TO: Israel
FROM: Dark Wraith
DATE: 3 January 2009
RE: Occupation

You will not win, you know. No amount of firepower will solve your problem with the Palestinians.

Destroy every Qassam rocket, wipe out every Grad missile, kill every member of Hamas, butcher hundreds of civilians who might or might not support it; and you will not win.

Buy our American politicians, cart to your shores billions of dollars in economic aid and war materiel from us, call us your ally as you persistently harm our interests to promote your own; and you will still not win.

Sink our ships that watch you, hire spies to steal our secrets, assassinate your enemies in far away lands; and you will still not win.

Justify your brutality with the horrors done throughout history to your own people, allow your policies to be driven by modern-day Zealots hated by most of your own citizens, hold your economy together on the reed of an unending state of war; and you will still not win.

Imagine your soldiers with their overwhelmingly superior firepower a warrior race, slaughter innocents to defeat evil, make your very religion a clarion cry to destiny instead of a magnificent story of heroism; and you will still not win.

Burn their land to the very ground.

Kill them; and then kill them some more.

Hunt them.

Starve them.

Humiliate them.

Beat them.

Terrorize them.

Then, kill them some more.

Still, you will not win.

Sooner or later, Empire meets its match, wrongful or righteous as that opponent may be. You have met yours, and you are not even Empire.

But, then again, this tragedy is no longer about victory, is it? You would have to destroy what bombs, bullets, knives, and fire cannot; and you already know that. If you harbor any remaining doubt, just ask Empire.

You, just like Empire, will one day weary of your toil. Perhaps you will move on before you are spent of this defining enterprise of madness in its ugly sack cloth of violence. Probably not, though.

Just ask Empire.

Or, more appropriately, read its epitaph.

With a new year comes renewed hope for better: a better economy, better leadership, better opportunities.

Better this and better that.

Certainly, I deserve better, now don't I? Surely, what has happened to date is not my responsibility. It was not I who mismanaged the macroeconomy so magnificently that we are now plunging into what might very well be a second Great Depression! In fact, just to show how not responsible I am for this fiasco, I can wave years of literature I have written warning about the inevitability of this very mess. I can show years of lecture notes and podcasts from the economics classes I've taught wherein I veritably roared that the economic policies of the Bush Administration were going to lead to disaster.

No, this whole economic mess is not my fault at all.

Neither is the catastrophe in Iraq. It's not like I invaded that country on a pack of wholesale lies. In fact, I was right there condemning the outrage of it all. Yes, I was. I even used my Photoshop skills to create and publish really harsh visual critiques of George W. Bush and his pack of neo-conservative enablers. Not to be outdone by any other critics, I even coined the term "neoconnies" to degrade those nasty cowards who would never, themselves, go to war but who would send tens of thousands of American troops right into the teeth of crazed jihadists and assorted other malcontents, "freedom fighters," and religiously excitable folks.

No, that whole Iraq thing is most definitely not my fault.

And while I'm at it, don't blame me for Afghanistan, either. I've had my say about how we dealt with the Taliban until the Taliban didn't want to play on our terms with oil pipelines, which made the Taliban our sworn enemy that needed a good old American-style regime change on the pretext of an outrage that was committed against us.

Ah, and that brings me to the whole "Attacks of September 11, 2001, upon the United States" thing. It's not like I didn't do my part to point out all the wildly improbable coincidences surrounding that awful series of events, like how Vice President Dick Cheney was in charge of NORAD that morning, the very morning NORAD could not muster fighter jets from its huge inventory to knock out a handful of lumbering sky boats that had been hijacked. My goodness, but I stuck my neck out to be called a "conspiracy theorist," and that really hurt my academically high-and-mighty sense of myself!

Oh, I almost forgot: I'm not responsible for the torturing of people by the United States government. I think I even posted a picture of one of those Iraqis being horribly mistreated at Abu Ghraib, and I'm pretty sure I was glad when the trailer trash that did those things was thrown in prison to rot. How else was the United States going to make people feel okay about themselves, and how else was the Pentagon going to get seriously professional and secretive about enhanced interrogation? Boy, did I have some harsh things to say about all that stuff.

And let me not forget to mention that I'm on record —in writing, no less!— as being firmly opposed to all the snooping and spying our government is doing. I've even gone out on a limb and written about how awful it is that the Transportation Security Administration brutes use technology to look at naked people by the hundreds of thousands, day after day, at airports. I've condemned how our very own law enforcement community is a huge deployer of Websites and online content to attract everything from wannabe terrorists to losers trying to find unlawful pornography. I've surely stood my ground on those matters, and I've even been labeled some kind of "civil libertarian" in the process.

Furthermore, I've made it abundantly clear that I know U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald whitewashed the investigation of the outing of CIA NOC operative Valerie Plame, and I've been more than adequate in connecting that outrageously inadequate investigation to the collapse of the rule of law in this country. Talk about putting my butt on the line! I've damned judges, law enforcement personnel, and even a U.S. Attorney, and these are the kinds of thugs who could turn me into a convicted felon on false charges and media hype without even so much as breaking a sweat before lunch.

No, none of what has become of this country is my fault. I'm just a citizen of Empire, a hapless, not-responsible victim who's done more than his share to stop the madness; and no one can hold me to account.

It's not like there was anything more I could have done. I mean, come on: yeah, sure, I could have taken up arms in open rebellion; but, God! — that's a bit over-the-top, now isn't it? Give my life for the cause of liberty? Die for what I believe in?! Do things that might get me thrown in prison where I'd get gang-raped to the gleeful cheers of all those people who think that's part of just punishment of criminals?! End up being reviled forever by just about everyone because all the newspapers and TV news shows would portray me as a real live terrorist?! Good God! I'm not a terrorist, and I surely don't want everyone calling me one for the rest of eternity, for goodness sake! Get real.

I've DONE my part.

That's why I deserve a really good year. First, I want one of those tax cuts our new President is promising. I deserve it: the rich got theirs during the Bush years, so now it's my turn, by God. I don't care if the Republicans' tax cuts drove our federal deficits into mind-numbing territory. I want mine, now, and so what if the federal budget deficits are going to explode into heretofore unimaginable ranges nearing a trillion dollars a year?

I get mine, and then we'll talk about that fiscal responsibility the Bush incompetents never exhibited.

And I want federal spending, too, and I want it to go to my priorities this time. The war-makers, war-mongers, and all their pork-barrel beneficiaries got theirs during the Bush years; now, it's time I got mine. After all, no one can argue that I don't deserve it.

As far as paying for all this stuff, we'll just print more money! Hell, the Federal Reserve was doing that for the rich by rocketing the growth rate of M3 out of control, so now the Fed can do the same for M1, the kind of money I use. Hyperinflation? Who cares? Besides, the "laws of economics" are all dead, anyway: that's how the Bush people saw it, and now liberals and Leftists are openly making the same claim!

Of course, what the Fed can't print we'll just borrow from the Chinese. They're the ones who pegged their currency for years at a ridiculously low value to the dollar, which made their crap ridiculously cheap here, thereby sucking trillions of American greenbacks and millions of American jobs into their pockets, so they have all that U.S. money to lend back to us so we can keep living way beyond our means. And all we have to do in return is let them be our lender, meaning they have claims on future cash flows from America's treasure for generations to come. And when those foreigners holding all those greenbacks have lent us all the money we need, they can go on a shopping spree, buying up our land, our companies, and our financial securities (which are really great bargains, right now, by the way, for those nice foreigners).

I'm on a roll, here, so let me announce the rest of the stuff I deserve. I want health care coverage, and I want the best money can buy. I want everyone to pay for moi. It's not like I'm to blame for my illnesses. Sure, I smoke, and I want everyone who doesn't to make me all better. Sure, I've let my body go to Hell, but it's not like everyone else should get off the hook for that. I want my meds: I want chemicals hawked by massive pharmaceutical companies that make me think my life should go on and on and on because — hey! — I deserve to live because I contribute so very, very much to this world.

Here's something else I expect: I want this government of ours to bail out all the huge companies that are going under; in fact, I want the government to take equity stakes in all those companies so it can both regulate and own American business. Big failed, so let's get as big as big can get by turning the federal government into a giant holding company. Now that's gotta be too big to fail, right?

Right.


Now for the moment of clarity.

I am a citizen of Empire, and this is an empire that always had its dark side, even as it truly did, at least sometimes, make the world better for its policies and actions, especially when they were expressions of the best in all of us as decent, humane people. Those policies and actions, however, turned thoroughly and pervasively ugly during the presidency of George W. Bush.

I knew early on that this was no ordinary turn of Empire. These men and women who had become our public expression of collective will were relentless in a way I had seen only in the awfullest of circumstances in my life. Reason, rhetoric, law, logic: none of these ephemeral and obtusely frail pieces of the high civilization would have any effect whatsoever. Like the policeman who will not be talked down from the firearm he is pointing at me, like the savage dog mauling me, this Administration was immune to words, to pictures, to outrage, to chants, to thought. I knew that, and I knew it early on.

Yet, what did I do?

I wrote. I reasoned. I petitioned, I expressed outrage. I protested.

I did the very things I knew very well would not work, but I did nothing else.

I am every bit, by blood and by soil, a citizen of Empire.

And somehow, despite that, I think I deserve better than to end my days in the long, bleak night of that Empire?

Right. Sure.


The Dark Wraith has spoken.

---

In which one of MSNBC's resident imbeciles, Right-wing Republican Joe Scarborough, formerly a congressional representative from the 1st District in Florida, tries to rewrite history in a leading question to Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski, who served as an adviser to Presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter, and George H.W. Bush.

Posted at Talking Points Memo, the video below presents the discriminating connoisseur of intellectual bondage and discipline a veritable feast as Mr. Scarborough gets justly—indeed, righteously—paddled for the grave but pervasive sin of TSHWS ("Talk Show Hosting While Stupid"). Note that Dr. Brzezinski needed only one sentence to dismiss Scarborough's nonsense, and note Scarborough's subsequent, blithering ramble as he declared his contorted, shallow claims about the Middle East peace process during the Clinton Administration in alignment with "...the rest of the foreign policy community," even going so far as to drop names of such publications as Foreign Affairs Magazine as the stuff of his regular reading regimen.



Regarding Mr. Scarborough's claim to be extraordinarily knowledgeable based upon his representation that he reads extensively from high-brow publications, discerning observers should keep in mind that, even if we are to believe a chimpanzee who insists that he has just finished reading Foreign Affairs Magazine, we can be quite certain that, when we ask him details of what he read, he will say, "Ooo-ooo-ooo, ah-ah-ah, eee-eee-eee!"

Perhaps surprisingly, he will actually be telling the truth: that is, indeed, what he—being a chimpanzee—read. A reasonably intelligent human will have found the content in the publication considerably different, but that's because a reasonably intelligent human is not a chimpanzee. This will inevitably lead to a disagreement between the chimpanzee and the reasonably intelligent human, and that is entirely due to the irreconcilable difference between a reasonably intelligent human and a chimpanzee. Whereas the former may be informed and perhaps even worldly, the latter can be no more than a Right-wing imbecile who makes monkey sounds on MSNBC.


The Dark Wraith does not, however, encourage disrespect for those of our evolutionary cousins who make their living being Republican shills.

CNN.com has released the polling results of a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey taken during the period from Friday, December 19 through Sunday, December 22, 2008. Those taking the poll were asked questions that included one about their opinion of Vice President Dick Cheney's performance in office relative to others who had held the position. The results are graphically depicted below.



As the illustration shows, about 23 percent of those surveyed think Mr. Cheney is the "worst" Vice President, while another 41 percent rate him as "poor"; 34 percent judge him as "good," and one percent think he is the "best." The poll has a sampling error of approximately three percent.


The Dark Wraith should probably ask readers here what they think of Mr. Cheney's performance in office (just to feel the love one last time before Dick fades into the sunset).

---

How can you tell the difference between a drummer who is a conspiracy theorist and a drummer who is a cynic?

Answer: The cynic doesn’t show up.

Uh... why not?

Answer: The cynic already knows there won’t be an audience.

So, why does the conspiracy theorist show up?

Answer: He just pretends to play for the audience; he’s really there just to hear himself.

But the cynic could do that, too.

Answer: Yes, but if he’s really a cynic, he won’t even listen to himself.

At 6:00 p.m. on Friday, December 19, 2008, Michael Connell was killed when the single-engine Piper Saratoga he was piloting crashed on approach to the Akron-Canton Airport in northeastern Ohio. The plane was about 2.5 miles out when it went down, hitting the ground between two houses in the Stark County city of Uniontown, 10 miles southeast of Akron.

Michael Connell was the information technology expert some activists allege was the mastermind behind the rigging of the presidential elections of 2000 and 2004. Mr. Connell was about to testify in Ohio, where his consulting business is based, about aspects of his vote rigging work in the Buckeye State. The non-profit group Velvet Revolution claims that a "tipster close to the McCain campaign" warned an investigator for the group last Summer that Connell's life was in danger and that he should not fly his plane because of the possibility of sabotage.

In late October of 2002, the twin-engine Beechcraft King Air A100 carrying liberal Minnesota Democrat Paul Wellstone crashed on approach two miles from Eveleth-Virginia Airport in Minnesota, killing Sen. Wellstone, his wife Sheila, their 33-year-old daughter Marcia, and five others people. The 58-year-old Wellstone was campaigning for re-election to his U.S. Senate seat. His death paved the way for his Republican opponent, St. Paul mayor Norm Coleman, to win the election. The National Transportation Safety Board ultimately ruled that pilot error caused the plane crash that killed Wellstone.

On October 16, 2000, then-Missouri Gov. Mel Carnahan, his son, and an aide were killed when the plane in which they were flying, a Cessna 335, crashed just weeks ahead of the election in which Mr. Carnahan was vying for a U.S. Senate seat against the incumbent Senator, John Ashcroft. Although dead, Carnahan went on to win the election against Ashcroft, whom President George W. Bush would subsequently appoint as United States Attorney General. Jean Carnahan, Mel Carnahan's widow, was appointed to take her late husband's seat in the Senate until a special election in 2002. Carnahan's wife lost the special election to Republican Jim Talent. The National Transportation Safety Board ultimately ruled that the primary cause of the accident that killed Mel Carnahan was disorientation of the pilot, Carnahan's 44-year-old son Roger, who had not long before the crash taken special training to handle flight emergencies involving the Cessna 335.

How can the cynic still call himself a 'musician' if he hates what he does so much?

Answer: Because music is his life, man.

And now, for some audio levity:




The Dark Wraith encourages readers to always be prepared for the occasional interruption.

---

The mother of the boy who got Bristol Palin, the daughter of 2008 Republican nominee for Vice President Sarah Palin, pregnant has been arrested on drug charges. Sherry Johnston, seen at left in trailer trash chic motif, is the mother of Bristol's 18-year-old fiancé, Levi Johnston. The elder Johnston was taken into custody by Alaska State Highway Patrol troopers this morning on six felony drug counts related to possession and production of a controlled substance.

While police have not provided extensive details as of the dateline of this article, the types of charges filed against Ms. Johnston have fueled speculation that Levi's mother was running a meth lab.

Because Sherry has now been released on $5,000 bail, she will be able to join her son and Bristol, along with Sarah Palin and the rest of Bristol's family, in celebrating the delivery of Bristol's baby, which might be born as early as this weekend.

Hospital personnel have not indicated if Sherry will be providing homemade pharmaceuticals to help Bristol with labor pains.

UPDATE: Police now say that the charges against Sherry Johnston relate to the opioid OxyContin, a Schedule 11 controlled substance known as "hillbilly heroin" because of its powerfully addictive properties and its presumed popularity among lower-class American Caucasians, although it was this drug for which the wealthy Right-wing extremist talk-radio personality Rush Limbaugh was busted in 2003.