News of the Month

November 10, 2001

Well, King George II continues his war of terrorism on the people of Afghanistan, in revenge for the attacks on New York and Washington. What solid information do we have about that? We know that a group of people, so dedicated to their cause that they were willing to die for it, murdered about 6,000 Americans. We think we know who’s leading that group, but we know its members are mostly the sons of wealthy Saudi Arabian families. We know that their leader, himself the son of a wealthy Saudi Arabian family – with close business connections to both King George I and King George II of the United States – is now living in Afghanistan. (Oh: side note – the FBI is now telling Congress that they have been forbidden from investigating the Bush-Bin Laden connection for years.) We also know that the government of Afghanistan is one of the most brutally repressive governments in history, grinding the people of Afghanistan into bloody submission – and they were so, even back when the US was funneling millions of dollars into their pockets to reward them for “fighting drugs”.

But the United States is outraged; we have to find someone to punish! Who shall it be? Well, the murderers themselves are out; they died for their cause, remember? The leaders are out – they’re hiding somewhere in the caves and deserts of Afghanistan. We’d have to have a functioning intelligence service to find them. (pause) So much for that; who’s next? It’s so much easier to declare war on a government – a country – than a bunch of people scattered around the desert. Aha! We have not one, but two, governments that provide support and refuge to the murderers – Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia. Oh; wait! We get oil from Saudi Arabia, and they let us use their land for our foreign military bases. We can’t possibly attack them! OK, then; who’s left?

Afghanistan! An ideal enemy! As powerless as Panama, as weak as Grenada, and as impotent as Iraq. Perfect! Like shooting fish in a barrel – just the way our leaders like it. That way, we can rack up a huge kill count on the opposing side, and only lose a few “American boys” –after all, that might cause the voters to question the war, and we can’t have that! So we begin attacking the nation of Afghanistan, supposedly because they “won’t turn Osama Bin Laden over to us.” We get to play with our toys again! We can use a million-dollar Tomahawk cruise missile to destroy a hundred-dollar supply shack. And while we’re at it, we can “accidentally” destroy several relief facilities run by the United Nations that our benevolent king hates so much. Wow!

The Taliban? Oh, they’re perfectly safe – they used those millions the United States gave them to build themselves some secure hidey-holes for just such a possibility. Osama Bin Laden? He’s paid the Taliban for security, too – out of the money he got from the Carlyle Group, the oil-and-defense investment club that his family and the Bush family jointly control. He’s safe, too. So who’s not safe? Who’s taking the brunt of our attacks on Afghanistan? The people. The people of Afghanistan are being terrorized by our brutal bombing. Terrorized? “Do you mean we’re terrorists? Can’t be!” Is be. The illegitimate government of the United States has turned us all into terrorists, on a global scale. But the truly sad part about it is, that’s nothing new – we’ll get further information on this in our virtual interview with Mr. Clark, in a few minutes.

The United States government is terrorizing the people of Afghanistan, in the hope that they’ll get tired enough of it to join the Northern Alliance and overthrow the dictatorship of the Taliban. Just like we’re terrorizing the people of Iraq – right now – in the hope that they will overthrow the dictatorship of Sadam Hussain. Trouble is, both those dictatorships are so powerful (they’re dictatorships, remember?) that the people are too powerless to do anything. It’s like … it’s like there’s a man tied to a tree, but we can’t free him, so we want to encourage him to free himself. So, we get a slingshot and start firing BBs at him, in the hope that he’ll free himself, just to get us to stop terrorizing him. Makes sense. If you’re crazy, that is. Remember that movie, The Madness of King George? Now we have another lunatic named George on the throne.

But despite television’s best efforts to hide the fact, there are other things going on – in this country and around the world. The mainstream media don’t seem to want to tell us anything about them, so I guess we get to do it here. Trouble is, looking at the rest of the news is scary.

As you know, King Georgie the Stupid and his handlers & managers are taking full advantage of this crisis, not just to make a killing in the arms market, but also to make an all-out assault on our constitutional rights. The so-called “PATRIOT” bill – or, more’s the pity, law by now – is an utterly unconstitutional clamp-down that Adolph Hitler would have grinned his approval of. The word “PATRIOT” is an acronym – what it stands for doesn’t matter, since it’s obvious they were going for whatever phrase they could pull out of their … orifices to be able to use that word.

Those of you who watched the 5 seasons of the recent television series Babylon 5 will understand me when I say that President Clarke has taken control, and the Nightwatch is coming to power. For those of you who didn’t watch that show, our situation is this: we have a ruler who came to power illegally, by fraud, who is using a terrible event as an excuse to reduce our freedoms and increase his own power.

There’s other news, too – for example, in our war against the nation of Columbia – well, against the people of Columbia, at any rate – in the name of the nation’s other insane war, the drug war. We’ve been spraying herbicide all over the nation, supposedly to kill the cocaine crops… supposedly. Here’s a report from The Earth Island Journal:

“A prominent US Senator and other government officials from both Washington and Bogotá stood on a Columbian mountainside above fields of lime-green coca – the plant sacred to Andean Indians, but also the source of the troublesome drug, cocaine. ‘They said that by using satellite images they could hit very precisely targets without any chance of danger to the surrounding crops,’ said Jim Farrell, Wellstone’s spokesperson. That turned out not to be the case. On the very first flyover by the crop duster, the senator, the US ambassador to Columbia, the lieutenant colonel of the Columbian National Police, and other embassy and congressional staffers were fully drenched with the sticky – and possibly dangerous – Roundup herbicide. ‘Imagine what’s happening when a high-level congressional delegation is not present,’ Farrell noted.

“US officials proudly point to the large areas of coca and poppy eradicated as proof that the fumigation is successful. But they strongly discourage journalists from probing the effects of aerial spraying any further. Last January, during a meeting with US Embassy staff in Bogotá, the top officer at the State Department’s Narcotics Affairs Section was emphatic and his tone threatening: ‘You cannot mention Monsanto!’ he boomed, spit flying from his mouth. But Monsanto is a major part of the Columbia story and there is no way to ignore it.

“In December 2000, Dutch journalist Marjon Van Royen investigated local health reports in Colombia and found that there had been ‘consistent health complaints,’ including ‘burning eyes, dizziness, and respiratory problems.’ According to Elas Nivia, a Colombian agronomist, local authorities reported 4,300 humans suffering skin or gastric disorders in the first two months of 2001. Some 178,000 animals (cattle, horses, pigs, dogs, hens, and fish) were reported killed by the spraying.”

Elsewhere in the world, the top ministers of the World Trade Organization are meeting this weekend in the tiny Arab state of Qatar. Didn’t hear anything about it? Well, of course not – the rich and powerful don’t want you to know the ways they’re planning to regulate your life: you might actually … object! Why Qatar? Well, it’s thousands of miles from anywhere; there are only a few – very expensive – flights into it; and most of all, the dictator who runs the place has in place some of the most Draconian anti-free expression laws in the world. Some of the things that are restricted or outright forbidden in our “ally,” Qatar, are freedom of assembly, political demonstrations, freedom of association, and political parties critical of the government or any other Arab government. A perfect place to discuss “free trade” – free, of course, from annoying things like free speech, free expression, and the ordinary people of the world.

And, speaking of meetings, King George II and Vladimir Putin, former KBG officer and current head of Russia, will be meeting at the royal ranch in Crawford this next Wednesday, the 14^th. Crawford is about 20 miles west of Waco, and there’ll be a sizeable contingent of people from all over Texas assembling at Crawford next Wednesday, to let King Georgie know what we think of him and his wars of terrorism.

Something else may have slid under your radar screens – not that our benevolent rulers intended that to happen, of course – the so-called “Fast Track” legislation for the WTO treaty. The intent of the legislation is to allow the administration to push the WTO treaty through Congress with minimal debate, without allowing the members to see it before the debate, and with no ability to modify it even if they do find something wrong with it. Ever heard the phrase “buying pig in a poke”? (A “poke” is a poke-bag, a cloth bag once used to take pigs to market.) Well, it seems that the House is getting in the way of Fast Track – questioning the power elite’s attempts to prevent Congress from taking too close a look at that questionable treaty. The House is asking, “Why would they want to prevent us from reading and debating the treaty – and even changing it if necessary?” (Look up.) You already know the answer to that one, don’t you?

And finally, in his column “Letters @ 3 AM” last week, Michael Ventura included a quote from our reigning monarch on the nature of American values. For those of you who don’t read Mr. Ventura’s column, I highly recommend it – his work is easily Pulitzer-class journalism. In the column, he quoted King Georgie the Stupid as having said, “There is no greater American value than owning something.” Listen to that again: “There is no greater American value than owning something.” Freedom? Independence? Patriotism? Tolerance? Pride? Courage? Integrity? Self-sacrifice? “There is no greater American value than owning something.”

With this one sentence, George W. Bush revealed his true character. And, come down to it, it makes sense. If you look back at all the little “gaffes” he made during the campaign and in his first months in office, the one theme that ties them all together is that those who own things are better than those who don’t. Look at his cabinet – living (literally) proof of that belief. Look at what he supports – “free” trade (for his fat corporate cronies, that is), increased pollution (as long as his favorites, the oil and energy companies, keep increasing their profits), the war on Afghanistan (because he had to find somebody to punish for the destruction of all that property). “There is no greater American value than owning something.” Materialism is the greatest American value.