Greetings.
Today we have an update on the keddes, a few photos, a little on Obama and Osama, and a preview from my upcoming book, tenatively titled “Would-Be Super-Heroes: An Official Training Guide”.
Let’s rock…
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Kedde Update
As it turns out, Gato, aka Kofte (Turkish word for “meat ball”), has actually been a good friend of the neighbors for two years, since she was a kitten. They knew she was pregnant, and have been looking for the new little ones for nearly two weeks, and were very pleased to know they were safe. And they gladly accepted the box full of them, offering me full visitation rights.
Gato has actually helped with the visitation as she’s tried to sneak them back into the wardrobe in the bedroom on two occasions. That gives me the opportunity to take them back next door and place them back in the box. Merhabas all around, pet Uno, Dos and Tres, and wait for the next attempt. Its a fun little ritual.
Gato gets fresh fish daily, and an assortment of fishbones and other left-overs from our neighbor’s cafe. Life is good for all.
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You all remember Sinan - the skateboarder that took a spill out in front of the Hippie Pad a few weeks ago. He’s dropped by a number of times just to chat (and use his English), and we’ve become pretty good friends. He’s a very sharp kid, beyond his 13 years.
It turns out his father has authored 5 books, and last night he dropped by to gift one to me. I don’t read Turkish, but I’ll have Belgin read it to me.
We had a more posed photo together, but Sinan didn’t like it. “My smile wasn’t from the soul”, he told me. I like this kid…
These are our Italian friends that visited last week… Emmanuela on the left, and Susan - who was my host in Florence a couple of years ago - on the right. This was at the top of the mountain on the big island… We made it just in time for a beautiful sunset. Lovely people… We had a great time.
This photo was from our climb up the mountain. Beautiful kids… Had to throw this one in there…
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Super-Heroes, Obama, Osama
About a third of my book is related to current events. Afterall, Super-Heroes need to be informed to what is really happening in the world. And since the DNC has been going on in Denver, and since so many people want change right now and Obama pledges “change” about 100 times a day, I thought it made sense to cover a few things here.
One very fair question is whether it makes any difference whether we elect McCain or Obama. I’ll tell you that as far as our governments propensity to wage wars, it will be the same regardless of which of these two we elect. Both have pledged to be warmongers.
Russo begged us to “Stop being good Democrats. Stop being good Republicans. Start being good Americans.”
Great advice.
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We all know McCain is insane - he sings songs about bombing other countries that pose no threat to the U.S., and then laughs about it. He’s a complete sociopath, and doesn’t even try to hide it.
Obama… When I first saw him speak a few years ago, my thought was “My god, this guy is good. I hope he’s on our side.” Sadly, he’s one of “them”. Besides choosing warmonger and the Patriot Act- / MCA-loving Biden as his Vice, he’s got Zbignew Brzezinski as his key foreign policy advisor.
I’ve talked before about PNAC, and its neo-con founders… Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Pearle and others. These guys fumble around like the Keystone Cops compared to Brezinski’s surgical precision. He was the architect of the CIA’s involvement in Afghanistan and funding the radical Islamists that later became known as al Qaeada and bin Laden. The role in Afghanistan then was against the Soviet Union, and now its to position for war against Russia.
Obama has called to reduce troops in Iraq and increase troops in Afghanistan to “go get Osama”. He, like McCain, has also taken the bi-party line of facing down the “threat from Russia”, even though he clearly knows that Georgia’s vicious, unprovoked attack on the civilian South Ossetians was U.S.-originated action to lure Russia into a military conflict. The U.S. has been provoking Russia for the last few years diplomatically, and now its militarily. This is very dangerous to everybody in the world.
Obama has pledged to continue the Global War on Terror, the farce that it is.
For those who need a little background on Afghanistan, I’ll now share a short bit from my upcoming book with you…
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The Manufacturing of an Enemy I:
9/11 as Justification for War in Afghanistan
The Bush Administration announced at 11 o’clock on the morning of the attacks that they were the work of Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. The morning headlines of the 12th of September announced “state-sponsored” terrorism, and called for military retaliation against Afghanistan. That’s a pretty quick conclusion by any measure.
A few facts are in order…
It is widely acknowledged that Al-Qaeda came to be a force under Osama bin Laden (a Suadi Arabian) in the 1980s as part of the right-wing Islamists’ resistance against a Marxist-leaning Afghani government, one that proclaimed, “… women, by right, must have equal education, job security, health services, and free time to rear a healthy generation for building the future of the country.” The right-wing Islamists, who were in the minority in Afghanistan then, were against such liberalized, secularized policies, but didn’t have the power themselves to prevent them. The Marxist movement in Afghanistan was influenced in part by the close proximity to the former Soviet Union.
In 1978, the Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviets was still raging, and it was President Jimmy Carter who approved CIA funding on the advice of Zbigniew Brzezinski, his National Security Advisor, for the purpose of challenging the government. Brzezinski accurately predicted that such a move would lure the former Soviet Union into intervention in response, and his hope of making it “the Soviets’ Vietnam” - a long, costly war they could not win – also proved accurate. This much was stated by Brzezinski himself.
Thus began “the largest covert operation in the history of the CIA”, according to Middle East expert Fred Halliday. The CIA’s activities were furthered under the Reagan Adminstration with funding assistance from Saudi Arabia. Support of Al-Qaeda and other radical Islamist groups continued under President Clinton in the Balkans, among other places. The end result for the people of Afghanistan was over a decade of war and destruction from CIA-backed extremis and from the Soviet armies, followed by seven years of terror and murder under the Taliban regime that took control in 1996. The U.S. had acheived its objectives.
Since the 1970s, al Qaeda and related terror organizations were funded – billions of dollars – by the U.S. government, directly and via its association with the Pakistani intelligence service known as the I.S.I. In fact, its now known that the supposed 9/11 ring-leader, Mohammed Atta, received his funding directly from the head of I.S.I., General Mahmoud Ahmad. Interestingly enough, General Ahmad, spent September 3rd-14th of 2001 on an official visit to the United States, meeting with CIA Director George Tenet, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, and Secretary of State General Colin Powell.
So now we know that there were close ties established for years between the CIA, bin Laden and other radical Islamist group, and between the CIA and the Pakistani intelligence, and between Pakistani Intelligence and the supposed ring-leader of the 9/11 events. And finally, the head of the I.S.I was the honored guest of the Bush Admistration on the days surrounding the 9/11 attacks. All of this is well documented.
Meanwhile, on September 10th, 2001, Osama bin Laden was admitted to the Pakistani military hospital in Rawalpindi for kidney dialysis, according to a 2003 report by CBS’ Dan Rather. Rawalpindi is known to be crawling with dozens, if not hundreds of U.S. military intelligence and terror-training officers. And just a few months before, in July of 2001, the CIA met with bin Laden while he was undergoing treatment at the American Hospital in Dubai. For a man who had long been on the FBI’s Most-Wanted list, even prior to 9/11, our government wasn’t trying very hard to capture him. In truth, bin Laden was, and is, a highly valuable CIA asset.
The U.S.’ war in Afghanistan was launched on October 7th, 2001, just four weeks after the 9/11 attacks. The intention was never to find Osama bin Laden… The U.S. government needs a “most-wanted” villain loose somewhere in the world so that they could be sure to always have an enemy available. The story goes much deeper than this, I’m just giving you the short story.
So… Why, then, did we go to war in Afghanistan?
Intended Outcomes
The actual intentions for the war in Afghanistan were to:
A) Take control of – and expand - the Afghan poppy crops (the raw materials for the world heroine trade) so that the CIA can use the profits for other covert operations,
B) Secure a military presence in the region to protect Unocal’s planned 1,000 mile oil pipeline, and
C) Establish a network of U.S. military bases in the region, and on Iran’s eastern border, with which to launch other wars, including quite possibly, Russia (more on this later).
This was the first step in the fraudulent “Global War on Terror”, enabled only by the attacks of 9/11. It was the resulting fear and anger of the American public that stopped us from demanding more facts before sending our soldiers off to foriegn lands.
Fear and anger… We’ll look at these closer later. Both are dangerous to everybody involved.
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Let’s do a quick review on how our government has performed against its actual intentions in Afghanistan, as stated above…
A) Increased Poppy Production
The Bush Administration itself points to a tremendous increase in poppy production. In 2001, prior to our troops landing there, the White House estimated that there was a little over 4,000 acres cultivated. In 2002, poppy fields covered 77,000 acres, and in 2003, 152,000 acres. In 2006, there were 430,000 acres. You see the trend.
And that begs the question… Is our government really for or against the poppy production?
In 2006, CIA Director Michael Hayden told us, “”Right now the issue is stability. . . Going in… and attacking the drug trade actually feeds the instability that you want to overcome.” A quick decoding of his message tells us that the “warlords” who are responsible for the production are actually the same right-wing terrorists that our government has been funding and protecting for years, and “we need them for stability”, Hayden seems to be telling us.
A 2007 United Nations report put the value at $4 billion, $3 billion of which was going to “insurgents, warlords and local officials”. Afghanistan’s poppy currently supplies about 50% of the heroine used in the United States, and about 75% of Europe’s demand.
With 36,000 U.S. military troops on the ground (and more on the way) and another 30,000 NATO troops, its beyond imagination that that this is a problem beyond the control of the U.S. government. The truth is quite the opposite, its going just as planned.
B) Support of the Oil Pipelines
In June 1998, John Maresca, a Unocal Corporation executive, testified before Congress that its proposed pipeline to move one million barrels of oil per day through Afghanistan “… is not going to be built until there is a single Afghan government. That’s the simple answer”, apparently alluding to the necessity of consolidating power under the Taliban regime. Later that year, Unocal had to pull back on its plan for the pipeline in light of a public outcry for dealing with such a ruthless, violent and oppressive government.
In 2003, President Bush named former Unocal consultant Zalimay Khalilzad, who had earlier initiated talks with the Taliban, as U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan. Its no coincidence that Bush had already, in December 2001, appointed Hamid Karzai, who has also been linked to Unocal through Khalilzad, as his Special Envoy to Afghanistan. In 2002, Karzai was appointed head of the interim-government, and in 2004 he became the President of Afghanistan in a very questionable election.
Its also interesting to note that Karzai was a leader of the hard-right Islamist terror groups in the 1980s that the CIA funded in the rebellion against the secular, liberalized Afghan goverment that led to the Soviet invasion mentioned above, and that during this period Karzai had direct contact with both then-Vice-President George H.W. Bush, and then-CIA Director William Casey.
I know, it all sounds kind of creepy. And it is.
So… What happened with the pipeline deal that Unocal was so interested in?
Well, Unocal was ultimately bought out by Chevron. And while there is no official word as yet on the pipeline deal, in June of 2008, one international columnist, Eric Margolis, quoted unnamed Pakistani and Indian officials as saying a deal had in fact been signed. We’ll have to wait and see whether the our government was ultimately successful here.
C) Establishing Military Bases
Check. Five airbases to date. 30,000 plus U.S. troops on the ground and more on the way, plus NATO’s 30,000.
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Better Not to Vote at All
Neither candidate has addressed the real problems in the economy, or even admitted that there are real problems. Both have pledged to send more soldiers to die around the world. Both will place American and everybody else at risk of nuclear war with Russia, China and possibly India, as that coalition tightens under threats from the U.S.
This is the same path we’ve been on, and both are promising more of the same.
Better we just ignore the elections… Take a stand to decline participation in the farce of a system that will not allow any real alternatives to conquest and bankruptcy.
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As I explain in the book… This is not pessism. We have to acknowledge the problems before we can go about creating a new path. If we are unwilling to call things what they are, we will have no control over the outcome.
Somehow, against all warnings from the great thinkers of the world, government and the political system has become a spectator sport. And then we just wonder why things suck.
Let’s take a stand and boycott the entire process. That is, unless you like the way things are going.
Peace. Love.
~ Alias
Love your thoughts Bro! Love you.
Why does everyone have a haircut except . . . . . . ., well at least you shaved
Yer poor old grey haired Pappy
Comment by Mr B. — September 5, 2008 @ 5:05 pm
dolce vita. still waiting for the book. u promised for the mid september.
Comment by mystictr — September 4, 2008 @ 9:48 pm