When Palestinian, Persian, and Arabian people in America give money
to charities to help the Palestinian people, Bush accuses them of
supporting terrorism and has them investigated.
When Yassir Arrafat gave $20,000 to the family of a suicide
bomber, George W. Bush denounced Arrafat for
"supporting terrorism."
But when Bush and Cheney's oil companies send hundreds of millions
of dollars to the family of Osama bin Laden in Saudi Arabia, that isn't
called "supporting terrorism." That's just the oil business.
Speaking of which, it is illegal for any American to trade with Cuba,
because Cuba supposedly spawns terrorists, but it's okay for
Bush and Cheney to send money to Saudi Arabia in oil deals?
When 15 of the 19 September 11 terrorists came from Saudi Arabia?
Where's that at?
For that matter, Dick Cheney and the Halliburton Oil Company were trading with Saddam
Hussein just three years ago. [That is, in early 2000.]
Yes, the same Saddam as the Republicans
are now [March 2003] saying is the
Mother of All Terrorists (since King George II can't find Osama...).
Saddam was okay then, but now that some Saudi Arabians have brought down the World Trade
Center, the Iraqi leader is suddenly the greatest threat there is to American security?
Speaking of which, evidence has just emerged that the Abdullah bin Khalid,
Qatar Minister of the Interior, a member of the Qatar royal family,
is actively supporting the al-Qaeda terrorists, and even helped one of
the top leaders of the September 11 terrorists, Kalid Sheik Mohommad,
evade U.S.
capture.1
So are we going to go bomb Qatar?
No, of course not. They are an oil-rich "ally", one that is letting
us use their land for bases while we wage war on Iraq. Funny how that works.
If we have any more friends like Saudi Arabia and Qatar, we won't need any enemies
like Afghanistan or Iraq.
Speaking of which, the Government guys in Washington tend to get
very nasty with foreign governments who won't cooperate with America's
War on Terrorism. You know, sanctions and all of that...
Well, unless the foreign government in question
is Saudi Arabia. The Saudis have refused to allow a single FBI agent
into the country to investigate Osama bin Laden, his family, or any
of the other September 11 terrorists' families.
The Saudis have a strict iron-clad policy of zero compliance, zero
cooperation.2
Why? And why does Washington allow that with no retaliation?
UPDATE: This has changed. The Saudi radicals are turning their attention to
the House of Saud itself. They bombed Riyadh on May 12, 2003 and Nov. 8, 2003,
after which the royal family suddenly decided that FBI agents could go anywhere
and question anyone about
terrorism.3
Funny how that works.
Speaking of which, on September 11, after the World Trade Center
came down, acting President G. W. Bush grounded all of the airplanes in the
U.S.A.. Well... all but one. A private jet flew around, on G. W. Bush's
orders, and gathered up the bin Laden family, and spirited them out of
the country before the FBI could question them. Why?
Undoubtedly, it had a lot to do with the fact that the Bush family
and the bin Laden family are old friends from many years of doing oil deals
together. But how did George Jr. know so quickly, on the afternoon
of Sept. 11, that Osama had done it, so
he'd better get the bin Laden family out of the country quick?
This story — about the rapid evacuation of the bin Laden family before they were
questioned by the FBI, when no other civilian aircraft were allowed to fly in the
USA —
has been verified by Richard Clark, former White House Coordinator for Counter-Terrorism,
in his testimony before the "September 11 Commission",
broadcast on NPR at 15:17 EST 24 March 2004.
The evacuation of the bin Laden family was so rapid and so hush-hush
that even Richard Clark didn't know how many people were on the airplane that
left the USA for Saudi Aribia. Nor did he know who they were.
Teenagers caught dealing marijuana are put in prison for years
because it's illegal because marijuana might be dangerous or it might
lead to harder drugs, while tobacco dealers — distributors of the
biggest killer drug in America, one that kills 430,000 Americans
per year — are not punished because it's perfectly legal because
everybody smokes tobacco. And the tobacco company executives also
claim that the dangers of tobacco have not been "adequately
proven".
(How many millions of corpses does it take to "adequately
prove it"?)
Which leads to: the American people are considered mature
enough and responsible enough
to make their own lifestyle choices when it comes to
the two deadliest killer drugs in America — tobacco and alcohol,
but the American people aren't mature and responsible enough to
be allowed to
choose whether to smoke marijuana.
There, the citizens are all irresponsible children who need to
be supervised by Big Brother.
In Texas, the nation's "war on drugs" is applied so
inconsistently
that it amounts to a race war waged by legal means:
"Although 72 percent of all illicit drug users are white and
only 15 percent
black, African-Americans account for 36.8 percent of those arrested
on drug
charges, constituting 42 percent of those held in federal prisions
for narcotics and nearly 60 percent of those held in [Texas] state jails.
In the 1990s the number of black inmates busted for narcotics increasedby 60 percent,
while that of whites increased by 46 percent.
In [Texas] state courts,
white drug users
are less likely to do time than blacks, with 32 percent of all
convicted white defendents
going to jail, while 46 percent of blacks end up imprisoned."
The Bush Dyslexicon, Observations on a National Disorder,
Mark Crispin Miller, page 229.
The Bush administration has gutted our Nuclear Security program,
eliminating
95% of the measley $300 million that was allocated to it.
They argue that our nuclear security is "good enough"
already. But the same Bush administration and the other
Republicans spend billions on tanks that the Army doesn't
even want, and billions on airplanes that the Air Force has
repeatedly said it doesn't want, to "keep us safe."
(Actually, it's to send the corporate welfare to the right
factories owned by the right campaign contributors.)
And they even want to spend hundreds of billions on a new Homeland
Security Force, but they won't spend $300 million on Nuclear Security...
Speaking of which, aren't we already spending trillions of dollars
on the
Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Coast Guard so that our homeland
will be secure? If they can't do it, then why are we spending the
money on them? What are they for, if not for Homeland Security?
Are they really just for killing people in foreign countries?
By Jove! I think she's got it!
(Sung to the tune of "The Rain in Spain" from
My Fair Lady)
The Army, Marines, Navy, and Air Force are for
killing foreigners in foreign countries.
Yes.
The Homeland Security Force is for killing Americans in America.
NO! The Homeland Security Force is for killing foreigners in America.
The Homeland Security Force is for killing foreigners in America.
Yes! By Jove! I think she's got it!
The uniformed Armed Forces are just for
killing foreigners in foreign countries.
Yes!
The Homeland Security Force is for killing foreigners in America.
Yes! By Jove! She's got it! She's really got it!
Speaking of our Fearless Leader, El Presidente,
Bush just signed the Farm Aid Bill. Apparently, he is in favor of forcing
welfare mothers to survive without help, but not corporate farmers.
But then again, Corporate Welfare is nothing new to Washington, is it?
Historically, the Communists and Nazis who tried to overthrow
the Constitutional democratic
government of the United States of America were routinely shot, but
when five Supreme Court justices — Sandra Day O'Conner, Clarence
Thomas, William Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia, and Anthony Kennedy —
did it, choosing to:
violate their oaths of office,
put politics above principle,
ignore the most basic principles of common law, like that someone
must have standing in a case in order to bring a lawsuit before the
court (which G. W. Bush did not have),
disobey the Constitutional instructions for conducting Presidential
elections, and steal a Presidential election,
tamper with an election: "DO NOT count the votes",
betray democracy, betray the public trust, disenfranchise
50,000,000 voters, and appoint their own boy President instead,
contradict their own previous declarations, precedents, and
rulings about judicial restraint, state's rights ("States have
rights only if I think the state is right."), and the impropriety
of any court issuing "one-time" "special-case"
unique decisions,
and manufacture a bunch of flimsy legalistic
excuses and pathetically obvious lies to cover up their criminal conduct,
they were not punished for their crimes, because they were wearing those
funny black robes while they committed their betrayal of the guys who
fought and died in World War II to keep America a democracy.
(We still have Manuel Noriega in a Federal prison in Florida for
disobeying the orders of his boss George Bush Sr., remember?
Maybe we should let Noriega out of prison, so he can teach Governor
Jebb Bush and Kathlene Harris how to hold "free and honest"
elections in Florida...
The way that Kathlene Harris' office purged 60,000 people, mostly black Democrats,
from the voter-registration lists just a few weeks before the
election makes the corruption and election tampering far too visible.
Jebb and Kathlene really need to learn a few tricks from Manuel...)
Similarly, fugitive Symbionese Liberation Army criminals —
Michael Bortin, Sara Jane Olson, Emily and Bill Harris, and James Kilgore —
who robbed a bank and murdered a woman in 1975, were recently arrested
and indicted after they had been fugitives for 26 or 27 years. But after
only a few months of people grumbling about the behavior of the Supreme
Court, we were urged, in the interests of "national unity",
to "forget it and move on", "it's old news",
"it's over."
That, in spite of the fact that it is easy to show that the Supreme Court
majority did far more harm to the USA and democracy
and our Constitutional way of government on Dec 12, 2000,
than those bank robbers and murderers ever did. By the way, what is
the statute of limitations for betraying one's nation, betraying
democracy, betraying the public trust, and violating one's oath of
office?
Are you going to tell me that there is no punishment for those crimes?
There must be a punishment for betraying your country, because
that fool John Walker Lindh (aka Abdul Hamid, aka Suleyman al-Faris)
who went over to Afghanistan and joined
the al-Qaeda is being tried for it, in spite of the fact that there
is not a shred of evidence that he ever fired a single shot at any
Americans...
He is charged with "conspiracy" to harm his country,
and "conspiracy" to harm American citizens.
The Supreme Court majority is certainly guilty of that — conspiring
to betray the Constitution, democracy, and the American people,
by putting party politics above justice and honesty.
Speaking of terrorists, when American citizens are hit by the
bombs of foreigners, it's "terrorism". But when American bombs
hit their civilians, it's just "collateral damage",
just an unfortunate but inevitable part of war.
They just did it again on June 30, 2002. U.S. forces bombed an
Afghanistani wedding party, killing 48 and injuring 100 innocent
civilians.
"It's unfortunate," they say,
"but it's just the way things go."
Those civilians made the
big mistake of living in poverty-stricken Afghanistan,
rather than oil-rich Saudi Arabia, where the September 11 terrorists
actually came from...
Heck, we've got to bomb somewhere, and you don't think we are going
to bomb our own oil supply, now do you?
(There is increasingly strong evidence that the royal family of
Saudi Arabia has been supporting terrorists for a long time, but
the Bush administration stubbornly ignores that. There seems to
be a conflict of interest with family oil contracts.)
Exact numbers are impossible to get, but it is entirely possible that
George W. Bush and gang have exacted revenge on the terrorists
for September 11 by killing more innocent civilians in Afghanistan
than we lost in New York, Pennsylvania, and Washington, D.C.
on September 11, 2001.
The heavy-handed, wide-spread use of overwhelmingly superior
firepower has killed many thousands of people,
all of whom were labeled "Taliban" or
"al-Qaeda", of course,
just like how all two million of the civilian casualties in
Viet Nam were called "Viet Cong".
There was a religious fanatic centuries ago, who said,
"Kill them all and let God sort them out."
Now that seems to be U.S. foreign policy.
On Jan. 27, 2004, NBC Evening News reported that the death toll of civilians
killed in Iraq in the Bush vs. Saddam War
had reached 10,000. That is a lot more than the 2749 Americans who
died on September 11. And Saddam wasn't even the guy who attacked America
and brought down the World Trade Center. It was
Osama bin Laden from Saudi Arabia, remember?
On April 16, 2004, Washington Week on Public Television reported that
the death toll was up to an estimated 14,000 Iraqis.
UPDATE: April 2005:
Those numbers are really obsolete now. Now the total is well over 100,000 Iraqi civilians,
a total which includes about 30,000 innocent children.
UPDATE again, April 2009:
Now they are talking about a million Iraqis who died.
The only guy allowed to bomb our people without being called a terrorist
in the last 20 years was Saddam Hussein, who hit a U.S. Navy ship,
the U.S.S. Stark, with a missile
and killed 37 sailors "by mistake".
He was allowed to slide on that one because he was our fair-haired
boy in the Middle East at the time, busy using poison gas on the
Iranians (whom the White House didn't like)...
(And, coincidentally, the previous time it happened was during the
Seven-Days War in 1967, when Israel hit the USS Liberty with a
missile and killed 34 U.S. Navy men. It just seems like, every time
we send a spy ship over there, one of our "friends" shoots
a missile into it. Obviously, we either need better friends or tougher
surveillance ships.)
Which brings up, whenever anyone else uses poison gas,
it's a horrible war crime, a violation of the Geneva Convention
and all kinds of international laws. But when Saddam Hussein
gassed the Iranians, the guys in Washington,
mostly Republicans — the Reagan administration — looked the other way
because they hated the Iranians.
And then they sold Saddam germ warfare equipment and supplies to go with
the poison gas stuff...
Just making sure he was well-equipped, and had everything he needed, for
killing Iranians and Kurds...
And Reagan's successor, King George I, continued the policy and
gave Saddam even more germs.
And now we have the problem of having to destroy that horrible stuff
before he uses it on us. Funny how that works.
One of the most outrageous pieces of hypocrisy was the Reagan Administration's
terrorist attack in Beirut, Lebanon in 1985. Bombing churches and killing
a lot of innocent worshippers is normally a terrible
terrorist act, right? Well, the Reagan administration wanted to assassinate
a Moslem cleric in Beirut, so they detonated a truck bomb in front of a mosque as the
worshippers were leaving. The bomb was timed to kill the maximum number of
people. Reagan's gang missed the cleric but killed 80 innocent
bystanders and wounded 250. When the Washington Post reported the
story three years later, the Reagan administration didn't even bother to deny
the crime.4
Back in the 1960s, the American people were horrified when the Ku Klux Klan
detonated bombs in Negro churches and killed little black girls in
Sunday school classes.
But President Ronald Reagan and Vice President George H. W. Bush apparently
decided that KKK conduct, bombing a congregation of worshippers,
was now okay, and even quite compatible with a moral Christian life.
What if some of the survivors of Reagan's bomb detonated a similar bomb in
front of a Christian church in some American city one Sunday morning?
Would we call that terrorism or just acceptable
foreign policy as usual? Now do you understand why some people over there call America
"the Great Satan"?
Note that inconsistency in moral issues really means no real
moral standards at all, like:
"Are there any conditions under which you would consider
killing innocent, unarmed people?"
Answer:
"No, absolutely not... It's unthinkable.
Well, unless they are Jews or Niggers or queers or Moslems; then it's okay
because they aren't innocent."
Or,
"Are there any conditions under which you would consider
killing innocent, unarmed people?"
Answer:
"No, absolutely not... It's unthinkable.
Well, unless we are talking about using cluster bombs in civilian neighborhoods
of Baghdad
during Shock And Awe. Then the military commanders decided that such
bombing was "appropriate". (NPR News, 19 March 2004)
Or,
"Are there any conditions under which you would consider
selling chemical and biological weapons to a murdering dictator?"
Answer:
"No, absolutely not... It's unthinkable.
Well... unless he is secretly working for us (like Saddam Hussein) and using the stuff
on somebody we don't like (Iranians)... Then it's okay."
Which brings up, guess who put Osama bin Laden in power, and
gave him lots of guns and money?
The CIA and George Bush (the elder), of course,
the same people as who put Manuel Noriega, General Pinochet, and
Saddam Hussein in power. But the USA doesn't support terrorists, they
say.
Which also leads to, today George W. Bush and gang are demanding that
the USA be exempt from any future war crimes prosecutions by the
World Court.
They are threatening to pull out of the peace-keeping mission
in the former-Yugoslavian republics like Bosnia, Croatia, and Kosovo
unless they get their own way.
Nobody else in the world can commit war crimes; they
should all obey the laws and principles that the Allies established
at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials. Other countries should all be
held accountable
for their actions — their leaders should be taken to the Hague and put
on trial for war crimes — but American military forces and the U.S. President
shouldn't have to go through such an embarrassing ordeal.
I guess G. W. Bush already knows who is guilty of what.
Obviously, he has good reason to fear justice.
And over on the A.A. front:
A.A. true believers claim that Bill Wilson was a saint who was
Guided by God
when he wrote the Twelve Steps.
They claim that Bill Wilson was so holy that we should hang on every
word he ever said or wrote — that we should reverently pore over his
teachings in
books like Alcoholics Anonymous,
Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, and
As Bill Sees It for the rest
of our lives, to get our needed spiritual guidance and the
answers to all of our questions. (I wish I were exaggerating here...)
If you point out that Bill Wilson was a
lazy, lying self-indulgent
philandererwho stole all of the Big Book
money, they will
say "That is irrelevant because it's all ancient history", or
"Bill's unfaithfulness to his wife doesn't detract from
his spirituality."
To get you to join, A.A. says that you aren't responsible for
your actions — that you are
"powerless over alcohol".
But then they tell you that you must assume responsibility for all
of your actions, and make long lists of all of your sins, and confess
them all to your sponsor and God. That is just one of many
bait and switch stunts
that A.A. pulls on newcomers.
They say that A.A. is a program of "Rigorous Honesty",
but they also tell you to "Fake It Until You Make It"
and "Act As If"
and "Don't reveal the intensely religious nature of the program to
new prospects;
it might 'arouse
their prejudices'".
Just dole out the truth to newcomers by
"Teaspoons,
Not Buckets." Oh, and never reveal
the horrendous
failure rate of A.A..
Just start each meeting with the same tired old line,
"RARELY HAVE we seen a person fail who has thoroughly
followed our path..."
"We offer unconditional love and acceptance.
Let us love you until you can love yourself.
Oh, by the way, don't fuck with us.
If you dare to criticize A.A. or Bill Wilson, we'll hate you
and call you names."
The A.A. true believers are quick to accuse any competitors
who make any money from treating alcoholics of
"only
being in it for the money", but they never see that in
themselves or in their own organizations.
For instance, I recently heard Jack Trimpey criticized by the
A.A. faithful for selling a set of
video tapes that teach about recognizing the Addictive Voice,
and how to defy it and quit drinking
(the AVRT technique).
They said that he was "only in it for the money"
because he sold the tapes.
On the other hand, the A.A. true believers have no criticism
of the Alcoholics
Anonymous organization for making millions of dollars by selling
copies of the Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous,
as well as several other books,
and by taking a cut of every basket that gets passed around.
Indeed, the A.A. headquarters, the G.S.O. (General Service Organization),
says, in its financial reports, that it has $10 million of
"cash reserves" in the bank and in safe investments.
Likewise, the faithful have no criticism of the Hazelden Foundation
for making millions of dollars by publishing a whole library of pro-A.A. books
and fanatical 12-step-oriented
cult propaganda.
The publishing arm of Alcoholics Anonymous,
Alcoholics Anonymous
World Services, Inc. (AAWS) has even been committing perjury
in the courts of both
Mexico
and
Germany,
lying to shut down A.A. members who have
been carrying the message to poor alcoholics by printing
and giving away, or selling extremely inexpensively,
copies of the old, out-of-copyright, first edition version of
the Big Book.
In Mexican courts, AAWS lied and said that the Big Book was
new and still under copyright. They even lied and declared on the copyright form that
the
Big Book was written rather recently by a guy named
"Wyne Parks", not by Bill Wilson, so it was still
covered by the copyright.
In Mexico, copyright violations are criminal offenses, not civil
offenses, so the Mexican A.A. member who had been helping the poor
alcoholics was sentenced to a year in prison.
AAWS is actually doing that kind of stuff to good A.A. members
who are helping the poor and "carrying the message."
But the A.A. true believers will never say that AAWS is
only in it for the money.
Likewise, addiction treatment clinics and residential treatment
facilities that are based on the Twelve Steps are never accused of
only being in it for the money, even if they charge $15,000 for
a 28-day stay (Hazelden and The
Betty Ford Clinic);
it is always "the other people",
who don't believe in the Twelve Steps, who are only in it for the
money...
There, the "inconsistency" is out-and-out hypocrisy.
Footnotes:
1)
Baer, Robert, Sleeping With The Devil; How Washington Sold Our Soul For Saudi Crude,
page 195.
2)
Baer, Robert, Sleeping With The Devil; How Washington Sold Our Soul For Saudi Crude,
page 20.
3)
Subhi Hadidi, Al-Quds al-Arabia (Palestinian expatriate),
Can Saudi Arabia Save Itself?, London, England, Nov. 28, 2003,
reprinted in World Press Review, Vol. 51, No. 2, Feb. 2004, pages 9 and 10.
The Bush Dyslexicon, Observations on a National Disorder
Mark Crispin Miller
W.W. Norton and Company, New York and London, 2001.
ISBN: 0-393-04183-2
Dewey: 973.931 M649b 2001
The Betrayal of America, How the Supreme Court Undermined the Constitution
and Chose Our President Vincent Bugliosi
Thunder' Mouth Press / Nation Books, New York, 2001.
ISBN: 1-56025-355-X
Dewey: 342.075 B931b 2001
Supreme Injustice, How the High Court Hijacked Election 2000
Alan M. Dershowitz
Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York, 2001.
ISBN: 0-19-514827-4
Dewey: 342.075 D438s 2001
Sleeping With The Devil; How Washington Sold Our Soul For Saudi Crude
Robert Baer
Crown Publishers, New York, 2003.
ISBN: 1-4000-5021-9
Dewey: 327.538 B141s 2003
Robert Baer is a former CIA agent who has a lot of expertise about the Middle East.
He has written a very disturbing and revealing book here, which basically says
that the days of the House of Sa'ud are numbered, and when it goes, so does our
dependable oil supply.
Baer says that the Saudi royal family is paying off the terrorists and extreme
Islamic fundamentalists to keep them from attacking the royal family, but that is
an "end game" — only a matter of buying time while the terrorist
organizations grow richer and more powerful, and the non-royal population of
the country becomes poorer and increasingly dissatisfied with the extravagant
profligate behavior of the thousands of high-living Saudi princes.
Baer says that there are 30,000 royals in Saudi Arabia, and they have
a population explosion problem: each prince has a dozen or two wives,
and many have 50 to 70 children, and all of the royal children expect and demand a
life of opulent luxury while the common people can't even get a job.
At that birth rate, in another generation, there could be many hundreds of thousands
of royals for the oil dole to support — and the money has actually already run out.
The hey-day when Saudi Arabia had more money than sand is gone. Now they are borrowing
money to keep the circus going. Sooner or later, the situation will
become unstable and blow up. And Baer shows us many reasons why the time will
probably be sooner than later.
And yes, the money that financed the 9/11 attacks on the USA came from Saudi Arabia.
And the Washington politicians know it, or should know it,
but they are too busy taking big campaign contributions and other huge payoffs
from the Saudis to make a fuss about the situation in Saudi Arabia —
"sleeping with the devil". But the times they are a'changin'.
See quotes.
