gonzo

Category: News and Politics

Holy Shi'ite! Batman
We've been fighting the Shi'ites for a few months now, like 1500 years worth or so, and nobody seems to want to ask the obvious question: who are these loonies, anyway?
Well, for starters, there's that embarrassing name, "Shi'ite." I can't help it if it reminds me every time I see it of a certain four-letter word. But that's not their fault either. I don't claim to speak Arabic….my Spanish isn't even that good….but from what I've read, in Arabic, "shiat" means something like "party," as in political party, and "Shi'ite" is short for "Shiat Ali," which means "the Party of Ali." Incidentally, the Shiites demographics reveal that only 15% of Muslims are Ali adherents, viewing the Koran as mere suggestions (kindda like most Christians view the ten commandants), while the remaining 85% sunnies are fundamentalist Koran thumpers placing the highest value on faith and family. No less vicious really, both dangerous. The one quality I can appreciate about both is that they are not hypocrites. They clearly mean what they say and do…. passionately. In Islam they don't hold grudges they hold decapitations, no lawyers here, just dissections…….hands, tongues, eyes or whatever the offending appendage. Say what you will, it works, crime as well as homosexuality is rare, no bottleneck of the courts or closets here either. The judges are master backgammon players and expert wife beaters. I don't know for sure, but I would have to say that polygamy was a female invention…….that way she only got beat every 10-15 days, plenty of time to heal before the next start, go team harem.
Ali was Muhammad's adopted son. He saved the Prophet's life and became his favorite. Muhammad even gave Ali his favorite daughter, Fatima. But the most important thing to remember about Ali is…..he lost. And Ali's son Husain, another loser, was killed in battle charging the Caliph's whole army with a few friends…..a couple dozen riders against a horde.
To us, that's just stupid. To the Shi'ites, it's glorious. That's what's hardest for Americans to understand about the Shia: they don't think winning is everything. It'd be closer to the truth to say that they think losing is everything, that losing is a sign of being in the right.
The point is, they don't think like us. A whole lot of what's gone wrong in Iraq comes from thinking that everybody in the world wants to be like us. That's just plain wrong. Hell, I'm sure I don't want to be like us. And I know for certain the Shi'ites don't.
We believe in winning. Remember the beginning of Patton, when George C. Scott stands up in dress uniform and says, "No son-of-a-bitch ever won a war by dying for his country……he won it by making some other poor son-of-a-bitch die for HIS country"? That sounds pretty obvious to us, but it's not the only way you can think about war.
In fact I'd say Patton (Patton in the movie, not the real Patton) is wrong. You can kill twenty of the enemy for every guy you lose…and still lose the war. That's what happened to us in Nam. We made a million or so of them die for their country, vs. 60,000 of us, and still lost. The British killed dozens of Kikuyu for every settler or soldier they lost fighting the Mau-Mau, and they still got run out of Kenya. Body count is the WORST way to figure out who's winning a guerrilla war.
If the Shi'ites wrote the script for Patton, George C. Scott would get up and say something like, "Go ahead and kill us…you'll be sorry!" We're talking about a martyr culture here, where dying makes you stronger. You know, that shouldn't be so hard for us to get, because we've got Christ, who won by losing, by dying. But that was a long time ago, and it's so prettified that now anti-Semite Mel Gibson had to make a whole movie to remind people that martyrdom actually hurts, oh the irony. (never watched the movie, never will, the book was good enough for me.)
The Shi'ites' martyrs are a lot more recent. Their favorite disaster happened in 680 AD, at the battle of Karbala. Yup, THAT Karbala…. the same city where we've been fighting Shi'ites for the last few months. Karbala means "anguish." That should tell you something about the way Shi'ites see the world, that they named one of their holiest cities after something we'd call "clinical depression." They're not smiley-face optimists. If a Shi'ite coached your kid's football team, he'd start every practice with a video of the team's biggest defeat: "Yet again we see Jason missing the goal! Truly we AM/PM Minimart-starbucks Big Gulps are out of the playoffs forever and a day!"……..the half time locker-room pep talk at the big OU/TU game: "As long as a person doesn't admit he is defeated, he is not decomposing……he's just a little behind and isn't through fighting and fragmenting….Darrell Royal, Texas football coach……."so get out there splatter some guts, show'em your spleen boys, hang half a hunnerd pink mist vapors on 'em!! Hooray Coach Barry, Go Boomer Sooner…."
For the Shi'ites, the battle of Karbala is like Christ's crucifixion and the Alamo, all rolled into one: a doomed last stand with God on the losers' side. Karbala was a fight over leadership, the kind you get when an empire based on one man has to deal with that man's death. Muhammad's armies blasted out of the desert in the early seventh century and ended up in control of most of the Middle East. When he died, he left a power vacuum like a black hole centered on Baghdad, the capital of the Islamic world. The winner would become "Caliph"……a pretty cushy job, sort of like Pope and Emperor rolled into one, with total control over everything, religion and government both.
With that kind of power at stake, the feuding got pretty intense. Ali got himself assassinated, which was a tradition for Caliphs…..life insurance salesmen ran from Caliphs like they were motocross riders. His killers, a rich, mean clan called the Umayyads grabbed the Caliphate. This is the key moment for the Shi'ites. The Umayyads won, Ali's family lost. It's time to face facts, right? You can't argue with success, right?
Wrong. The whole Shia psychology is that you CAN argue with success, and you DON'T have to face facts. Ali's son, Husain, stayed calm when the Umayyad killed his dad; he even accepted the first Umayyad Caliph. But when that Caliph died and the Caliphate went to another Umayyad, Husain realized he had to take back the Caliphate or die trying. Husain was riding to a rendezvous with some rebels with only about 30 men guarding him when he found himself facing the Caliph's whole army near Karbala.
Victory was impossible. Escape was impossible. So Husain did what any red-blooded boy would do: he charged. And naturally, the Caliph's soldiers did a Benihana on Husain and his men.
That's the key moment for Shi'ites. The way they see, everything that happened after Husain's martyrdom is sleazy, dirty, worthless. The real world is trash; the only good people are the martyrs. In Shia culture, you ain't nobody till you're dead. The world won't be worth living in until the return of the "Mahdi," the messiah. (You may remember that Sadr's posse is called the "Mahdi Army.") The Shia are the Travis Bickles of Islam: "someday a real rain will come, to wash the scum off the streets," and if they can help it along with a car bomb or two, so much the better.
They have a huge death wish, so naturally their holiest places are tombs. That's why Shi'ites make that pilgrimage to Karbala, to visit the tomb of Husain. Shi'ites commemorate Husain getting himself sliced and diced for ten days every year, slashing themselves with knives and bashing themselves with chains to celebrate that glorious defeat. Ayatollah Khomeini, the biggest Shi'ite hero of the 20th century, used to preach "Every day is the anniversary of the battle, and every place is Karbala." The inspirational message was: wherever you are, go get yourself massacred. What are you doing sitting around breathing? Why ain't you out there getting slaughtered, you lazy godless bum?
And these are the people we're picking off one by one, then bragging about body counts. Still wonder why the war's going so badly?
At the moment, Sadr is toast and the Mahdi-ettes are withdrawing, and Bush's PR guys are claiming Sadr's going into politics to play nice. You have to wonder if they really believe that. I hope not; I hope they're not really that dumb.
Any guerrilla war has lulls, slowdowns, little coffee breaks that last a week, a month, sometimes years. It doesn't mean the war's over. The VC used to go home when it was time to harvest the rice crop; every time they did, the Saigon PR office would declare that the insurgency was beaten. Sadr and his boys are going to work us the way you work a can lid: back and forth, over and over, sheer metal fatigue. They've got a whole new crop of martyrs to worship, and all they have to do is wait for another dub'ya policy mistake to outrage all their followers. One thing you can be sure of, if you're an Iraqi Shiite: outrages are like trains, there'll always be another one coming along, the 310 to Allah. When it arrives, they'll get on board, fight us again, lose again, win the propaganda battle again, and come back a little stronger, with more of the Shi'ite poor on their side. After a half dozen years of lost battles, they'll be so strong we'll be glad to catch the last chopper out of Najaf and let'em martyr each other, instead of paying hundreds of billions of my tax money to be their Santa-Claus bogeyman…………….this will be a continuing saga from the kosmic gonzo files…….I got lots more to say before I leave the on the last train to Christville.
…………………*Special shout-out to Jon D., who sent me a story on Darfur from the Guardian newspaper with a note: "Dude you should check out this sick shit." Well Dude, I did. And it was pretty disgusting. Turns out that while the Janjaweed Arab militia is raping the women in black villages, these Janjaweed women, sort of backup singers, sing songs making fun of the women getting raped. Some of the insults in the songs are a little surprising. For example, one song goes, "You are gorillas, you are black, and you are badly dressed." Who would've thought these Sudanese peasants were such fashion snobs? It's not bad enough being raped and killed, but insulting somebody's clothes…….that's a low blow, ladies. Somebody better call Oprah about this.
………………………Kosmicdebris
PARTIES SHARE SAME RHETORIC

Enough already! When are you going to figure out that you've all been had. It's not that hard to figure out. I know it's supposed to be a secret, but the cat is out of the bag.
Question: Regardless of whether you are a Democrat or a Republican, is your party acting in your best interest? Are you happy with what they are doing on the issues that matter to you? Or more appropriately, not doing? Are you so deeply faithful to your party that no matter what it does, it has to be right?
If so, voters and activists like you appall me. To cast your vote for a party rather than the person is absurd. It is that kind of blind loyalty that has gotten us in the dire situation that we now find ourselves. Please allow me to enlighten you to the reality of the truth.
Ladies and gentlemen, the Democrats and the Republicans are, here it comes, are you ready? on the same team ... . Other than getting your vote, you mean nothing to them! And what they have planned for us isn't pretty. I won't go into that now, knowing how hard the truth is. If you are seeking the truth, may I suggest you start by searching youtube.com and enter: You can handle the truth. Watch and learn because knowledge is power. And if we all don't learn the truth soon, it will be too late.…… signed disgusted voter.
While I am on the subject…….I am an online student of Michael Moore's temple of liberal enlightenment. I am working on my thesis titled "The Hypocrisy of Democracy." here is an excerpt:
The Cheney-Burton company moved its headquarters to Dubai. This is the corporation that provided our troops with dirty drinking water, gets no-bid contracts and will be there forever to facilitate the continued extraction of billions from American taxpayers. This is money that should be used (here!) to build better roads, bridges!, schools and border security systems to name a few examples of lost opportunities because of gee dub' ya's foreign policy decisions based on hidden agendas foisted on Americans using his favorite techniques of deception, misinformation, dirty tricks to steal elections and executive privilege to conceal the process and keep his villainous henchmen anonymous and out of prison, all designed to enrich the energy empire, the defense establishment and other corporations that thrive on perpetual wars.( we wont mention the federal lawmakers that have a vested interest some industry that directly or indirectly profits from the military-industrial complex, on the good senators own home turf, talk about conflict of interest.)
The surge against the insurgents is a tactical blunder and a strategic nightmare, like trying to extinguish a fire with gasoline. The Bush occupation in Iraq opened a Pandora's box that can only be closed by Iraqis politically and not Americans militarily.
Things may seem alright now, so is the tip of an iceberg, that which was hidden doomed the titanic, America may just be using Iraq as a staging area to occupy? Iran?. The Iranians have never stopped arming themselves, or spent many shells, yet. Who knows, Israel is looking at Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. The perfect storm is brewing. American diplomats are finding that it is becoming more and more difficult to keep Israel on the short leash. History has proven that Israel doesn't need US permission to neutralize a threat. ( neutralize, v. a popular military and political euphemism for offensive aggression, formally referred to as an attack) it's a safe bet the jewish state will receive the first nuclear bomb Iran builds or buys, inside or outside king David's borders. So the yarmulkes are motivated, if not poised for self preservation. Seems I read a book that spoke about this revelation. Rumsfield told the truth once when he made the most telling statement: "There are things we don't know we don't know."
Bottom line: Republicans are bullies and democrats are sissys and the voting public ?? the lights are off, but someone's home? Most likely Apathy and indifference.
……………………Kosmicdebris
Runs on tap water.....for real dude.
Category: News and Politics
BIG OIL WILL PROTECT ITS OWN INTERESTS
Anyone who thinks these big oil conglomerates won't do anything to keep those big incomes should know about this report.
A man by the name of Stanley Meyersinvented an engine that ran on water. He had a patent on his invention and was working on establishing production. His amazing invention on his own vehicle got 100 miles per gallon. Not gasoline, one gallon of water. He was offered a million dollars for the plans and the patents, but had refused to sell his invention. He had repeatedly mentioned being threatened by oil companies, but refused to abandon his water car project.
What happened? On March 26, 1998, Stanley was poisoned and killed. He died in his hometown of Grove City, Ohio. Later that same week, all of his equipment and the car that he was using disappeared; stolen! Who killed him? No one has yet been found, but it isn't hard to figure out who benefits the most by his invention not making it to the market.
This one thing we know, Stanley is gone and we continue to buy gasoline at exorbitant prices. We also continue to create global warming at an alarming rate. So what is happening because of the greatest invention of the century? Nothing! Although this could solve most of the world's problems, it makes no sense that after Stanley's discovery, this country has failed to use his technology.
First, the suspicious death of Stanley Meyers, and now the financial rape of the American people by the oil conglomerates. While some of us have had to alter our lives and skip road trips to visit family and friends this summer, Exxon Mobil reports another unbelievable jump in profits this last quarter of some $10 billion.
It is difficult to pay for gas at all without thinking of how we are assisting the thieves in blocking action on global warming. Personally, I have adjusted and plan to adjust even more to living without giving them any more than I absolutely must. Exxon's own report card shows that its contribution to the pollution of the world is up this year by 5 percent. It is not only economic rape but environmental rape too, they are stealing our children's future potential. Water would be so cool, I would love to see every gas pump disappear in my lifetime. Without oil no one from Texas will be able to afford to buy their way into the Whitehouse. Yeah! ………………………………...................Kosmicdebris……………………………….......