Die Tookie Die
Over lunch today the execution of Tookie Williams came up. Two guys started reveling in the man's death. When they started talking about details of the case against him, they had it all wrong... of course. So just how could they feel so strongly that it was justified?
I just can't understand anyone who would revel in the death of anyone else. It shows that they are morally bankrupt. It's no wonder that the Republican party is so appealing to them.
Of course, these opinions weren't their own. They were just parroting. They were trying to get a rise out of anyone who might disagree with them. Forget that we're talking about a government sanctioned murder. Forget any question about whether his death was deserved. Piss off some imaginary opponent that lives only in your head. Don't bother thinking for yourself.
It should be no surprise that both of these guys wear their Christianity on their sleaves. They are as fashion conscious as any 14 year old girl after all.
This culture is depraved. A culture that can take such an intense subject so lightly is chronically ill. That these people who displayed this idiocy think they are the only truly decent human beings is the most disturbing symptom of our sick culture.
- posted by Slonob @ 8:00 PM 1 comments
They'll Oppose Anyone
Prior to the openings on the Supreme Court and in concert with the "nuclear option" putsch (okay slight exaggeration), the right wing noise machine began the clatter. In radio and TV ads they insisted that the liberals will oppose anyone, regardless of merit.
TV Ad from Progress for America
Just look how right "Progess" for America is:
Kristol Questions Hume's Parrot Routine
I think we can see behind the curtain a bit here. Kristol calls Hume on it when Hume repeats the spin from the White House. Hume plays dumb forcing Kristol to admit that he talked to the same people in the administration.
Also, it's funny to see the apparent taint of activism directed at right wingers. You see, any activism is un-American according to right wing noise makers. But it seems this "activism" swear word can be fired in any direction. That silver bullet doesn't kill only liberals. Kinda Joe McCarthy I suppose. Careful with that axe right wing demagogs. It just might come swinging your way.
Progress for America
- posted by Slonob @ 9:17 PM 0 comments
Wendy McElroy
Wendy McElroy is a right wing propagandist who is sponsored by the Independent Institute. Her theme is anti-feminism. Although, she brands it as a real, not coopted feminism. She also is open about calling herself an anarchist. (I sincerely hope the anarchocapitalists begin to be as open about their goals as Wendy. Their arrogance does not allow them to see that they are drifting further away from the ideals of most Americans.)
Wendy is yet another faux intellectual adding herself to the noise from the right. Her themes are so in line with this machine, that she appears to construct her articles from fridge magnets. These magnets appear in the mail every day, it seems. For instance, compare her article on the NYT that I critiqued below to this article by Arnold Beichman and published in the Weekly Standard 13 days after McElroy's column.
Wendy appears to be a harmless blow hard, but there are words, phrases, and entire myths between all the nonsense. She is a guilty pleasure to reactionary right wingers. She is the answer to the feminazi. She fights fire with fire. She is a feminist after all. She allows Joe American to reconcile the love for his liberated wife and the anxiety her liberation brings. But that's just the empty calories. The meat is the persistent mantras: political correctness is everywhere, unions hate America, liberals hate America, neocons are the only sane people left, only liberals have inconsistent principals (if they have any at all).
- posted by Slonob @ 10:27 PM 0 comments
Wendy McElroy, Oh Wendy II
The Anti-Male New York Times
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You go girl. And that David Brooks. He's a big dumb conservative faker. Bush could be launching a war against all of Europe and that guy would shake his pom pons for Bush. C'mon! And what about the NYT's promotion of the war? Isn't that why Judith Miller is in jail? Oh wait, no. We still think the war is a good idea.
Perhaps nothing else could be expected from the leadership of publisher Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. Edwin Diamond's book Behind the Times quotes Sulzberger as stating, "We can no longer offer our readers a predominantly white, straight, male vision of events."
Wait. Give me a mirror. She's talking about me now. Is this a conspiracy to make me a powerless white male? How could they!? Is that even possible? Wow what a left wing cabal this must be! I bet it's those penis denying male weenies in the Toyota Priuses and such. I bet they sold us out!
Former Times reporter Nan Robertson explains that Sulzberger calls himself a feminist and she points to his deep admiration of author Marilyn French, renowned for male-bashing. In her book The War Against Women, French states, "Men's need to dominate women may be based in their own sense of marginality or emptiness; we do not know its root, and men are making no effort to discover it."
Marilyn French is a male basher? Well since she didn't change her name to Marilyn Freedom, she must be some kind of left wing radical.
For years, the Times — America's "newspaper of record" — has been a vehicle for political correctness in both subtle and blatant ways. Examining its policies provides an interesting window into the anti-male and liberal bias rampant in most current media.
How dare they try to be subtle. How deceptive! Wait, could Wendy be playing the same game? Is she just a right wing purveyor of political correctness?
You'd better watch it. If you're not careful you'll be labeled a male basher. No, we don't need a definition of what that is. We'll leave it for Wendy to dictate for us.
Those policies dictate:
1) Who is hired.
In an article entitled "The Degradation of the New York Times," Joseph Epstein — former editor of the American Scholar — writes, "the true politics of the new New York Times are to be found at work on the issues of feminism, racism, homosexuality — usually funneled through the totem of 'diversity,' which, reinforced by political correctness, I prefer to think of as totalitarian pluralism." Epstein adds, "The way Sulzberger has backed up his conviction is not only through the writing he publishes but also through hiring and promotion practices inside the paper."
Supporting material for the hiring practices? How did Brooks get through? Oh yeah. He's a nasty faker. No wonder he's so totally into Bush.
No wonder Blair was forgiven over and over again for gross inaccuracies and flat fabrication. Times Executive Editor Howell Raines' explanation was, "as a white man from Alabama" he gave Blair too many chances. Would another reporter, if he was also a white man from Alabama, been given no chance at all?
Not supported and not supportable. They hate red staters at the NYT. Here's the proof!
2) Which stories receive coverage.
William McGowan's iconoclastic book Coloring the News chronicles the media distortions caused by political correctness. McGowan is especially critical of the Times, which in its crusade for "diversity" and sensitivity to minorities, has sacrificed both accuracy and balanced coverage. For example, he points out, "The New York Times runs a long, admiring article identifying Patrick Chavis, a black doctor in Los Angeles, as evidence that affirmative action in medical schools is working the way it was meant to, by bringing good doctors into minority neighborhoods. Later, after many botched operations and a patient's death, Chavis loses his license. The Times never reports it."
Chant after Wendy: diversity, diversity, eeeeevil diversity. See. If you say something a number of times it's true. Can we learn ANYTHING from the Bush Administration. Duh.
3) How studies and statistics are reported.
In his article "Unfit to Print: Case Study in Deceit at the New York Times," men's rights activist Carey Roberts described the misrepresentation of a report from the General Accounting Office (GAO) on the status of women's health research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
You mean they refuse to report studies from fly-by-night organizations that all lead back to the same money source: a group of billionaire right wing radicals who want 19th century unbridled capitalism to return?
The "Results in Brief" section of the study (pp. 6-7) offers its conclusions, "In the past decade, NIH has made significant progress in implementing a strengthened policy on including women in clinical research... More than 50 percent of the participants in clinical research studies that NIH funded in fiscal year 1997 were women, according to NIH. Even when studies with female-only or male-only protocols are removed from the data, the proportion of women enrolled exceeded 50 percent."
And this proves...?
The GAO report shows that the NIH actually neglected men's health in 1997. For example, men constituted only 37% of participants in extramural research studies (Figure 1); 740 female-only studies were funded, but only 244 male-only ones (Table 2). Nevertheless, the Times story — written by a medical reporter who should know how to read NIH studies — bore the headline "Research Neglects Women..." The slighting of men was not mentioned.
And this proves...? The slighting of men? That's it. I'm going to run my Excursion right over one of those Priuses tonight.
Such exposés in the powerful Times have real-world impact. As Roberts points out, "Responding to the public outcry over the fabricated 'neglect' of women's health, the Women's Health Office Act, S. 2675, was introduced in the 106th Congress. The bill was read on June 6, 2000, just five weeks after the Times article appeared."
You mean people didn't read the cited material! I bet Fox News readers read all cited material and don't need some half assed paraphrasing with arrows pointing to push button words and phrases. What kind of jack asses read this paper.. this NYT?
4) Which books are reviewed.
In his book Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say, author Warren Farrell carefully documents the extreme bias with which the inordinately influential Times Book Review section chooses titles to spotlight. Farrell writes, "man-haters like Marilyn French and Andrea Dworkin" have "every book they write reviewed while books written by men who articulate the issues of adult men with compassion and criticize the feminist perspective have none of those books reviewed."
Farrell comments on the impact of the NYT bias. "When The New York Times Book Review ignores a book it sends a message: 'You are not one of the players.' Other media take the cue. When it systematically ignores books on a topic with one point of view and gives double reviews to books with the opposite perspective, the violation is not just one of journalistic ethics, but of the responsibility of power."
So Marilyn IS a man-hater! I knew it. I bet they don't bother to review Wendy's material either. That's it. It's proven. And Dr. Laura? No way man. Uh uh. Coulture? I bet those fuzzy sweater wearing liberals are afraid of her. She's a dominatrix, after all. I bet they don't even review that faker Brooks' books. That's how come we know he's a faker.
The Times is no longer a player on any team that values truth, accuracy, or men. The Old Gray Lady is like the Old Gray Mare...she ain't what she used to be. Putting her to pasture would be a kindness.
Ah ha ha. Ho ho. Ha. Ho. Wait, can Wendy do that? In time. In time.
- posted by Slonob @ 10:09 PM 0 comments
Wendy McElroy, Oh Wendy
The following is in response to "Why Men Earn More", Thursday, February 24, 2005
It has stirred vigorous and predictable debate about what causes the "wage gap" by which the average female employee is said to earn approximately 80 cents for every dollar paid to a man.
Is there or isn't there a wage gap? I don't see anything in this article that truly refutes the existence of a gap. So why the quotes?
But what I view as Farrell’s most controversial point remains undiscussed. Namely, should women use affirmative action--that is, government-mandated preferences-- to ‘correct’ the free market’s wage gap and make more money? Farrell, who is usually associated with male empowerment, says "yes."
I like the emphasis on 'correct'. That's subtle stuff. I'm sure that 'correct' is a direct quote from many places within the book. Nice of Farrell to include such an obvious pushbutton.
Be careful you authors who have not been endorsed by the right wing noise machine. If the word correct appears anywhere in your text, it will be quoted with the same attention to context that Wendy has given here.
The first part of the book revolves around refuting feminism’s explanation of the wage gap: namely that it results from rampant discrimination against women in the workplace.
For example, women’s lack of access to various well-paying blue collar jobs due to union policies and attitudes. But addressing such arguments is not the book’s purpose. Refuting the specific feminist claim of discrimination is. And Farrell ably accomplishes this goal on two levels.
Can she support this? I doubt it. Seems like a reckless point of view steeped in dogma. Surely if these are policies, she can produce direct quotes from said policies. Attitudes are a bit less tangible and keep her safe from scrutiny, right?
But quite another factor underlies the situations that continue to make men "more disposable": government policy. Indeed, even private industry commonly implements preference for women’s safety out of fear of lawsuits for harms such as exposure to chemicals or other stress during pregnancy.
This presumes that you buy the anti-litigation dogma. Either that or it wants to promote it. Is that the point of the whole article... to get her own myths propagated? Doesn't she need to support such a statement? I suppose not since she's singing to the choir.
A government that discriminates on the basis of sex or race violates a basic principle of justice. The law must apply to every human being equally.
This I can agree with. I don't need the dogma to get there. Equal protection under the law is fundamental. However, some conservatives still support affirmative action. Much of the legislation we live with today comes from Nixon and Ford. At issue is institutional dsicrimination. If it ever existed than how is it undone? But let's not distract ourselves with a real debate.
This is the core of my disagreement: Farrell believes in affirmative action and, so, advises women to ‘game the system’ in order to make money. I reject affirmative action and, so, seek to eliminate the system in order to make justice.
Nevertheless, "Why Men Earn More" goes on my reference shelf as a book I will quote and re-read despite disagreements.
Well good for you Wendy.
- posted by Slonob @ 9:51 PM 0 comments
Thomas Friedman, Spokesman For Idiocy
By John Chuckman
Devoted to human freedom, you must embrace even the freedom to express stupidity. So I can happily report that a week ago at this writing Thomas Friedman struck a mighty blow for freedom with one of the dumbest columns he has ever written, "Giving the Hatemongers No Place to Hide" (July 22, NYT), although his regular readers may not forgive my distinguishing this column from his regular output.
The theme of the column is captured by one of the pithy bromides of which he is so fond, "Guess what: words matter." To make sure that you understand, Friedman repeats this a number of times with slight variations, a favorite technique of propagandists and, for that matter, police interrogators. You can't help smiling for here is a man who has spent his entire adult life twisting and torturing words to give imperial hubris a happy face.
As we will see, the words that really matter to Friedman are the ones that disagree with his view of the world and current events. Like an unpleasant, spoiled child Friedman uses a tantrum in print to get what he wants.
Friedman starts in his usual breezy, know-it-all style, "I wasn't surprised…. And I won't be surprised…" at discoveries by English police at a bookstore in Leeds. These include video games, Islamic video games. Friedman ominously explains, "The video games feature apocalyptic battles between defenders of Islam and opponents." I couldn't help thinking of General Ripper darkly telling a stunned Peter Sellers as Mandrake about fluoride, children, and water in Doctor Strangelove. Good God, Friedman lives in a country up to its armpits in violent video games, violent books and magazines, violent music, and a hell of a lot more genuine violence than the English can even imagine.
Friedman asks, "If the primary terrorism problem we face today can effectively be addressed only by a war of ideas within Islam - a war between life-affirming Muslims against those who want to turn one of the world's great religions into a death cult - what can the rest of us do?"
Note the cheap trick here of identifying Islam in general with the world's terrorism problem even while ostensibly distinguishing between life-affirming and death-cult Muslims. Islam in general bears the burden of correction for its minority of extremists. These are the words of someone with murky and undeclared motives.
Terrorism, like any other criminal behavior, is the sole responsibility of those committing the acts, not of the religion or the people with which they happen to be associated. The number of people involved in events in New York was about twenty. The number in London maybe a dozen. The world has about a billion Muslims. Friedman simply has no shame.
He glosses over, another favorite technique of Friedman's, the death-cult wing of every religion, letting it apply only to Islam. What about lunatics in America who turn Christianity into death cults like those of Jim Jones (900 deaths) or Waco (about 100 deaths)? There are dozens of these, not to mention the weird Aryan-nation people who live in the woods and mountains armed to the teeth. American fundamentalists have gathered innumerable times on hillsides awaiting the end of the world. Many of them stocked their basements with guns, ammo, and freeze-dried provisions awaiting the calamity that was supposed to occur when the calendar turned to the year 2000. What about the pictures of Marines earnestly kneeling at some make-shift alter in Iraq before they head out to kill people? What about America's Eric Rudolphs? Its Timothy McVeighs?
And how can you apply the adjective life-affirming to thousands of ferociously angry settlers in Gaza determined to rip down every brick in place, cut down every tree, root up every vine, people who have been widely reported to be poisoning the land they will have to surrender? It seems to me that Israel itself represents the focus of just such a struggle going on in Judaism, the only difference between it and what we see in Islam being one of numbers.
One thing is certain, if you tried smearing Judaism in general with the bloody excesses of Israeli settlers or charming figures like the late bloodthirsty Rabbi Kahane and his followers, you'd call down a firestorm of anti-Semitism accusations on your head. Yet this is precisely what Friedman feels perfectly free to do with Islam.
Friedman answers his own question, as he always does, another technique familiar to propagandists the world over, "We need to shine a spotlight on hate speech wherever it appears. The State Department produces an annual human rights report. Henceforth, it should also produce a quarterly War of Ideas Report, which would focus on those religious leaders and writers who are inciting violence against others."
If he stopped at the first sentence, he'd have my support. There is a need to shine light on hatred, genuine hatred, something that is abundant in Friedman's homeland. Radio, television, and newspaper columns pour out hatred in the United States around the clock. Dozens of columnists and commentators spew the stuff. Actually, it is this cacophony of hate pervading American media that allows people like Friedman to pass for reasonable, but he is not reasonable by comparison with what is heard and read in other Western countries.
The State Department's annual human rights report is a document with ghastly shortcomings. Perhaps Friedman likes it because it reflects many of his own qualities - arrogant, insulting, inaccurate, and deliberately incomplete. Everyone outside the United States recognizes the report as biased and used mainly as a bludgeon against countries from which the United States seeks concessions of some kind, usually economic. Incomplete? Just ask Amnesty International, the United States itself very much belongs on any such list compiled without bias: police and prison brutality there are routine, daily events.
Having laid down a principle that seems plausible, Friedman goes on with another of his favorite techniques, casually stretching a principle beyond recognition, trying to make it fit a case it plainly does not fit. Friedman says, "We also need to spotlight the 'excuse makers,' the former State Department spokesman James Rubin said. After every major terrorist incident, the excuse makers come out to tell us why imperialism, Zionism, colonialism or Iraq explains why the terrorists acted. These excuse makers are just one notch less despicable than the terrorists and also deserve to be exposed."
Events in London and New York are not related to Iraq or Israel or imperialism? Then why is Bush's mob intensely pressuring Sharon to quickly complete the evacuation of Gaza? And why are the Bush people suddenly talking about troop reductions in Iraq after all the "stay the course" blather? Of course, they're related. "It's the injustice, stupid!" should be on a plaque over Friedman's desk.
Here is some of what Friedman is actually saying in this passage. He doesn't care that lists themselves are chilling things, having such horrible associations as the NKVD's lists for arrest, Senator McCarthy's lists of Communists, and Nixon's enemies' list (disproportionately featuring Jews). We need a list of "despicable" excuse makers.
And never mind, he is saying, that such lists always are abused. America's no-fly list contains thousands of names included in error or by deliberate abuse, and there is almost no way for individuals to remove their names from this job-threatening list. One of the earliest abuses discovered was Ted Kennedy's name on the list, but most people do not have Senator Kennedy's influence to have their names easily removed.
The most frightening thing Friedman is saying is that people who discuss terror and its causes in terms other than his own are "despicable." Yes, words matter, and despicable is a very strong word, a hate-word if there ever was one.
So here is Friedman saying he hates people who disagree with his way of thinking on a subject, blithely managing to identify the people he hates with haters. This reminds me of the time Friedman, in true 1984 Inner Party fashion, tried to get suicide-bomber and all associated terms expunged from the English language, even advocating official penalties for heads of governments in the Middle East who dared use the word martyr.
Friedman is also saying, as he has so many times, that large numbers of people act irrationally. They blow themselves up for no good reason, just for hate. He says, "There is no political justification for 9/11, 7/7 or 7/21. As the Middle East expert Stephen P. Cohen put it: 'These terrorists are what they do.' And what they do is murder."
This is demonstrably false.
Most haters are averse to killing themselves. Haters are generally cowards. Hitler went on until the Russians were almost at the bunker door and only killed himself for fear of falling into their hands. Stalin was only stopped by Nature's good timing or secret assassination from launching yet another wave of arrests. I don't know of a single instance of those lynching thousands of black Americans who gave up their lives to get at their object of hate. America's "Reverend" Jimmy Swaggart threatened to kill any homosexual making a pass at him and weekly spurs his flock to hatred, but he has never offered to lay his own life down for the cause of his seething hatred.
On the other hand, has anyone ever described the Russians who laid down their lives in waves to stop Hitler as haters? I've never seen the Japanese Kamikaze pilots who tried desperately to stop the U.S. from reaching their homeland described as haters.
Something is desperately wrong with Friedman's way of looking at things, and if people like him win the struggle for hearts and minds, the ugly Patriot Act will be only the smallest reason for truth no longer having a place in America.
Maybe that Joe Stalin mustache Friedman sports represents more than a cosmetic effort to add some character to his face?
- posted by Slonob @ 9:50 PM 0 comments
Extremists
We seem to be unable to stop right wing extremists here or abroad.
Federal Judge Finds Husband, Mother's Bodies
Let's hear the right wing loud mouths bring this one up.
Damn activist judges!
- posted by Slonob @ 12:02 PM 0 comments
Divided by Equal
The favoritism towards the family from the right is be both an attempt to purchase votes and bait for the more liberals (the thinking, principled ones who might ordinarily catch their blunder).
If the law is going to favor citizens in nuclear families over other citizens, we find ourselves toying with the concept of family as we attempt to quell the disequilibrium.
Gay marriage, is the latest battle and, of course, is a logical extension of the debate.
The right can say a family is a family. It has a man, a woman, and one or more kids. The left will say a family is as a family does. If two people are committed to one another and are responsible, productive citizens then they too should be included in the legal definition of a family. So the liberals say domestic partnerships are also families. In order to codify this, there must be some legal union available. The heterosexuals have marriage already. So marriage or something similar must be available to homosexuals.
Unfortunately, laws have been passed that extend rights to domestic partnerships for homosexuals alone. I personally experienced the problem that surrounds these reckless laws. Although I had been in a committed relationship for quite some time, when I was an independent contractor I was not eligible for my partner's benefits. A lesbian woman she worked with was able to extend her benefits to her partner. The lesbian couple had been together a few months while I had been with my partner for more than six years. This was clearly unfair. In fact, I was denied equal protection under the law. While the employer was obligated to extend benefits to the lesbian partner, there were no such provisions that applied to me.
When liberals talk about domestic partnership, they think they are talking about equal protection under the law. However, much of the legislation they have supported denies others equal protection under the law. Of course, the right have prompted this unfair lawmaking to begin with. While the liberals might think they are pulling the law back to something fair, they are in fact running in the same wrong direction that the right has gone.
Liberals have a way of tying their shoes together on this stuff. If they believed in equal protection under the law, they would be opposed to legally favoring families altogether. The only other choice is to extend benefits to more and more definitions of family until all people are effectively covered in the same way.
The use of these issues as political baiting becomes obvious when you think about how this has played out. As they call anti-abortion pro-life, they label extending family law to domestic partnership support for gay marriage. This successful formular has apparently even distracted libertarians who, in principal, should also be opposed to laws that favor families. The libertarians are drawn to the reactionary allure of exposing the contradictions from the left. The liberals, after all, are also in favor of hate crime laws which are so unfair that it leads one to believe liberals are the antithesis of principled lawmakers. Are liberals actively opposed to equal protection under the law? Do they know what it means?
The solution is to oppose laws that favor families altogether. Either that or support progressive legislation that favors every citizen equally.
Of course, if liberals were to openly oppose laws favoring the family, they would send too many in the middle running to the opposition. The right would howl that the liberals are taking rights away from families motivated only by dogma.
But what about the libertarians? If the liberals cease this two-step with the opposition, I believe the libertarians will find a more comfortable home on the side of the liberals. The right under Bush seem to be leading us to bigger and more intrusive government, after all. The open loathing of the government will sound even more hollow from the right that is firmly on the side of the establishment.
How do the right avoid addressing their own contradictions? Divide and conquer. In other words, they don't have to. It's al al part of the design.
- posted by Slonob @ 4:09 PM 0 comments
The Second Great Depression and the Rise of Anarchism in America
Too many conservatives lose hope. They doubt that the liberal welfare state can be brought to collapse.... In short, they doubt that The Heritage Foundation's Vision for America can be achieved.
Edwin J. Feulner
Heritage Foundation
I bet most Americans don't realize that they have been voting for a deliberate collapse of America as we know it. Apparently conservatives want their turn at rebuilding America after a melt-down, similar to how the Democrats had their turn following The Great Depression. The only problem is that they'll need The Second Great Depression to do it.
In other words, the philosophy is to bust shit up just to be there when it happens. Anarchistic rebellion by any other name smells just as sweet.
On the bright side, some lucky author will get to write another The Grapes of Wrath and we'll all enjoy another great work of fiction while we figure out how to feed our families.
Read all about it.
- posted by Slonob @ 10:01 AM 0 comments
Saddam: The Early Years
In 1953, Saddam Hussein, a failed painter living in poverty in the Tikrit District of Iraq, sought to discredit his rival, Abdul Karim who also attended the Khair Academy of the Arts. Karim had gained notoriety as an oil painter and was scheduled to be on a popular morning TV program. Saddam got a job as a janitor at the TV station just a few days before the program was to air. Always masterful in the art of persuasion, he talked the head camera operator into pointing the camera at Karim's feet. It was well known that the president watched this program, and this would be a huge insult indeed. The program was coming to a close, but still no cooperation came from the cameraman. Frustrated and characteristically furious, Saddam shouted an insult that roughly translates to "your mother's ankles are well known in public."
Saddam was quite pleased with himself and even painted a cartoonish depiction of the event. Needless to say, Karim was furious. However, he was not one to confront his enemy directly. He was rather passive, which angered Saddam even more than before. Saddam sought out a friend, Karl-Heinz Schaab who was instrumental in the establishment of the new Baghdad chapter of the Bilderberg Group. Impressed with the group's focus on academic pursuits, Saddam was quickly taken in. Schaab's plan was to get Karim drunk, take him to a local brothel and get lots of pictures. However, true to his Machiavellian nature, Saddam had a different plan in mind. His plan would ultimately betray Schaab and potentially add up to much gain for himself.
Saddam pursuaded his friend, Schaab, to invite Karim to join the Bilderberg Group. Saddam was a prominent member of the Thule Society which also included Karim. Knowing the fickle nature of his rival, he counted on losing a member of his beloved organization. Everything fell into place perfectly. Saddam rose to the top of the Thule Party, later renamed Tikrit Council to gain wider popular support. Karim simply disappeared.
Saddam had enjoyed his position in the Tikrit Council but, in 1958 was horrified to find that his rival had reemerged in an unexpected way. He had been renamed Abdul Karim Kassem and was leading the Ba'ath party to increasing success. It seemed that his rival had a knack for outdoing him.
Saddam attempted to locate his friend, Schaab, but found only rumors that he had been an Israeli spy and was now stationed in Iran. Saddam now realized that he had to make Kassem pay on his own. Inexplicably Saddam ordered Schaab's entire extended family murdered. It is often said that this is his first purge on his way to power.
He sought Kassem and mocked an apology, offering a merger between the Tikrit Council and the Ba'ath party. Kassem must have imagined he was becoming adept at consilidating his power as he agreed to go along with Saddam's plan.
By 1958, the merger turned into an unexpected success as, to international surprise, the Ba'ath party rose to rule Iraq with Kassem as president. Saddam, of course, would have been unhappy if it he had not seen a weakness that he hoped would open the door for his own ascention to power. Meanwhile, he pretended to be an enthusiastic member of the party. Most notable of his mock efforts was the short-lived checkerboard square Iraqi flag, designed by Saddam himself. To this day, Saddam is said to chuckle occasionally as he thinks of this hoax played on his rival. Saddam was having his fun, but more sinister plotting was at work.
In the summer of 1960, Saddam met with CIA operative Alan Mills. He had been feigning interest in bringing the U.S. closer to Iraq. No doubt, he expected the might of America to be quite a wild card for his own endeavors. Incidently, this courtship would last through the eighties until it finally ended with the first Bush Administration. The CIA encounters opened up a library of information that would help him destroy his rival. Saddam learned that an American, Dan Berkowitz (father of David Berkowitz), had been a leading researcher for the Bilderberg. The Bilderberg group was said to be producing assassins to be deployed across the world. The assassins would be living and functioning as normal people in any given society, but once they heard a secret keyword, they would immediately begin their programmed mission. Bilderberg was a branch of an expanding organization posing as a religion known as World Vision. Saddam learned that his friend, Schaab was in fact an operative for the CIA and worked with Anthony Chapman (Mark Chapman's father) in Texas for a number of years in the late forties. Schaab had turned Kassem into an assassin, but had not exepected Kassem to rise to power. The fear was that others could use the new president for their own needs. This fear came from the defection of Schaab to the Soviet union in 1958. Even more alarming was that the "defection" had occured the week of Kassem's ascention to power. Saddam now had allies in a common goal: the removal of Kassem from power.
In 1962, a vacationing American from San Francsisco, Dan White, met with Saddam to discuss an emerging plan. In 1961, White met with Dan Mitrione in Belo Horizonte where he also established contact with Michael Prokes, a Hollywood insider who knew many producers and directors. "Project Celebrity" would be used to send Kassem the keyword that would launch him on his mission. Kassem had an insatiable thirst for American dramas and westerns. He also made sure to get a private copy of many movies so that he could screen them in his private theater. Given this, they could determine the timing of the activation of Kassem.
The plan was in full effect by October, 1962, which also happened to be the timing of the Cuban Missile crisis. Some have reported that the activation movie was The Manchurian Candidate. But in fact, this is a few weeks too late, aside from being far too obvious. The actual film is thought to be The Longest Day, which was released on the 4th. The keyword was the unlikely phrase martini jockey. On September 14th, the to-be-assassinated Farzad Bazoft, a leader of the Iraqi Democratic Movement, was partially informed of the plot. He quickly arranged for gunmen to follow his every move.
October 10th, nearly a week after the release of the film, Kassem was said to be inconsolable. He wept openly as he watched the star packed depiction of D-Day. A day later he went missing. There is no account of Kassem's actions in this period. When he emerged a week later, he had a broken wrist and had painted over his brow to conceal that his eyebrows had been shaved. It is said that Bazoft was in fact attacked by Kassem, but he never made an official report to authorities. Bazoft later was involved in a homosexual sex scandal and was often seen drunk in public. He later died from alcohol poisoning following a drinking contest that included Saddam's son, Saffi.
The plot was a failure, but the whispering in the Ba'ath party would eventually lead to his downfall in February 1963. Saddam perpetuated the rumors and embellished with great zeal. To this day, Iraqis parody Kassem by wearing western-style dresses and smoking cigars every October 10th.
Later, it was revealed that Schaab had in fact propped Kassem up as a leading Ba'ath member and was a CIA operative, in addition to working for the Mossad.
Saddam eventually rose to the presidency in 1979. In 1980, he ordered a self-authored mockish poem carved on the grave-stone of Kassem, along with an embossed depiction of his TV stunt. The original painting of this event hangs in Saddam's first wife's dining room.
- posted by Slonob @ 10:15 AM 0 comments
