to get away, even though the cops had the aircraft surrounded. Naive I may be, but even I don't think that sort of thing happens by accident.

Let us mull over those seemingly-unrelated concepts: Strange doings in Mexico...strange Lebanese businessmen... Do a little googling. What do we come up with?

We soon come face-to-face (and quite a forbidding face it is) with Jean Succar Kuri, a Cancun-based Lebanese businessman who now resides in an Arizona jail. Kuri has been named as the proprietor of a child prostitution ring which supplied sexual playthings -- slaves, essentially -- to the elite. The story is told here; Rigorous Intuition has devoted some fine posts to this vile business.

(To read the rest, click "Permalink" below)

Courageous journalist Lydia Cacho wrote a book on this scandal: The Demons of Eden. The Mexican authorities have severely harassed her and put her in fear of her life. Cacho, arrested on trumped-up charges, now stands accused of libel -- in a country where truth is not considered an absolute defense.

A clandestine telephone recording indicates that Cacho's harassment was arranged, in large part, by another Lebanese businessman in Mexico: Kamel Nacif, who travels in the highest circles of the Mexican government. Nacif, a wealthy and (by all accounts) exploitative and despotic maquiladora owner, seems to have had close ties to Jean Succar Kuri:

In the conversations, the voices identified as those of Nacif and [Puebla governor Mario] Marín discuss how they had the activist arrested and thrown into a cell with "nutcases and dykes (lesbians)," so that she would be raped. That did not happen, however, because in the prison in Puebla, "the prisoners themselves and the guards protected me," said the writer. But she was mistreated. Cacho described how she was threatened during the nearly 20-hour trip to Puebla and was only allowed to eat once.

From the Casino Watch website:

Mexican textile magnate Kamel Nacif has been a familiar face at Las Vegas gambling tables for some 30 years, using phony identification to wager at Caesars Palace when he was still in his late teens. He remains, however, a bit of a multimillionaire mystery man, long suspected by Nevada Gaming Control Board agents of money laundering and arms and narcotics dealing.

There's more. The Bushes have been tied to yet another shadowy Lebanese clan.

Back in 1982, the Smatt clan -- a wealthy Lebanese family operating in Florida and Jamaica -- became the target of an investigation ("Operation Nimbus") by FBI agent Darlene Novinger, who claimed that evidence linked the clan with drug smuggling. Novinger (who died of cancer in 2003) also believed that "Poppy" Bush and Jeb Bush were involved.

After submitting her report, orders came to cease the investigation and destroy all documents. She said someone in the FBI's Miami office leaked to the traffickers that she had penetrated the operation. Before Operation Nimbus was shut down, veteran US Customs investigator Joe Price filed corroborating reports in September 1983 implicating Bush. And after he did, FBI agents arrested him on a narcotics trafficking charge.

The Smatts, led by paterfamilias William Smatt, were linked to the quasi-fascist Lebanese Phalange -- more properly called the Kataeb Social Democratic Party -- founded by the Gemayel family. The Gemayels have long been accused of running the opium production trade which one thrived in the Bakaa valley.

Even though the Gemayels admired Hitler, Israel had supported the ascension of Bashir Gemayel to the Lebanese presidency in 1982, due to his staunch opposition to the Palestinians and Syria. A pro-Nazi Syrian faction assassinated him soon therafter. Nobody ever said that fascists always get along with each other.

(Alternative theorists suspect that Israel arranged the Gemayel killing because he refused to enter into a formal agreement with the Israelis.)

The William Smatt targeted by Novinger appears to be the same person who wrote a strange book called "The Messiah." This tome proclaims George W. Bush, Republican, to be the Chosen One, the new Christ. I'm not kidding. You must see it to believe it.

(Novinger's Smatt operated out of Jamaica, while Bush-loving author William C. Smatt has run for public office in that country, so I think we have grounds for believing the two to be one and the same.)

Check out this review:

It's interesting, however, that this evil twit and his book turn up very few hits in a web search. The only ones that do turn up mention a "Smatt Brothers Jamaican drug cartel," and its connection to the Bush family. Interestingly, the dedication to this "copyright pending" screed is to sweet William's "two deceased beloved brothers Alfred Smatt and Adolph Smatt." Also, at the end of the book is a bizarre plug for the Shaw Park Hotel in Cutlass Bay, Ocho Rios, Jamaica - where Mr. Smatt evidently spends a lot of time communing with god. Coincidence?

A little web-searching reveals that people named Smatt run much of the lucrative tourist trade in Jamaica.

What does it all come down to? As I said, my thoughts are still vague. I don't have an over-arching theory.

All I can do is look at this list -- Richard Rainwater, Jean Succar Kuri, Kamel Nacif, William Smatt -- and then note that these Lebanese-born businessmen have been accused of some very odd things. They all have links to the right-wing power elite. Do these guys know each other?

Or is that a naive question?

Are you an "enemy combatant"? Am I?

Please read Kagro X's important post at the Next Hurrah. After Hamdan, Bush intends to "fix" the situation by making it worse. He hopes to expand his abilities to subject American citizens to military justice -- with a presumption of guilt.

News of this power-grab brings my mind back to 1971, when the Kennedy Center invited Nixon to attend the premiere of Leonard Bernstein's Mass, a work commissioned by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in honor of her late husband. (Yes, I like Mass, despite the many cringe-inducing displays of Hippie Triteness. This is the guiltiest of my guilty pleasures.) Nixon declined the invite but -- ever suspicious of anything linked to the Kennedy family -- sent out his underlings to spy on the rehearsals. The Nixonites sent back the troubling report that the Latin sections of the work probably contained "secret messages" from the rebel underground. Lenny went on Dick's "enemy's list."

I tell that story to illustrate just how deep presidential paranoia can run. Imagine how Nixon might have proceeded if he possessed the expanded powers Bush now hopes to obtain.

Look at how W hopes to amend the law:

(To read the rest, click "Permalink" below)

B) "Unlawful" enemy combatants are persons not entitled to combatant immunity, who engage in acts against the United States or its coalition partners in violation of the laws and customs of war during an armed conflict. Spies and saboteurs are traditional examples of unlawful enemy combatants. For purposes of the war on terrorism, the term Unlawful Enemy Combatant is defined to include, but is not limited to, an individual who is or was part of or supporting Taliban or al Qaeda forces, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners.

This bit is to be removed:

to have committed a belligerent act in aid of such an organization so engaged, or

(C) to have directly supported hostilities in aid of such enemy armed forces.

In other words, to be an enemy combatant, you need no longer commit a billigerent act. You need merely act against the current administration's war policies in any way -- for example, by protesting or writing an editorial against the war. Furthering the point, we have the following:

The President is authorized to establish military commissions for the trial of enemy combatants for violations of the laws and customs of war...

At present, this line refers to "alien enemy combatants." By striking out the word "alien," the Bushites have signaled their intention to Gitmo-ize domestic dissidents. Which explains why the administration plans to expand the Guantanamo gulag.

Even the old Trickster wouldn't have dared.

Mel: Over the edge

The fellow going over the edge, in this case, is not Mel Gibson but yours truly. I feel a conspiracy theory coming on. Sometimes I just can't help myself, y'know? Please don't take what I'm about to say seriously; I offer it as entertainment. Just mull it over for a half-minute while chewing on your Post Toasties.

In a previous post (scroll down), I expressed regret that Mel Gibson had not offered the public rational arguments against the wars in Iraq and Lebanon, which he seems to oppose. Gibson has a unique ability to speak to the Protestant evangelical crowd which backs Bush with such blind enthusiasm. (That sitch is a little weird, since a good traditionalist like Gibson probably thinks that Prots are all going to hell -- but that's another story.)

What if Gibson had told associates that he planned to make just such a public statement? Here's where we get all dark and dank and paranoid...

Back in the bad old days of the CIA's MKULTRA program (referenced in Gibson's film Conspiracy Theory), some taxpayer monies were spent on researching "alcohol antagonists and accelerators." In other words, the spooks wanted to find a magic potion which could allow an operative to drink like the winner of the Irish lottery without losing his sobriety. The CIA also wanted to find a potion that could make someone who just had a single shot act like he had downed a bottle of Jack Daniels.

That research was initiated half-a-century ago. Nobody really knows what the guys in the lab came up with.

If you have any imagination, you can fill out the rest of the theory for yourself. You may also want to reconsider the Patrick Kennedy case.

Have I just made an irresponsible suggestion? Well...yeah.

Which is why this blog probably will not discuss this outlandish and unsupported theory in the future. Most of the people fascinated by MKULTRA are schizy loons, and I would prefer never again to deal with those annoying people.

So please go back to eating your Post Toasties. And please act as though I never said a word of it.

(Scoffers are encouraged to post their derisive mutterings, but I beg them to avoid references to tin-foil chapeaus. I'm not asking for kind words, just a little originality.)

Mel Gibson and war

You probably expect me to make snide comments about Mel Gibson's drunk driving episode and the subsequent revelation of his ghastly behavior during the arrest and booking. Truth be told, I did allow myself a few captious snickers while reading the news to my ladyfriend. In the end, though, the whole affair made me sad.

Long time readers know that I do not admire Passion of the Christ. But Mel Gibson has done a lot of good work, and he deserves to be judged for his best efforts, not for one horrible night. John Huston killed a man while driving drunk (the studio hushed up the incident), but that tragedy doesn't make Treasure of the Sierra Madre and The Man Who Would be King any less brilliant.

Gibson's anti-Semitic outburst -- "The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world" -- was, of course, inane and odious. I agree with Josh Marshall's response: "People do say all sorts of things when they're crazy drunk. But with Gibson, there's a history."

Intriguingly, that offensive remark hints that Mel Gibson does not support either our bloody Iraq misadventure or Israel's vandalism in Lebanon. If that is true, then why did he not voice his opposition before? Instead of this drunken lapse into the lowest sort of anti-Semitic conspiracism, Gibson could have offered rational arguments against the current madness.

Mel Gibson still has the opportunity to make such an argument in a public forum, and he can do so with a force unavailable to any other Hollywood figure. The fundamentalists who blindly support Bush's atrocities will never listen to a Martin Sheen, but they will hear out the man who made Passion of the Christ.

Similarly, Gibson has, in the past, offered hints that he views the Bush family with suspicion. Why not offer more than a hint?

I'm not sure how Bush-entranced fundamentalists would respond to an anti-war pronouncement by Mel Gibson. The Protestant leaders who embraced Passion would suddenly be forced to admit the profound theological and cultural differences separating the evangelicals from "breakaway" Catholics such as Gibson and his father, who reject the Vatican II reforms.

A side note: Very few people in the "Passion" audience understood why Gibson included a Last Supper flashback in which Jesus declares that his blood would be shed "for many." Although the details resist easy summary here, I can say that this scene underscores a decades-old controversy over the translation of the Mass into the vernacular -- a controversy which relates, in turn, to a larger debate over the old doctrine of "no salvation outside the Church." The film's many Protestant admirers never realized that Sedevacantism -- the technical term for the doctrine underlying Gibson's traditionalism -- emerged, in large part, as a reaction against the Vatican II reforms which reclassified Protestants as "separated brethren" instead of heretics. (Sedevacantists believe that every Pope since the Second Vatican Council has been false.)

The horror of it (Plus: An additional note)

ISRAEL:
HAVE YOU NO CONSCIENCE?

These photos of civilian casualties in Lebanon came from uruknet. I have not shown the worst.

ADDITIONAL NOTE: Where, exactly, were those Israeli soldiers when they were captured? It's a key question, since that "kidnapping" provided the rationale for this war. For a good discussion of the issue -- including the changing stories and the (deliberate?) mistranslations -- see here.

Democracy and Dubya

I know that mine is but one voice among many in the blogosphere snarling "What a dickhead!" after watching W's performance at the joint Bush/Blair press conference today, but...really...what a dickhead!

The White House has not radiated such sheer stupidity since the Spanish-American war, when President William McKinley declared that he had to invade the Philippines to bring "Christianity" to that nation -- despite the fact that Christianity had been in place for centuries.

In an exactly similar vein, W defends the Israeli invasion of Lebanon as a measure to bring "democracy." Here's a newsflash, dummy: Lebanon is, or was, a democracy. An imperfect one, to be sure, but that cultured land was nevertheless well on its way toward re-establishing itself as "the Paris of Orient."

Before this bloody attack -- which began only after the capture of Israeli soldiers within Lebanon -- only 18% of the Lebanese populace (less than half the Shi'ites in the country) supported Hezbollah. Now nearly all Lebanese support Hezbollah, and for understandable reasons: Nobody else has the guts to fight the Israelis.

The Palestinian Authority is democratic. Bush and Israel pretend otherwise because the Palestinians dared to vote for someone Israel does not like.

Iran, the next target of American aggression, is at least partially democratic -- although once again, we cannot allow that fact to appear within our media, because the Iranians dared to vote for someone Israel does not like.

Speaking of "partially democratic": Can we use any better description for Israel itself? Of course, Dubya will never ask the Israeli government to allow all non-Jews in that land access to the ballot box.

As for Iraq: The vast majority of the Iraqis want us to go -- and they want to regain control of their own natural resources, which is the one thing this administration cannot allow.

By contrast, W never criticizes Saudi Arabia or Egypt, two distinctly non-democratic countries. If a true representative of the people ever attained elected office in Saudi Arabia -- well, in the first place, the land would no longer be "Saudi." Without a friendly monarch on that throne, gas prices in the United States would shoot up to ten dollars a gallon and the Arabs would use the profits to construct nuclear weaponry.

Neither does W criticize Pakistan, which once was a democracy but is now a military dictatorship. Pakistan harbors Osama Bin Laden, the man W pretends to have hunted all these years.

Democracy? Our president loves democracy the way Godzilla loved Tokyo.

BOMBSHELL: SKYWAY AND BUSHCO!

Remember the drug jet? Remember the DC-9 loaded up with 5.5 tons of coke, which was discovered by Mexican authorities? Remember when we learned that it was owned by Skyway, a scam company designed to bilk investors, a company run by the (allegedly) spooked-up Kovar family?

Daniel Hopsicker has tied this drug smuggling scandal directly to the immediate circle of George W. Bush:

The company which owned the seized "Cocaine One" DC9, SkyWay Aircraft of St. Petersburg FL, leased a 70,000 square foot “repair” facility at DFW Airport in Dallas for more than $20,000 a month...in a building owned by a man called “George W. Bush’s biggest supporter” and “the power behind the throne” during Bush’s first Presidential campaign.

SkyWay, a company with no products, and thus nothing needing "repair," nonetheless announced in July 2003 “their newly established Part 145 repair station” in a building owned by LIT Industrial Texas Limited Partnership, a venture of Texas real estate giant Trammel Crow, the flagship corporation in the far-flung empire of billionaire speculator Richard Rainwater.

Ranked among the 100 wealthiest Americans, Rainwater backed George W. Bush in four separate business ventures, including the Texas Rangers baseball team from which Bush, who had been drilling “dry holes” until then, profited handsomely. In a heated 1994 Governor’s race, Texas Democratic Governor Ann Richards charged Rainwater “owned" her Republican opponent Bush.

There's more; follow the link. What the hell do we have to do to force the mainstream media to pay attention?

UPDATE: I haven't any time to write now, but a little Googling on Rainwater will demonstrate that this guy's financial links to GWB are profound. And he has strong links to the Cheneys, as well...

Lebanon tidings...

Covert op? I strongly urge readers to check out Xymphora's latest. Turns out that those captured Israeli soldiers were inside Lebanon. Mr. X suspects that Israeli intelligence intentionally blew their mission in order to create a cause for war. Anyone who has read Victor Ostrovsky's books will recognise the plausibility of this hypothesis.

Chemical Weapons: The Sydney Morning Herald reports on the likely Israeli use of CBW.

Oil spill disaster: When Israel bombed a power plant in Lebanon, 10,000 to 30,000 tons of oil spilled into the Mediterranean. Even under the best of circumstances, Lebanon has no ability to repair an ecological disaster on that scale.

U.S. Troops? Condoleeza insists that American soldiers will play no role in Lebanese peacekeeping, but Ken Silverstein of Harpers reports that

...a well-connected former CIA officer has told me that the Bush Administration is in fact considering exactly such a deployment.
The officer, who had broad experience in the Middle East while at the CIA, noted that NATO and European countries, including England, have made clear that they are either unwilling or extremely reluctant to participate in an international force. Given other nations' lack of commitment, any “robust” force—between 10,000 and 30,000 troops, according to estimates being discussed in the media—would by definition require major U.S. participation.

GIYUS is an acronym for Give Israel Your United Support, an "Israel First" web site promoting the use of a tool called "Megaphone." This application facilitates the sharing of pro-Israel articles and alerts users to online polls on the Israeli invasion. This software is part of a larger plan by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs to mobilize 100,000 propagandists. So far, GIYUS has attracted fewer than a thousand participants. For more, read here and here.

I'd advise against downloading Megaphone (which may have spyware), but you can safely use the online version of the application -- and you can use it against the makers' interests, if you participate in those online polls.

By the way: Did you know that the unpleasantness in Lebanon is due to "Iran's holy war" in that country? You learn such amazing things from a site like GIYUS!

Finally: Maybe OIL is the new oil: Did you know that there once was a pipeline which brought oil from the Iraqi city of Mosul to Israel's northern port of Haifa? Some folks in Israel hope to restore this pipeline -- but doing so would require regime change in Syria.

Kooks are now "experts"

The esteemed Professor Hex has drawn my attention to this Newshounds expose: To educate the American public on the current crises in Lebanon and Iraq, FOX News has given air time to two "Middle East experts" with no credentials beyond authorship of some wacky books in the lucrative Christian "Apocalypse soon" genre. Worse, FOX hides the backgrounds of these authors, allowing viewers to conclude that these guys must be professors or intelligence analysts or policy advisors -- you know, actual experts.

The geniuses in question are Michael D. Evans -- author of The American Prophecies: Ancient Scriptures Reveal Our Nation's Future -- and Mark Hitchcock, author of What Jesus Says About Earth's Final Days. If you want a whiff of a typical Evans product, smell this:

Is America in prophecy? Yes, it is. As a Middle East analyst and minister who has worked closely with leaders in that region for decades, I tended to be skeptical of attempts to come up with schemes to plug America into prophetic interpretations. I have often referred to such teachers as "Pop Prophecy Peddlers." But, after thousands of hours of research, I am totally convinced that America is found in prophecy, and I believe you will, too, after reading [my] book.

In a nutshell, here is how the United States fits into Bible prophecy. America has married two brothers, both descendants of ancient Abraham, who was told by God to get out of Ur of the Chaldees (modern day Iraq).

The LORD had said to Abram...

And so on. You get the idea. I've always found this sort of thing more amusing when it comes in pamphlet format, to be read while waiting for the bus. For a good response to Evans by a non-nutty Christian, go here.

Here's the part I don't understand: Evans is one of those Israel ueber alles types who feel that, in order to avoid God's wrath, America must become "literally indistinguishable" (actual quote) from Israel, the one nation which can Do No Wrong. Evans scored a major berth on Fox even though Saudi Prince Al-waleed bin Talal now owns a huge chunk of the network, controlling not only voting shares but -- to an increasing degree -- content.

The Prince could have had Evans canned with one phone call to Rupert Murdoch. Something strange is going on here.

As for Hitchcock: Even the Fundamentalist Fruit Loops reviewing his book The Second Coming of Babylon have noted the basic flaw with his theory that the leader of "Babylon" (i.e., Iraq) will be the anti-Christ. After all, who is running Babylon now? As one Amazon commenter put it:

Our fair and balanced land is the Beast you obsess over blindly. We are the return of Babylon. the evidence is everywhere around us. Our lovable liar of a leader is the final antichrist, but you love him too much for that to even be a possibility for you.

Let's hope that meme gets a little more play among the loons who tune in to FOX.

The race goes not to the swiftest

Envy is such an unavoidable part of the human condition that virtue lies not in avoidance but candid admission. Ana Marie Cox, a.k.a. Wonkette, has been named Washington Editor at Time.com. I've always enjoyed her style, but so far as I know, her only real scoop has been that Washingtonienne thing, which never really interested me. Compare her accomplishments with those of (say) Brad Friedman, who has spent the past year and a half trying to expose election shennanigans, and you'll gather some notion of how Power Rewards Piffle.

Ah well. She is a good writer. Besides, if she translates her obsessions into traditional Time-style, then we can one day expect to see these immortal words (please avert your eyes if easily offended):

"Fucked was the ass until out flew my brains!"

Astounding vote fraud news

Something stinks in Alaska. John Gideon of Brad Blog has received some amazing facts about the 2004 vote in that state -- where the Secretary of State has tried to keep the info hidden:

The State of Alaska website shows 16 of 40 house districts with more than 200% voter turnout, Also, if you add up the vote totals from each district they come to more than 100,000 votes for state wide candidates than the summary reports show.

More than 7 months ago the Democrats asked for an explanation. The state said it could not release the data files because they were proprietary to Diebold.

Diebold gave the state permission to release the files.

The state still refused.

Ron Baiman has a Powerpoint presentation on the "baked" Alaskan election -- unfortunately, the presentation won't load up for me. Perhaps if we ask Ron real nice, he'll convert it to Flash or HTML?

Baiman also claims that the 2004 "hard copy" data will be destroyed in early September, unless someone offers to store it.

Meanwhile, in San Diego: Controversy still surrounds the CA-50 election. I will reiterate my view that Democrat Francine Busby probably would have lost a clean election -- but that doesn't mean we should ever tolerate a non-clean election. The San Diego Union Tribune published an agonizingly dumb editorial on the subject, defending the idea of poll workers taking election machines home for a slumber party:

And safeguards are numerous. The memory card inside every electronic machine has a tamper-evident seal. Before the polls open on Election Day, two poll workers check the seal on every machine and certify that the seals were unbroken. Then every machine is tested with what is called a “zero tape,” certifying that no votes have yet been cast.

And so on. The thing devolves into the usual rot about those awful, awful internet conspiracy theorists. Paul Lehto is compiling a response:

The situation is much more dire with elections, where the secrecy is provided by computers. A computer is something that simply does what it is told to do (so long as one can speak its languages) and will do simply anything it’s told without any regard for law, morality or ethics. Because computers simply follow the commands of anyone (whether given on election day or stored with a command not to execute until election day) the fact that the government claims to test the machines by casting one or two votes on a few machines before and a few after the election is laughably insufficient not so much because of the low numbers tested, but because the only thing that matters with a computer is knowing for sure exactly what the computer was asked to do on the day of election itself. But, we can’t know that. A person that knows computers can place undetectable “easter egg” code that executes only on a later date, Election Day.

A word about that memory card seal: It's a joke. Diebold machines have an open MMC/SD slot and an open PCMCIA slot, both of which allow "extra" programming to sneak in. If you don't know what a PCMCIA slot is, ask the geeky teenager who lives next door. (We should also take into some consideration the little-known fact that power cords can be used to transmit data.) Those machines are as vulnerable as naked woman tied to a bed in a war zone.

Placing a thick lock on the front door of the building means nothing if you leave the side doors wide open.

Need some good news?

Chicago passed a living wage ordinance, forcing the biggest retailers to pay employees at least ten bucks an hour. Wal-Mart responded with a threat to pick up its marbles and play elsewhere. Two words: good and riddance.

Coulter's latest

Ann Coulter calls Bill Clinton a "latent homosexual," which is a bit like calling the battle of the Somme a "latent peace." Her reasoning? Clinton had an affair with a curvy intern to prove to himself that he was not gay.

This led me to consider those mysterious Guckert/Gannon overnight stays in the White House. By Coulter's standards, we must now conclude that George W. Bush is a latent heterosexual.

(By the way, have I ever mentioned that George W. Bush and his Yale roommate, Victor Ashe, were both male cheerleaders? Can't recall if that little factoid has ever cropped up in these pages before...)

Protest

Free speech and the spirit of dissent are still alive -- down under. "Nick Possum," one of the oldest friends of this blog, has covered a large demonstration in Sydney, directed against the atrocities in Lebanon.

Israel's supporters have become so wrapped up in their preconceptions, so unable to see matters from any point of view other than their own, that they will automatically presume that all of these people must be anti-Semites. Was opposition to (say) the Soviet invasion of Hungary based on anti-Slavism, or was it based on a desire for justice?

The Kurds recently killed ten Turkish soldiers. By Israeli logic, Turkey now has the right to invade and to destroy Kurdish Iraq -- and anyone who says otherwise must be anti-Turk.

Every nation that has ever invaded another has always fastened upon a seemingly-credible pretext. Napoleon used a broken treaty to justify the invasion of Russia -- and his complaint was, in fact, well-founded. Yet few today know of that complaint, while War and Peace keeps alive the memory of Moscow's occupation.

Our president maintains that this is battle between the forces of democracy and those who would destroy it. But Israel is not a true democracy; racism determines citizenship, and the Israeli government controls the lives of many non-Jews who lack basic freedoms. Lebanese democracy -- however young, however faulted, however haunted by civil war and occupation -- is (was?) superior to the Israeli variety. The Israeli occupation will almost certainly end this promising democratic experiment.

I wish Americans could manage a demonstration of this sort.

The most depressing domestic story of the year (Update)

Read it and weep. Half the U.S. populace (up from 36%) believes that Saddam had WMDS. I guess the recent Fox-led propaganda campaign has worked.

Seventy-two percent of respondents said the Iraqi people are better off now than under Saddam Hussein's regime -- a figure similar to that of 2004, when it stood at 76 percent. In addition, 64 percent say Saddam had "strong links" with al Qaeda, up from 62 percent in October 2004. Fifty-five percent said that "history will give the U.S. credit for bringing freedom and democracy to Iraq."

There are days when I think someone must be dumping stupidity powder into the water supply.

Update: You want more depression? Check out this AOL online poll...

Help a soldier

Sgt. Michael Monn, stationed at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina, could use a good word placed into the right pair of ears. He seriously injured his foot in a training accident. Despite the injury, his superiors plan to ship him to Iraq. There's a quota to be met, you know...

I like the way his sister pleads on his behalf:

Michael is my only brother and means more than almost anything to me. I ask each and every one of you that are reading this to take less than 5 minutes out of your day tomorrow (Monday) and please call a congress person. You can call in your own state or in Arizona. I know that John McCain is one of my Senators and he should be sympathetic to the pleas for local soldiers, but who knows. He is kind of a douche.

If you do call McCain, ixnay on the ouche-day.

Of course, the best way we can help these soldiers is to end this stupid war.

NYT vs. Blogland

Check out David Sirota's "The political fault line we're never supposed to talk about." Sirota offers a hostile response to a hostile New York Times review of Sirota's new book "Hostile Takeover." Without faulting the volume on a factual basis, the NYT reviewer expresses sniffy outrage that a mere blogger would dare to attempt the long form.

A blogger? Write a book? Da noive!

Scam

Although I had hoped to allow Dr. E's fine entry to remain at the top of this site for a while, I feel obligated to warn folks about a particularly clever new scam email. Allegedly, it comes from something called the "War-Torn Societies Project," which, we are told, is attempting to raise a million bucks to aid the victims in Lebanon.

Anyone googling "War-Torn Societies Project" may come under the impression that it is a real organization. In fact, a group by that name did exist. It was run by the U.N. -- and it ceased to function a few years back. The wording of the scam email -- "help save lives of people cut up in the war ravage country of Lebanon" -- conveys an unmistakable "Nigerian" odor, even though a London address is given.

Surreal Truthinesses (revised)

dr. elsewhere here

Seems I spend as much time apologizing for my absences these days as I do offering any blogging. I realized this morning that, not only am I overwhelmed by my own pitiful little life, but I am genuinely overwhelmed by this out-of-control world.

Thankfully, Joe has - as ever and always - been blaze-blogging up a storm; he really is on a serious roll here these days, like a western wildfire.

His latest entry was spot on, and so provocative, there is precious little to add beyond the anecdote I shared in the comments.

But this morning during breakfast I ran across a Booman post that absolutely shook me to my core. Like Joe, he nails it, this godforsaken ME (look at that acronym for a second) crisis, but from a different angle, one that feels like a coffin shutting out the last gasps of oxygen.

Booman observes that the Israel/Lebanon situation places the Democrats in a double bind, one that to me is very reminiscent of what 9/11 did to almost everyone, especially in Congress, who almost unanimously voted in the USAPATRIOT Act (using the acronym for all it's worth, which was a lot because now everyone except me uses "Patriot Act") without question, or even reading it, and all the rest, you know, is now history. Or at least in the rapidly vanishing reality-based version of history.

Five years later and folks are starting to show signs of recovery, recognizing they've been duped, or at least that's what the polls had started to show until this morning's new numbers. So we needed a new 9/11, a new "Remember the Alamo and the Maine," a new new Pearl Harbor.

Booman reminds us of the now infamous "reality-based" quote reported by Ron Suskind (I will still bet an important appendage that the speaker of that quote was Rove), and points out that keeping Israel in conflict will split the very Democratic Jewish vote in this country, taking a huge portion of the fundraising money with them over to the GOP.

Bush's craven attempt to court the black vote, albeit belatedly and brazenly, appears to have failed miserably. So Rove had to fish elsewhere. Could it be more perfect? Was Israel waiting for the timing go-ahead after drawing up these plans a year ago?

And we Democrats are again left standing stupefied, as if we had never heard of the evil Rove can conjure.

Thankfully there were those 8 Congressmen who voted against the actions of Israel. And thankfully there are the courageous bloggers like Joe and Billmon to risk it all and call it as they see it, as a matter of conscience and not mere blind loyalty. Prime among these must also be Tom Hayden for his bold confessional, a "dupe" for Israel.

But Booman emphasizes the long-standing impossibility of speaking truth about Israel; I made the additional point in my comment to Joe's piece that this impossibility about which we can hardly even speak is actually the real - as in reality-based - version of what Ann Coulter tried to assert against the Jersey wives. But with the crucial exception that those wives have done nothing to harm anyone else, let alone committed war crimes.

But beware; Booman also points out that The Weekly Standard has been trolling for the blogosphere pulse, and takes note of the fact that the leading site maestros - kos, Josh, Drum, others - have made a public decision to stand down on this issue (too divisive...?!), while the threads are boiling over with outrage against Israel. So Joe, take note.

There you have it; the pulse of the microcosm. And it does feel more like the precursor for cardiac arrest than I think I have ever felt.

And I was kept awake by sniper fire across the parkway in Memphis the night King was shot. At least then we had a voice. No more; our voice is being silenced.

Revision, times two: Color me stupid and stressed, again.
I have now really, really corrected all the instances of this error in the post; whereas it originally and erroneously referenced Billmon, it now really reads - correctly - Booman.
Did they, like, get together and do this name thing on purpose? Just for me?
In my made rush I evidently put in the revision and raced out the door before actually revising.
My apologies to Booman, and all readers, and thanks to Joe for gently bringing this error to my attention, and to anon for holding my feets to the fire.
And thanks again to all for your patience.

Israel: At what point is the Nazi comparison justified?

I haven't heard the phrase "Never again!" in years -- perhaps because everyone understands that it is happening again. And the Israelis are doing it.

More than a few people have drawn the obvious comparison between the current attack on Lebanon and the atrocities committed by the Nazis in the aftermath of the assassination of Reinhard Heidrich (who, incidentally, was an architect of the Holocaust). The comparison is inexact only to the extent that the Israelis have killed more people, and have razed a city, not a village.

The propagandists have tried to sell this attack as a self-defense measure, but that assertion is falling apart. We know now that this war was provoked by neither rocket attacks nor kidnappings -- in fact, it was planned long ago.

What, then, do we make of those all-too-convenient rocket attacks and kidnappings? Perhaps we should categorize them alongside the staged "attack on German soldiers" used to justify the Nazi invasion of Poland. I do not trust Barry Chamish (who often gets into conspiratorial realms too dank and confused for even me) but his recent claims may spark others to do some independent investigation:

And now we know why Corporal Shalit was handed over to Hamas. Read the findings of the IDF's investigator Col. Giora Eiland. The kidnapping was caught on a surveillance camera. A soldier wanted to shoot the kidnappers but was denied the opportunity by his officer.

Victimized children often grow up to become victimizers. At what point can we fairly say that the victims of the Nazis have become Nazis?

"Israel is a democracy!" shout that nation's defenders -- but so was the United States during the slaughter of the Indians. And so was Germany when Hitler came to power. Does anyone doubt that Hitler would have won had fair and honest elections been held in 1939? At any rate, we can hardly call Israel a true democracy until the vote is extended to all the people whose lives are controlled by the Israeli government. (And there are persistent, impossible-to-ignore allegations that the right has corrupted the Israeli electoral process.)

Reader Robert Boldt sent me his own thoughts on this historical analogy. I don't agree with all that he says, but I do want to spark debate. Please note that I have never seen any independent verification for the quote backed by the fourth footnote. Note as well that I cannot agree that Israel should cease to exist. I do hold that it should cease to exist as presently constituted. Democracy must be extended to all who live there, regardless of religion or race; the idea of a "Jewish state" is as repellent and indefensible as is the notion of an "Aryan state" -- or, for that matter, the notion of an exclusively Arab or Islamic state.

I certainly can sympathize with Boldt's sweeping condemnation of all forms of monotheist orthodoxy.

All text below the asterisks belongs to Boldt.

* * *

Of course there is no hard and fast point-by-point analogy in comparing Israel to the German Nazis. The comparison is deliberately inflammatory and a strict historical stretch at best. There are disturbing proclivities that lie deep within the modern Jewish/Israel psyche that seem to have driven them to imitate their former oppressors. I wish I could say that the downtrodden victim of abuse never goes on to visit the same rape and pillage upon his own children and other innocents under his domination. Sad to say the opposite is more than often the rule.

I agree the Israelis are not trying to destroy the Palestinians in exactly the same way that the Germans were trying to eliminate the Jews. But Israel is practicing its own unique genocide in its own way. There are just too many people watching and they don’t have quite the same amount of impunity the Krauts had – nearly, but once again, not the quite the same amount. I find the “Wall” not all that different from Auschwitz and Treblinka except the modern Jews lack the German obsession with efficiency and speed. The Israelis have just built it around their victims rather than building the camp and herding everyone in. Of course the Israelis haven’t set up the ovens - yet. It’s far more fun for their soldiers to use Palestinian children for gunnery training and practice driving their shiny new American Caterpillar tractors over young activists. I also think Israel’s Lebanon scorched earth policy, which by this time next week will probably have resulted in a modern disaster worthy of a reapplication of the term “Holocaust,” is something the Reich III would well understand and applaud. After all the Nazis took the policy of recriminations against innocent civilians to a height unexcelled only until recently by the Israelis. Oh don’t tell me about that little barbarian, Pol Pot – we are talking about “civilized” white men here.

The present situation has caused me to think the unthinkable and consider the abandoning of certain ideas that I had been taught to think of as unassailable. I have examined my intellectual and emotional reactions to these propositions I have had thrust in my face by the present state of the world and found my conclusions repellant and distasteful. I can fully understand other’s unwillingness to concur in my assertions. I wish I could draw back from these conclusions myself, but I cannot.

(To read the rest, click "Permalink" below)

The first conclusion I have reluctantly come to is that Israel has become what it hated. In a peculiar form of a realpolitck Stockholm-syndrome, Israel has permanently taken on the spirit of the racist, imperialist ideology of their Nazi oppressors of old. All that is lacking is to call a spade a spade and attach the dreaded swastika to their enterprise. I do not like being forced by the evidence to these conclusions. [1] I struggled for days to try to compose a graphic that would express the condition of Israel and the measure of their crimes and atrocities. “Stop Israel !” “Israel Out Now!” “Condemn Israel” just didn’t seem to carry nearly the magnitude of their culpability or the need for a swift sure cauterizing action necessary to bring to a halt, once and for all, this mad regime. “Israel” spelled with a swastika in place of the “s” seemed the only graphic able to carry the full meaning or the outrage that I felt must be expressed. I realize the swastika is a symbol that has been prohibited as being the height of political incorrectness and bad taste. It creates a visceral, Pavlovian response in most people so that it can never be used to either advocate for a revival of German National Socialism or never to be used to accuse Israel of committing the same excesses they have had visited upon themselves.

Another unthinkable conclusion I have come to is that the civilized world needs to begin to formulate certain ways and means to implement the termination of Israel as a military-political entity. Its existence as an oppressor in the region, its threat as a nuclear power, its treatment of the Palestinians together with human rights violations unmatched by few others in the civilized world plus its inability to self correct and become a productive member of the human community, I think, should have forced Israel to forfeit its membership among the society of nations. Amerika is completely responsible for the conduct and the survival of Israel. Israel could not exist without massive government and private support from the United States. It is not a self-sustaining endeavor. Make no mistake about this; I am not advocating the destruction of the nation in a military incursion like Lebanon or Iraq. Like Terri Schiavo, our support should be (gently?) withdrawn - both financial and military aid from the US government as well as a complete economic boycott by all peace-loving nations. A massive UN evacuation and resettlement of Israel’s citizens should be set up for those who wish to leave and avoid a massacre by invading elements.

Violence always produces an opposite and usually a more powerful reaction. To the destabilizing of fully half the earth, Israel has failed to learn that lesson. We seem not to have learned it either – not even in spite of Vietnam. We, like Israel, still keep thinking the answer to every problem in geopolitics is a military one. It is difficult to imagine the Middle-east without Israel. I would really like to try…

A word about American Jews and the Jewish lobby, American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC): Americans need to understand the degree to which Israel and its insidious agents have attempted to buy, intimidate and coerce every local and national politician in this country. This is the message Tom Hayden spoke of in his essay, I was Israel’s Dupe. [2] There is no aspect of our society that has not been corrupted by these agents whose sole purpose is the protection of Israel at the expense of the United States. Is it not surprising that congress nearly unanimously voted to support the destruction of Lebanon. Nearly Unanimously! Good gods, they actually own the whole damned congress – bought and paid for!!! [3]

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon: “…we the Jewish people control America." [4]

It’s time to end the Israel fairy tale. The left has too long been divided on this issue. It is time we remove the scales from our eyes and see the malignancy that is Israel for what it is. Do you realize there is more dissonance between Jews in Israel as to their fascist policies than there is among the faithful in America? The poor Jews in this country that still maintain their unthinking, maniacal allegiance to the “homeland” must be abandoned as hopelessly deluded and beyond hope of rational persuasion or conversion. They must be left behind in the dust of the road flailing and frothing hysterically while we move into the real world the way it really is. The survival of our country (for what that is worth) depends on it. We must wage the most brutally honest media campaign against Israel possible. Israel must be castrated militarily. In the name of humanity there should not be left one stone standing upon another in that whole horrid land. The land of Israel must cease to exist. It should be given to the Palestinians who have earned it several times over. If it were within my power I would also order that the shrines to monotheism that have fostered so much violence, bloodshed and the wasting of innocent life be dismantled as well. I will hold that proposal for another day. The great massacres inspired by our theological differences are actually indications that monotheism is at long last suffering its grand final gasp. The only trouble is that these three great plagues of humanity: Judaism, Christianity and Islam may do us all in before their final rattle. Events seem to point to this.

It’s time to shout “fire” in the crowded theatre. If it takes the judicious and deliciously appropriate use of a swastika - I say let’s use it.

I am willing to listen to strategic arguments on this. What I would vehemently insist on is the importance of the strongest possible anti-Israel advocacy by the left as quickly as possible. Talk about the earth in the balance!

Bob Boldt

[1] “Freud would have offered us a more chilling lesson… Identification with the aggressor. As the lesson of the Holocaust. The inability to live out the trauma of the genocide one experienced in any other way. Do unto others what was done onto you. The only deliverance from the trauma of one’s dehumanization is to remake oneself in the image of the Nazi. Projection of that brutality onto another is the proof that one has learned the lesson. The lesson that one has internalized the fascist imperative: Orwell’s boot brought down on the face of everything human in the other.” - Walter A. Davis (see the link, Kafka’s Birthday, for a complete essay by Professor Davis on the subject.) (http://mwcnews.net/content/view/7922/42/)

[2] “…all these rank-and-file constituencies were attuned to the question of Israel, even in local and state elections, and would never vote for a candidate perceived as anti-Israel or pro-Palestinian. I had to be certified “kosher,” not once but over and over again.” - Tom Haden, I Was Israel’s Dupe His essay is worth the read and will open your eyes. (http://counterpunch.com/Hayden07202006.html)

[3] Associated Press – July 21, 2006 “The house, displaying a foreign affairs solidarity lacking on issues such as Iraq, voted overwhelmingly yesterday to support Israel in its confrontation with Hezbollah guerrillas. The resolution, which was passed on a 410-8 vote, also condemns enemies of the Jewish state.” The vote was regarded as a success for the lobbying attempts by the infamous AIPAC. – read it and weep for our so-called democracy.http://washingtontimes.com/national/20060720-105124-4182r.htm)

[4] On October 3, 2001, I.A.P. News reported that according to Israel Radio (in Hebrew) Kol Yisrael an acrimonious argument erupted during the Israeli cabinet weekly session last week between Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his foreign Minister Shimon Peres. Peres warned Sharon that refusing to heed incessant American requests for a cease-fire with the Palestinians would endanger Israeli interests and "turn the US against us. "Sharon reportedly yelled at Peres, saying "don't worry about American pressure, we the Jewish people control America." (http://www.mediamonitors.net/khodr49.html)

Shi'ite and Sunni

When I popped into the Whiskey Bar just now, the following bit of Orwelliana from the Daily Telegraph was thrust into my face:

President George W Bush intends to build an "umbrella of Arab allies" against Hezbollah while giving Israel a free hand in attacking the group's strongholds, according to American officials.

White House aides have said they consider the Lebanon crisis to be a "leadership moment" for Mr Bush and an opportunity to proceed with his post-September 11 plan to reshape the Middle East by building Sunni Arab opposition to Shia terrorism. Yesterday Mr Bush cited the role of Iran and Syria in providing help to Hezbollah.

(Emphasis added.) "Sunni Arab opposition to..." ARE THEY KIDDING? Don't these sub-turkeys know who is running Iraq these days?

And do we have any evidence that this "umbrella" exists, or ever could exist? Despite the history of antagonism between Shi'ite and Sunni, I very much doubt that any Islamic state wants to see the U.S. drop nukes on any other Islamic state. Such an attack could destabilize every government in the region.

Obviously, this story is part of a larger propaganda campaign designed to convince the dullards that the Main Foe is and has always been the Shi'ites of Iran. We are being prepped for an attack.

The Third Secret

On weekends, I allow myself the occasional non-political post, and what you are about to read is just such an indulgence. Our topic is the alleged "miracle" of Fatima, and the silly rumors associated with that event. From today's Democratic Underground:

My super Catholic cousin just told me that the Fatima predictions are coming to pass. From what I remember, there was supposed to be a war in the ME which moved northward to Europe, and Rome was supposed to be sacked, the pope taken hostage. It's been awhile, but I wondered if anyone had better info than I do. My cousin is not exactly preparing for some Catholic rapture, but she's quoting Fatima predictions all over the place.

The only "Catholic rapture" known to me would be Bernini's gorgeous statue of St. Teresa, which has forced generations of pilgrims to find a polite way to say: "Hey, she looks like she's coming!"

As for those "secrets of Fatima" – well, to be frank, I have no idea just which secrets this poster's cousin may have quoted. And I know a little about the ins and outs of this story, having followed it for three decades.

I first learned about these events from a youthful viewing of the 1952 Warner Brothers' epic Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima -- which features horrible Warnercolor, a goofy turn by Gilbert Roland, Max Steiner's worst score, and three child actors who present a compelling case for legalized strangulation. Compared to Song of Bernadette (the finest film on a religious subject ever made), MOOLOF is, well, crummy.

Still, the movie tells a genuinely weird story, and I was a genuinely weird kid. I had to find out more.

(To read the rest, click "Permalink" below)

The basics: In Portugal, between May and October of 1917, Lucia dos Santos (10) and her cousins Jacinta and Francisco Marto (8 and 9, respectively) reported visions of the Virgin Mary in the Cova da Iria, which is near the city of Fatima. During one of these apparitions, Lucia received "secrets" from the Virigin; alas, these secrets were neither written down nor orally transmitted at the time. During the final apparition, a large crowd reported a "solar miracle," which has been variously described -- some say the sun danced, some say it changed colors.

Most "official" versions of the tale neglect to mention the fact that quite a few people saw nothing at all. The number of reported witnesses has grown over the years; early accounts give 15,000 or thereabouts, although the figure of 70,000 took hold in later years.

Jacinta and Francisco died in the post-WWI flu pandemic. Lucia joined a convent and died only last year, thereby dispatching rumors that she would live to see the end of the world. Over the course of time, Lucia revealed that the three children had received a previous set of angelic visitations in 1916, the year before the Virgin appeared. Apparition-ologists refer to this "retconned" story as "Fatima II."

For an ultra-skeptical response to the Fatima story, check out this site.

Before continuing with Fatima, I should offer a general note on Marian secrets. This tradition began with the 1846 La Sallette apparition, the model for most subsequent visionary events. In that case, the witnesses were two shepherd children, Melanie Calvet (14) and Maximum Giraud (11). Maximum was a lovable dolt who, in later years, could never hold down a steady job, while Melanie was one of those "difficult" women for whom menopause starts at puberty and lasts until death. I long ago gave up on trying to figure out whether Melanie's secret (which exists in several variants) was simply her way of staying in the limelight.

Most sources agree that Lucia dos Santos, who assumed the name Sister Dolores, was not a Melanie-esque attention seeker -- in fact, she was a very private person. Still, she too may have been, in her own way, a "difficult" woman. I base that assessment on a book I read in the downtown Los Angeles library, back in the 1970s. (The volume -- published in the 1940s, if I recall aright -- is no longer in the catalogue and may have been lost in one of the two great fires to hit that structure.) The book was written by an American priest tasked to sculpt the Virgin at Sister Lucia's directions, and he drops amusing hints that his client was not exactly easy to get along with. Of course, he expressed his feelings in a diplomatic fashion -- after all, he must have suspected that Lucia might one day be beatified.

At any rate, Lucia wrote down the first two secrets at the start of World War II. The first "secret" was, supposedly, a vision of Hell -- although I fail to see why a basic doctrine of Christianity should count as a "secret."

The second was rather more complex. The Virgin herself supposedly said these words in 1917, as the Great War raged:

The war is going to end: but if people do not cease offending God, a worse one will break out during the Pontificate of Pius XI. When you see a night illumined by an unknown light, know that this is the great sign given you by God that he is about to punish the world for its crimes, by means of war, famine, and persecutions of the Church and of the Holy Father.

As a prophecy of World War II, this text has little value, since Lucia did not divulge this message until after the fact. Lucia interpreted a January, 1938 aurora borealis, visible in Europe, as a fulfillment of the "unknown light" prediction -- if we can use the word "prediction" in this instance. While some Catholics were indeed persecuted under Hitler’s rule, Catholics in Croatia were the ones doing the persecuting. One cannot fairly say that the Pope himself suffered during the war.

The text of the second secret continues:

To prevent this, I shall come to ask for the consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart, and the Communion of reparation on the First Saturdays. If my requests are heeded, Russia will be converted, and there will be peace; if not, she will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions of the Church. The good will be martyred; the Holy Father will have much to suffer; various nations will be annihilated. In the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to me, and she shall be converted, and a period of peace will be granted to the world.

These words were, for obvious reasons, incautiously interpreted during the Cold War years. Many Catholics believed that Mary had requested the consecration of Russia in order to prevent the Third World War. A more careful reading indicates something quite different: The text states that this proposed consecration would prevent World War II -- as though Russia were the cause of that conflict!

Of course, Lucia kept Mary's admonition to herself, thereby insuring that no such consecration could occur. What, then, was the purpose of this absurd exercise? The words "I shall come to ask" may be taken as a prediction of a further Marian visitation -- presumably to someone else, perhaps someone within the Church hierarchy. No evidence suggests that such a thing has ever occurred.

Thus, Secret #2 fails to impress. What about Secret #3?

In 1944, Lucia wrote out the text, sealed the letter up, and handed it to her Bishop, who passed it on (unread) to the Vatican. Lucia advised that the message should remain sealed until 1960, because it would be "better understood" at that time.

That year came and went, with no official word as to the secret's contents. You can imagine how Catholics felt about that. Naturally, the rumors started flying.

According to a commonly-heard (but unverified) story, the beloved Pope John XXIII opened the secret, shook his head, said "This is not for our time," and then re-sealed the message. A rumor circulated that the letter described a nuclear holocaust. There were even wild reports that the Pope confided the "secret" to Kruschev during the missile crisis.

A few surly old grumpusses suspected that the message remained hidden because the "prophecy" was silly and might embarrass the Church. Personally, I always preferred the tale told by Cecil Adams, whose sources revealed the message to be the following:

"What's all this about birth control? We said nothing about birth control. Please revise ASAP. PS: Kennedy for president!"

In 2000, Pope John Paul II finally revealed the real, no-foolin’ text of the Third Secret, as preserved in Lucia’s own handwriting:

After the two parts which I have already explained, at the left of Our Lady and a little above, we saw an Angel with a flaming sword in his left hand; flashing, it gave out flames that looked as though they would set the world on fire; but they died out in contact with the splendour that Our Lady radiated towards him from her right hand: pointing to the earth with his right hand, the Angel cried out in a loud voice: 'Penance, Penance, Penance!'. And we saw in an immense light that is God: 'something similar to how people appear in a mirror when they pass in front of it' a Bishop dressed in White, 'we had the impression that it was the Holy Father'. Other Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious going up a steep mountain, at the top of which there was a big Cross of rough-hewn trunks as of a cork-tree with the bark; before reaching there the Holy Father passed through a big city half in ruins and half trembling with halting step, afflicted with pain and sorrow, he prayed for the souls of the corpses he met on his way; having reached the top of the mountain, on his knees at the foot of the big Cross he was killed by a group of soldiers who fired bullets and arrows at him, and in the same way there died one after another the other Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious, and various lay people of different ranks and positions. Beneath the two arms of the Cross there were two Angels each with a crystal aspersorium in his hand, in which they gathered up the blood of the Martyrs and with it sprinkled the souls that were making their way to God.

The Vatican floated the idea that the violent parts of this text referred to the 1981 assassination attempt by Mehmet Ali Agca. I fail to see any linkage. The Pope was not killed on that occasion, there were no corpses in the area, and there was but one crazed civilian attacker -- not a group of soldiers firing "bullets and arrows." (Arrows? In this day and age?) Even if we allow for a highly symbolic interpretation, the Third Secret does not relate to the events of 1981.

You may have noticed the utter lack of any reference to events in the Middle East. The cousin of that DU poster should sleep easier at night.

So what was Lucy -- or Mary -- really getting at?

Keep in mind that Lucia wrote this text in 1944, at a time when the Vatican was surrounded by Nazi soldiers. She may have "foreseen" a Nazi invasion of St. Peter's Basilica. Conversely, she may have believed that those Nazis were the only force keeping the godless Bolshies from marching into Vatican City.

We really don't know what kind of political propaganda may have affected her thinking. Portugal was, at that time, under the rule of the arguably-Fascist, fiercely pro-Catholic António de Oliveira Salazar, and Lucia's religious superiors were, almost certainly, Salazar supporters. (Lucia herself was a naive peasant woman who would have absorbed the views of others.) Salazar hated the Communists and distrusted the Nazis, so one cannot really be sure just who Lucia might have seen as the likeliest "bad guys" in her scenario.

The bottom line: The text of the fabled Third Secret makes some sense when seen as a failed prediction of the outcome of World War II. Of course, believers in Fatima cannot allow themselves to admit that their beloved Lucia may have put the words of a failed prophecy into the mouth of the Blessed Virgin.

The unsatisfactory nature of this text has led some to speculate that the Vatican still hides the Real Third Secret of Fatima – or, as I like to call it, the RTSOF (pronounced “Rit-Sof”). Lots of RTSOF rumors are floating around out there. One recent visionary insists that the RTSOF proclaims Mary herself to be...um, er, well...

...God.

A Jewish mother as the Supreme Being? Goethe would have liked that one. Das Ewig-Weibliche zieht uns hinan, and all that.

What is the REAL reason for the war on Lebanon? (UPDATE)

Few Iraqis embraced the jihadis until the Americans stole Iraq's oil. Similarly, only 18% of the Lebanese supported Hezbollah before the current Israeli strikes. When the refugees return, we can expect every one of them to seethe with rage at Israel -- and at the United States, which has sped up Israel's supply of precision-guided weaponry.

Worse still: We have growing indications of Israeli chemical warfare. Bachir Cham, a Belgian/Lebanese doctor who runs a hospital in Lebanon, offers this report:

"The bodies don't look like they normally do. After an explosion there were no traces of blood loss or subcutaneous haemorrhages [bruises]," Cham said via mobile phone direct from Beirut.

"The hair and sometimes the beard and the moustache remained intact. I found no traces of the pressure wave by the explosion. The colour of the skin was black like a shoe, but the skin was not carbonised or burnt."

After reading these words, I'm worried about Samantha Green -- a Canadian student doing a summer internship the American University in Beirut -- who has decided not to join the evacuation. Her voice narrates a powerful slide presentation here, and the Hamilton Spectator publishes her story here:

When I arrived two months ago, the atmosphere was an instantly appealing mix of Mediterranean and Arab culture. The depth and variety of history and culture was amazing, the food was great and cheap, and the locals were the most welcoming people I've come across, opening their homes, their kitchens, even their weddings, to me...

The Lebanese are scared, and sad, and also overwhelmingly angry. The majority of the Lebanese do not naturally support Hezbollah, but Israeli attacks are rallying support. I am staying in a dorm at the American University of Beirut, and even these least radical Lebanese were joyful when Hezbollah hit an Israeli warship.

I've volunteered in a public garden to which refugees from Beirut's southern suburbs have fled. These families, among Beirut's poorest, have had their homes destroyed by Israeli bombing and have nowhere left to go.

Since schools and community centres are full, entire families have brought mattresses and bags of clothes to camp out in the garden. There are no sanitation facilities and no shelter. Some families have been there for six days now.

Many Americans don't understand that a large number of Christians live in Lebanon -- in fact, the world's last remaining native speakers of Aramaic, the language of Jesus, reside here. Fans of historical irony will find grim humor in the fact that the "Christians" of the American south have enabled Israeli attacks on Christians in Lebanon's north. Indeed, the IDF targeted the media outlets of the very "Cedar Revolution" which the Bush administation had once supported.

The Israelis are smart -- much smarter than their easily-gulled American supporters. The Israelis know full well that this offensive will raise sympathy for Hezbollah from 18% to 100%. Why, then, the attack on Lebanon? I doubt that the stated reasons are the real ones; indeed, I would not be surprised to learn that some Hezbollah attacks were provoked or staged. (Note the precedent.)

So why would Israel engage in such a risky adventure? For the same reason America invaded Iraq: A desperate need for a diminishing natural resource.

The current Lebanese war is about water.

Few Americans understand this, because few Americans can imagine living in a region where the demand for water exceeds supply. But this natural resource has long been at the real root of Israeli/Lebanese conflict. As this report notes:

Almost half of the water currently used in Israel is captured, diverted or preempted from its neighbors." This is understandable, given water can be described as "Israel's vulnerable and fragile source of life.

Moreover:

Today, in 2006, Israel lives with increasing water shortages and a rapidly decreasing supply of fresh water. The river Jordan may run dry within the next two years, because of the vast amount of water being drawn from the river by the people living in the area.

(Emphasis added.) From a brief -- yet monumentally important -- 2002 New York Times story:

Senior officials from the United States Embassy in Beirut met Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri to try to defuse a dispute with Israel over Lebanon's plans to use water both countries say they need. Israel has said it takes a "grave view" of Lebanon's plan to pipe water to southern villages from the Wazzani Springs, three miles north of the Israeli border. The springs feed the Hasbani River, a tributary of the Jordan River, which is a major source of Israel's fresh water. Lebanon says that it is within its rights under international law and that it plans to open a pumping station soon.

Few in the West now recalls that in 2002, Uri Saguy -- head of the Israeli water suppply, as well as the former head of Israeli military intelligence -- warned that "war or forceful confrontation" would result if Lebanon continued to access its own water. (This, despite the fact that the Lebanese had already allowed the bully to the south to install pumps at the Springs.) See also this story in the Christian Science Monitor.

Hariri is gone now, and those southern villages have been reduced to rubble. When the current conflict ends, Israel will control the Wazzani Springs.

UPDATE: Quite independently, Jeff Wells over at Rigorous Intuition came to much the same conclusion. He quotes from a book called Watershed: The Role of Fresh Water in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (unread by me); apparently, the Litani has played a major role in Zionist strategic thinking well before Israel came to exist. We also learn that the Ogallala aquifer in the U.S. may be endangered, and that none other than the Reverend Moon has been buying up territory surrounding South America's Guarani Aquifer.

Water. It's the new oil.

Minister for war

Sarah Posner, in the American Prospect, has a frightening expose of the influential Texas pastor John Hagee, who is pushing for a joint U.S.-Israel war on Iran. "Dr." Hagee, as he styles himself, claims that the book of Esther predicted this battle. (Esther is a prophetic work? News to me...)

Hagee has ties to the powerful, both in the United States and in Israel. His book Jerusalem Countdown contains data which, he claims, comes from top-level Israeli insiders:

Notwithstanding Hagee’s bizarre narrative of the future, certain Jewish leaders value what they call his support for Israel, and appreciate his pledge not to actively proselytize Jews -- a promise that sets him apart from other evangelicals. Rudin says that while he welcomes Hagee’s support for Israel, he is uneasy “with what I feel is placing Jews and Judaism and the state of Israel into somebody else’s divine play.”

Hagee hopes to establish a Christian pro-Israel PAC, more powerful than AIPAC itself.

Money also seems to play a huge role in Hagee's theocratic politics. He counsels his flock to give endlessly, since donations to his ministry constitute "the only proof you have that the cancer of greed has not consumed your soul.” This, from a guy who is worth millions.

If investigations of the current Washington scandals run deep enough, Hagee's name may show up. He broadcasts on the TBN network run by Pat Crouch, the close friend of the corrupt congressman Duke Cunningham. (Incidentally, gay rumors have swirled around both Crouch and Cunningham, who have both displayed an affection for ornate, effeminate furnishings.) Not only that. Hagee is a close associate of Tom Delay:

In 2002, DeLay visited pastor John Hagee’s Cornerstone Church. Hagee preached a fiery message as simple as it was horrifying: “The war between America and Iraq is the gateway to the apocalypse!” he said, urging his followers to support the war in order to bring about the Second Coming. After Hagee finished, DeLay rose to second the motion. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “What has been spoken here tonight is the truth from God.”

With those words -- broadcast to 225 Christian TV and radio stations -- DeLay placed himself squarely inside the End-Time camp, a faction willing to force the Apocalypse upon the rest of the world.

Hagee sends millions to Israel. DeLay, we now know, has involved himself with money laundering. The previous two sentences may have a connection.

And if that conspiratorial insinuation strikes you as over-the-top, I would counter that Hagee deserves to receive what he dishes out. He happens to be quite the conspiratorialist in his own right -- in fact, this page claims him as a proponent of the Illuminati conspiracy theory. I'd like to see some confirmation of this, since the Illuminati-spotters tend to be thinly-disguised anti-Semites (their cited sources usually head in the direction of Nesta Webster and William Guy Carr) -- while Hagee is the most ardent supporter of Israel on the Christian right.

All bets are off

In case you didn't know, Alan Schlesinger -- the Republican senatorial candidate who will run against Joe Lieberman, Ned Lamont, or both -- has a gambling problem.

A MUST-SEE!

A short German documentary finally uncovers the secret mechanism behind the Bush bulge. The controller, we learn, must possess "a driver's license and basic word processing skills."

Thank heaven for little girls

Bush, surrounded by his fellow science-hating kooks, announces his veto of the stem cell bill. The wisest person in the room offers a one-fingered response.

The NYC tunnel terrorists: Hopsicker's latest

Regarding the plot to blow up the tunnels in New York City, Daniel Hopsicker has (as is his wont) staked out a weltanschauung outside both the "official" view and the standard un-official view. Of course, he has done this sort of thing before, in his investigations of Mohammed Atta.

Many of the tunnel plotters were related to a strange figure named Assem Hammoud, a Hezbollah-related criminal. Hammoud, Hopsicker contends, is no simple-minded religious maniac, but a jet-setting, sophisticated smuggler who enjoys the good life, including those pleasures denied to the devout. In this dichotomous behavior, he resembles Atta.

The Hammoud clan, Hopsicker contends, is fairly large and has long had an involvement in various unsavory activities, primarily smuggling. More importantly, Hopsicker connects one clan member with Atta himself...

But Assem Hammoud's most intriguing relative in the U.S. is the Dearborn clan member who moved to Sarasota Florida, where he was quite a busy boy...

Wissam Hammoud owned a cell phone store in Sarasota which supplied mobile phones to Mohamed Atta... bragged of helping Hezbollah buy assault weapons and night-vision goggles (the group needed them so they “could kill Jews at night”)... was convicted in February in a Federal Court in Tampa of soliciting the murder and beheading of a Federal Agent...and suspected of having foreknowledge of the 9.11 attack.

“In September 2001, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement interviewed Hammoud because someone had anonymously called saying Hammoud had made a comment that the Oklahoma City bombing was small compared with what was coming,” reported the Tampa Tribune on Jan 6 2004, in a story headlined “Man Bragged Of Ties To Terror, Records Say.”

If (as Hopsicker argues) it is true that the Hammoud family has connections to Hezbollah, the obvious questions are these: Did Hezbollah have foreknowledge of the events of 9/11? If Hezbollah did see it coming, did they participate in the plot? Did foreknowledge extend to Hezbollah's state sponsors?

If so, Bush would have his much-needed pretext for bombing Iran and Syria.

But, but, but: We must be careful when we set foot on such dangerous territory...

(To read the rest, click "Permalink" below)

Many times in the past, agents connected to American intelligence have gone "off the reservation" to commit acts unapproved by either the President or the head of the CIA. Similarly, it is perfectly conceivable that individuals who supply Hezbollah with arms, funds, and smuggled goods might also form independent schemes and alliances.

So even if we concede that Hopsicker may be on to something in his thoughts on the Hammoud clan, we should not conclude that the time has come to bomb Tehran. As readers know, I have been screaming against the administration's plans to attack Iran for quite some time -- and I shall continue to do so.

That said, I wonder why the Bush administration has not used the possible Hammoud/Hezbollah/911 links for propaganda purposes? Perhaps (one could argue) they hesitate because the available evidence does not allow one to speak definitively of such a linkage. Of course, a lack of hard evidence has never before deterred this administration's propagandists.

Conceivably, the Bushites may -- as we shall see -- have personal reasons for not wanting much light shed on this corner of the terrorist infrastructure. Wissam Hammoud seems to have had a powerful "guardian angel" or two:

In 1999 Hammoud and two pals, Mohamed Saad and Saad Saad, were stopped while attempting to board a flight in Tampa. Mohamed Saad owned a market which was raided in 2003 as part of a nationwide stolen baby formula scam. The owner of the property, Sami Al-Arian, was convicted of terrorism-related charges in Tampa last year.

The three men were heading to Detroit. In their luggage was an assault weapon and more than eleven pounds of ammunition, as well as what newspapers delicately called “other gun-related equipment.”

Even before 9/11, bringing a personal arsenal fit for paramilitary bank robbers in Los Angeles onboard a commercial flight was considered something of a faux pas.

Yet...nothing happened.

Hopsicker strongly hints that Hammoud ran a protected operation -- in a state run by Jeb Bush, in a district Katherine Harris calls home. (In the past, Hopsicker has directly linked with our unbeloved Kathy with a certain "spooky" flight school that played a major role in the Atta tale.)

What, ultimately, is Daniel Hopsicker getting at? He does not here state his underlying thesis directly, but the hints are unmistakable. The theory seems to be that jihadist terrorism relates to a massive smuggling ring, in which drugs are but one of the products. Moreover, these smugglers had, in turn, strong links to key figures within the Republican party.

This infrastructure of corruption granted the 911 plotters immunity. The crime could not be prevented -- and could not, after the fact, be fully investigated.

This key idea underlies many of Hopsicker's disparate investigations. It is a theory which I, for one, consider worthy of serious consideration.

Post script: I am a bit concerned that Hopsicker has cited Steve Emerson as a source. Emerson lied outrageously during the October Surprise controversy. I trust that man about as far as I can throw the collected World Trade Center rubble.