By Judith Gayle | Political Waves
Q: What’s the difference between a Christian radical and a Muslim jihadist?
A: Not too damned much.
We’re having a Salman Rushdie moment on steroids. As the ignorant are prone to do when prodded, zealots across the Muslim world have arisen in defense of their Prophet, once again ready to punish disrespect with death and terror. We knew there was a fuse out there, waiting to suddenly spark our attention and justify our feeling that chaos was closing in, but nobody would have guessed that a couple of movie-maker wannabes with hate-filled hearts would strike the match that lit it.
What we could assess with surety, however, was the inability of the fundamentalist world to do other than react in the worst possible terms to any goad, in this country with self-serving rhetoric and across the Mid-east with fire and death. Would it seem uncaring to mention what a typical, boring and mindlessly stupid response this is? Nah, I cried at the service for the American dead returned to Dover today, my hand over my heart. Let’s just say this kind of fire-bombing, rock-throwing, mindlessly-violent stuff — man’s inhumanity to man — is getting old. Or maybe I am, whatever.
The fragile new governments established in the countries that liberated themselves from dictatorships during the Arab Spring now find themselves facing down their own religious fanatics. In Benghazi, the newly established government is filled with remorse at the death of a man who proved their champion in harder times. In Cairo, the Muslim Brotherhood is caught between their own fundamentalist leanings and the people’s determination for a 21st century government. These newly configured governments chose a moderate path forward, each trying for a homegrown blend of the old way and the untried path of democracy, but as with so many similar ventures — big and small, in this era of radical polarization — the enemy to their progress may be their own hardcore fundamentalists. Everywhere, nations are facing the worst aspects of their own culture, trying to claw them back into the black and white absolutes of the old paradigm.
How could this happen in a 21st century embassy, we wonder? It’s mostly neglect. The State Department is the stepchild that has gone underutilized and underfunded for most of this century. Think about it. How did George W. use his statesmen? He trotted them out when he needed them — Colin to legitimize, Condi to dazzle — while the majority of his attention was invested in the raw power he found at the Pentagon. Money that flooded into militarism was often funding withheld from the department of state. Logic dictates that Marines should be guarding embassies around the globe — and most certainly in the Middle-east — but they are not. Why? Insufficient funding, withheld by a Congress more eager that those bucks end up in the hands of private contractors, i.e., mercenaries, engaged in profit-making efforts on foreign soil.
We know that the attack on Benghazi was no religious protest, but rather a terrorist attack, a savage, coordinated assault on the American consulate that took American lives, including that of Ambassador Chris Stevens. But because of the protests that have erupted over an anti-Islamic YouTube clip — reminiscent of the violence over Danish cartoons insulting the Prophet in 2005 — the firestorm of outrage has morphed into a single anti-American protest playing out at Western embassies in places like Yemen, Sudan, Tunisia and Egypt, nearly a dozen countries as I write, and counting. In Lebanon, Palestinian refugees protested the YouTube “movie trailer” by burning Obama in effigy. In Afghanistan, the Taliban has called upon the faithful to escalate bloodshed and punish American soldiers for the affront to Allah’s Prophet.
All this over a 14 minute YouTube clip? Apparently so, although no one has actually seen a whole movie called the “The Innocence of Muslims.” It may not actually exist. Actors hired to make the YouTube footage have reported that nothing about Mohammed or Islam was even suggested in their dialogue, which was badly dubbed after the fact to portray the Muslim Prophet as a child molester and murderous thug. Amateurish footage of sex and violence playing against a green-screen desert scene was put together by a couple of radical Coptic Christians, one of whom operates a website promoting Islamophobia, designed to convince Muslims that their religion is fraudulent.
Anti-Islam minister Terry Jones, famous for his Koran-burning plans, is promoting the film, along with a California man, Steve Klein, who has a long record of radical Christianity, and is an anti-Muslim (and Mormon) propagandist tracked by the Southern Poverty Law Center (who tells us that two of the organizations he’s affiliated with have been designated hate groups). Jones received a call from General Martin Dempsey at the Pentagon this week, asking that he withdraw his support. Jones, who says the film is “educational,” remains noncommittal, while Klein is verbal and defiant.
Early reports that the filmmaker was Israeli, as were the (bogus) “millionaire backers” of the film, seem intent on inserting Jews into the plot. As Coptic Christians make up some 10% of Egyptian society, violence against them, along with high rhetoric against America’s supposed support of this “production” appears to be in the offing. This is the kind of thing that has a ripple effect, a self-perpetuated toxicity designed to continue the loop of religious violence, such as Michele Bachmann’s declaration that the embassy attacks are an attempt by Islam to impose Sharia Law on the U.S. is a ploy to spread fear, portray Obama’s response as weak, and impose radical Christianity on our own politics. The zealots are furious at the Prez for refusing to trash all Muslims as dangerous cutthroats, for drawing down troops in the region, and for playing a cool game of chess with Bibi Netanyahu in his desire for hot war with Iran. To their mind, his ability to thwart their escalation of the global conflict is not part of the neocon script, nor, apparently, Gawd’s plan.
This nasty little video is, in short, the rhetoric of the Islamophobia Industry, which is mixed in a petrie dish of Zionism and evangelical longing for Armageddon. It is met by a similar force half-way round the world fighting against democracy and modernity, wearing the face of radical Islam. All these fringe players have the same purpose in mind: to inflame a religious war that will explode the planet into “the last days.”
There it is, a tiny pocket of dark matter, vibrating to the strains of Onward Christian Soldiers and shouts of “Allahu Akbar,” seated squarely at the heart of both the Islamic and American Taliban movements. And while not nearly in the numbers we think, there are always those who will come running when they hear the call.
The same hate-mongers who made our current mess showed up to protest the building of a mosque in New York last year. They make it their business to kick up this kind of shit and cry victimization when responsibility is directed back at them. They’re the people Robert Fisk calls “the provocateurs.” They are ignored by mainstream Christians, quietly tolerated by Christocrat fundamentalists, and only championed by religious radicals; and please note how MANY radicals we have in our government power structure now, most of them wearing Tea Party tri-cornered hats.
These folks work at the dark business of Armageddon, pulling strings to trigger Gawd’s wrath, as much warriors against tolerance as those they claim to hate — and the good news is that now, not only do we see them coming, we’ve got them figured out. Ms. Bachmann, for instance, may not be back in the House next year, but if she is, only the faithful will pay attention to her dog whistle. The rest of us have heard it all before.
To view what’s happening today in the Mid-east as anything but the residue of a failed attempt to turn the world dark would be a mistake. I have a suspicion it will all fall flat. I don’t know about you, but I don’t have the energy for this anymore. I don’t know anyone who is interested in pounding hell out of Iran as a preventative, or continuing our occupation of Afghanistan, for that matter. Eleven years after the towers fell, our toxic load is finally spent and our spirits are weary of revenge.
Yet here we are, you say, still at it. Osama bin Laden’s Gawd and George W. Bush’s are still duking it out, eleven years after OBL successfully launched his plan to create a global religious conflict that would pit Islam against the rest of the world in a clash of civilizations. Allah was to be the winner, but so far, no cigar. On the other hand, America no longer has the military might or the bankroll to go after another Muslim nation, so — who knows? — maybe that means God/dess wins in the long run, and Gaia won’t have to shake us off like fleas!
All across the globe, people are turning to matters of more immediate concern than international conquest. They’re looking for ways to feed their kids, keep their schools open and teachers paid. They’re working together to take on the bureaucracy that is putting them out of their homes, pushing them out of their jobs. They’re coming together in their communities, assessing the fallout from apathy and decline that we let happen while we chased after foreign “righteousness.” We’re coming together to problem solve the basic needs of our social structures, to recreate ourselves much like those newly formed democracies are attempting to do. We don’t have time or patience for extremists now.
Perhaps those who don’t think we’re “on the right path” under Barack Obama ought to look back at the eight years that came before him and ask if THAT was the right path. Maybe we should ask if spending hand over fist and starting two cataclysmic Middle-eastern wars without raising taxes to pay for them was the right path. Hindsight trumps foresight, every time. That’s a reality we need to look at, as we contemplate the possibility of a bumble-brained Romney administration relying on aggressive neocon foreign policy and plutocratic fiscal policy for another round of “American exceptionalism.”
Haven’t we had enough crazy to last a lifetime? Can’t we recognize extremism in a comment on birtherism? A demand for the top 1% of the nation’s wealthy to receive more tax breaks while American kids go to bed hungry? A picket line set up at the burial of a fallen soldier declaring God’s hatred for America? A rocket grenade at the Libyan embassy or a load of bombs on a neighborhood in Syria? Is there anything NOT crazy about war or greed or arrogance? I don’t think so.
It’s just that simple, isn’t it? What is not conceived in love is a form of hate. The Golden Rule is all of God/dess we need to make the Shift of Ages. It’s the largest part of sanity and cooperation, the greatest blessing of an evolving planet. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” is the simple astringent that chases crazy away and makes it look like the dark matter it really is. We can only beat back extremism if we open our hearts to love for one another, working together to rebuild our future and letting the dark shadows fall back to the Light.
This week, let’s give everyone we meet exactly what we’d love to receive — and don’t forget to ask them if they’re registered to vote. If they need a ride, you know what to do next.
First, Happy Rosh Hashanah — may we transform all that no longer serves Light!
No, Mystes , I don’t think the larger issue is about the film clip. I consider it false flag bullshit of some kind — although I think it’s credible that the protests provided opportunity for Al Qaeda’s Al-Zawahiri to avenge the killing of his deputy in a drone attack with mindless murder — but that doesn’t discount the irrationality of the little folks who buy this on a religious basis. My point is more that we still don’t have an effective antidote to their violent eruptions, there or here at home, and their hysteria is like a virus that disrupts us all. It’s the dark matter that must be exorcised from the human heart.
“Rabble” seems a somewhat disrespectful but concise word for these folks, and I see them here in the Pea Patch. All you have to do is mention one of the “whistle” words … abortion, the 2nd Amendment, gay … around here and people become trembling idiots, their eyes rolled back in their heads with apoplectic visions running barefoot through their brains. Nothing that comes out of their mouths after they’re triggered contributes to civilized dialogue or problem solving. We owe the 2010 elections to this kind of rabble, buying simplistic, emotional knee-jerk rhetoric that strikes at their OWN families and livliehoods, so it’s best not to underestimate how nihilistic this energy is.
They … and their counterparts in the Mid-east … are easily controlled and set off in response to any hint of culture war and we know they provide dependable cover for actions below the surface. In Tarot, there are “stopper” cards that throw an e-brake, kind of like a retrograde does. Besides the aforementioned smoke and mirrors, that’s what this kind of energy eruption provides; a communication breakdown and delay. But why?
I’m not seeing that this is useful to the presidential election; Romney proved his (suspected) ineptitude by jumping the shark, politicizing what should have remained civil and confounding his GOP betters. The newest polls reflect his error. Today on pundit TV, his lone champion seems to be Liz Cheney (and the people said BOO! HISS!) still stumping for the neocons.
Cheney also tried a hard-sell on Obama’s strained relations with Israel and Bibi … as did every commentator that interviewed him this morning, causing him to protest that he won’t be drawn into the American election. He also suggested that the current Mid-east violence is directed principally at America, for which Israel must then suffer as our principal ally in the region. ‘Cuz — you know — everything’s always our fault.
I suppose it’s possible … as some have argued … that the current flare works to confirm Bibi’s desire for war, although, according to observers there is no public, and now even fading military, support for unilateral engagement with Iran in Israel; and Obama seems unwilling to yield on the point. This scuffle might prove useful to persuade Americans how hostile the Mid-east remains and how important it is to give Netanyahu what he wants — although that hasn’t happened except in the hearts of the Far Right so far. We seem to be on to Zionism these days, with American Jews no longer writing blank checks, political or otherwise.
And, agreed, the clip was so amateurish that everyone who’d ever seen an actual Hollywood production had to know this was bogus — but the question of American approval is tied up in misunderstanding of free speech issues, and over at Counterpunch, Esam Al-Amin writes convincingly of the many times offensive material HAS been removed at our behest. Not good.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/09/14/america-and-the-muslims/
If the universe is just giving us another of those prime examples of why the United States should give up on the empirism business, anyone who ever read Howard Zinn knows that, although I suppose we can always use more reminders. But I still can’t figure out what this incident provides cover for — and so, I’m coming down on the side of be’s interpretation: the little Pholus event that was blown out of proportion when it entered GA territory, bouncing against opportunistic transits.
Maybe. Or maybe next week all hell will break loose and we’ll all know what’s going on.
By the way, to sweeten the pot, Iran has added another half-million to the price on Rushdie’s head — it’s now 3.3 million. Really makes you want to sit down and talk to the Iranians like intellectual peers, don’t it?
And — golly, GaryB. I didn’t know Mitt had such impressive superpowers! Is it from the majik underwear, ya think???
Um, Jude, are you buying that story? The one that says the Embassy was attacked because of a home-made softporn video about what-might-have-been-Mohammed? Really? I watched 14 minutes of the thing, and it would have been funny were it not so pathetic. And worse, boring. You can’t call them production ‘values’ – they didn’t even rise to the level of ‘bad.’ This was a non-starter. Rubes make crap like this in their basements every week and it doesn’t cause career diplomats to be slaughtered.
I smell eau de provocaturd.
Besides: Islam is a religion of hierarchy and control. When an artist insults the Prophet, a price is set on his head. Very precise: a cartoon Mohammed gets Van Gogh killed; the Satanic Verses puts a 25 year fatwah on Salman Rushdie, Shabana keeps dancing, and the Taliban -after several warnings- puts a bullet in her head. These are not random, enraged killings, they are condemnations put out by councils of mullahs after due deliberation. Stupid, yes, but cold.
I don’t know about you Jude but I feel safer knowing that “if” Romney was President fights wouldn’t break out at a hockey game!
Dear Judith,
Thank you for your thoughtful response. I agree with you however, accepting the fact that we are international assholes is the first step to accepting the true history of America instead of what we’ve been taught. Our current administration has continued and escalated the violence in the world, I cannot pretend otherwise.
I am not an astrologer but I am extremely psychic. The two nights prior to 9-11 I was up all night getting images and hearing plane engines when none existed. I am not a fearful person and I am not afraid now. That radical form of love requires that we stop killing each other and stop supporting our politicians if they cannot stop themselves from killing others abroad and at home. Until we stop the violence consciousness will struggle to flower if at all. In my opinion. We are all in this together.
Er. scratch the part where I said Eris was sextile the trickster Mercury in the U.S. chart and replace it with Eris sextile Mars in the trickster’s sign of Gemini in the U.S. chart. It’s the devil that made me do that./be
When I woke to see the picture of the Libyan consulate reduced to an orange-gold inferno (one of the most dramatic I’ve seen lately, by the way — terrifying and beautiful at the same time) I went to my computer to check to see what ELSE was happening … as these things are most often false flag events, the smoke and mirrors referenced by Fe’s excellent piece.
Nothing in particular stood out — although Obama’s recent 7 point bump and lead in several swing states certainly can’t make Israel happy, as I indicated — but In These Times, EVERYthing stands out, doesn’t it? And Juan Cole’s notion of the butterfly effect gives us a rational look at how these things are not only “in the works” at any given moment but events of opportunity rarely missed by those who hold a particularly impassioned (read that “inflexible”) life-view.
The life-view I was writing about today has to do with how our lowest-common-denominator of decent behavior seems to be attached to those who are religiously polarized. Institutionalized belief systems always have a sub-set that goes rogue but it always surprises me when they turn into killers.
The notion that God/dess … if He/She/It/They exists in some responsive form … needs us to defend against perceived attack of any kind is ludicrous. The supposition that we are required to kill in the name of deity devalues the spiritual authority of the deity … unless we worship death, which MANY of us do … and THAT’s what needs remediating! We need a new understanding of the concept of God — and we’re discovering it by exploring all the reasons why our current concepts no longer work.
“What we call religion is really cultural mythology, based on world views that are really obsolete. The clash of cultures and mythologies could lead to our collective devastation and destruction.”
That’s Deepak Chopra, in commentary to HuffPost Live. Here’s a bit more:
“The one thing you do in any resolution of any conflict is you treat your perceived enemy with respect. The rage in Islam is the perception of disrespect and humiliation.”
Chopra also spoke out against Mitt Romney, saying that the Obama administration’s response to the widespread anti-American protests triggered by the provocative YouTube film deemed offensive to Mohammed was “sober” and handled “correctly.”
“I feel in fact quite distressed that Mr. Romney used this not only to polarize the situation between our government and other governments in the world but to fragment our own population and to polarize people in our own country about this issue,” he said.
Chopra also tweeted:
To offend another religion is disgraceful & shameful. To be easily offended is poor self esteem & lack of faith.
The 1st amendment is America’s pride. To abuse that privilege to insult & humiliate others is shameful & to be unworthy of that privilege.
That’s one mindset — one I respect. My interest this week was to investigate the mindset of those who produced the offensive video, explore their motives and track our response; and THANKS, be, for the full profile — Pholus was much on my mind as I thought of these sad little hate-mongers, so deluded with their own religious imperative that they determined to change the mind of faithful Muslims with slander and shock.
With all that Neptune it just had to be “the flickers” that prompted this, didn’t it, be? Such a sad moment at Dover — those people were not pumping their fist in the air, they were holding their hand out in friendship. Seems a waste of our best foot forward … unless we are able to make this a moment in which reason and compassion prevail.
Meanwhile, we would do well to remember how thin-skinned the militantly religious are. And I think it’s valuable for us to recognize that not only are there people out there working to provoke the end of the world, there are even more tuning in to the Discovery and History channels to see the possibilities televised for their entertainment value. If that ain’t crazy, Bob’s yer Uncle.
We still have a good bit of awakening to do, especially in this nation — as you suggest, miaferoleto. Thanks for sharing your thoughts, I agree with much of what you suggest and I’m sure the majority of Planet Waves readers are familiar as well. When we were attacked on 9/11 and everyone said, “Why?” my response was, “Are you kidding?” Noam Chomsky is right on many levels as are others who identify us as an international bully — including Pinter — with our system so skewed as to be tyrannous to not only others but our own citizens, as well. Most of us here know the score.
And yes, I read Will Pitts article on the convention. We will be facing our escalating authoritarianism in these next years, goaded by the big outlying planets that insist we change or expire. Just discovering our country is an international asshole hasn’t got a lot of value, however, if it only serves to make us more frightened or cynical. THAT is also a mindset that, once adopted, become self-fulfilling.
One of the things I particularly appreciated about channeling early in this century, was the advice to those of us with conscience to “salt ourselves” among the mainstream groups: teachers, lawyers, public employees, yadda. Change is happening, and it happens from WITHIN the system, not from the outside in — which is not to say that pressure from the outside, like #occupy and others, isn’t extremely valuable. It’s just that you can’t FORCE change and make it a success, much as you can’t legislate morality — it has to be organic if it’s to impact.
This week, a great read caught my attention — I posted it on Political Waves, here:
http://polwaves.planetwaves.net/2012/09/awakening-the-process/
It chronicles the events that drove a lifelong Republican away from the GOP … and, more, changed his way of looking at the world into a more compassionate mindset. It’s evident that he was teachable, and that he was mentored by his wife and others but the ‘win’ is all his.
Giving up old belief isn’t easy — Eric spoke to that in his excellent piece on denial this weekend. And when we do begin to see the man-behind-the-curtain, we can be left with cynicism and disenchantment. That may be a “stage,” but it’s not a very productive one. If we can stay awake to the possibilities, it’s good practice to be prepared when we formally discard some bit of our world view, to have a new way of seeing ready to fill the void space that’s created. If we don’t have answers or even questions ready, it serves to put harmlessness in that spot.
“Jesus brought a radical notion of love to the world.”
Agreed, the Christ Consciousness, which has little to do with Christianity and everything to do with love. If we worked a little harder on living that mindset, change really WOULD arrive.
Wow. Thanks Jude, I wish there were more like you to keep things in perspective and who had the talent to sum it up in such a way that could make us laugh at who we (humanity) are, hitting all the highlights of our insanity and then pointing us in the direction of sanity. Like you, I cried at the service and, like you, I’m weary of all the crazy shit being hurled back and forth on the global stage and on the local political platforms. However, I can’t resist looking at the explanations given to us by the gods and goddesses of astrology.
Within the structure of Uranus square Pluto that supplies the raw energy these days, there are myriads of patterns made up of symbols, each tackling a specific area of dark matter, bringing it up from the sub levels in order to dispose of it properly. It’s not pretty, but it is a process necessary for healing.
Start with Pholus the centaur, who begins some little something, maybe even innocently (although not in this case) like a 2-bit piece of film on the Internet, and whose in a sign about a whole lot of something, like maybe religious enthusiasm. Pholus is conjunct the Great Attractor so it’s reeaally gonna attract a whole lot of something. When transiting Jupiter (a whole lot of something on his own like networks for example) teams up with Chaos (capable of producing something creative and of value, but which in the beginning is only incoherent and chaotic) and opposes Pholus, eventually something’s gotta give. Enter Mercury and Sun in Virgo to square the opposing teams and throw in a sensitive and combustible symbol like Nine Eleven and you get the perfect storm.
Add to it Pallas-Athene, the master pattern weaver, in a conjunction with Uranus as they square Pluto; all three retrograde, well, let’s just say the emphasis is not on thinking things through, unless big-time mischief is the goal. However, there is a purpose being served for the U.S. anyway in that Pallas and Uranus were and are trine the north node in Leo of the Sibly birth chart for America. Following the north nodewill take us to a higher level.
Other mischief makers bedevilling the U.S. are transiting Eris who sextiles the trickster and sometimes filmmaker Mercury in the U.S. birthchart, but even worse, is irritatingly quincunx the U.S. Neptune (who doesn’t see so clearly in the best of times) and, dear me, the President’s natal Mars. This automatically sets off the U.S. birthchart’s natal square between Mars and Neptune and we are all fighting in the fog.
The numerous other examples would would shed light on the why’s of our whirling emotional reactions but only one more as space and time is limited. Transiting Arachne, the little asteroid who was turned into a spider when she challenged the goddess of weaving patterns, Pallas-Athene, was in the delicate position to conjunct the U.S. Saturn in Libra and set off the natal square to the U.S. Sun in Cancer on September 11th. She was not alone either, as Zeus (aka Jupiter) was also conjunct the U.S. Saturn at the time tempers were out of control in faraway lands. There is an expression about tangled webs we weave that might explain President Obama’s “not an ally but not an enemy” remark, but as you say Jude, this will probably all fall flat. Little Borasisi in Pisces is close enough in range to be filling in the T-square of Jupiter/Chaos (Gemini), Pholus/GA (Sagittarius) and Sun/Mercury (Virgo) so active on 9/11, making it a mutable (transitional) cross to bear. Borasisi is saying “it ain’t real folks, it just made up and looks real”. Easy for him to say!
be
Here is Pinter’s brilliant speech:
Nobel Lecture
Art, Truth & Politics
In 1958 I wrote the following:
‘There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false.’
I believe that these assertions still make sense and do still apply to the exploration of reality through art. So as a writer I stand by them but as a citizen I cannot. As a citizen I must ask: What is true? What is false?
Truth in drama is forever elusive. You never quite find it but the search for it is compulsive. The search is clearly what drives the endeavour. The search is your task. More often than not you stumble upon the truth in the dark, colliding with it or just glimpsing an image or a shape which seems to correspond to the truth, often without realising that you have done so. But the real truth is that there never is any such thing as one truth to be found in dramatic art. There are many. These truths challenge each other, recoil from each other, reflect each other, ignore each other, tease each other, are blind to each other. Sometimes you feel you have the truth of a moment in your hand, then it slips through your fingers and is lost.
I have often been asked how my plays come about. I cannot say. Nor can I ever sum up my plays, except to say that this is what happened. That is what they said. That is what they did.
Most of the plays are engendered by a line, a word or an image. The given word is often shortly followed by the image. I shall give two examples of two lines which came right out of the blue into my head, followed by an image, followed by me.
The plays are The Homecoming and Old Times. The first line of The Homecoming is ‘What have you done with the scissors?’ The first line of Old Times is ‘Dark.’
In each case I had no further information.
In the first case someone was obviously looking for a pair of scissors and was demanding their whereabouts of someone else he suspected had probably stolen them. But I somehow knew that the person addressed didn’t give a damn about the scissors or about the questioner either, for that matter.
‘Dark’ I took to be a description of someone’s hair, the hair of a woman, and was the answer to a question. In each case I found myself compelled to pursue the matter. This happened visually, a very slow fade, through shadow into light.
I always start a play by calling the characters A, B and C.
In the play that became The Homecoming I saw a man enter a stark room and ask his question of a younger man sitting on an ugly sofa reading a racing paper. I somehow suspected that A was a father and that B was his son, but I had no proof. This was however confirmed a short time later when B (later to become Lenny) says to A (later to become Max), ‘Dad, do you mind if I change the subject? I want to ask you something. The dinner we had before, what was the name of it? What do you call it? Why don’t you buy a dog? You’re a dog cook. Honest. You think you’re cooking for a lot of dogs.’ So since B calls A ‘Dad’ it seemed to me reasonable to assume that they were father and son. A was also clearly the cook and his cooking did not seem to be held in high regard. Did this mean that there was no mother? I didn’t know. But, as I told myself at the time, our beginnings never know our ends.
‘Dark.’ A large window. Evening sky. A man, A (later to become Deeley), and a woman, B (later to become Kate), sitting with drinks. ‘Fat or thin?’ the man asks. Who are they talking about? But I then see, standing at the window, a woman, C (later to become Anna), in another condition of light, her back to them, her hair dark.
It’s a strange moment, the moment of creating characters who up to that moment have had no existence. What follows is fitful, uncertain, even hallucinatory, although sometimes it can be an unstoppable avalanche. The author’s position is an odd one. In a sense he is not welcomed by the characters. The characters resist him, they are not easy to live with, they are impossible to define. You certainly can’t dictate to them. To a certain extent you play a never-ending game with them, cat and mouse, blind man’s buff, hide and seek. But finally you find that you have people of flesh and blood on your hands, people with will and an individual sensibility of their own, made out of component parts you are unable to change, manipulate or distort.
So language in art remains a highly ambiguous transaction, a quicksand, a trampoline, a frozen pool which might give way under you, the author, at any time.
But as I have said, the search for the truth can never stop. It cannot be adjourned, it cannot be postponed. It has to be faced, right there, on the spot.
Political theatre presents an entirely different set of problems. Sermonising has to be avoided at all cost. Objectivity is essential. The characters must be allowed to breathe their own air. The author cannot confine and constrict them to satisfy his own taste or disposition or prejudice. He must be prepared to approach them from a variety of angles, from a full and uninhibited range of perspectives, take them by surprise, perhaps, occasionally, but nevertheless give them the freedom to go which way they will. This does not always work. And political satire, of course, adheres to none of these precepts, in fact does precisely the opposite, which is its proper function.
In my play The Birthday Party I think I allow a whole range of options to operate in a dense forest of possibility before finally focussing on an act of subjugation.
Mountain Language pretends to no such range of operation. It remains brutal, short and ugly. But the soldiers in the play do get some fun out of it. One sometimes forgets that torturers become easily bored. They need a bit of a laugh to keep their spirits up. This has been confirmed of course by the events at Abu Ghraib in Baghdad. Mountain Language lasts only 20 minutes, but it could go on for hour after hour, on and on and on, the same pattern repeated over and over again, on and on, hour after hour.
Ashes to Ashes, on the other hand, seems to me to be taking place under water. A drowning woman, her hand reaching up through the waves, dropping down out of sight, reaching for others, but finding nobody there, either above or under the water, finding only shadows, reflections, floating; the woman a lost figure in a drowning landscape, a woman unable to escape the doom that seemed to belong only to others.
But as they died, she must die too.
Political language, as used by politicians, does not venture into any of this territory since the majority of politicians, on the evidence available to us, are interested not in truth but in power and in the maintenance of that power. To maintain that power it is essential that people remain in ignorance, that they live in ignorance of the truth, even the truth of their own lives. What surrounds us therefore is a vast tapestry of lies, upon which we feed.
As every single person here knows, the justification for the invasion of Iraq was that Saddam Hussein possessed a highly dangerous body of weapons of mass destruction, some of which could be fired in 45 minutes, bringing about appalling devastation. We were assured that was true. It was not true. We were told that Iraq had a relationship with Al Quaeda and shared responsibility for the atrocity in New York of September 11th 2001. We were assured that this was true. It was not true. We were told that Iraq threatened the security of the world. We were assured it was true. It was not true.
The truth is something entirely different. The truth is to do with how the United States understands its role in the world and how it chooses to embody it.
But before I come back to the present I would like to look at the recent past, by which I mean United States foreign policy since the end of the Second World War. I believe it is obligatory upon us to subject this period to at least some kind of even limited scrutiny, which is all that time will allow here.
Everyone knows what happened in the Soviet Union and throughout Eastern Europe during the post-war period: the systematic brutality, the widespread atrocities, the ruthless suppression of independent thought. All this has been fully documented and verified.
But my contention here is that the US crimes in the same period have only been superficially recorded, let alone documented, let alone acknowledged, let alone recognised as crimes at all. I believe this must be addressed and that the truth has considerable bearing on where the world stands now. Although constrained, to a certain extent, by the existence of the Soviet Union, the United States’ actions throughout the world made it clear that it had concluded it had carte blanche to do what it liked.
Direct invasion of a sovereign state has never in fact been America’s favoured method. In the main, it has preferred what it has described as ‘low intensity conflict’. Low intensity conflict means that thousands of people die but slower than if you dropped a bomb on them in one fell swoop. It means that you infect the heart of the country, that you establish a malignant growth and watch the gangrene bloom. When the populace has been subdued – or beaten to death – the same thing – and your own friends, the military and the great corporations, sit comfortably in power, you go before the camera and say that democracy has prevailed. This was a commonplace in US foreign policy in the years to which I refer.
The tragedy of Nicaragua was a highly significant case. I choose to offer it here as a potent example of America’s view of its role in the world, both then and now.
I was present at a meeting at the US embassy in London in the late 1980s.
The United States Congress was about to decide whether to give more money to the Contras in their campaign against the state of Nicaragua. I was a member of a delegation speaking on behalf of Nicaragua but the most important member of this delegation was a Father John Metcalf. The leader of the US body was Raymond Seitz (then number two to the ambassador, later ambassador himself). Father Metcalf said: ‘Sir, I am in charge of a parish in the north of Nicaragua. My parishioners built a school, a health centre, a cultural centre. We have lived in peace. A few months ago a Contra force attacked the parish. They destroyed everything: the school, the health centre, the cultural centre. They raped nurses and teachers, slaughtered doctors, in the most brutal manner. They behaved like savages. Please demand that the US government withdraw its support from this shocking terrorist activity.’
Raymond Seitz had a very good reputation as a rational, responsible and highly sophisticated man. He was greatly respected in diplomatic circles. He listened, paused and then spoke with some gravity. ‘Father,’ he said, ‘let me tell you something. In war, innocent people always suffer.’ There was a frozen silence. We stared at him. He did not flinch.
Innocent people, indeed, always suffer.
Finally somebody said: ‘But in this case “innocent people” were the victims of a gruesome atrocity subsidised by your government, one among many. If Congress allows the Contras more money further atrocities of this kind will take place. Is this not the case? Is your government not therefore guilty of supporting acts of murder and destruction upon the citizens of a sovereign state?’
Seitz was imperturbable. ‘I don’t agree that the facts as presented support your assertions,’ he said.
As we were leaving the Embassy a US aide told me that he enjoyed my plays. I did not reply.
I should remind you that at the time President Reagan made the following statement: ‘The Contras are the moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers.’
The United States supported the brutal Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua for over 40 years. The Nicaraguan people, led by the Sandinistas, overthrew this regime in 1979, a breathtaking popular revolution.
The Sandinistas weren’t perfect. They possessed their fair share of arrogance and their political philosophy contained a number of contradictory elements. But they were intelligent, rational and civilised. They set out to establish a stable, decent, pluralistic society. The death penalty was abolished. Hundreds of thousands of poverty-stricken peasants were brought back from the dead. Over 100,000 families were given title to land. Two thousand schools were built. A quite remarkable literacy campaign reduced illiteracy in the country to less than one seventh. Free education was established and a free health service. Infant mortality was reduced by a third. Polio was eradicated.
The United States denounced these achievements as Marxist/Leninist subversion. In the view of the US government, a dangerous example was being set. If Nicaragua was allowed to establish basic norms of social and economic justice, if it was allowed to raise the standards of health care and education and achieve social unity and national self respect, neighbouring countries would ask the same questions and do the same things. There was of course at the time fierce resistance to the status quo in El Salvador.
I spoke earlier about ‘a tapestry of lies’ which surrounds us. President Reagan commonly described Nicaragua as a ‘totalitarian dungeon’. This was taken generally by the media, and certainly by the British government, as accurate and fair comment. But there was in fact no record of death squads under the Sandinista government. There was no record of torture. There was no record of systematic or official military brutality. No priests were ever murdered in Nicaragua. There were in fact three priests in the government, two Jesuits and a Maryknoll missionary. The totalitarian dungeons were actually next door, in El Salvador and Guatemala. The United States had brought down the democratically elected government of Guatemala in 1954 and it is estimated that over 200,000 people had been victims of successive military dictatorships.
Six of the most distinguished Jesuits in the world were viciously murdered at the Central American University in San Salvador in 1989 by a battalion of the Alcatl regiment trained at Fort Benning, Georgia, USA. That extremely brave man Archbishop Romero was assassinated while saying mass. It is estimated that 75,000 people died. Why were they killed? They were killed because they believed a better life was possible and should be achieved. That belief immediately qualified them as communists. They died because they dared to question the status quo, the endless plateau of poverty, disease, degradation and oppression, which had been their birthright.
The United States finally brought down the Sandinista government. It took some years and considerable resistance but relentless economic persecution and 30,000 dead finally undermined the spirit of the Nicaraguan people. They were exhausted and poverty stricken once again. The casinos moved back into the country. Free health and free education were over. Big business returned with a vengeance. ‘Democracy’ had prevailed.
But this ‘policy’ was by no means restricted to Central America. It was conducted throughout the world. It was never-ending. And it is as if it never happened.
The United States supported and in many cases engendered every right wing military dictatorship in the world after the end of the Second World War. I refer to Indonesia, Greece, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Haiti, Turkey, the Philippines, Guatemala, El Salvador, and, of course, Chile. The horror the United States inflicted upon Chile in 1973 can never be purged and can never be forgiven.
Hundreds of thousands of deaths took place throughout these countries. Did they take place? And are they in all cases attributable to US foreign policy? The answer is yes they did take place and they are attributable to American foreign policy. But you wouldn’t know it.
It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn’t happening. It didn’t matter. It was of no interest. The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It’s a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.
I put to you that the United States is without doubt the greatest show on the road. Brutal, indifferent, scornful and ruthless it may be but it is also very clever. As a salesman it is out on its own and its most saleable commodity is self love. It’s a winner. Listen to all American presidents on television say the words, ‘the American people’, as in the sentence, ‘I say to the American people it is time to pray and to defend the rights of the American people and I ask the American people to trust their president in the action he is about to take on behalf of the American people.’
It’s a scintillating stratagem. Language is actually employed to keep thought at bay. The words ‘the American people’ provide a truly voluptuous cushion of reassurance. You don’t need to think. Just lie back on the cushion. The cushion may be suffocating your intelligence and your critical faculties but it’s very comfortable. This does not apply of course to the 40 million people living below the poverty line and the 2 million men and women imprisoned in the vast gulag of prisons, which extends across the US.
The United States no longer bothers about low intensity conflict. It no longer sees any point in being reticent or even devious. It puts its cards on the table without fear or favour. It quite simply doesn’t give a damn about the United Nations, international law or critical dissent, which it regards as impotent and irrelevant. It also has its own bleating little lamb tagging behind it on a lead, the pathetic and supine Great Britain.
What has happened to our moral sensibility? Did we ever have any? What do these words mean? Do they refer to a term very rarely employed these days – conscience? A conscience to do not only with our own acts but to do with our shared responsibility in the acts of others? Is all this dead? Look at Guantanamo Bay. Hundreds of people detained without charge for over three years, with no legal representation or due process, technically detained forever. This totally illegitimate structure is maintained in defiance of the Geneva Convention. It is not only tolerated but hardly thought about by what’s called the ‘international community’. This criminal outrage is being committed by a country, which declares itself to be ‘the leader of the free world’. Do we think about the inhabitants of Guantanamo Bay? What does the media say about them? They pop up occasionally – a small item on page six. They have been consigned to a no man’s land from which indeed they may never return. At present many are on hunger strike, being force-fed, including British residents. No niceties in these force-feeding procedures. No sedative or anaesthetic. Just a tube stuck up your nose and into your throat. You vomit blood. This is torture. What has the British Foreign Secretary said about this? Nothing. What has the British Prime Minister said about this? Nothing. Why not? Because the United States has said: to criticise our conduct in Guantanamo Bay constitutes an unfriendly act. You’re either with us or against us. So Blair shuts up.
The invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of international law. The invasion was an arbitrary military action inspired by a series of lies upon lies and gross manipulation of the media and therefore of the public; an act intended to consolidate American military and economic control of the Middle East masquerading – as a last resort – all other justifications having failed to justify themselves – as liberation. A formidable assertion of military force responsible for the death and mutilation of thousands and thousands of innocent people.
We have brought torture, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, innumerable acts of random murder, misery, degradation and death to the Iraqi people and call it ‘bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East’.
How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be described as a mass murderer and a war criminal? One hundred thousand? More than enough, I would have thought. Therefore it is just that Bush and Blair be arraigned before the International Criminal Court of Justice. But Bush has been clever. He has not ratified the International Criminal Court of Justice. Therefore if any American soldier or for that matter politician finds himself in the dock Bush has warned that he will send in the marines. But Tony Blair has ratified the Court and is therefore available for prosecution. We can let the Court have his address if they’re interested. It is Number 10, Downing Street, London.
Death in this context is irrelevant. Both Bush and Blair place death well away on the back burner. At least 100,000 Iraqis were killed by American bombs and missiles before the Iraq insurgency began. These people are of no moment. Their deaths don’t exist. They are blank. They are not even recorded as being dead. ‘We don’t do body counts,’ said the American general Tommy Franks.
Early in the invasion there was a photograph published on the front page of British newspapers of Tony Blair kissing the cheek of a little Iraqi boy. ‘A grateful child,’ said the caption. A few days later there was a story and photograph, on an inside page, of another four-year-old boy with no arms. His family had been blown up by a missile. He was the only survivor. ‘When do I get my arms back?’ he asked. The story was dropped. Well, Tony Blair wasn’t holding him in his arms, nor the body of any other mutilated child, nor the body of any bloody corpse. Blood is dirty. It dirties your shirt and tie when you’re making a sincere speech on television.
The 2,000 American dead are an embarrassment. They are transported to their graves in the dark. Funerals are unobtrusive, out of harm’s way. The mutilated rot in their beds, some for the rest of their lives. So the dead and the mutilated both rot, in different kinds of graves.
Here is an extract from a poem by Pablo Neruda, ‘I’m Explaining a Few Things’:
And one morning all that was burning,
one morning the bonfires
leapt out of the earth
devouring human beings
and from then on fire,
gunpowder from then on,
and from then on blood.
Bandits with planes and Moors,
bandits with finger-rings and duchesses,
bandits with black friars spattering blessings
came through the sky to kill children
and the blood of children ran through the streets
without fuss, like children’s blood.
Jackals that the jackals would despise
stones that the dry thistle would bite on and spit out,
vipers that the vipers would abominate.
Face to face with you I have seen the blood
of Spain tower like a tide
to drown you in one wave
of pride and knives.
Treacherous
generals:
see my dead house,
look at broken Spain:
from every house burning metal flows
instead of flowers
from every socket of Spain
Spain emerges
and from every dead child a rifle with eyes
and from every crime bullets are born
which will one day find
the bull’s eye of your hearts.
And you will ask: why doesn’t his poetry
speak of dreams and leaves
and the great volcanoes of his native land.
Come and see the blood in the streets.
Come and see
the blood in the streets.
Come and see the blood
in the streets!*
Let me make it quite clear that in quoting from Neruda’s poem I am in no way comparing Republican Spain to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. I quote Neruda because nowhere in contemporary poetry have I read such a powerful visceral description of the bombing of civilians.
I have said earlier that the United States is now totally frank about putting its cards on the table. That is the case. Its official declared policy is now defined as ‘full spectrum dominance’. That is not my term, it is theirs. ‘Full spectrum dominance’ means control of land, sea, air and space and all attendant resources.
The United States now occupies 702 military installations throughout the world in 132 countries, with the honourable exception of Sweden, of course. We don’t quite know how they got there but they are there all right.
The United States possesses 8,000 active and operational nuclear warheads. Two thousand are on hair trigger alert, ready to be launched with 15 minutes warning. It is developing new systems of nuclear force, known as bunker busters. The British, ever cooperative, are intending to replace their own nuclear missile, Trident. Who, I wonder, are they aiming at? Osama bin Laden? You? Me? Joe Dokes? China? Paris? Who knows? What we do know is that this infantile insanity – the possession and threatened use of nuclear weapons – is at the heart of present American political philosophy. We must remind ourselves that the United States is on a permanent military footing and shows no sign of relaxing it.
Many thousands, if not millions, of people in the United States itself are demonstrably sickened, shamed and angered by their government’s actions, but as things stand they are not a coherent political force – yet. But the anxiety, uncertainty and fear which we can see growing daily in the United States is unlikely to diminish.
I know that President Bush has many extremely competent speech writers but I would like to volunteer for the job myself. I propose the following short address which he can make on television to the nation. I see him grave, hair carefully combed, serious, winning, sincere, often beguiling, sometimes employing a wry smile, curiously attractive, a man’s man.
‘God is good. God is great. God is good. My God is good. Bin Laden’s God is bad. His is a bad God. Saddam’s God was bad, except he didn’t have one. He was a barbarian. We are not barbarians. We don’t chop people’s heads off. We believe in freedom. So does God. I am not a barbarian. I am the democratically elected leader of a freedom-loving democracy. We are a compassionate society. We give compassionate electrocution and compassionate lethal injection. We are a great nation. I am not a dictator. He is. I am not a barbarian. He is. And he is. They all are. I possess moral authority. You see this fist? This is my moral authority. And don’t you forget it.’
A writer’s life is a highly vulnerable, almost naked activity. We don’t have to weep about that. The writer makes his choice and is stuck with it. But it is true to say that you are open to all the winds, some of them icy indeed. You are out on your own, out on a limb. You find no shelter, no protection – unless you lie – in which case of course you have constructed your own protection and, it could be argued, become a politician.
I have referred to death quite a few times this evening. I shall now quote a poem of my own called ‘Death’.
Where was the dead body found?
Who found the dead body?
Was the dead body dead when found?
How was the dead body found?
Who was the dead body?
Who was the father or daughter or brother
Or uncle or sister or mother or son
Of the dead and abandoned body?
Was the body dead when abandoned?
Was the body abandoned?
By whom had it been abandoned?
Was the dead body naked or dressed for a journey?
What made you declare the dead body dead?
Did you declare the dead body dead?
How well did you know the dead body?
How did you know the dead body was dead?
Did you wash the dead body
Did you close both its eyes
Did you bury the body
Did you leave it abandoned
Did you kiss the dead body
When we look into a mirror we think the image that confronts us is accurate. But move a millimetre and the image changes. We are actually looking at a never-ending range of reflections. But sometimes a writer has to smash the mirror – for it is on the other side of that mirror that the truth stares at us.
I believe that despite the enormous odds which exist, unflinching, unswerving, fierce intellectual determination, as citizens, to define the real truth of our lives and our societies is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all. It is in fact mandatory.
If such a determination is not embodied in our political vision we have no hope of restoring what is so nearly lost to us – the dignity of man.
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Veterans Today Senior Gordon Duff was interviewed on Press TV regarding what is happening in the Middle East. He has a military and intelligence background and communicates daily with contacts in that part of the world.
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2012/09/14/261558/zionists-nato-fuel-antiislam-war/
As I posted to your article last week, Jude, in 2005 Harold Pinter pointed his finger at America in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech. The world is getting tired of our antics. 120 countries met in Iran just weeks ago without us. Without U.S. The Keshe Foundation plans to release new technology within the month of September against the orders of President Obama. America is now experiencing the backlash of our colonialism. We should have been able to choose peace. We should have learned something as a race after thousands of years. Coulda Shoulda Woulda.
Jesus brought a radical notion of love to the world, that of love your neighbor. Love your brother as I have loved you. A totally radical concept. He overturned the money changers tables in the temple, defying Biblical corporate power and signing his death warrrant. We are now living the 21st century version of that same story. And what, exactly, are we doing about it?
William Rivers Pitts wrote in his article on Truthout.org that outside the Democratic convention in Charlotte was a totalitarian police state. The chickens are coming home to roost.