The Jeff Gannon/Jim Guckert story refuses to die. Note, for example, this story on Bellaciao -- which features what appears to be a photograph of Guckert leaning in for a clench with W. That look on Bush's face is priceless.
The Johnny-Gosch-grew-up-to-be-Jim-Guckert theory also remains alive. The argument has spawned the mother of all threads over on Democratic Undergound, for reasons I can fully understand: If the theory is true, then the wilder tales to arise out of the so-called Franklin case are also true. And that, in turn, would mean the end of the Bush dynasty.
(If you are going to review the DU material, start with the summaries here.)
On a certain level, I want the rumors to have a foundation in fact. Do we have any facts?
Guckert does bear a physical resemblance to members of the Gosch family. Interesting, but hardly conclusive.
Ted Gunderson, formerly of the FBI (and former presidential candidate for a right-wing minor party) says that he was told by a "source" that Guckert is Gosch. Trouble is, Ted's the kind of guy who would believe anything you told him, provided your info fit into his conspiratorial framework. Let's say you wanted to spread the story that George Tenet is a Chinese spy who had undergone surgical alteration to look Caucasian: Just call Ted Gunderson, RayeAllen Russbacher, Robert Sterling and Alex Jones, then sit back and watch as the tale circulates.
(On the other hand, Gunderson believes that Oswald shot JFK and that J. Edgar was straight!)
Sherman Skolnick makes a similar allegation, citing no source or documentary evidence. Again, Skolnick hardly has a rep as a discerning sifter of evidence.
Democratic Underground posters have linked to all sorts of wacky web sites (such as this one) filled with yarns about the mythical Project Monarch (a hoax perpetrated by a couple of Tennessee con artists), murderous Freemasons and even the dreaded Illuminati.
Now, I've been known to indulge in conspiratorial speculation myself, but I do try keep speculation clearly labeled as such. Credibility crumbles if you associate with the kinds of people who peddle unverified shock stories.
Things get tricky, of course, when those unverfied shock stories coalesce around a kernel of truth. The Nebraska scandal does have a basis in fact. Larry King was indeed a crook. Spence and Blodgett were indeed involved in a gay prostitution ring with connections to the first Bush White House. I suspect that something awful really did happen to Bonnacci, Alisha Owens and the others. Inevitably, however, all SRA tales become drenched in crap, and picking the Hersheys out of the horseshit soon becomes an impossible task.
Of course, such tales do have an interesting side effect: They play well among evangelicals, which means they tend to undermine fundamentalist faith in the Bush family. I suppose that's a good thing, from a purely tactical viewpoint.
But our interest should run deeper than mere tactics. Ultimately, we should seek proof. And you won't find any on the fearmongering sites which have recently become popular with certain D.U. posters.
In his communique, Ted Gunderson stated that he spoke on behalf of Noreen Gosch, Johnny's mother. But she refuses to take a stand on this topic, according to Michael Corbin (who has known her for years).
The obvious next step is to contact Noreen Gosch herself, and I've attempted to do just that. Alas, my emails bounced back and calls to her listed phone number have resulted in either a busy signal or an answering machine. I'll let you know if I get through.
Many have noted that Paul Bonnacci has made claims involving Johnny and Hunter S. Thompson at the Bohemian Grove. Naturally, these claims ballooned into speculation that Thompson was "suicided" to stop him from talking about Gosch.
Is the Thompson link worthy of credence?
Newcomers to this corner of the conspiraverse may not understand that nearly every well-known person has played a cameo role in one "ritual abuse" tale or another. For example, the Tennessee con artists mentioned above (whose early writings introduced memes mimicked by Bonnacci) have fingered as "Satanists" such luminaries as Gerry Ford, Senator Robert Byrd, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Boxcar Willie, Jack Benny, Bob Hope, former Dodger pitcher Fernando Valenzuela, the entire Disney company and...well, the list goes on forever.
The bottom line: Everyone you've ever heard of is a Satanist. Or so, at least, certain anti-Satanists would have you believe. More than a century after Leo Taxil made his grand confession, the devil-spotters remain as gullible as ever.
I'll be happy to revise my opinions, and even to apologize for the harsh things said about Gunderson and Skolnick, if some genuine evidence pops up in favor of the "Oh-my-Gosch" hypothesis. By "evidence" I refer to something other than an unnamed source.
Tuesday, March 08, 2005
Who funded the "Left Behind" books?
You think I've had a bit of an obsession with Reverend Moon lately? Check out Cell Whitman's site. And you damn well ought to do so, because he's got loads of good info.
I'm beginning to wonder whether Moon is the puppetmaster, or at least the moneyman, behind much of the current fundamentalist menace.
Not so long ago, the religious right had lost much of its Reagan-era muscle, due to a flurry of scandals (including the ones involving the Bakkers and Jimmy Swaggart). Pat Robertson's presidential run turned into a comedy; soon thereafter, the public learned that he had hired a gay ghostwriter to write his books -- one of which cribbed material from notorious anti-Semites. The Christian Coalition lost support. Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority fizzled out.
The country seemed to be regaining its senses.
Suddenly, the movement gained new muscles, or at least new money. To a great degree, this turn of events resulted from the popularity of Tim LaHaye's Left Behind series.
LaHaye -- like Doug Wead and Falwell and any number of other fundamentalists -- is a Moon-man. The aforementioned site offers a surprisingly chummy letter from LaHaye to Moon's lieutenant Bo Hi Pak, written some years ago:
Those other projects eventually included the Left Behind books, which peddled Apocalypse fantasies and reactionary propaganda to a new generation of ill-educated seekers. I am told that the books mute LaHaye's two great obsessions: Fiery anti-Catholicism and the Illuminati conspiracy theory.
The books avoided those pitfalls because LaHaye wisely farmed out the actual writing duties to a hireling. And just who (we may fairly ask) provided the cash which paid for that hireling's services...?
Every time you see those volumes dancing across the shelves at your local Wal-Mart, just remember: LaHaye's work was funded with drug money, fascist booty and laundered Yakuza plunder. Lucre doesn't get any filthier.
To paraphrase a wise Jewish fellow: By their loot, ye will know them.
I'm beginning to wonder whether Moon is the puppetmaster, or at least the moneyman, behind much of the current fundamentalist menace.
Not so long ago, the religious right had lost much of its Reagan-era muscle, due to a flurry of scandals (including the ones involving the Bakkers and Jimmy Swaggart). Pat Robertson's presidential run turned into a comedy; soon thereafter, the public learned that he had hired a gay ghostwriter to write his books -- one of which cribbed material from notorious anti-Semites. The Christian Coalition lost support. Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority fizzled out.
The country seemed to be regaining its senses.
Suddenly, the movement gained new muscles, or at least new money. To a great degree, this turn of events resulted from the popularity of Tim LaHaye's Left Behind series.
LaHaye -- like Doug Wead and Falwell and any number of other fundamentalists -- is a Moon-man. The aforementioned site offers a surprisingly chummy letter from LaHaye to Moon's lieutenant Bo Hi Pak, written some years ago:
Bo Hi, I am encouraged! Amid the bad signs I see today, I also detect a lot of good signs... Even physical ailments to three of the 76 (year old) flaming liberal Supreme Court justices.What a Christian -- gloating over the physical ailments afflicting those who disagree with a him politically. Jesus would be proud of you, Timmy-boy!
Once again, my friend, I am in your debt for your generous help to our work. You don’t know how timely it was!LaHaye goes on to say that the Moon-funded reorganization of his (LaHaye's) ministry allowed LaHaye more time for other projects.
Those other projects eventually included the Left Behind books, which peddled Apocalypse fantasies and reactionary propaganda to a new generation of ill-educated seekers. I am told that the books mute LaHaye's two great obsessions: Fiery anti-Catholicism and the Illuminati conspiracy theory.
The books avoided those pitfalls because LaHaye wisely farmed out the actual writing duties to a hireling. And just who (we may fairly ask) provided the cash which paid for that hireling's services...?
Every time you see those volumes dancing across the shelves at your local Wal-Mart, just remember: LaHaye's work was funded with drug money, fascist booty and laundered Yakuza plunder. Lucre doesn't get any filthier.
To paraphrase a wise Jewish fellow: By their loot, ye will know them.
Monday, March 07, 2005
Seeing red
Check out Bradblog' latest on Republican congressman Tom Feeney, who called Dan Rather "Comrade Rather." Such hypocrisy! Brad has been tracking Feeney's ties to YEI, the firm which harbored an honest-to-Mao Chinese spy. Note the pattern: At colleges across the country, right-wing students place red stars on the doors of professors who do not love Bush -- the same president who has done nothing to stop the Chinese from stealing American jobs.
More on Moon and Douglas Wead
Axis of logic mentions my comments about GOPUSA as a possible Moon front, but notes that I haven't...
I first encountered street Moonies back in the early 1970s. In my wayward youth, I sometimes visited Hollywood Boulevard to see movies and buy old comics and books. The place wasn't as frightening in those days as it later became -- even though it was crawling with cultists, who provided a very entertaining freak show.
Hare Krishnas chanted daily. The Tony Alamo cult placed its choir near the Chinese theater. I caught a glimpse of a few robed holdovers from the Process Church of the Final Judgment. The Order of the Black Ram kept a very unnerving museum, later purchased by Faruiza Balk. The NOI representatives, looking sharp in their black suits, were surprisingly willing to debate a white kid. The Scientologists were annoying and frightening. A buxom lovely from the Children of God seemed downright desperate to de-virginize me; although tempted, I was flummoxed when she mixed Jesus into her proposition. (She remains one of the great "what ifs?" of my life. Wonder what happened to her?)
(Incidentally, the Children of God -- a cult notorious for permitting sex with children -- maintains a choir which was once invited to sing for the elder Bush at the White House!)
Returning to Hollywood in the early '70s: The only cultists more frightening than the Hubbardians were the Moonies. I talked to a few street representatives of the good Reverend -- one of them was a cute Asian who probably ended up entertaining VIPs at Tongsun Park's notorious little club. She looked a tad underfed, and seemed to waft through life in a state of perpetual hypnosis; I wanted to wave my hand in front of her face to see if she would blink.
One day, the Moonies covered every available space on the boulevard with posters of Moon announcing his rally for Nixon. This was during the doggiest of the dog days of Watergate, when nobody supported Nixon.
"What the hell?" I thought. Where did Moon get the money for so many expensively-produced full-color posters -- not to mention the up-front costs of a full-scale rally? That Asian cutie with the thousand-yard stare couldn't have sold that many flowers. And why the hell was Moon investing so much cash into so hopeless a cause as Dick Nixon?
Cut to: Many years later. I visit the Nixon library. Outside the main building is an ostentatious gold fountain. A plaque names the donor:
Ryoichi Sasakawa.
That was the Nixon connection to Moon.
Nobody knows the source of Moon's money, but much of it seems to have flowed into his coffers by way of Sasakawa, a businessman who was one of the most dangerous Japanese war criminals of World War II -- indeed, his was one of the primary voices in Japan calling for aggression against the United States. A close friend of Admiral Yamoto, Sasakawa represented the Mitsubishi firm, which built ships for the Imperial Navy of Japan. After the war, Sasakawa somehow gained a monopoly on motorboat race gambling, which is a massive industry in his country.
Substantial evidence links Sasakawa to the Yakuza. He also headed, for a time, the World Anti-Communist League. Moon himself called the League "fascist." Although the Korean messiah was heavily linked to the group, he once made a superficial show of severing his connections -- which continued in a subterranean fashion.
Moon's "church" is, in sum and in short, largely a mechanism for organizing and financing post-war fascism. Moon front groups have had economic and/or personal linkages to WACL, to the fascist National Front party of France, and to Western Goals -- itself linked to the National Front, to the John Birch Society, to death squad leaders, to apartheid South Africa, and to a host of similar unlovelies.
Moon funded the "cocaine coup" which briefly brought fascists (including Nazi fugitive Klaus Barbie) to power in Bolivia.
Another key early figure in Moon's Unification Church was Japanese terrorist leader and war criminal Yoshio Kodama, who, after the war, became perhaps the most important power within the Yakuza.
In the 1970s, the Fraser Committee investigated Moon's role in the Tongsun Park blackmail/bribery scandal. The lead investigator was Robert Boettcher, who later wrote a book about Moon called Gifts of Deceit, which reveals in its opening pages that the Korean "messiah" would show Nazi films to his young followers to "instill discipline." He has loudly proclaimed America to be "satanic" in its individualism, and has praised Germany for training its citizens in "totalism."
These Nazified alliances did nothing to scare off the Bush family, which has been linked with Moon's group since the 1970s. As the Inside the Moonies site notes,
Where did he get this unending fortune? Much of it may stem from the astonishing amount of gold and other booty stolen by the Japanese during World War II. One of these caches was given the label "Golden Lily" and stashed in various hideaways in the Philippines. Sterling Seagrave's Gold Warriors avers that a substantial portion of this treasure was recovered by private efforts, led by WACL and its one-time leader, John K. Singlaub. Seagrave's book includes
The explosive growth of right-wing media occurred directly the recovery of the Golden Lily treasure. Coincidence?
One can go say much more about the fascist tentacles of the self-proclaimed Lord of the Second Advent. For more data, see here and here and, of course, Robert Parry's must-read series.
One of Parry's pieces quotes moderate Republican Jim Leach as saying that the Unification Church
Yes, I have strayed somewhat from Moon. Suffice it to say that his money makes him the key figure linking the allegedly "respectable" Republican right and its evangelical confreres with that ghastly band who long for the days of Tojo and Adolf.
For now, let us return to Douglas Wead, a Bush family consigliere who specializes in wooing the fundamentalist vote, and recently made famous as the man who made embarrassing secret tape recordings of George W Bush. (The tapes have supposedly been turned over to Bush -- but if you think no copies were made, you're very naive.) In a previous post, I've noted that Wead has been connected to Moon.
Kevin Phillips' American Dynasty describes Wead as "an Assemblies of God minister for two decades, formerly associated with Amway, singer Pat Boone, and televangelists Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker." Amway is one of the greatest annoyances ever to afflict this nation, while the Bakkers were crooks of the lowest order. (The fact that Martha Stewart did time while Tammy Faye stayed free tells you much about what is wrong with our justice system.)
Wead was both a personal friend of the Bakkers and a chief fundraiser for their "PTL Club," which was largely a vehicle for theft. After the Jessica Hahn scandal (she has had some interesting things to say about Wead's political ambitions), Wead turned against his former friends and helped move their assets into the control of Jerry Falwell -- who has since become folded into Moon's empire.
In January 1991, Wead organized a prayer breakfast sponsored by the Reverend Moon, who spoke at the event, much to the consternation of some attendees. Another speaker was Anthony Evans, a leader in the Dominionist movement, devoted to replacing democracy with a Christian theocracy. As readers will recall, a key funder of this movement is the Ahmanson family -- which owns ES&S, the company that counts many of our votes.
Wead also has links to the American Freedom Coalition, funded and staffed by Moon's people.
Names, names, names...! The moment one attempts to track who works with whom in these circles, one soon finds oneself entangled in a vast web of associations. Wead is particularly well connected -- such, at least, is the purport of a terrific recent expose titled "Wead in the Rose Garden".
A few excerpts:
About those tapes:
Many on the left theorize that Wead's revelations were a Rovian ploy to distract from the emergent Gannon/Guckert scandal. As noted earlier, I am unconvinced by this argument.
The tapes highlighted the Bush family's disingenuous use of Christian "code words" designed to appeal to the evangelical voters. Many of these same voters long suspected that the elder Bush's embrace of fundamentalism was insincere. The White House cannot have wanted those fears re-awakened.
More importantly: The tapes highlighted W's stance on gay issues -- a stance which cannot have strengthened his standing among the religious rightists. Bush is quoted as saying that the Republican party should stay away from bashing gays, a view which coalesces with what we have heard from other sources. (I doubt that our President holds a personal grudge against homosexuals, although he is perfectly willing to side with gay-bashers for political gain.) His words may have pleased some Democrats, but they must have alienated many who voted for him.
Bush's secretly recorded comments may remind the more savvy evangelicals of the whispered relationship between the President and his former roommate, Victor Ashe. Many web sites describe Ashe as gay.
(Ashe and Bush were male cheerleaders at Yale. I never tire of mentioning that.)
Few have placed the recent controversy in the context of Wead's earlier association with Bush the elder. In 1990, Bush extended the Disabilities Act to AIDS sufferers, a move which angered Wead, who vehemently disagreed with the President's decision to invite gay representatives to the signing of the bill. Wead either left the White House voluntarily or was fired; accounts differ. He went on to denounce GHWB at a 1990 conference of the National Association of Evangelicals.
Some argue that Wead's public rift with Poppy led to weakened fundamentalist support in 1992. The lost election of that year may have had been, in some measure, Wead's revenge.
Given that history, and given the notorious vindictiveness of the Bush family, I cannot believe that Wead's later relationship with W was simply due to a confluence of religious values. Wead got a taste of power in 1988 and (especially) in 1992. I believe that he remains a manipulator, and I believe that the tapes represented an reminder of his power.
Wead has an agenda. But is it the same as Reverend Moon's agenda?
Moon's agenda remains the installation of a fascist theocracy.
...explored Moon's deeper connection to the Japanese fascists connected to moon, the fact that Moon has done over a year in prison for his white collar crimes, and the clear agenda he has.Well, these matters certainly do deserve mention. If I may be allowed to begin on a personal note:
I first encountered street Moonies back in the early 1970s. In my wayward youth, I sometimes visited Hollywood Boulevard to see movies and buy old comics and books. The place wasn't as frightening in those days as it later became -- even though it was crawling with cultists, who provided a very entertaining freak show.
Hare Krishnas chanted daily. The Tony Alamo cult placed its choir near the Chinese theater. I caught a glimpse of a few robed holdovers from the Process Church of the Final Judgment. The Order of the Black Ram kept a very unnerving museum, later purchased by Faruiza Balk. The NOI representatives, looking sharp in their black suits, were surprisingly willing to debate a white kid. The Scientologists were annoying and frightening. A buxom lovely from the Children of God seemed downright desperate to de-virginize me; although tempted, I was flummoxed when she mixed Jesus into her proposition. (She remains one of the great "what ifs?" of my life. Wonder what happened to her?)
(Incidentally, the Children of God -- a cult notorious for permitting sex with children -- maintains a choir which was once invited to sing for the elder Bush at the White House!)
Returning to Hollywood in the early '70s: The only cultists more frightening than the Hubbardians were the Moonies. I talked to a few street representatives of the good Reverend -- one of them was a cute Asian who probably ended up entertaining VIPs at Tongsun Park's notorious little club. She looked a tad underfed, and seemed to waft through life in a state of perpetual hypnosis; I wanted to wave my hand in front of her face to see if she would blink.
One day, the Moonies covered every available space on the boulevard with posters of Moon announcing his rally for Nixon. This was during the doggiest of the dog days of Watergate, when nobody supported Nixon.
"What the hell?" I thought. Where did Moon get the money for so many expensively-produced full-color posters -- not to mention the up-front costs of a full-scale rally? That Asian cutie with the thousand-yard stare couldn't have sold that many flowers. And why the hell was Moon investing so much cash into so hopeless a cause as Dick Nixon?
Cut to: Many years later. I visit the Nixon library. Outside the main building is an ostentatious gold fountain. A plaque names the donor:
Ryoichi Sasakawa.
That was the Nixon connection to Moon.
Nobody knows the source of Moon's money, but much of it seems to have flowed into his coffers by way of Sasakawa, a businessman who was one of the most dangerous Japanese war criminals of World War II -- indeed, his was one of the primary voices in Japan calling for aggression against the United States. A close friend of Admiral Yamoto, Sasakawa represented the Mitsubishi firm, which built ships for the Imperial Navy of Japan. After the war, Sasakawa somehow gained a monopoly on motorboat race gambling, which is a massive industry in his country.
Substantial evidence links Sasakawa to the Yakuza. He also headed, for a time, the World Anti-Communist League. Moon himself called the League "fascist." Although the Korean messiah was heavily linked to the group, he once made a superficial show of severing his connections -- which continued in a subterranean fashion.
Moon's "church" is, in sum and in short, largely a mechanism for organizing and financing post-war fascism. Moon front groups have had economic and/or personal linkages to WACL, to the fascist National Front party of France, and to Western Goals -- itself linked to the National Front, to the John Birch Society, to death squad leaders, to apartheid South Africa, and to a host of similar unlovelies.
Moon funded the "cocaine coup" which briefly brought fascists (including Nazi fugitive Klaus Barbie) to power in Bolivia.
Another key early figure in Moon's Unification Church was Japanese terrorist leader and war criminal Yoshio Kodama, who, after the war, became perhaps the most important power within the Yakuza.
In the 1970s, the Fraser Committee investigated Moon's role in the Tongsun Park blackmail/bribery scandal. The lead investigator was Robert Boettcher, who later wrote a book about Moon called Gifts of Deceit, which reveals in its opening pages that the Korean "messiah" would show Nazi films to his young followers to "instill discipline." He has loudly proclaimed America to be "satanic" in its individualism, and has praised Germany for training its citizens in "totalism."
These Nazified alliances did nothing to scare off the Bush family, which has been linked with Moon's group since the 1970s. As the Inside the Moonies site notes,
Several Congressmen were entertained in a Washington Hilton hotel suite rented by the Moonies. Everything the girls learned about Senators and Congressmen was to be entered into the Moonie's confidential file, including details of personal lives. Rev. Moon was Vice President George Bush's guest to the Reagan inaugural.The continuing Bush alliance no doubt stems in part from Moon's illimitable (and no doubt illicit) treasure house, which funds much of the conservative movement.
Moon is quoted in many publications as saying, "I will conquer and subjugate the world. I am your brain. The time will come, without my seeking it, when my words will almost serve as law. If I ask a certain thing, it will be done. If I don't want something, it will not be done."
Where did he get this unending fortune? Much of it may stem from the astonishing amount of gold and other booty stolen by the Japanese during World War II. One of these caches was given the label "Golden Lily" and stashed in various hideaways in the Philippines. Sterling Seagrave's Gold Warriors avers that a substantial portion of this treasure was recovered by private efforts, led by WACL and its one-time leader, John K. Singlaub. Seagrave's book includes
handwritten letters and diagrams showing how a group of senior U.S. Government officials and Pentagon generals hoped to use Golden Lily treasure to create a new private FBI and a military-industrial complex controlled by them, in partnership with the John Birch Society, the Moonies and far-right tycoons. This is confirmed by tape recordings of a 1987 conference in Hong Kong that included retired U.S. Army General John Singlaub and General Robert Schweitzer of the National Security Council under President Reagan.(My emphasis added.) In another place, I may explain why I believe that Rupert Murdoch is one of the afore-mentioned "far-right tycoons." Western Goals, interestingly enough, seems to have been born in the John Birch cauldron.
The explosive growth of right-wing media occurred directly the recovery of the Golden Lily treasure. Coincidence?
One can go say much more about the fascist tentacles of the self-proclaimed Lord of the Second Advent. For more data, see here and here and, of course, Robert Parry's must-read series.
One of Parry's pieces quotes moderate Republican Jim Leach as saying that the Unification Church
has "infiltrated the New Right and the party it wants to control, the Republican Party, and infiltrated the media as well." Leach's news conference was disrupted when then-college GOP leader Grover Norquist accused Leach of lying. (Norquist is now a prominent conservative leader in Washington with close ties to the highest levels of George W. Bush's administration.)Norquist got his start as the leader of a group called College Republicans, which was funded by Moon. Of course, Norquist has since gone onto infamy in the current administration -- although he isn't nearly infamous enough for his role in founding the Islamic Institute, directed by one Abdurahman Alamoudi. Almoudi has made no secret of his support for Hamas and Hezbollah.
Yes, I have strayed somewhat from Moon. Suffice it to say that his money makes him the key figure linking the allegedly "respectable" Republican right and its evangelical confreres with that ghastly band who long for the days of Tojo and Adolf.
For now, let us return to Douglas Wead, a Bush family consigliere who specializes in wooing the fundamentalist vote, and recently made famous as the man who made embarrassing secret tape recordings of George W Bush. (The tapes have supposedly been turned over to Bush -- but if you think no copies were made, you're very naive.) In a previous post, I've noted that Wead has been connected to Moon.
Kevin Phillips' American Dynasty describes Wead as "an Assemblies of God minister for two decades, formerly associated with Amway, singer Pat Boone, and televangelists Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker." Amway is one of the greatest annoyances ever to afflict this nation, while the Bakkers were crooks of the lowest order. (The fact that Martha Stewart did time while Tammy Faye stayed free tells you much about what is wrong with our justice system.)
Wead was both a personal friend of the Bakkers and a chief fundraiser for their "PTL Club," which was largely a vehicle for theft. After the Jessica Hahn scandal (she has had some interesting things to say about Wead's political ambitions), Wead turned against his former friends and helped move their assets into the control of Jerry Falwell -- who has since become folded into Moon's empire.
In January 1991, Wead organized a prayer breakfast sponsored by the Reverend Moon, who spoke at the event, much to the consternation of some attendees. Another speaker was Anthony Evans, a leader in the Dominionist movement, devoted to replacing democracy with a Christian theocracy. As readers will recall, a key funder of this movement is the Ahmanson family -- which owns ES&S, the company that counts many of our votes.
Wead also has links to the American Freedom Coalition, funded and staffed by Moon's people.
Names, names, names...! The moment one attempts to track who works with whom in these circles, one soon finds oneself entangled in a vast web of associations. Wead is particularly well connected -- such, at least, is the purport of a terrific recent expose titled "Wead in the Rose Garden".
A few excerpts:
When you scratch beneath Doug Wead's surface you find an Assemblies of God minister who divorced his wife, a man involved with pyramid schemes, televangelizing faith healers and the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church.Here is more on the Amway connection:
Wead and another kingpin, Jean Godzich, eventually branched out and set up an Amway in France. In 1986, the French government began investigating it and decided the company was a dangerous mind-control cult, and a fraudulent business. Amway France terminated the distributorship of Godzich, from whose group most of the complaints had originated.Wead is also on the board of an extremely lucrative "faith healing" church (some would use the word "racket") run by one Benny Hinn. This page offers a skeptical look at Hinn.
"So what do Wead and Godzich do next? They set up a new MLM in France, called Groupement or GEPM. Its product line consisted of Amway products, its business structure was identical to Amway France, and its cultic activities were just as blatant as they were in the first operation.
"After receiving numerous complaints about GEPM, French authorities moved in to shut it down, but this time it issued criminal arrest warrants, 13 for the company's distributors, and 2 for Godzich and Wead. Godzich took all the cash and fled the country and Wead never returned to France."
About those tapes:
Many on the left theorize that Wead's revelations were a Rovian ploy to distract from the emergent Gannon/Guckert scandal. As noted earlier, I am unconvinced by this argument.
The tapes highlighted the Bush family's disingenuous use of Christian "code words" designed to appeal to the evangelical voters. Many of these same voters long suspected that the elder Bush's embrace of fundamentalism was insincere. The White House cannot have wanted those fears re-awakened.
More importantly: The tapes highlighted W's stance on gay issues -- a stance which cannot have strengthened his standing among the religious rightists. Bush is quoted as saying that the Republican party should stay away from bashing gays, a view which coalesces with what we have heard from other sources. (I doubt that our President holds a personal grudge against homosexuals, although he is perfectly willing to side with gay-bashers for political gain.) His words may have pleased some Democrats, but they must have alienated many who voted for him.
Bush's secretly recorded comments may remind the more savvy evangelicals of the whispered relationship between the President and his former roommate, Victor Ashe. Many web sites describe Ashe as gay.
(Ashe and Bush were male cheerleaders at Yale. I never tire of mentioning that.)
Few have placed the recent controversy in the context of Wead's earlier association with Bush the elder. In 1990, Bush extended the Disabilities Act to AIDS sufferers, a move which angered Wead, who vehemently disagreed with the President's decision to invite gay representatives to the signing of the bill. Wead either left the White House voluntarily or was fired; accounts differ. He went on to denounce GHWB at a 1990 conference of the National Association of Evangelicals.
Some argue that Wead's public rift with Poppy led to weakened fundamentalist support in 1992. The lost election of that year may have had been, in some measure, Wead's revenge.
Given that history, and given the notorious vindictiveness of the Bush family, I cannot believe that Wead's later relationship with W was simply due to a confluence of religious values. Wead got a taste of power in 1988 and (especially) in 1992. I believe that he remains a manipulator, and I believe that the tapes represented an reminder of his power.
Wead has an agenda. But is it the same as Reverend Moon's agenda?
Moon's agenda remains the installation of a fascist theocracy.
Sunday, March 06, 2005
Guckert/Gannon is NOT Johnny Gosch
You may recall the rather odd theory that Jim Guckert, a.k.a. Jeff Gannon, is actually Johnny Gosch, a famous kidnap victim of the 1980s. Aficionados of this theory often take it into even wilder realms. I've read extraordinary tales involving prostitutes, Satanists, CIA mind controllers, people who drink on Sundays, and even worse individuals.
This is all very droll, but where's the evidence? As I've previously noted, Guckert claims to be 47, while Gosch would be 35. However, as this site notes, one of Gannon's escort pages lists his age as 31 in 2001.
Golly. I can't imagine why a gay male prostitute would lie about his age...
Further points of interest: Johnny's mother, Noreen Gosch, claims that she was visited by her son in 1997, and that he is living under an assumed name. I've heard conflicting rumors about whether the person who contacted her was really the long-lost Johnny. (Some of you may recall the classic case of the Tichborne claimant.)
By an odd coincidence, a newspaper editor hostile to Noreen Gosch was named James Gannon.
And now we learn the following information, which appears to come from a rightward leaning conspiracist of the sort we came to know so well during the Clinton-hating 1990s:
I now feel confident that Jim Guckert is NOT Johnny Gosch. And how do I know? Because Ted Gunderson, the FBI's answer to Maxwell Smart, says he is.
I know Gunderson of old. The man is, in his way, 100% reliable: If Ted says the sky is blue, you can bet the rent money that the sky has changed to some other color.
Another conspiracist pushing the Gosch/Guckert line is -- but of course! -- Sherman Skolnick. Does he have proof? Well, consider the following:
Skolnick is a Chicago-based theorist who once conducted a noteworthy investigation into the 1972 airplane crash that killed the wife of E. Howard Hunt. In subsequent decades, Skolnick devolved into sub-tabloid sensationalism, offered to the public via his dial-a-conspiracy hotline -- (773) 731-1100. (Oddly, the number was being "checked for trouble" when I called it just now.)
His specialty is the grand assertion, qualified by adverbial weaseling. Here are three examples from the same brief article (all italics mine): "Monica Lewinsky was reportedly positioned from an early age to be a Mata Hari type," while her father "was ostensibly a sleeper agent for the Mossad" and "Plainly, [congressman Gary] Condit was reportedly in a position to know highly classified data about McVeigh."
Don't you love that conjunction of "plainly" and "reportedly"?
Skolnick is perhaps best known for his outrageous attempt to pin the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing on the Japanese. I, however, will always hold a special fondness for his series of 1992 reports that a "group of generals" were "on their way to Washington to arrest George Bush for treason" -- a word Skolnick tends to pronounce "TREEEEEEEE-zunnn." These stories continued week after week, yet the generals somehow never reached the nation's capitol; they remained forever "on their way." Perhaps they traveled underground, like Bugs and Daffy, always making that wrong turn at Albuquerque.
Reportedly, Skolnick can't understand why other writers allegedly don't trust his ostensibly accurate scoops.
Now, the disciples of Ted and Sherman tend to frown on those who, like me, have the temerity to ask for evidence. No doubt they will accuse me of being a gummint agent tasked to keep a cover on Bush's TREEEEEEE-zunnn. Before they fling such accusations, let me add two further comments:
1. Although I doubt the Gosch connection, I still think there is much more to the Guckert/Gannon story than we have been told.
2. If you are the sort of person inclined to accept the word of a Gunderson or a Skolnick, by all means continue to spread their "news" that Gosch and Guckert are one and the same. Encourage others to pursue this line of inquiry. Anything that might damage Bush's reputation within his right-wing fan base suits me just fine.
This is all very droll, but where's the evidence? As I've previously noted, Guckert claims to be 47, while Gosch would be 35. However, as this site notes, one of Gannon's escort pages lists his age as 31 in 2001.
Golly. I can't imagine why a gay male prostitute would lie about his age...
Further points of interest: Johnny's mother, Noreen Gosch, claims that she was visited by her son in 1997, and that he is living under an assumed name. I've heard conflicting rumors about whether the person who contacted her was really the long-lost Johnny. (Some of you may recall the classic case of the Tichborne claimant.)
By an odd coincidence, a newspaper editor hostile to Noreen Gosch was named James Gannon.
And now we learn the following information, which appears to come from a rightward leaning conspiracist of the sort we came to know so well during the Clinton-hating 1990s:
Last evening I received a call from Ted Gunderson who is presently in Nebraska to interview a central figure in the Franklin Coverup case that is at the root of this "Jeff Gannon" story. A confidential source of Teds' has -- in a conversation with Ted yesterday afternoon-given a 100% confirmation that Jeff Gannon/Jim Guckert is very definitely Johnny Gosch. Ted has the full backing and authority of the mother of Johnny, Noreen Gosch, to handle this as only Ted would know how, along with the complete assistance of John DeCamp. Ted and John DeCamp are the investigators and exposers of the Franklin Coverup. Ted has given me the greenlight to write and post this much so far but for very obvious reasons, I cannot go into greater detail at this time, though I do know more than what I can add to this at this time. As I have been told, more information will soon be forthcoming with the authorization to post when I receive it.Well. That settles that.
Tim White, Viet Nam Vet(Air Force),Concerned Citizen
I now feel confident that Jim Guckert is NOT Johnny Gosch. And how do I know? Because Ted Gunderson, the FBI's answer to Maxwell Smart, says he is.
I know Gunderson of old. The man is, in his way, 100% reliable: If Ted says the sky is blue, you can bet the rent money that the sky has changed to some other color.
Another conspiracist pushing the Gosch/Guckert line is -- but of course! -- Sherman Skolnick. Does he have proof? Well, consider the following:
The Special Prosecutor became aware that D.C. Escort Service operative, Jeff Gannon most likely alias Johnny Gosch, received the secret details directly from George W. Bush himself, either upstairs in the White House or across the street in an Executive office building.And so on. This is the sort of thing that gives conspiracy theory a bad name: Proof-by-assertion, with nary a whiff of evidence.
Gannon trained in whorehouse services as a penetration agent for a super-secret U.S. agency, was an expert in torture techniques called S-M. Gannon alias Gosch became a top-level consultant on torture methods to Alberto Gonzales, who was soft-ball questioned about this when being affirmed as the new U.S. Attorney General.
Skolnick is a Chicago-based theorist who once conducted a noteworthy investigation into the 1972 airplane crash that killed the wife of E. Howard Hunt. In subsequent decades, Skolnick devolved into sub-tabloid sensationalism, offered to the public via his dial-a-conspiracy hotline -- (773) 731-1100. (Oddly, the number was being "checked for trouble" when I called it just now.)
His specialty is the grand assertion, qualified by adverbial weaseling. Here are three examples from the same brief article (all italics mine): "Monica Lewinsky was reportedly positioned from an early age to be a Mata Hari type," while her father "was ostensibly a sleeper agent for the Mossad" and "Plainly, [congressman Gary] Condit was reportedly in a position to know highly classified data about McVeigh."
Don't you love that conjunction of "plainly" and "reportedly"?
Skolnick is perhaps best known for his outrageous attempt to pin the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing on the Japanese. I, however, will always hold a special fondness for his series of 1992 reports that a "group of generals" were "on their way to Washington to arrest George Bush for treason" -- a word Skolnick tends to pronounce "TREEEEEEEE-zunnn." These stories continued week after week, yet the generals somehow never reached the nation's capitol; they remained forever "on their way." Perhaps they traveled underground, like Bugs and Daffy, always making that wrong turn at Albuquerque.
Reportedly, Skolnick can't understand why other writers allegedly don't trust his ostensibly accurate scoops.
Now, the disciples of Ted and Sherman tend to frown on those who, like me, have the temerity to ask for evidence. No doubt they will accuse me of being a gummint agent tasked to keep a cover on Bush's TREEEEEEE-zunnn. Before they fling such accusations, let me add two further comments:
1. Although I doubt the Gosch connection, I still think there is much more to the Guckert/Gannon story than we have been told.
2. If you are the sort of person inclined to accept the word of a Gunderson or a Skolnick, by all means continue to spread their "news" that Gosch and Guckert are one and the same. Encourage others to pursue this line of inquiry. Anything that might damage Bush's reputation within his right-wing fan base suits me just fine.
The maximum pain
This article is just the latest in a series. For more than a decade now, the popular press has offered glimpses of research into non-lethal weaponry.
Not many years ago, the articles would emphasize such items as "sticky-foam" and tasers. Usually, the last few paragraphs would offer hints -- mere whispers -- of more ominous developments: Blinding lasers. Mood-altering electromagnetics. Riot control gear that could cause protestors to become violently ill. Weapons that could induce pain without frying the flesh.
Now the non-lethal researchers are taking off the petticoats to show what they have underneath. The new weaponry will involved Pulsed Energy Projectiles:
John Alexander, once the head of non-lethal research, used to justify the development of these weapons by asking: "Which would you rather be, shot or shocked?" That simplistic query avoids the real issue.
The problem with such weaponry is that the rulers of any given nation define which forms of protest are legitimate and which are not. "Well," a non-lethal proponent might argue, "if you think your right to protest is being diminished, simply vote for politicians who will restore your rights." But what about crooked politicians who achieve office through subterfuge or fraud? What if you live in a non-democratic nation?
Introduction of a pulsed energy weapon -- an utterly debilitating and agonizingly effective device, resistant to all countermeasures -- would lower the threshold for use. A cop ordered to quash a demonstration will use a "pain beam" far more readily than he will use a gun.
Democracy depends, in a strange way, on revolution. Of course, revolt is always an ugly thing, and must always remain the tool of final resort. Yet the possibility of rebellion is the only thing that has ever kept any government honest. Any technology which removes that possibility makes tyranny inevitable.
Ultimately, non-lethal weapons will prove far more dangerous than guns, or even bombs. A bullet kills a person. Non-lethal weaponry can kill the very concept of freedom.
The referenced article mentions one Brian Cooper, "an expert in dental pain at the University of Florida," who was apparently consulted as part of this research. He seems to have been embarrassed and flustered to learn that his name was listed in connection with such a weapon.
A question for Dr. Cooper: If the weapon you helped develop enters the American aresnal (if it has not done so already), will protest remain permissible? Will popular revolt remain possible, even in the case of outrageous corruption?
Only one thing can impede techno-tyranny: Technicians who can foresee the consequences, and who cannot condone, rationalize or participate. We need to make sure that more scientists like Dr. Cooper feel the pangs of conscience and the burden of responsibility.
Not many years ago, the articles would emphasize such items as "sticky-foam" and tasers. Usually, the last few paragraphs would offer hints -- mere whispers -- of more ominous developments: Blinding lasers. Mood-altering electromagnetics. Riot control gear that could cause protestors to become violently ill. Weapons that could induce pain without frying the flesh.
Now the non-lethal researchers are taking off the petticoats to show what they have underneath. The new weaponry will involved Pulsed Energy Projectiles:
The new study, which runs until July and will be carried out with researchers at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, aims to optimize this effect. The idea is to work out how to generate a pulse which triggers pain neurons without damaging tissue.One can just guess how such a device would be used in a prison such as Abu Ghraib.
The contract, heavily censored before release, asks researchers to look for "optimal pulse parameters to evoke peak nociceptor activation" - in other words, cause the maximum pain possible. Studies on cells grown in the lab will identify how much pain can be inflicted on someone before causing injury or death
John Alexander, once the head of non-lethal research, used to justify the development of these weapons by asking: "Which would you rather be, shot or shocked?" That simplistic query avoids the real issue.
The problem with such weaponry is that the rulers of any given nation define which forms of protest are legitimate and which are not. "Well," a non-lethal proponent might argue, "if you think your right to protest is being diminished, simply vote for politicians who will restore your rights." But what about crooked politicians who achieve office through subterfuge or fraud? What if you live in a non-democratic nation?
Introduction of a pulsed energy weapon -- an utterly debilitating and agonizingly effective device, resistant to all countermeasures -- would lower the threshold for use. A cop ordered to quash a demonstration will use a "pain beam" far more readily than he will use a gun.
Democracy depends, in a strange way, on revolution. Of course, revolt is always an ugly thing, and must always remain the tool of final resort. Yet the possibility of rebellion is the only thing that has ever kept any government honest. Any technology which removes that possibility makes tyranny inevitable.
Ultimately, non-lethal weapons will prove far more dangerous than guns, or even bombs. A bullet kills a person. Non-lethal weaponry can kill the very concept of freedom.
The referenced article mentions one Brian Cooper, "an expert in dental pain at the University of Florida," who was apparently consulted as part of this research. He seems to have been embarrassed and flustered to learn that his name was listed in connection with such a weapon.
A question for Dr. Cooper: If the weapon you helped develop enters the American aresnal (if it has not done so already), will protest remain permissible? Will popular revolt remain possible, even in the case of outrageous corruption?
Only one thing can impede techno-tyranny: Technicians who can foresee the consequences, and who cannot condone, rationalize or participate. We need to make sure that more scientists like Dr. Cooper feel the pangs of conscience and the burden of responsibility.
Saturday, March 05, 2005
Jesus freaks and Roehmosexuals
Many younger people don't realize that America's current fundamentalist plague originated in the hippie movement of the 1960s. But it's true. The transition from flower-power to Jesusmania was marked by poorly-drawn underground comics, Bible readings at communes, Jesus Christ Superstar, Godspell, and the truly horrifying Truth of Truths.
(The last-mentioned monstrosity was an alleged rock opera, featuring Jim Backus as the Voice of God. "Oh, Jehovah -- you've done it again!")
Orange County Weekly presents a fascinating glimpse of this history. An excellent article focuses on the rather sad tale of Lonnie Frisbee, an acid-dropping potheaded Jesus lookalike who became first a convert and then a converter -- without bothering to shave, bathe, or forego weed:
Lonnie (forgive the familiarity, but I can't bring myself to refer to him as "Frisbee") utterly alienated his flock by dying of AIDS in 1993. Turns out he led a double life: While serving as the chairman of JC's Department of Grooviness, he was covertly cruising the gay bars of Laguna Beach.
I mean, look at Jim Bakker: The man wept incessantly, dressed in pastels, and married a classic fag-hag. Maybe his infamous encounter with Jessica Hahn was just his attempt to hide the truth from himself?
Okay, I admit that I wrote that earlier post in order to have some impudent fun at Dobson's expense. But now, after reading the O.C. Weekly piece, I'm beginning to wonder if I've stumbled onto something. Does the true face of the fundamentalist leadership resemble Ned Flanders -- or Waylon Smithers?
At this point, perhaps we should answer the disingenuous question posed by Ann Coulter in her response to Gannon-gate:
(The last-mentioned monstrosity was an alleged rock opera, featuring Jim Backus as the Voice of God. "Oh, Jehovah -- you've done it again!")
Orange County Weekly presents a fascinating glimpse of this history. An excellent article focuses on the rather sad tale of Lonnie Frisbee, an acid-dropping potheaded Jesus lookalike who became first a convert and then a converter -- without bothering to shave, bathe, or forego weed:
A conservative-Christian intellectual swears that when he was a young man, he saw Lonnie -- like Jesus -- actually make a blind man see. They call that being "anointed" by God.Alas, as the trippy Jesus Freak movement gave way to the uptight Religious Right, the evangelicals turned against Lonnie Frisbee.
His ministries enrolled thousands of kids. Some were so turned on they’d soon set out to become preachers themselves; many today are evangelical pastors at churches around the world.
Lonnie (forgive the familiarity, but I can't bring myself to refer to him as "Frisbee") utterly alienated his flock by dying of AIDS in 1993. Turns out he led a double life: While serving as the chairman of JC's Department of Grooviness, he was covertly cruising the gay bars of Laguna Beach.
Stories spread that he’d hypnotized people all along. He was trashed in a 1997 book titled Counterfeit Revival. Evangelicals knew better than anyone how easily the public would accept Frisbee as just another disgraced preacher. It even gave birth to a new philosophy that deemed any “sexual problem” like Frisbee’s as the worst sin of all, worse even than murder.The most fascinating aspect of the O.C. Weekly piece comes by way of Chuck Smith Jr., son of the conservative Orange County minister who first brought Lonnie to the Lord:
"Lonnie’s misfortune is he got caught," says Junior, Capo Beach Calvary Church’s pastor, "because there are a lot of charismatic homosexual ministers—right now."Some of you may recall an earlier piece I wrote called "Prancing Preachers," in which I poked fun at James Dobson, the minister who "outed" Spongebob Squarepants. If Dobson can scry unmanliness in a cartoon character, what would happen (I wondered) if we placed TV preachers under the same scrutiny? Many televangelists (I argued) hew closer to gay stereotypes than do the objects of their vituperation.
I mean, look at Jim Bakker: The man wept incessantly, dressed in pastels, and married a classic fag-hag. Maybe his infamous encounter with Jessica Hahn was just his attempt to hide the truth from himself?
Okay, I admit that I wrote that earlier post in order to have some impudent fun at Dobson's expense. But now, after reading the O.C. Weekly piece, I'm beginning to wonder if I've stumbled onto something. Does the true face of the fundamentalist leadership resemble Ned Flanders -- or Waylon Smithers?
At this point, perhaps we should answer the disingenuous question posed by Ann Coulter in her response to Gannon-gate:
Are we supposed to like gay people now, or hate them? Is there a website where I can go to and find out how the Democrats want me to feel about gay people on a moment-to-moment basis?Actually, Ann, the progressive line has long been consistent. We have nothing against gays. But we don't like covert gays who preach against overt gays, as Guckert/Gannon did and does. The problem isn't homosexuality -- it's hypocrisy.
John Lennon and hypnosis
One of our readers has written an interesting piece derived from an interview with May Pang, the "Yoko-approved" lover of John Lennon. I can't help wondering how the hard-core conspiracy-spotters (many of whom never liked Yoko) will react to the following news:
The same Friday night that Yoko setup the stop smoking hypnosis session with John at the Dakota without May, May said that John had planned on traveling down to New Orleans that weekend to join up with Paul McCartney and possibly start writing some songs with him for his upcoming album, 'Venus and Mars' that Paul was making in New Orleans. But alas, John's so-called one hour "stop smoking hypnosis session" turned into a long drawn out all weekend marathon session from which he never returned back to May or to his old life. May guesses that Yoko may have had John drugged, hypnotized and/or put into a trance. During the so-called hypnosis session, May believes that John was told to break off with May and everything in his past so he could be with Yoko and was told that Yoko was his "mother" who knows what is best for John. Several days later May finally ran into John at the dentist's office and John looked like he hadn't slept in days and appeared "zombie like" and had difficulty talking. Then a few months later, May found out that John has made a complete break with his past by no longer seeing anyone from his past except for Yoko.If I had enough $$ to offer a substantive reward, I would announce a contest. The winner's trophy would go the person who uses this information to concoct the most creatively paranoid conspiracy theory. Extra points if you can work in some mention of the Bush family.
Did Rove flatten the bulge?
Bush Wired has an interesting update on the "why-was-W-imitating-Quasimodo?" mystery.
As those who have followed the controversy know, the NYT had a bulge story prepped for publication just before the election, a story which no doubt would have been "echoed" throughout the mediaverse. Alas, the editors killed it.
For some time now, there have been reports that Karl Rove personally visited the New York Times and requested a quashing. An NYT editor who confirmed the existence of the bulge story denied any involvement by Rove.
Well, we still cannot confirm that the NYT cancelled the expose at Karl Rove's insistence -- but we do have strong evidence (in the form of a New Yorker piece) that Rove did, in fact, have a "friendly get-together" over drinks with NYT editor Bill Keller and Washington bureau chief Philip Taubman. This confab took place on October 22, shortly before the election.
The story indicates that Rove discussed his dissatisfaction with the paper's coverage of the administration. ("You call that boot-licking, you insufferable worms?") No mention of the bulge.
However, a chat over drinks is just the sort of informal occasion at which a presidential confidant might discuss a very delicate matter, particularly one pertaining to security. I doubt that the bulge truly is a security device, but I do not doubt for a second that the president's men would present it as such -- sotto voce, in strictest confidence, and all that.
So we cannot prove that Rove killed the story. But we know that it died an unnatural death, and that he was at the scene of the crime. And he certainly had motive.
As those who have followed the controversy know, the NYT had a bulge story prepped for publication just before the election, a story which no doubt would have been "echoed" throughout the mediaverse. Alas, the editors killed it.
For some time now, there have been reports that Karl Rove personally visited the New York Times and requested a quashing. An NYT editor who confirmed the existence of the bulge story denied any involvement by Rove.
Well, we still cannot confirm that the NYT cancelled the expose at Karl Rove's insistence -- but we do have strong evidence (in the form of a New Yorker piece) that Rove did, in fact, have a "friendly get-together" over drinks with NYT editor Bill Keller and Washington bureau chief Philip Taubman. This confab took place on October 22, shortly before the election.
The story indicates that Rove discussed his dissatisfaction with the paper's coverage of the administration. ("You call that boot-licking, you insufferable worms?") No mention of the bulge.
However, a chat over drinks is just the sort of informal occasion at which a presidential confidant might discuss a very delicate matter, particularly one pertaining to security. I doubt that the bulge truly is a security device, but I do not doubt for a second that the president's men would present it as such -- sotto voce, in strictest confidence, and all that.
So we cannot prove that Rove killed the story. But we know that it died an unnatural death, and that he was at the scene of the crime. And he certainly had motive.
Friday, March 04, 2005
A "Night" note
I don't have much time to write, and thus you will be spared my analysis of the 1955 classic Night of the Hunter as a gnostic allegory. But I did want to offer a political observation which came to my mind after last night's viewing.
If you don't know the film, it's the only movie directed by Charles Laughton, adapted from a once-popular novel by Davis Grubb. The script was written either by Laughton himself or by James Agee, depending on which source you believe. The cast features Robert Mitchum (playing a psychotic preacher who might have inspired the late Dr. Gene Scott), Shelley Winters and -- giving perhaps the best performance by anyone ever -- Lillian Gish.
It's also my favorite film of all time.
I can't recommend seeing this one in a theater; the deliberately unrealistic tone often causes modern audiences to snicker. But when viewed on tape or disc at home, late at night, the film has always had an inexplicable effect on me. After each viewing, I feel as though I just awoke from an extremely vivid dream -- the kind you experience during fevers, or after you take pain medication.
(How does gnosticism fit in? Jehovah = Mitchum's character; Sophia = Gish's character. The Matrix movies offer similar analogues in the Architect and the Oracle. If you don't know what I'm talking about, read Hoeller's book Gnosticism.)
And the political observation...?
Well, the story takes place during the Depression. Everyone is poor. In the opening, the father has committed murder in order to keep his children fed. We don't blame him.
Yet these people don't seem poor to modern eyes. Look at the houses they live in. If the Harper home were located in Los Angeles, it'd be worth, what, maybe three-quarters of a million bucks.
Today, many four-person families in the San Fernando Valley struggle to afford a one-bedroom apartment.
Yet we do not consider ourselves poor. We do not think we live in a Depression. We would never forgive anyone who commits a crime to help his children.
Is the power of right-wing brainwashing so immense that we can be living in poverty and not know it?
If you don't know the film, it's the only movie directed by Charles Laughton, adapted from a once-popular novel by Davis Grubb. The script was written either by Laughton himself or by James Agee, depending on which source you believe. The cast features Robert Mitchum (playing a psychotic preacher who might have inspired the late Dr. Gene Scott), Shelley Winters and -- giving perhaps the best performance by anyone ever -- Lillian Gish.
It's also my favorite film of all time.
I can't recommend seeing this one in a theater; the deliberately unrealistic tone often causes modern audiences to snicker. But when viewed on tape or disc at home, late at night, the film has always had an inexplicable effect on me. After each viewing, I feel as though I just awoke from an extremely vivid dream -- the kind you experience during fevers, or after you take pain medication.
(How does gnosticism fit in? Jehovah = Mitchum's character; Sophia = Gish's character. The Matrix movies offer similar analogues in the Architect and the Oracle. If you don't know what I'm talking about, read Hoeller's book Gnosticism.)
And the political observation...?
Well, the story takes place during the Depression. Everyone is poor. In the opening, the father has committed murder in order to keep his children fed. We don't blame him.
Yet these people don't seem poor to modern eyes. Look at the houses they live in. If the Harper home were located in Los Angeles, it'd be worth, what, maybe three-quarters of a million bucks.
Today, many four-person families in the San Fernando Valley struggle to afford a one-bedroom apartment.
Yet we do not consider ourselves poor. We do not think we live in a Depression. We would never forgive anyone who commits a crime to help his children.
Is the power of right-wing brainwashing so immense that we can be living in poverty and not know it?
Thursday, March 03, 2005
This painting -- "The Red Tower," by Robert Delaunay -- hangs in the Art Institute of Chicago, which is in within walking distance of the Sears Tower. Delaunay uses the collapse of the Eiffel Tower as a symbol for war's destruction. I've always considered this one of the finest cubist works, even though I've seen it only in reproduction. I'd love to see it "in the paint" -- but I don't expect to.
We're NOT number 1
The right tends to accuse us reality-based types of "hating America" just because we don't share their fantasies.
Tell 'em that the red states are leeches and the blue states produce wealth, and the rightists will scream bloody murder -- even though the numbers bear out the contention.
If you assert that people in "Old Europe" live longer than we do, are better educated and enjoy greater prosperity, the average conservative will put his hands over his ears and sing "God Bless America" at a volume loud enough to drown out your voice.
If you dare to mention that people in "post-Christian" nations such as France, Germany, England and Italy are more moral than are the folks in Texas and other hotbeds of Jesusmania, you will be met with incredulous stares. (I measure "more moral" by such yardsticks as crime statistics, divorce rates, teenage pregnancies, and so forth.)
Remember Al Franken's Lies and the Lying Liars? He recounts a telling anecdote. At one point, a Republican "expert" informed him that economic growth depends on low tax rates for the wealthy. Franken asked this person if she could cite the top rate during Eisenhower's administration, when this country was experiencing unprecedented prosperity. The GOP ideologue guessed that the top rate must have been something along the lines of 20 percent. In fact, the wealthiest taxpayers forked over 88 percent to Uncle Sam, unless they socked the money into an investment that would benefit the nation.
(JFK, the Democrat, lowered the top tax rate. I'm not sure he should have. History suggests that nations prosper when tax rates are progressive.)
Try telling a Republican that Forbes rated California the best place in America to locate a business -- when Gray Davis was governor. Nobody is saying that about my state now!
Most Republicans think that America is still the most prosperous nation on earth, when conservatives policies have kept our economy at a near-cadaverous level for four years. For an eye-opening look at just how far this nation has sunk, you should read this piece by Michael Ventura, a writer who used to be a regular feature of the L.A. Weekly. (I haven't seen his work in ages -- but he's definitely still running on all cylinders.)
Here's a generous sampling from Ventura's piece:
The elections in Europe are much cleaner as well.
Tell 'em that the red states are leeches and the blue states produce wealth, and the rightists will scream bloody murder -- even though the numbers bear out the contention.
If you assert that people in "Old Europe" live longer than we do, are better educated and enjoy greater prosperity, the average conservative will put his hands over his ears and sing "God Bless America" at a volume loud enough to drown out your voice.
If you dare to mention that people in "post-Christian" nations such as France, Germany, England and Italy are more moral than are the folks in Texas and other hotbeds of Jesusmania, you will be met with incredulous stares. (I measure "more moral" by such yardsticks as crime statistics, divorce rates, teenage pregnancies, and so forth.)
Remember Al Franken's Lies and the Lying Liars? He recounts a telling anecdote. At one point, a Republican "expert" informed him that economic growth depends on low tax rates for the wealthy. Franken asked this person if she could cite the top rate during Eisenhower's administration, when this country was experiencing unprecedented prosperity. The GOP ideologue guessed that the top rate must have been something along the lines of 20 percent. In fact, the wealthiest taxpayers forked over 88 percent to Uncle Sam, unless they socked the money into an investment that would benefit the nation.
(JFK, the Democrat, lowered the top tax rate. I'm not sure he should have. History suggests that nations prosper when tax rates are progressive.)
Try telling a Republican that Forbes rated California the best place in America to locate a business -- when Gray Davis was governor. Nobody is saying that about my state now!
Most Republicans think that America is still the most prosperous nation on earth, when conservatives policies have kept our economy at a near-cadaverous level for four years. For an eye-opening look at just how far this nation has sunk, you should read this piece by Michael Ventura, a writer who used to be a regular feature of the L.A. Weekly. (I haven't seen his work in ages -- but he's definitely still running on all cylinders.)
Here's a generous sampling from Ventura's piece:
"Europe surpassed the United States in the mid-1990s as the largest producer of scientific literature" (The European Dream, p.70).One other thing -- Americans believe that our country is the most charitable on earth, in terms of foreign aid. Nonsense. If you cut Israel and Egypt out of the equation, Japan and most European countries give far more generously to needy peoples than we do. Pretty soon, we will be among those needy peoples. (Indeed, we already are, if you consider our reliance on foreign investment.)
Nevertheless, Congress cut funds to the National Science Foundation. The agency will issue 1,000 fewer research grants this year (NYT, Dec. 21, 2004).
Foreign applications to U.S. grad schools declined 28 percent last year. Foreign student enrollment on all levels fell for the first time in three decades, but increased greatly in Europe and China. Last year Chinese grad-school graduates in the U.S. dropped 56 percent, Indians 51 percent, South Koreans 28 percent (NYT, Dec. 21, 2004). We're not the place to be anymore.
The World Health Organization "ranked the countries of the world in terms of overall health performance, and the U.S. [was]...37th." In the fairness of health care, we're 54th. "The irony is that the United States spends more per capita for health care than any other nation in the world" (The European Dream, pp.79-80). Pay more, get lots, lots less...
U.S. childhood poverty now ranks 22nd, or second to last, among the developed nations. Only Mexico scores lower" (The European Dream, p.81). Been to Mexico lately? Does it look "developed" to you? Yet it's the only "developed" country to score lower in childhood poverty.
Twelve million American families--more than 10 percent of all U.S. households--"continue to struggle, and not always successfully, to feed themselves." Families that "had members who actually went hungry at some point last year" numbered 3.9 million (NYT, Nov. 22, 2004)...
"Of the 20 most developed countries in the world, the U.S. was dead last in the growth rate of total compensation to its workforce in the 1980s.... In the 1990s, the U.S. average compensation growth rate grew only slightly, at an annual rate of about 0.1 percent" (The European Dream, p.39). Yet Americans work longer hours per year than any other industrialized country, and get less vacation time.
"Sixty-one of the 140 biggest companies on the Global Fortune 500 rankings are European, while only 50 are U.S. companies" (The European Dream, p.66). "In a recent survey of the world's 50 best companies, conducted by Global Finance, all but one were European" (The European Dream, p.69).
"Fourteen of the 20 largest commercial banks in the world today are European.... In the chemical industry, the European company BASF is the world's leader, and three of the top six players are European. In engineering and construction, three of the top five companies are European.... The two others are Japanese. Not a single American engineering and construction company is included among the world's top nine competitors. In food and consumer products, Nestlé and Unilever, two European giants, rank first and second, respectively, in the world. In the food and drugstore retail trade, two European companies...are first and second, and European companies make up five of the top ten. Only four U.S. companies are on the list" (The European Dream, p.68).
The United States has lost 1.3 million jobs to China in the last decade (CNN, Jan. 12, 2005)...
The International Association of Chiefs of Police said that cuts by the [Bush] administration in federal aid to local police agencies have left the nation more vulnerable than ever" (USA Today, Nov. 17, 2004).
No. 1? In most important categories we're not even in the Top 10 anymore. Not even close.
The USA is "No. 1" in nothing but weaponry, consumer spending, debt, and delusion.
The elections in Europe are much cleaner as well.
Do not read these words under penalty of law
I presume you've already seen it -- but if not, check out the interview that everyone is talking about: "The coming crackdown on blogging."
Yep, just to make sure that their propaganda stranglehold is absolute, our leaders may soon use strained arguments to crack down on blogs that are said to "contribute" to a political campaing, even by way of a hyperlink.
Dig it: According to Mitch McConnell, massive corporate donations to Bush are protected free speech. But according to some members of the FEC, the words you are reading now may NOT be protected. Especially not if I say "Vote Democratic" and provide a link to a Dem site.
Let's stop saying "Fascism is coming." That's like saying "The 21st Century will be upon us soon," or "One day, man will walk on the moon."
Yep, just to make sure that their propaganda stranglehold is absolute, our leaders may soon use strained arguments to crack down on blogs that are said to "contribute" to a political campaing, even by way of a hyperlink.
Dig it: According to Mitch McConnell, massive corporate donations to Bush are protected free speech. But according to some members of the FEC, the words you are reading now may NOT be protected. Especially not if I say "Vote Democratic" and provide a link to a Dem site.
Let's stop saying "Fascism is coming." That's like saying "The 21st Century will be upon us soon," or "One day, man will walk on the moon."
Tuesday, March 01, 2005
Let us bulge forward
Bushwired directs our attention to this photo, published on the back cover of a W hagiography titled The Right Man. Does this image show the device beneath Bush's jacket? If so, its appearance here is pretty damned brazen!
Bushwired also opines that most of the photos from Bush's Euro tour simply show a translation earpiece, not (as some have alleged) a secret listening device. I concur.
Believe it or not, the bulge-spotters even have their own Yahoo group now!
Some have aksed: "Why didn't John Kerry offer an opinion on this matter?" After all, Kerry patted Bush's back after the second debate. One of my readers offered these comments, which deserve repetition here:
Bushwired also opines that most of the photos from Bush's Euro tour simply show a translation earpiece, not (as some have alleged) a secret listening device. I concur.
Believe it or not, the bulge-spotters even have their own Yahoo group now!
Some have aksed: "Why didn't John Kerry offer an opinion on this matter?" After all, Kerry patted Bush's back after the second debate. One of my readers offered these comments, which deserve repetition here:
On second thought, it's not difficult to imagine how the Bush campaign finessed this matter.
They quietly explain to Kerry (and to the NY Times, which was on the verge on running the story, but killed it) that the President's security arrangements are secret, but the campaign will make an exception in this case in the interests of national security, by revealing that the President always remains in contact with the Secret Service, in public and quasi-public places, post 9/11. Consequently, he wears a listening device at all times, outside any secure area.
A media already highly deferential to authority will drop the story immediately, upon hearing this line (now they can't pretend they don't "know", but they can't legally or ethically report what they've been told).
The Kerry campaign finds itself similarly hamstrung. Monitoring the transmission frequencies during the debate to ensure Bush wasn't being coached -- much less jamming them or playing loony tunes -- would constitute a federal crime.
So, in effect, the Bushies once again use "national security" for political advantage.
Clint Eastwood and Joseph Campbell: Movies, myth and melodrama
"Melodrama is the conflict between good and evil; drama is the conflict between good and good."
So wrote George Bernard Shaw. That's why he gives the longest, most compelling speech in St. Joan to the Inquisitor. Joan’s chief adversary is no Sauron or Darth Vader; he is a logical, educated, well-meaning individual. But he is also the product of his age, matched against a heroine who, in Shaw's view, heralds the future.
Shaw’s maxim popped into my head when I read (in Salon and elsewhere) that many conservatives had turned against Clint Eastwood, whose Dirty Harry character they had once embraced. Rightists love the image of Clint as a vigilante, torturing information out of the demonic Scorpio killer. They don't like the kind of director Eastwood has become. (Or rather, they don't like some of the scripts he has chosen; most people have little idea what a director actually does.) They don't care for films like Unforgiven and Mystic River, in which the protagonist is not necessarily the good guy and the antagonist is not necessarily the bad guy.
Ask yourself: In the entire history of storytelling (movies, novels, the stage), has any denizen of the political right ever managed to compile a resume filled with dramas -- true dramas, as Shaw defined the term?
If we confine that inquiry to Hollywood, one can name Clint Eastwood and...well, who else? John Ford made excellent dramas -- but, even though some have called him a conservative, I can't believe that the man who directed How Green Was My Valley and The Grapes of Wrath would have had any use for the likes of Ann Coulter. By contrast, C.B. DeMille, who wallowed in melodrama of the most ludicrous sort, probably would have loved Coulter. Orson Welles, an old-school liberal, felt that "every villain has his reasons" -- thus, the corrupt cop in Touch of Evil remains oddly likable, and Charles Foster Kane is both victim and victimizer.
Now ask yourself the next question: Why does the right hate drama? Why do they hate any reminder that life is a complex, morally messy business?
I found an answer of sorts while flipping through Joseph Campbell’s Myths to Live By. Surprisingly, Campbell blames the Old Testament.
In a chapter entitled "Mythologies of War and Peace," he writes: "The late Bronze and early Iron Age Greeks were becoming masters of the ancient Aegean just about when the Amorites, Maobites, and earliest Habiru or Hebrews were overrunning Cannaan." These two conquering peoples recorded their triumphs in very different war-songs. The Iliad shows enormous respect for the Trojans: "The noble Trojan champion Hector is the leading spiritual hero of the piece. Achilles, beside him, is a thug."
Campbell contrasts the civilized attitude of the Greeks with the one found in Deuteronomy and Joshua, which I consider the most vile scriptures ever labeled holy. In these works, a bloodthirsty tribal deity demands genocide against an enemy innocent of any crime, aside from occupying some beachfront property the Hebrews want for themselves. The orders to kill encompass "all that breathe": Men and women, the elderly and the newborn, even the livestock. The enemy is considered subhuman -- "life unworthy of life," as Hitler might have put it.
Of course, a gracious attitude came more easily to the Greeks because they won more of their wars. Much of the Old Testament was compiled during the Babylonian exile. Enslaved people rarely develop an appreciation for moral complexity; a slave wants to hear nothing beyond "We are right; they are wrong." I can understand why the Jewish and Greek worldviews differed.
What I can not understand is why our nation -- a nation of victors, not of slaves -- has turned against its classical inheritance.
America was born of the Enlightenment, which derived from the Renaissance, which derived from the Greeks. When I was young, nearly everyone who passed high school understood this history, just as nearly everyone viewed the more barbaric books of the Old Testament as relics from an age of savagery. Today, millions of modern fundamentalists view Deuteronomy and Joshua as holy, as inspired works with contemporary relevance.
By refusing to acknowledge the humanity of his adversary, the reactionary exiles himself to a fantasyland in which he is ever right. Compromise becomes weakness, self-doubt is seen as a form of neurosis, and propaganda trumps debate. Reactionary religion reduces all existence to cheap melodrama. That's why Bronze Age throwbacks will never understand drama: One might as well ask an Amazonian tribesman to tell you how a Kray supercomputer works.
Yet Clint Eastwood, oddly enough, has become one of our most lauded dramatists. His politics, so far as I know, still veer rightwards, even as the rightists veer away from him.
They prefer Mel Gibson, maker of melodramas, who serves 'em up grisly and brutal. Gibson, I hear, will soon make a film derived from the books of Macabbees, those ancient chronicles of the conflict between the Jews and the Greeks. I read those books many years ago, and the side I rooted for was probably not the one intended by the authors. I may skip the film version. But I look forward to Clint Eastwood's latest.
So wrote George Bernard Shaw. That's why he gives the longest, most compelling speech in St. Joan to the Inquisitor. Joan’s chief adversary is no Sauron or Darth Vader; he is a logical, educated, well-meaning individual. But he is also the product of his age, matched against a heroine who, in Shaw's view, heralds the future.
Shaw’s maxim popped into my head when I read (in Salon and elsewhere) that many conservatives had turned against Clint Eastwood, whose Dirty Harry character they had once embraced. Rightists love the image of Clint as a vigilante, torturing information out of the demonic Scorpio killer. They don't like the kind of director Eastwood has become. (Or rather, they don't like some of the scripts he has chosen; most people have little idea what a director actually does.) They don't care for films like Unforgiven and Mystic River, in which the protagonist is not necessarily the good guy and the antagonist is not necessarily the bad guy.
Ask yourself: In the entire history of storytelling (movies, novels, the stage), has any denizen of the political right ever managed to compile a resume filled with dramas -- true dramas, as Shaw defined the term?
If we confine that inquiry to Hollywood, one can name Clint Eastwood and...well, who else? John Ford made excellent dramas -- but, even though some have called him a conservative, I can't believe that the man who directed How Green Was My Valley and The Grapes of Wrath would have had any use for the likes of Ann Coulter. By contrast, C.B. DeMille, who wallowed in melodrama of the most ludicrous sort, probably would have loved Coulter. Orson Welles, an old-school liberal, felt that "every villain has his reasons" -- thus, the corrupt cop in Touch of Evil remains oddly likable, and Charles Foster Kane is both victim and victimizer.
Now ask yourself the next question: Why does the right hate drama? Why do they hate any reminder that life is a complex, morally messy business?
I found an answer of sorts while flipping through Joseph Campbell’s Myths to Live By. Surprisingly, Campbell blames the Old Testament.
In a chapter entitled "Mythologies of War and Peace," he writes: "The late Bronze and early Iron Age Greeks were becoming masters of the ancient Aegean just about when the Amorites, Maobites, and earliest Habiru or Hebrews were overrunning Cannaan." These two conquering peoples recorded their triumphs in very different war-songs. The Iliad shows enormous respect for the Trojans: "The noble Trojan champion Hector is the leading spiritual hero of the piece. Achilles, beside him, is a thug."
Or consider that magnificent tragedy of Aeschylus, The Persians: What an extraordinary production to have been presented in a Greek city hardly twenty years after Aeschylus himself had fought the invading Persians at Salamis! The setting is in Persia, with the Queen of Persia and her court discussing the return of their defeated king Xerxes from that battle. It is written from a Persian point of view and shows with what respect and great capacity for empathy the ancient Greeks could regard even their most threatening enemy of that time.(Can you imagine the uproar if any American film-maker dared to suggest that General Giap might have had a few admirable qualities?)
Campbell contrasts the civilized attitude of the Greeks with the one found in Deuteronomy and Joshua, which I consider the most vile scriptures ever labeled holy. In these works, a bloodthirsty tribal deity demands genocide against an enemy innocent of any crime, aside from occupying some beachfront property the Hebrews want for themselves. The orders to kill encompass "all that breathe": Men and women, the elderly and the newborn, even the livestock. The enemy is considered subhuman -- "life unworthy of life," as Hitler might have put it.
Of course, a gracious attitude came more easily to the Greeks because they won more of their wars. Much of the Old Testament was compiled during the Babylonian exile. Enslaved people rarely develop an appreciation for moral complexity; a slave wants to hear nothing beyond "We are right; they are wrong." I can understand why the Jewish and Greek worldviews differed.
What I can not understand is why our nation -- a nation of victors, not of slaves -- has turned against its classical inheritance.
America was born of the Enlightenment, which derived from the Renaissance, which derived from the Greeks. When I was young, nearly everyone who passed high school understood this history, just as nearly everyone viewed the more barbaric books of the Old Testament as relics from an age of savagery. Today, millions of modern fundamentalists view Deuteronomy and Joshua as holy, as inspired works with contemporary relevance.
By refusing to acknowledge the humanity of his adversary, the reactionary exiles himself to a fantasyland in which he is ever right. Compromise becomes weakness, self-doubt is seen as a form of neurosis, and propaganda trumps debate. Reactionary religion reduces all existence to cheap melodrama. That's why Bronze Age throwbacks will never understand drama: One might as well ask an Amazonian tribesman to tell you how a Kray supercomputer works.
Yet Clint Eastwood, oddly enough, has become one of our most lauded dramatists. His politics, so far as I know, still veer rightwards, even as the rightists veer away from him.
They prefer Mel Gibson, maker of melodramas, who serves 'em up grisly and brutal. Gibson, I hear, will soon make a film derived from the books of Macabbees, those ancient chronicles of the conflict between the Jews and the Greeks. I read those books many years ago, and the side I rooted for was probably not the one intended by the authors. I may skip the film version. But I look forward to Clint Eastwood's latest.
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