The Undertaker’s Tally

The Undertaker’s Tally

 

Son of Leo Strauss

 

In his extraordinary article, The Undertaker’s Tally, Roger Morris1 chillingly, and deeply disturbingly, lifts the veil on the life, times and evil mind of the real Donald Rumsfeld.

Morris begins with Rumsfeld’s early years, his early political ambitions, his run for Congress with the aid of the subsequently infamous Jeb Magruder secretly smearing his opponent. Speaking of the later, dashed but not extinguished Presidential hopes of Rumsfeld and Cheney, Morris says

Historians will only guess at the rancor building in these two deeply ambitious, deeply disappointed figures at the president they had, George W. Bush, whom they no doubt saw as manifestly, maddeningly inferior. The Rumsfeld-Cheney recompense, at vast cost to the nation and world, would be their fierce seizure of power after September 11, 2001.

It sounds like what it looks like in hindsight; a right-wing coup which wrested effective control of the country from an incompetent, “pathologically unfit” president in order to put into effect a policy which had been brewing for years, as shown in the letter from the Project For The New American Century to President Clinton2 in 1998.

Central to understanding the duplicity of Rumsfeld is his notorious relationship with Saddam Hussein, whom Rumsfeld was secretively funding, arming and supporting in his war with Iran.

There could have been little doubt that Saddam would use the considerable aid Rumsfeld was sliding under the table, and any larger gain from a better-armed war with Iran, to further the regime’s most aggressive weapons development, and to move from a U.S.-strengthened position to tyrannize all the more savagely Iraqi Shiites and Kurds. In the event, as Washington watched, he did it all – and no one could or should have known more than Rumsfeld.
….
Rumsfeld would be faulted for his pandering 1984 diplomacy in Baghdad to appease the tyranny (the gassing of the Kurds had already begun) after a timorous, hypocritical Washington statement denouncing use of chemical weapons. The toll of the policy would be much more. Iraqi chemical weapons plants bombed in the 1991 Gulf War and releasing agents to which some 100,000 American troops were exposed, the pandemic of the infamous Gulf War Syndrome, would trace in large measure to the materiel and technology afforded by Rumsfeld’s knowing acts seven years before.

He discusses the people who were around Rumsfeld, including the Zionists and their agendas.

He opened government as never before to men who habitually, automatically assumed that U.S. and Israeli interests were identical, with no objectivity about American policy in a Middle East they scarcely understood to begin with. Their ignorance and presumption were matched only by their zeal to cluster in decisive quarters of the new Bush regime where decisions of grand strategy, of war and peace, were now shaped and predetermined.

Historians will debate, too, the obvious blurred allegiance of what some call these American “Likudniks” with their utter conformity to the belligerent ultra-Zionist mentality of the Israeli right.

And he looks at the inevitabilities of Rumsfeld’s reign.

In blindly striking out after 9/11 — a reflexive, grandly opportunistic, richly self-satisfying political act in America — without seriously understanding the politics or history of either country, he plunged the Pentagon into blundering, plundering occupations that made the nightmares of 2007 and beyond nearly inevitable.

It is an astonishing piece of investigative writing which only a Washington insider could bring off this convincingly and which is essential reading for anyone struggling to understand how the US could have got itself into the mess it is in.

Naturally the Groveller General and his bureaucrats could have had no idea of any of this. If they did they could not have gone along with it so cheerfully.

 

 

1Roger Morris served in the State Department and on the Senior Staff of the National Security Council under Presidents Johnson and Nixon and resigned in protest at the invasion of Cambodia. He then worked as a legislative advisor in the U.S. Senate and a director of policy studies at the Carnegie Endowment, and writes this Rumsfeldian history from intimate firsthand knowledge as well as extensive research. A Visiting Honors professor at the University of Washington and Research Fellow of the Green Institute, he is an award-winning historian and investigative journalist, including a National Book Award Silver Medal winner, and the author of books on Nixon, Kissinger, Haig, and the Clintons. More recently, he co-authored with Sally Denton The Money and the Power, a history of Las Vegas as the paradigm of national corruption. His latest work, Shadows of the Eagle, a history of U.S. covert interventions and policy in the Middle East and South Asia over the past half-century, will be published in 2007 by Knopf.

2Project For A New American Century letter to Clinton
The letter from the PNAC to President Clinton is still proudly displayed on their website.

It is dated January 26, 1998 (Australia Day, appropriately enough)
It was signed by Elliott Abrams, Richard L. Armitage, William J. Bennett, Jeffrey Bergner, John Bolton, Paula Dobriansky, Francis Fukuyama, Robert Kagan, Zalmay Khalilzad, William Kristol, Richard Perle, Peter W. Rodman, Donald Rumsfeld, William Schneider, Jr., Vin Weber, Paul Wolfowitz, R. James Woolsey and Robert B. Zoellick.

Khalilzad is an Afghan native, a Muslim, current US Ambassador to Iraq and probable next Ambassador to the UN. Bolton was Ambassador to the UN but was not confirmed. Look up the rest. Many or most of them are in the Administration, were in it, or advise it.

Some excerpts from the letter:

The only acceptable strategy is one that eliminates the possibility that Iraq will be able to use or threaten to use weapons of mass destruction. In the near term, this means a willingness to undertake military action as diplomacy is clearly failing. In the long term, it means removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power. That now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy.

We urge you to articulate this aim, and to turn your Administration’s attention to implementing a strategy for removing Saddam’s regime from power. This will require a full complement of diplomatic, political and military efforts. Although we are fully aware of the dangers and difficulties in implementing this policy, we believe the dangers of failing to do so are far greater. We believe the U.S. has the authority under existing UN resolutions to take the necessary steps, including military steps, to protect our vital interests in the Gulf. In any case, American policy cannot continue to be crippled by a misguided insistence on unanimity in the UN Security Council.

We urge you to act decisively. If you act now to end the threat of weapons of mass destruction against the U.S. or its allies, you will be acting in the most fundamental national security interests of the country. If we accept a course of weakness and drift, we put our interests and our future at risk.

What the letter makes clear is that the Republican right was obsessed with attacking Iraq. All that was needed was a pretext. It is hard to interpret “our vital interests in the Gulf” as anything other than “oil”. No mention here of democracy, or freeing the enslaved Iraqi masses from tyranny.

Given the limited range of any of Iraq’s missile systems, who must the writers be suggesting could be endangered by Iraq? Well, Israel. So it appears that the writers wrongly assume that Israel is an “ally” of the USA. But this is not true. Nevertheless it is telling that those who have signed the letter assume it, or at least hope others will believe it. From their point of view it probably seems obvious.

If only they had not so arrogantly dismissed as misguided the “insistence on unanimity in the UN Security Council”. They might not be in the quagmire they created.

And remember, these people are still in power and influencing – actually, dominating – world affairs. But, you know, they come across as not that bright and not that clever.

 

We’ll All Be Rooned, Said Hanrahan

We’ll All Be Rooned, Said Hanrahan

 

Hooray for the Rain! (if you got it)

In praise of the recent rain here is the most Strayan of Australian pomes;
Hanrahan versing the elements.
True Australian values.
Pure Poa Tree.

 

SAID HANRAHAN

by John O’Brien

“We’ll all be rooned,” said Hanrahan,
In accents most forlorn,
Outside the church, ere Mass began,
One frosty Sunday morn.

The congregation stood about,
Coat-collars to the ears,
And talked of stock, and crops, and drought,
As it had done for years.

“It’s looking crook,” said Daniel Croke;
“Bedad, it’s cruke, me lad,
For never since the banks went broke
Has seasons been so bad.”

“It’s dry, all right,” said young O’Neil,
With which astute remark
He squatted down upon his heel
And chewed a piece of bark.

And so around the chorus ran
“It’s keepin’ dry, no doubt.”
“We’ll all be rooned,” said Hanrahan,
“Before the year is out.”

“The crops are done; ye’ll have your work
To save one bag of grain;

From here way out to Back-o’-Bourke
They’re singin’ out for rain.

“They’re singin’ out for rain,” he said,
“And all the tanks are dry.
”The congregation scratched its head,
And gazed around the sky.

“There won’t be grass, in any case,
Enough to feed an ass;
There’s not a blade on Casey’s place
As I came down to Mass.”

“If rain don’t come this month,” said Dan,
And cleared his throat to speak –
“We’ll all be rooned,” said Hanrahan,
“If rain don’t come this week.”

A heavy silence seemed to steal
On all at this remark;
And each man squatted on his heel,
And chewed a piece of bark.

“We want an inch of rain, we do,”
O’Neil observed at last;
But Croke “maintained” we wanted two
To put the danger past.

“If we don’t get three inches, man,
Or four to break this drought,
We’ll all be rooned,” said Hanrahan,
“Before the year is out.”

In God’s good time down came the rain;
And all the afternoon
On iron roof and window-pane
It drummed a homely tune.

And through the night it pattered still,
And lightsome, gladsome elves
On dripping spout and window-sill
Kept talking to themselves.

It pelted, pelted all day long,
A-singing at its work,
Till every heart took up the song
Way out to Back-o’-Bourke.

And every creek a banker ran,
And dams filled overtop;
“We’ll all be rooned,” said Hanrahan,
“If this rain doesn’t stop.”

And stop it did, in God’s good time;
And spring came in to fold
A mantle o’er the hills sublime
Of green and pink and gold.

And days went by on dancing feet,
With harvest-hopes immense,
And laughing eyes beheld the wheat
Nid-nodding o’er the fence.

And, oh, the smiles on every face,
As happy lad and lass
Through grass knee-deep on Casey’s place
Went riding down to Mass.

While round the church in clothes genteel
Discoursed the men of mark,
And each man squatted on his heel,
And chewed his piece of bark.

“There’ll be bush-fires for sure, me man,
There will, without a doubt;
We’ll all be rooned,” said Hanrahan,
“Before the year is out.”

Government Gets ‘F’ on Values

Government Gets ‘F’ on Values

‘F’ is for Effed

 

We are devastated to have to report that the Government – which instituted the Australian Values campaign – has failed its own test.

A Government website, Values Education, has provided a list of the nine most important Australian values which should be taught to Australian kiddies.

Values Australia has assessed the Government, and the Groveller General, Lord Water Cunntiham, against these benchmarks and to our great embarrassment and shame they have failed comprehensively, by not a whisker but, really, entirely.

The key indicators include such core Australian values as a fair go, compassion, honesty and respect.

The assessor remarked that the Government failed largely on account of its policies regarding the Iraq War and David Hicks but also on account of its Industrial Relations legislation and its amendments to the Crimes Act.

For example, the Integrity test requires the applicant to

“Act in accordance with principles of moral and ethical conduct, ensure consistency between words and deeds.”

The Government was unable to provide any evidence to satisfy this requirement.

The full marking sheet is shown here.

Oh Pastor Ted, What a Jock You Are!

Oh Pastor Ted, What a Jock You Are!

There’s a Lotta Love in This Place

 

US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s little girl, Alexandra Pelosi, has made a doco, Friends of God, starring Crystal Methodist, Pastor Ted Haggard, about evangelical christians. And quite an eye-opener it is.

And quite disturbing.

We assume that Pastor Ted will one day release the companion film, Friends of Dorothy.

It’s ironic that the doco was shot when Ted Haggard was still pretending to be straight, before he was outed by a gay ex-prostitute and resigned in disgrace, and before he converted back to Super-Heterodom by the grace of god in a world-record three weeks.

It’s disturbing because Pastor Ted involves his two evangelical friends in some jockstrapping competitive locker-room “dick-measuring” which shamelessly implicates their absent, compromised, objectivised wives. (They did not discuss the advantages of Crystal Meth.)

Values Australia, in any case, was intrigued by the purported heightened libido of those whom the ghostly fire has touched. We had assumed that most evangelical bedroom gymnastics would be confined to the missionary position. So we went in search of the alleged polling. After all, Ted says, “ALL the polls say…” We didn’t find one such poll.

But we did find some interesting material. Like this suggested bisexual threesome:

“Learn How To Please God and Your Wife From A Chirstian [sic] View Point!” shrieks sexually-skilled husband.com (now for sale).

“Discover How Christian Married Couples Have Exciting Sex“ offers christian-sex.net (no longer active)

We liked:

“Steamy Christian Sex: Have Passionate Sex In Marriage – Techniques and Advice That Work!” promised by SteamyChristianSex.com (defunct)

We checked out:

Jamaica Gleaner News – Porn in the pews – Churchmen wrestle with …
…Male church members surfing for sexy pics, survey reveals one-in-five churchmen …

“Churchmen wrestle with” …what? Their members? We had the unsavoury vision of male members searching for internet lolitas in their one-eyed way, and were intrigued by Jollyblogger’s:

The Purpose Driven Sex Life, Part 1

Perhaps Part 2 is “The Orgasm Driven Sex Life” and Part 3 “The Chauffeur Driven Sex Life” starring Hugh Grant.

There was the raunchy (and somehow appropriate for Pastor Ted):

In and Out of the Corporate Closet – Whitepapers – Publications …”Why do I need to know about someone’s sex life?” …
Between one and ten percent of the … Among Evangelical Christians, 60% are in favor while 34% are not. …

and the grossly suggestive:

Fuller Online 2005-2006 Catalogue

And then there was this:

Christian Sex Toys
Discreetly to Your Door-Private
Porn Free-Lingerie-Toys-online shop
mybelovedsgarden.net (in full bloom)

So we had to look.

The homepage promises to provide

“a safe, non-pornographic place to shop, For all your Christian Sex toys and Romance needs, While keeping Christ at the center of your marriage.”

We have to report that we found the assorted Vibrating Bullets, Massage Vibes, Glass Phalluses, G-Spot Vibes, Erection Control and Enhancement devices, Hands Free Clitoral Stimulators and Anal Stimulators very christian and inoffensively plain-brown-wrapperly, although, while they are promoted as specifically christian sex toys, we did not notice a crucifix engraved or embossed on, or attached to any of the vibrators or other devices.

The lingerie was hot and swinging but the photos – of what we assume are the choir girls from the local temple – had been sensitively retouched so as not to arouse.

 

But there was just one problem. We looked and looked and, for the longest time, could not work out what was upsetting us about the pictures until we saw – or rather didn’t see – it.

None of the models has a belly-button! Is this for biblical eve-ish accuracy? we wondered. or are evangelicals more aroused by the navel than the unsaved?

And then we noticed that one of the girls appeared to have soiled herself. That’s when we understood that for evangelicals, the biggest turn-on is indeed the navel and the biggest turn-off is a pooey bottom.

Safe from pornographic lust as promised!

Ah, we’ve come a long way from Augustine and John Calvin!

Thank you, Pastor Ted!

How Long Would Jesus Keep Hicks in Guantánamo?

How Long Would Jesus Keep Hicks in Guantánamo?

Love your enemies and be good to them” –

Direct Orders From the Mouth of God:

“Love your enemies, do good to them which hate you,

Bless them that curse you, and pray for them which despitefully use you.”

Christianity is one of the “revealed” religions, meaning that adherents believe the “truth” has been revealed through their sacred texts. Oddly enough, Jews, Muslims and Christians all share the same belief in the revealed truths of the same texts – the old testament.

There are those who believe that the bible is the inspired word of their god. Among these are some who believe that the bible is a guide to morals; others believe that every single word in it is literally true.

President Bush and his evangelical supporters are amongst this group.

Happily, the following passage works for both those seeking a guide and those obedient to specific instruction, all the more so because these words are the literal words spoken by Jesus Christ.

We offer this passage as a service to christians who are considering what their responses ought to be in relation to Iraq, the war on terror, and the incarceration of fellow human beings – even possibly terrorists – in Guantánamo Bay.

We offer this reading because it has come to our attention that there are very many christians whose hearts have been hardened against the heathen; christians who lack compassion and humility; devout christians who seem preoccupied with their own salvation at the expense of the lives of others, little realising that their selfishness and lack of compassion will see the gates to heaven slammed shut against them and cost them eternal life…

So here are the orders from the highest. It could not be more clear. These are the strict and literal instructions of Jesus.

Christians who disobey these direct orders without repentance will go to hell.

Luke 6: 27-38

27   But I say unto you which hear, Love your enemies, do good to them which hate you,
28   Bless them that curse you, and pray for them which despitefully use you.
29   And unto him that smiteth thee on the one cheek offer also the other; and him that taketh away thy cloak forbid not to take thy coat also.
30   Give to every man that asketh of thee; and of him that taketh away thy goods ask them not again.
31   And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.
32   For if ye love them which love you, what thank have ye? for sinners also love those that love them.
33   And if ye do good to them which do good to you, what thank have ye? for sinners also do even the same.
34   And if ye lend to them of whom ye hope to receive, what thank have ye? for sinners also lend to sinners, to receive as much again.
35   But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil.
36   Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful.
37   Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven:
38   Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again.

Sorry

Sorry

 

 

It is a pop-psych fallacy, particularly perpetrated by John Howard, to insist on “putting the past behind us”. The past that is not dealt with eats away at us in our (collective) subconscious and paralyses us for action. The past that is put behind us bites us in the bum.

What in the past is not acknowledged, and is not completed, waits for us in the future. The refusal of the non-aboriginal people of Australia to acknowledge the past has waited for us for a long time and has been draining our energy. It has stopped us from creating a different future, and not just in the area of indigenous affairs.

When the past is completed it is taken out of the future. The most powerful means of doing that is acknowledgement and apology.

What is left is a blank slate on which we can create anything we choose. Great adventures, great achievements, great excitement.

The removal of aboriginal children from their families is a past that today is to be completed with the simple word, “Sorry”, and that simple action will be the beginning of a future we are only beginning to imagine.

The removal policy was part of a eugenic strategy to fade out the aboriginal race – slowburn genocide, if you like. It was never “for their own good” but was targeted at particular types of children. Only aboriginal children were removed – specifically, only part-aboriginal children. “Full-bloods” were not removed but were left, in their racial degeneracy, to die out.

Absorption and Merger

 

“ Governments subsequently turned to alternative policies to protect Aborigines. In developing these policies, it appeared clear to all that the Aboriginal race was marching towards extinction.

 

John Forrest, Chair of the 1883 Commission established to inquire into the Aboriginal situation, reported that the Aborigines were “fast disappearing” and that “this was inevitable and usual among similar ethnic minorities in other parts of the world, and that Aborigines were a “vagrant race”, unresponsive to measures for amelioration of their conditions.”

 

Commentators of the England cricket tour of 1867-68 expressed regret that the “smart cricketers” (Aborigines who had learnt to play cricket) were members of “dying race” because it had been possible to raise some “above [their] natural level as “savage[s]”.

 

The social-Darwinist absorption or merger policies awaited the extinction of “full-blood” Indigenous persons. Social-Darwinists saw Aborigines as either the “missing link” or the subjects of degeneration, namely they were “man in a state of barbarism…inevitably and invariably [to go] downward towards extinction”. Social Darwinism predicted that the Aborigines would die out because of the laws of nature; namely, survival of the fittest. Biological determinism advocated an activist approach to this process calling for the pro-active breeding out of Aboriginal blood. This breeding out approach was based on the science of eugenics.

 

In the context of the Australian Aboriginals, the policy application of eugenic scientific theories was called “merger” or “absorption”. Eugenics propounded that the children with the fairest skin colour would be most likely to lose their Aboriginal identity and, accordingly, most readily absorbed into the non-Indigenous population. In contrast with the racial purification policies of Nazi Germany, it was argued that the White community should accept “half-caste” children once the children were sufficiently White in complexion during which time “full-bloods” would die out.

 

In a process that Smith refers to as “indigenisation”, the humanitarian discourse of protection turned to incorporating the Other into the settler community and thereby displacing the natives. The protectorate policies, it was thought, were doomed to fail because the Aborigines were a dying race. Something more was needed to protect individual members of the protected group.

 

By the 1890s, the NSW Board began to remove Indigenous children of mixed descent from their families and “merge” them into the non-Indigenous population. The term absorption was adopted in Western Australia.

Debate emerged throughout Australia regarding the best age at which the children should be removed so as to promote the efficacy of the merger policies. A 1913 Royal Commission in South Australia failed to determine whether the children should ideally be removed at birth or at the age of two years. The Queensland and Western Australian Chief Protectors deemed the age of four years as the preferred age of removal.

Murdoch University Electronic Journal of Law, “Genocide, a Crime of Which No Anglo-Saxon Nation Could be Guilty”, David Markovich BCom(Econ), LLB (Hons)”

Windschuttle¹ disagrees with all this, of course, which makes it pretty certainly correct.

Apologists claim that it was done for the good of the victims, or that in any event that was the result in many cases. The truth is that “the good of the children” was no consideration. Children were taken from their families solely on the basis of the colour of their skin – literally – and their family circumstances were immaterial.

It is impossible to imagine what reaction there would be if white children were systematically removed from their families in the way that aboriginal children were, even rounded up on horseback and torn away from their mothers as they were at one time. No government which carried out such a policy would survive even weeks. There would be rioting in the streets. The Aborigines, however, were powerless and no such redress was available to them.

Nor is it possible for most of us to imagine the anguish of entire families who grew up without their children or their grandchildren or their parents or their siblings; the desperation and despair of parents to find their children; the cultural amputation of children no longer permitted to speak their own language, to “be” aboriginal and yet to suffer the racial discrimination which they encountered, and still encounter. To characterise the deep damage inevitably caused by these outcomes as justified “for the children’s own good” is cultural and, worse, religious arrogance of the most abhorrent kind.

Then there is the excuse that “we” should not take the blame for what was done by others to other people, that this government cannot take the blame for what was done before. Most of those who formulated and carried out the policies of removing aboriginal children from their families are dead. But although they are dead the hurt and the social legacy are very much with us today. Secondly, this is not the government which passed the laws. Nevertheless governments are accountable in the way that individuals are. They have accountability in the way that corporations, as legal ‘persons’, do. A company which incurred a debt ten years ago still has that debt even though every one of the executives and every single employee has changed, and in fact even though none of the original shareholders remains. In an unbroken line that goes back to the beginning of the company, the new management and employees and shareholders still bear the company’s burdens. And so do we now. Not as blame, but we as a nation are accountable.

Ruby Langford Ginibi, author of Don’t Take Your Love to Town, said to me some years ago that as long as ordinary Australians are still reaping the benefits of the actions that were taken, even long ago, against the aboriginal people — including the theft of their land and their children — then if today’s beneficiaries do not acknowledge those wrongs they are as guilty as the original perpetrators. It is easy to see the truth in this.

We bear responsibility as a nation. Denial does not make us strong. It makes us weak. Acknowledging responsibility does not weaken or belittle us. On the contrary, taking responsibility makes us powerful. It gives us the power to take action, to make a difference, to complete the past and to cause a new future.

 

¹Another historian, Irving Candicocque, also disagrees, saying that 

Aborigines have always been well-looked after. They are allowed at least two hours a day in the exercise yard and their accommodation – at our expense! – includes their very own shit pan which is a great deal more than they used to have as savages in the bush!”

Candicocque’s works include

Denying the obvious (Our Grandfathers Could Never Have Did Nothing So Nasty Like What They Say),
The Aboriginal Protection Boards (They Never Stole No Kids and Anyway it Was for Their Own Good)
and The Great Big Massacre Hoax (they weren’t killed; they just ran away and never come back).