Stop the End of the World: PURGE BUSH!

Friday, March 16, 2007

Sage is always good. Or maybe lavender. Pine is nice, too. Dried, bundled, tied with string, burned with hot, divine intent. Would it work? Do we have enough to go around? This is the question.

I speak, of course, of ritual. Purging and cleansing and purifying and, truly, burning a nicely dried, blessed smudge stick can be a terrific slice of personal magic, to rid a space (or perhaps even your own body) of negative juju or vicious spirits or just to make way for the new and the moist and the good. You can smudge a room. You can create a divine smoldering cloud and then move through the smoke, invoke change, purge the negative, invite hot licks of yes. It is a thing to do.

But here’s the thing: Can you smudge an entire nation? Do we have enough lavender for 300 million? It is, all things considered, a big goddamn country. Windy. Rocky, in places. Could be tricky. Not to mention, you know, hazy. From all the smoke. Think of the potential traffic accidents. Coughing.

Important considerations, really, because it is becoming increasingly evident that a great national purifying ritual is just about exactly what we need. We are, after all, almost at that point. The Great Bleakness is nearing its end and you can veritably feel the swarm of uptight BushCo demons and malicious energies swirling around the country like happy karmic leeches, like a giant intellectual rash, like black raindrops of dank sweat from Karl Rove’s evil mealy thighs.

To make matters worse, these dark energies, these base spirits were actually invited here by the Powers That Be, by those quivering, shivering, terrified armies of evangelical right-wing neocon bonk jobs and attorneys general and sour Supreme Court justices and scowling defense secretaries lo these past half-dozen years, and this means they shall not leave easily, despite how it is quickly coming time for them to be shoved back down into the bowels of fear and shrill egomania whence they came.

We must, therefore, do like the Mayans do. We must follow their divine and entirely appropriate example, set just recently.

Apparently, George W. Bush — famed warmonger, despoiler of lands, despiser of gays and women and science and earthly resource, hapless fascist-wannabe — it seems George just visited Guatemala, where he happily trod upon a holy Mayan site or two and shook hands with wary diplomats and blinked a lot and mispronounced a hundred different names. You know, same old, same old.

But then something interesting happened. Seems Bush left behind huge steaming piles of banality wherever he went, and therefore the first thing Guatemala’s holy guardians of the sacred did as soon as Air Force One’s wheels lifted off the ground was, of course, to purify the hallowed ground our president’s shockingly low, nefarious energy had infected.

It’s true. Those Mayan priests rushed in right after George left and cleansed the sacred archeological site upon which Dubya had trod, shooed away the snickering hordes of bleak spirits that trail behind America’s Great Embarrassment like a sickly fog of ignorance and misprision and shockingly humiliating grammar.

Yes, we need a grand American ritual. We are, after all, far more deeply infected than that Mayan site. Does it not seem entirely appropriate? Does it not make perfect sense? Of course it does.

Ah, but maybe you scoff. Maybe you say what those highly regarded Mayan priests did was just quaint tribal nonsense, a little savage, silly, pagan. Truly, most Christians tend to sneer at such things, mock and deride and denounce even as they kneel before giant gruesome crosses and flock to pieces of suspiciously burnt toast and make Mel Gibson insanely wealthy.

Christian rituals, if they exist at all, are largely tepid and bland and might involve, say, a little rosary bead here, a little sip of wine there, maybe a quick bologna sandwich followed by 4,000 Hail Marys and a bunch of blind fervent prayers to some grand unhappy deity because, well, most Christians don’t really understand the notion of spirit guides or negative energies unless it looks really sexy in red leathery skin and black boots and sharp pointy horns.

I bring this up only because an estimated 75 percent of Americans at least vaguely identify with the Christian faith, and we can safely presume that only a wizened handful know how to burn, smudge, cleanse with anything resembling deep laughter and honest pagan intent and the understanding that Bush has been more toxic to this nation than Adam Sandler and MySpace and cheap piss-water domestic beer combined. Would this fact be an obstacle? Can we please try, anyway?

We could try water. Sacred baths. Not-so-sacred baths. Any sort of bath, shower, divine scrub-down involving divine intent and maybe some candles and a little dish of salt and some blessed soap and the prayer-full idea that you are sloughing off skanky Bush demons and old skin and past loves and idiotic politicians.

Can we bathe each other? Hose each other down? We do, after all, have a lot of water laying around. Bottles and bottles of it stacked to the rooftops of the nation’s Costcos and Wal-Warts like wet plastic kindling. Would this be sanitary? Do we have proper drainage? Enough soap? Ah, logistics.

Ah, but wait. There is another fabulous possibility. There is, of course, fire. I love fire. Fire is God’s own enema. Fire is the devil’s dental floss. It is beautiful and powerful and dangerous and obvious and fun. As purgatives go, it can’t be beat. Ritualistically, you can burn it all: incense, candles, locks of hair, photographs, bedsheets, foreign policy documents, Dick Cheney’s black charcoal heart, Jenna Bush’s beer bong. Fire is good. Fire kicks serious spiritual butt. This is what they say.

Sure, it won’t be easy. We will have to get around the law. Skirt the federal fire marshal’s implied edict that we cannot really have, say, a National Day of Fire, a grand torching of the toxic memory that is eight miserable years of the Bush administration.

No matter. It’s still worth a try. It is, in fact, mandatory. And this being America, we can just keep it simple. Obvious. Keep the metaphor so clear that even celebrities and teenagers and recovering born-again Christians will understand.

Here is what we can do: We shall burn a bush. Ten thousand bushes. Maybe a million. Bushes laced with sage, lavender, pine, incense, with eight years of warmongering and intolerance and those beady squinty vacant eyes. We shall gather in parks or street corners or fire pits at the beach sometime next year, and ignite.

Just circulate copies of three-star General William Odom’s debunking of many of the misconceptions about Iraq in an interview summarized on the McLaughlin Report on Nov. 20, 2005 which still applies now.

1) Argument: Withdrawal would incite civil war.
Odom: Civil war is already happening.

2) Argument: World would not support withdrawal.
Odom: The world would rally behind withdrawal.

3) Argument: Withdrawal emboldens insurgency.
Odom: Occupation emboldens insurgency far more than withdrawal would.

4) Argument: Withdrawal would create a terrorist haven.
Odom: Iraq is worse than a haven now, it’s a training ground for terrorists.

5) Argument: Withdrawal invites Iranian influence.
Odom: Occupation has already increased Iranian influence.

6) Argument: Withdrawal would spread unrest to other nations.
Odom: Staying would cause the same if not more unrest.

7) Argument: Withdrawal would cause more Sunni/Shiite clashes.
Odom: More clashes will be prompted if we stay.

8) Argument: The Iraqi military will be unprepared if we leave now.
Odom: Disloyalty by the Iraqi military is the reason they are not prepared.

9) Argument: Withdrawal dishonors the troops there now and those who have died or been wounded.
Odom: Many troops already question the occupation.

So there’s Odom, a patriot in every sense of the word, debunking the pro - occupation platform. Myself, I agree with all of Odom’s points.

It’s time to get out 

Four years ago this week, the tanks rolled for what President Bush originally called, "Operation Iraqi Liberation" — O.I.L.
I kid you not.

And it was four years ago that, from the White House, George Bush, declaring war, said, "I want to talk to the Iraqi people." That Dick Cheney didn’t tell Bush that Iraqis speak Arabic … well, never mind. I expected the President to say something like, "Our troops are coming to liberate you, so don’t shoot them." Instead, Mr. Bush told, the Iraqis,

"Do not destroy oil wells."

Nevertheless, the Bush Administration said the war had nothing to do with Iraq’s oil. Indeed, in 2002, the State Department stated, and its official newsletter, the Washington Post, repeated, that State’s Iraq study group, "does not have oil on its list of issues."

But now, we’ve learned that, despite protestations to the contrary, Condoleezza Rice held a secret meeting with the former Secretary-General of OPEC, Fadhil Chalabi, an Iraqi, and offered Chalabi the job of Oil Minister for Iraq. (It is well established that the President of the United States may appoint the cabinet ministers of another nation if that appointment is confirmed by the 101st Airborne.)

In all the chest-beating about how the war did badly, no one seems to remember how the war did very, very well — for Big Oil.

The war has kept Iraq’s oil production to 2.1 million barrels a day from pre-war, pre-embargo production of over 4 million barrels. In the oil game, that’s a lot to lose. In fact, the loss of Iraq’s 2 million barrels a day is equal to the entire planet’s reserve production capacity.

In other words, the war has caused a hell of a supply squeeze — and Big Oil just loves it. Oil today is $57 a barrel versus the $18 a barrel price under Bill "Love-Not-War" Clinton.

Since the launch of Operation Iraqi Liberation, Halliburton stock has tripled to $64 a share — not, as some believe, because of those Iraq reconstruction contracts — peanuts for Halliburton. Cheney’s former company’s main business is "oil services." And, as one oilman complained to me, Cheney’s former company has captured a big hunk of the rise in oil prices by jacking up the charges for Halliburton drilling and piping equipment.

But before we shed tears for Big Oil’s having to hand Halliburton its slice, let me note that the value of the reserves of the five biggest oil companies more than doubled during the war to $2.36 trillion.

And that was the plan: putting a new floor under the price of oil. I’ve have that in writing. In 2005, after a two-year battle with the State and Defense Departments, they released to my team at BBC Newsnight the "Options for a Sustainable Iraqi Oil Industry." Now, you might think our government shouldn’t be writing a plan for another nation’s oil. Well, our government didn’t write it, despite the State Department seal on the cover. In fact, we discovered that the 323-page plan was drafted in Houston by oil industry executives and consultants.

The suspicion is that Bush went to war to get Iraq’s oil. That’s not true. The document, and secret recordings of those in on the scheme, made it clear that the Administration wanted to make certain America did not get the oil. In other words, keep the lid on Iraq’s oil production — and thereby keep the price of oil high.

Of course, the language was far more subtle than, "Let’s cut Iraq’s oil production and jack up prices." Rather, the report uses industry jargon and euphemisms which require Iraq to remain an obedient member of the OPEC cartel and stick to the oil-production limits — "quotas" — which keep up oil prices.

The Houston plan, enforced by an army of occupation, would, "enhance [Iraq’s] relationship with OPEC," the oil cartel.

And that’s undoubtedly why Condoleezza Rice asked Fadhil Chalabi to take charge of Iraq’s Oil Ministry. As former chief operating officer of OPEC, the oil cartel, Fadhil was a Big Oil favorite, certain to ensure that Iraq would never again allow the world to slip back to the Clinton era of low prices and low profits. (In investigating for BBC, I was told by the former chief of the CIA’s oil unit that he’d met with Fadhil regarding oil at Bush’s request. Fadhil recently complained to the BBC. He denied the meeting with the Bush emissary in London because, he noted, he was secretly meeting that week in Washington with Condi!)

Fadhil, by the way, turned down Condi’s offer to run Iraq’s Oil Ministry. Ultimately, Iraq’s Oil Ministry was given to Fadhil’s fellow tribesman, Ahmad Chalabi, a convicted bank swindler and neo-con idol. But whichever Chalabi is nominal head of Iraq’s oil industry in Baghdad, the orders come from Houston. Indeed, the oil law adopted by Iraq’s shaky government this month is virtually a photocopy of the "Options" plan first conceived in Texas long before Iraq was "liberated."

In other words, the war has gone exactly to plan — the Houston plan. So forget the naïve cloth-rending about a conflict gone haywire. Exxon-Mobil reported a record $10 billion profit last quarter, the largest of any corporation in history. Mission Accomplished.

Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestseller, Armed Madhouse: From Baghdad to New Orleans — Sordid Secrets and Strange Tales of a White House Gone Wild. A new edition, updated and expanded, will be released April 24.

Palast hits the road with the new Armed Madhouse tour beginning April 21 in Chicago; then to Madison, Portland, Eugene, San Francisco, San Jose, Los Angeles, Santa Fe, New York (with Randi Rhodes) and Washington. The original tour was sponsored by Code Pink, Buzzflash, Working Assets, DemocracyNow! and many more. Add your group to the list by contacting us.

I am GEORGE WALKER BUSH, son of the former president of the United States of America George Herbert Walker Bush, and currently serving as President of the United States of America. This letter might surprise you because we have not met neither in person nor by correspondence. I came to know of you in my search for a reliable and reputable person to handle a very confidential business transaction, which involves the transfer of a huge sum of money to an account requiring maximum confidence.

I am writing you in absolute confidence primarily to seek your assistance in acquiring oil funds that are presently trapped in the republic of Iraq. My partners and I solicit your assistance in completing a transaction begun by my father, who has long been actively engaged in the extraction of petroleum in the United States of America, and bravely served his country as director of the United States Central Intelligence Agency.

In the decade of the nineteen-eighties, my father, then vice-president of the United States of America, sought to work with the good offices of the President of the Republic of Iraq to regain lost oil revenue sources in the neighboring Islamic republic of Iran. This unsuccessful venture was soon followed by a falling-out with his Iraqi partner, who sought to acquire additional oil revenue sources in the neighboring emirate of Kuwait, a wholly-owned U.S.-British subsidiary.

My father re-secured the petroleum assets of Kuwait in 1991 at a cost of sixty-one billion U.S. dollars ($61,000,000,000). Out of that cost, thirty-six billion dollars ($36,000,000,000) were supplied by his partners in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and other Persian gulf monarchies, and sixteen billion dollars ($16,000,000,000) by German and Japanese partners. But my father’s former Iraqi business partner remained in control of the republic of Iraq and its petroleum reserves.

My family is calling for your urgent assistance in funding the removal of the President of the Republic of Iraq and acquiring the petroleum assets of his country, as compensation for the costs of removing him from power. unfortunately, our partners from 1991 are not willing to shoulder the burden of this new venture, which in its upcoming phase may cost the sum of 100 billion to 200 billion dollars ($100,000,000,000 - $200,000,000,000), both in the initial acquisition and in long-term management.

Without the funds from our 1991 partners, we would not be able to acquire the oil revenue trapped within Iraq. That is why my family and our colleagues are urgently seeking your gracious assistance. Our distinguished colleagues in this business transaction include the sitting vice-president of the United States of America, Richard Cheney, who is an original partner in the Iraq venture and former head of the Halliburton oil company, and Condoleeza Rice, whose professional dedication to the venture was demonstrated in the naming of a Chevron oil tanker after her.

I would beseech you to transfer a sum equaling ten to twenty-five percent (10-25 %) of your yearly income to our account to aid in this important venture. The internal revenue service of the United States of America will function as our trusted intermediary. I propose that you make this transfer before the fifteenth (15th) of the month of April.

I know that a transaction of this magnitude would make anyone apprehensive and worried. But I am assuring you that all will be well at the end of the day. A bold step taken shall not be regretted, I assure you. Please do be informed that this business transaction is 100% legal. If you do not wish to co-operate in this transaction, please contact our intermediary representatives to further discuss the matter.

I pray that you understand our plight. My family and our colleagues will be forever grateful. Please reply in strict confidence to the contact numbers below.

Sincerely with warm regards,

George Walker Bush

"History may not repeat itself, but it does rhyme alot."
— Mark Twain

"The best way to predict the future is to invent it."
— Alan Kay

"The universe will reward you for taking risks on its behalf."
— Shakti Gawain

"Our complex global economy is built upon millions of small, private acts of psychological surrender, the willingness of people to acquiesce in playing their assigned parts as cogs in the great social machine that encompasses all other machines... that capacity for self-enslavement must be broken." — Theodore Roszak - The Voice Of The Earth

"Show me your garden and I shall tell you what you are."
— Alfred Austin

"My heart was completely tinder, and eternally lighted up by some Goddess or other."
— Robert Burns