BIG LETTERS FOR OLD PEOPLE
Tirades and Lectures: Alice's Restaurant
This is not a tirade or a lecture,
it is simply a thing not to be liked
much like tirades and/or lectures.
It has a basis in everything I know
that you don’t know and some
of what you know that I don’t.
First, I am very angry at having been
sent to the bottom of the page
in Reader’s Digest, the one
with big letters for Old People.
Secondly, I am going to feed my dog
and while I am feeding that dog
I’m thinking of Israel, the Mogen David
and a curious thing called Niggis.
That’s what you don’t know.
You also don’t know about trocars
in the same way I know about them
having handed them over
with innocent face and all.
There are conspiracies and plans,
most of all there are knowledges
built around the fundamental axis
of irregularity:
Eye closures, car accidents,
things that CHANGE US,
like a piddly article in the READER’S DIGEST
On some old bag’s nightstand.
Niggis, for what it’s worth involves
a surly noise at six a.m. in which
I look out to find my favorite dog friend,
BUSH, what a name to give a dog!
Find him being tormented by a young muslim woman
with two children, on her way back
from the dumpster down the street:
It’s Alice’s Restaurant you know.
Her concern is to put enough sticks
into the eye of the dog so the satanic
force called his saliva
won’t ruin her pretty religious countenance.
I ask her: “What in the HELL are you doing?
Wa salaam wa' alaikum?”
She looks up from under a head scarf
belligerent and points to the kids half-a-block-away
already, and the dog INSIDE
the purely impenetrable fence.
No wonder dogs hate us and no wonder
muslims hate dogs
but I don’t and I’m on my way up now
to feed my muslima Jewel:
Translates to Johara
in an Old Testament Way in our language,
the language of Niggeritis
I’ve counseled one or two people on recently.
So, Guthrie points at me and asks:
"What in TARNATION are you doing?"
I answer: When you see the photo of the naked men
flanked by German Shepherds inside Abu Gharaib,
when you look at that remember Niggis.
It’s not really about the Draft or the Sixties,
In fact it’s probably so far out of your realm
that you can almost JUSTIFY it.
Kind of like the READER’S DIGEST
justifies a lot of what it has to say about:
eye closures and car accidents,
the alarming irregularity of it all,
the alarming heroics of defending things
you fail to understand,
or undermining them with belligerent
mind boggling simplicity.
Personally, I enjoy it and would subscribe
if my heart was really into it.
"The right of freedom of speech consists in speaking the truth."
23.1.06
In every time zone
a soldier patrols the perimeter of the site
in a certain kind of loneliness.
He persists but I do not.
A prayerful moth, rather large,
finds sanctuary on top of the blinds
but we do not.
Momentary gladness fills the room,
grace ends with a smile.
Your presence fills nothing but the void
as a car loading explosives at dawn
shuts prophecy down for the day.
It is grown here and exported, how?
Radishes grow into melons.
Dogs scattered in various poses
at the road side, mangled and all
quite dead. How can this be?
Who is painting the roads red?
A minaret is climbing through the arcadia door
it is almost beautiful, a knick knack.
The men in clusters near the bottom
count several angles. Another balances
high on the scaffold with bare chest.
A slaughter in the dust one year ago
and next year my decorations will
sing everything is loved once
before building a reputation, wherever that is.
a soldier patrols the perimeter of the site
in a certain kind of loneliness.
He persists but I do not.
A prayerful moth, rather large,
finds sanctuary on top of the blinds
but we do not.
Momentary gladness fills the room,
grace ends with a smile.
Your presence fills nothing but the void
as a car loading explosives at dawn
shuts prophecy down for the day.
It is grown here and exported, how?
Radishes grow into melons.
Dogs scattered in various poses
at the road side, mangled and all
quite dead. How can this be?
Who is painting the roads red?
A minaret is climbing through the arcadia door
it is almost beautiful, a knick knack.
The men in clusters near the bottom
count several angles. Another balances
high on the scaffold with bare chest.
A slaughter in the dust one year ago
and next year my decorations will
sing everything is loved once
before building a reputation, wherever that is.
http://squirrelsinmyattic.blogspot.com/
Squirrel poetry. Strangely enough this is very good squirrel poetry. Not the usual squirrel poetry that most people are used to.
Go there now.
Squirrel poetry. Strangely enough this is very good squirrel poetry. Not the usual squirrel poetry that most people are used to.
Go there now.
21.1.06
Extry Extry, read all about it!
$0.05 Worth of Info from Iran
United States Pushes Drive to Monopolize Nuclear Energy!
http://blog.zmag.org/index.php/weblog/entry/iran5/
Yes indeed. The Western World is committed to controlling Nuclear Energy because it has a case of sour grapes over Oil.
Read what the Iranian President is saying. Every single bit of it sensical, academic and progressive. What an upstart!
Israel? Well....lets just say that Israel has some answerin' to do regarding it's own nuclear energy usage (we all know that already) and along with that they need to explain why they feel their right to land supercedes the rights of the indigenous Palestinians. We all know that as well.
What we really need to consider however is that the Iranian president shoots from the hip and points a critical finger at the way the West uses international organizations (Security Council and the IAEA) as ATTACK DOGS. Vicious.
$0.05 Worth of Info from Iran
United States Pushes Drive to Monopolize Nuclear Energy!
http://blog.zmag.org/index.php/weblog/entry/iran5/
Yes indeed. The Western World is committed to controlling Nuclear Energy because it has a case of sour grapes over Oil.
Read what the Iranian President is saying. Every single bit of it sensical, academic and progressive. What an upstart!
Israel? Well....lets just say that Israel has some answerin' to do regarding it's own nuclear energy usage (we all know that already) and along with that they need to explain why they feel their right to land supercedes the rights of the indigenous Palestinians. We all know that as well.
What we really need to consider however is that the Iranian president shoots from the hip and points a critical finger at the way the West uses international organizations (Security Council and the IAEA) as ATTACK DOGS. Vicious.
18.1.06
The Warlords of Jebel Al Sheik
http://www.lebaneseforces.com/blastfromthepast005.asp
September 1983Over 110 villages or Christian quarters in the Chouf were ethnically cleansed of their Christian inhabitants: Throats were slit, bodies hacked apart with axes, many were burned alive over fire red, iron bars. Syrian soldiers and members of the Druze community of Lebanon took part in these massacres. Likewise, on November 8, 1982, Israeli Druze officers allowed the Lebanese Druze to massacre the Christian population in certain villages such as Kfarnabrakh, at the foot of the cedars of Mount Barouk.Walid Joumblatt, the leader of the Lebanese Druze, gave the order to massacre the Chouf Christians.
February 1984Occupation of West Beirut by Amal, the pro-Syrian Shi'ite militia. On February 6, 1984, Amal supported by Syrian troupes, attacked the Lebanese army stationed in West Beirut. The fighting left at least one hundred dead and over 400 injured. Nabih Berri, Head of Amal, and Ghazi Kanaan (now dead per suicide via Syrian media accounts), commander of the Syrian forces in Lebanon, are responsible for this slaughter.
March 1985 Exodus of tens of thousands of Christians from Iklim El_Kharroub and the eastern part of Saida. The Palestinians and Lebanese Druze laid siege to, pillaged and burned over twenty Christian villages. Walid Joumblatt, Yasser Arafat and Syrian officers, planned these massacres.
*In September, Hobeika ordered LF militiamen into the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps on the outskirts of the city, which had recently been evacuated by the PLO. Over the next three days, LF forces killed over 800 residents of the camp.* NOTE: Hobeika is the first of the mysterious assassinations in this round in 1982. He was murdered because he turned state evidence AND well...follow this from: http://www.meib.org/articles/0201_l1.htm
Hobeika was involved in a second massacre in March 1985 that would later come back to haunt him. The American CIA reportedly paid Hobeika (through Lebanese army intelligence officers) to assassinate Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah, the spiritual leader of the militant Shi'ite group Hezbollah, considered by US officials to have taken part in planning the October 1983 bombing of the US marine barracks in Beirut which killed 241 servicemen. However, the assassination attempt that Hobeika carried out was not the surgical operation that his benefactors had hoped for - the car bombing near Fadlallah's residence killed dozens of bystanders but left the intended target unscathed. The massacre led the CIA to terminate its relationship with Hobeika and gave Hezbollah a lasting grudge against him.
Who invited SYRIA again?
That same month, Hobeika (now dead) joined Samir Geagea (now out of prison) and Karim Pakradouni in revolting against LF commander Fouad Abu Nader, who had begun to follow the lead of his uncle, President Amine Gemayel (dead too, assassinated), in reconciling with Damascus. After Geagea stepped down from the joint leadership of the LF a few months later, Hobeika advanced to the top of the militia's political hierarchy. Hobeika, who was until then a staunch opponent of Syrian intervention in Lebanon, abruptly realigned himself in hopes of reaching an agreement with Syrian-backed militias and assuming the presidency in a Syrian-dominated post-war republic. In September 1985, he traveled to Damascus. The leader of the Progressive Socialist Party (PSP) militia, Walid Jumblatt, reportedly asked Syrian Vice-President Abdul Halim Khaddam why he was negotiating with "this murderer," to which Khaddam replied, "Who in Lebanon is not a murderer?"1
In December, Hobeika and Pakradouni joined Jumblatt and Amal leader Nabih Berri in Damascus to sign the Tripartite Accord, an agreement between the country's three top militias that would have legalized the Syrian presence in Lebanon. After details of the accord were published in the Lebanese press, however, Christian opposition to the agreement grew rapidly. In January 1986, rebellious LF forces led by Geagea, with help from Amine Gemayel's partisans, seized control of east Beirut and Hobeika fled to France.
Although he was discredited within his own Christian community, Hobeika was encouraged by Khaddam and Lebanese financier (and future prime minister) Rafiq Hariri (NOW DEAD) to return to the country and establish his own militia in Syrian-occupied areas. For the next five years, Hobeika served his new patrons and awaited the day that his support for Damascus would be rewarded.
And for CRYING OUT LOUD: After Syria invaded east Beirut and ousted Michel Aoun (now out of prison) in October 1990, completing its conquest of Lebanon, Hobeika was twice "elected" to parliament and occupied several important cabinet positions. Hobeika's post-war political career is a good illustration of why most Lebanese feel such intense skepticism toward their government. After having contributed so substantially to the creation of hundreds of thousands of internal refugees and handicapped persons injured during the war - two of the most pressing social problems in postwar Lebanon - Hobeika was appointed minister of the displaced (October 1991) and minister of social affairs and the disabled (November 1992). In May 1995 he was appointed minister of electricity and water resources, a post he held for over three years....
So Hezbollah (terrorist organization well known for their plots and treasons tee hee) says:
NO HOBEIKA: Prior to the August 2000 elections, Hezbollah officials objected when Damascus included Hobeika on the "Consensus and Renewal" list, a pro-Syrian electoral coalition running against allies of Druze leader Walid Jumblatt in the Baabda-Aley district, arguing that the former militia chieftain had the blood of thousands of Muslims on his hands. Although a compromise was reached to leave a slot on the list blank so that Hobeika's supporters could write in his name, Hobeika suffered a humiliating defeat in the elections. Bet Jumblatt didn't mind his blood brother on that list though!
Ah.....September 11th....and William Cooper shot dead too in the Superstition Mountains a few weeks later by a redneck SHARIF.....Damn those Sharifs! Sometimes a laugh helps....
In the aftermath of September 11, Hobeika attempted to win American support by contacting the CIA to offer his help in locating and capturing Imad Mughniyah, the former head of special overseas operations for Hezbollah who is listed on the Bush administration's most wanted terrorist list. Hobeika had collaborated with CIA operatives in Lebanon in the early 1980s and attended a training course at the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia in 1982. His services would have been a valuable asset in the hunt for Mughniyah. Hobeika owned one of the largest private security firms in Lebanon (in effect, a small militia made up of bodyguards with legally-registered weaponry and skilled intelligence operatives) that has a presence in the largely Shi'ite southern suburbs of Beirut - the most likely location of Mughniyah.
A reasonable amount of time.... we take such a careful and reasonable amount of time to delay discussion of one's death.
At 9:30 AM on January 24, Hobeika and three bodyguards left his apartment on Kamel Asaad street in suburban Hazmieh southeast of the capital en route to his office in Sin al-Fil. Shortly after their departure, the blue Range Rover they were driving slowed down to pass by a Mercedes parked on the side of a narrow road. At that instant, an estimated 22 pounds of TNT in the Mercedes suddenly detonated (apparently by remote control). The explosion reportedly catapulted the former warlord's charred remains over sixty meters from the wrecked SUV, killed a bystander and injured six others. The blast blackened neighboring apartment buildings, destroyed dozens of cars parked nearby, and even shattered glass windows up to one kilometer away from the scene.
Hours after the assassination, Lebanese Interior Minister Elias Murr held a press conference and announced that the authorities had "confirmation that Israel and its agents were behind this terrorist act." President Lahoud and Prime Minister Hariri also insisted that Israel was involved. Since categorical statements alleging Israeli involvement are generally made by Lebanese and Syrian officials whenever there are manifestations of anti-Syrian dissent in Lebanon, official statements in Beirut and Damascus do not reveal anything substantial about the incident. Israeli officials denied the claims.
The Suspects
The Israelis?
Since Israel has carried out similar assassinations of its enemies in Lebanon in the past (e.g. the January 1979 assassination of Abu Ali Hassan Salameh, the commander of Yasser Arafat's Force 17), it might have been able to carry out the assassination of Hobeika, either directly or through Lebanese proxies, even in an area like Hazmieh. Contrary to widespread Arab and Western media speculation, however, Israel does not appear to have had a compelling motive to kill Hobeika, as there was no reason to believe that he would reveal credible new information about Israeli involvement in the massacre during his testimony in Belgium. His SLA story would not have been taken seriously enough to threaten Israel - in fact, the ridiculousness of the story would have undermined the credibility of the lawsuit. Indeed, the assassination worked against Israeli interests insofar as it allowed Hobeika's vague allegations of direct Israeli involvement to attract international media attention without being formally specified or cross-examined in a courtroom.
The Palestinians?
In light of the large numbers of Palestinians that Hobeika was responsible for killing during the war in Lebanon, the possibility that an armed Palestinian faction carried out the assassination cannot be discounted. Just last year, in fact, a senior official of Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement in Lebanon, Bassam Abu Sharif, threatened to kill Hobeika.5 Notwithstanding such boasts, assassinating Hobeika would not really have advanced Palestinian interests since he was already politically irrelevant. Moreover, Palestinians in Lebanon are extremely vulnerable and would have risked severe retaliation had they conducted such an operation without Syria's blessing and it was traced to a Palestinian faction. After the assassination, Fatah officials in Lebanon apparently feared that they might be blamed - they moved quickly to prevent any public celebrations in camps under their control and issued a decree prohibiting residents of Sabra and Shatila from speaking to journalists for a 48-hour period. "Emotionally, people may feel some relief from Hobeika's death," acknowledged a Fatah military bureau member in Lebanon, "but if you look at it from a political perspective, this is not a good thing for us."6
The Lebanese Forces
Another possible culprit is the radical wing of the LF. In 1991, according to the Lebanese authorities, LF operatives loyal to Samir Geagea carried out a 1991 bombing which destroyed Hobeika's car and killed one of his bodyguards. In June 1998, the Lebanese authorities claimed to have uncovered a plot by former LF intelligence operatives to assassinate Hobeika, as well as Maj. Gen. Ghazi Kanaan, the chief of Syrian military intelligence in Lebanon, and then-Interior Minister Michel Murr. The 13 alleged members of the cell who were arrested by security forces reportedly received their orders via the Internet from an LF office in Australia.
However, as the above failures illustrate, radical LF factions have been thoroughly penetrated by Lebanese and Syrian intelligence over the last ten years. It is highly unlikely that any anti-Syrian faction of the LF could have undertaken an operation of this complexity in Hazmieh unless it was coordinating with the Syrians - which seems unlikely.
Although a Western news agency in Cyprus received a fax claiming responsibility in the name of a previously unknown group called "Lebanese for a Free and Independent Lebanon," this was probably a ploy designed to implicate the anti-Syrian opposition. It is possible that former LF officials currently aligned with the Syrians might have been motivated to assassinate Hobeika, fearing that he might speak candidly about their involvement in the Sabra and Shatila massacre, and received permission from the Syrians to do so. The fact that the Lebanese government's investigation of the massacre was suspended in 1983 suggests that there are politically sensitive details to the case that have not seen the light of day. However, while this remains an outside possibility, there are more plausible explanations.
The Syrians
As the final months of Hobeika's life clearly indicate, the Syrians had completely withdrawn their protection and instructed the Lebanese judiciary to take action against him, or at least threaten to do so. Given the timing of the judicial moves, it appears likely that the Syrian intelligence learned about his attempts to approach the CIA. Had the Syrians learned that he was considering leaving the country (which also appears likely, since his bodyguard was talking freely about it), they would have had a strong motive to eliminate him, or allow others to eliminate him, before he could do so. Moreover, the Syrians stood to gain from the killing in other important ways. The event could serve as a pretext for a massive crackdown on opponents of the Syrian occupation in Lebanon. More generally, the assassination, which bore an uncanny resemblance to killings during the war, lent support to Syria's claim that a withdrawal of its forces from Lebanon would lead to internal violence and instability. However, while it appears that Damascus wanted to see Hobeika dead and permitted the operation to occur in an area with a strong Syrian intelligence presence, it is not all that likely that they carried it out themselves - it would have been more expedient to simply facilitate an operation by a local group.
Hezbollah's Foreign Operations Branch (Imad Mughniyah)
As previously mentioned, Hezbollah's political leadership has its own grudge against Hobeika dating back to the March 1985 car bomb attack against Fadlallah, as does the movement's main external sponsor, Iran, for his role in the deaths of four Iranian diplomats during the civil war. A more immediate motive for eliminating Hobeika would have been the desire to preempt his assistance to the CIA in locating Imad Mughniyah, the head of Hezbollah's Foreign Operations Branch (jihaz al-amaliyyat al-kharijiyya). Although Mughniyah's agency is no longer officially part of Hezbollah, this is mainly a facade designed to allow the group's political leadership to maintain plausible deniability regarding its operations. Logistically it is part of the same organization - the main distinction being that Mughniyah coordinates directly with Iran and Syria, and maintains a degree of operational autonomy.While there is no direct evidence linking Mughniyah to the assassination, he had the most compelling motive of any suspect to order a hit on Hobeika, his operatives in Lebanon were clearly capable of such an operation, and the Syrians appear to have been more than willing to facilitate it.
QUIZ:
Who are the two names missing from this roster of usual suspects?
What is the meaning of Mainly a FACADE?
Who is next?
http://www.lebaneseforces.com/blastfromthepast005.asp
September 1983Over 110 villages or Christian quarters in the Chouf were ethnically cleansed of their Christian inhabitants: Throats were slit, bodies hacked apart with axes, many were burned alive over fire red, iron bars. Syrian soldiers and members of the Druze community of Lebanon took part in these massacres. Likewise, on November 8, 1982, Israeli Druze officers allowed the Lebanese Druze to massacre the Christian population in certain villages such as Kfarnabrakh, at the foot of the cedars of Mount Barouk.Walid Joumblatt, the leader of the Lebanese Druze, gave the order to massacre the Chouf Christians.
February 1984Occupation of West Beirut by Amal, the pro-Syrian Shi'ite militia. On February 6, 1984, Amal supported by Syrian troupes, attacked the Lebanese army stationed in West Beirut. The fighting left at least one hundred dead and over 400 injured. Nabih Berri, Head of Amal, and Ghazi Kanaan (now dead per suicide via Syrian media accounts), commander of the Syrian forces in Lebanon, are responsible for this slaughter.
March 1985 Exodus of tens of thousands of Christians from Iklim El_Kharroub and the eastern part of Saida. The Palestinians and Lebanese Druze laid siege to, pillaged and burned over twenty Christian villages. Walid Joumblatt, Yasser Arafat and Syrian officers, planned these massacres.
*In September, Hobeika ordered LF militiamen into the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps on the outskirts of the city, which had recently been evacuated by the PLO. Over the next three days, LF forces killed over 800 residents of the camp.* NOTE: Hobeika is the first of the mysterious assassinations in this round in 1982. He was murdered because he turned state evidence AND well...follow this from: http://www.meib.org/articles/0201_l1.htm
Hobeika was involved in a second massacre in March 1985 that would later come back to haunt him. The American CIA reportedly paid Hobeika (through Lebanese army intelligence officers) to assassinate Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah, the spiritual leader of the militant Shi'ite group Hezbollah, considered by US officials to have taken part in planning the October 1983 bombing of the US marine barracks in Beirut which killed 241 servicemen. However, the assassination attempt that Hobeika carried out was not the surgical operation that his benefactors had hoped for - the car bombing near Fadlallah's residence killed dozens of bystanders but left the intended target unscathed. The massacre led the CIA to terminate its relationship with Hobeika and gave Hezbollah a lasting grudge against him.
Who invited SYRIA again?
That same month, Hobeika (now dead) joined Samir Geagea (now out of prison) and Karim Pakradouni in revolting against LF commander Fouad Abu Nader, who had begun to follow the lead of his uncle, President Amine Gemayel (dead too, assassinated), in reconciling with Damascus. After Geagea stepped down from the joint leadership of the LF a few months later, Hobeika advanced to the top of the militia's political hierarchy. Hobeika, who was until then a staunch opponent of Syrian intervention in Lebanon, abruptly realigned himself in hopes of reaching an agreement with Syrian-backed militias and assuming the presidency in a Syrian-dominated post-war republic. In September 1985, he traveled to Damascus. The leader of the Progressive Socialist Party (PSP) militia, Walid Jumblatt, reportedly asked Syrian Vice-President Abdul Halim Khaddam why he was negotiating with "this murderer," to which Khaddam replied, "Who in Lebanon is not a murderer?"1
In December, Hobeika and Pakradouni joined Jumblatt and Amal leader Nabih Berri in Damascus to sign the Tripartite Accord, an agreement between the country's three top militias that would have legalized the Syrian presence in Lebanon. After details of the accord were published in the Lebanese press, however, Christian opposition to the agreement grew rapidly. In January 1986, rebellious LF forces led by Geagea, with help from Amine Gemayel's partisans, seized control of east Beirut and Hobeika fled to France.
Although he was discredited within his own Christian community, Hobeika was encouraged by Khaddam and Lebanese financier (and future prime minister) Rafiq Hariri (NOW DEAD) to return to the country and establish his own militia in Syrian-occupied areas. For the next five years, Hobeika served his new patrons and awaited the day that his support for Damascus would be rewarded.
And for CRYING OUT LOUD: After Syria invaded east Beirut and ousted Michel Aoun (now out of prison) in October 1990, completing its conquest of Lebanon, Hobeika was twice "elected" to parliament and occupied several important cabinet positions. Hobeika's post-war political career is a good illustration of why most Lebanese feel such intense skepticism toward their government. After having contributed so substantially to the creation of hundreds of thousands of internal refugees and handicapped persons injured during the war - two of the most pressing social problems in postwar Lebanon - Hobeika was appointed minister of the displaced (October 1991) and minister of social affairs and the disabled (November 1992). In May 1995 he was appointed minister of electricity and water resources, a post he held for over three years....
So Hezbollah (terrorist organization well known for their plots and treasons tee hee) says:
NO HOBEIKA: Prior to the August 2000 elections, Hezbollah officials objected when Damascus included Hobeika on the "Consensus and Renewal" list, a pro-Syrian electoral coalition running against allies of Druze leader Walid Jumblatt in the Baabda-Aley district, arguing that the former militia chieftain had the blood of thousands of Muslims on his hands. Although a compromise was reached to leave a slot on the list blank so that Hobeika's supporters could write in his name, Hobeika suffered a humiliating defeat in the elections. Bet Jumblatt didn't mind his blood brother on that list though!
Ah.....September 11th....and William Cooper shot dead too in the Superstition Mountains a few weeks later by a redneck SHARIF.....Damn those Sharifs! Sometimes a laugh helps....
In the aftermath of September 11, Hobeika attempted to win American support by contacting the CIA to offer his help in locating and capturing Imad Mughniyah, the former head of special overseas operations for Hezbollah who is listed on the Bush administration's most wanted terrorist list. Hobeika had collaborated with CIA operatives in Lebanon in the early 1980s and attended a training course at the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia in 1982. His services would have been a valuable asset in the hunt for Mughniyah. Hobeika owned one of the largest private security firms in Lebanon (in effect, a small militia made up of bodyguards with legally-registered weaponry and skilled intelligence operatives) that has a presence in the largely Shi'ite southern suburbs of Beirut - the most likely location of Mughniyah.
A reasonable amount of time.... we take such a careful and reasonable amount of time to delay discussion of one's death.
At 9:30 AM on January 24, Hobeika and three bodyguards left his apartment on Kamel Asaad street in suburban Hazmieh southeast of the capital en route to his office in Sin al-Fil. Shortly after their departure, the blue Range Rover they were driving slowed down to pass by a Mercedes parked on the side of a narrow road. At that instant, an estimated 22 pounds of TNT in the Mercedes suddenly detonated (apparently by remote control). The explosion reportedly catapulted the former warlord's charred remains over sixty meters from the wrecked SUV, killed a bystander and injured six others. The blast blackened neighboring apartment buildings, destroyed dozens of cars parked nearby, and even shattered glass windows up to one kilometer away from the scene.
Hours after the assassination, Lebanese Interior Minister Elias Murr held a press conference and announced that the authorities had "confirmation that Israel and its agents were behind this terrorist act." President Lahoud and Prime Minister Hariri also insisted that Israel was involved. Since categorical statements alleging Israeli involvement are generally made by Lebanese and Syrian officials whenever there are manifestations of anti-Syrian dissent in Lebanon, official statements in Beirut and Damascus do not reveal anything substantial about the incident. Israeli officials denied the claims.
The Suspects
The Israelis?
Since Israel has carried out similar assassinations of its enemies in Lebanon in the past (e.g. the January 1979 assassination of Abu Ali Hassan Salameh, the commander of Yasser Arafat's Force 17), it might have been able to carry out the assassination of Hobeika, either directly or through Lebanese proxies, even in an area like Hazmieh. Contrary to widespread Arab and Western media speculation, however, Israel does not appear to have had a compelling motive to kill Hobeika, as there was no reason to believe that he would reveal credible new information about Israeli involvement in the massacre during his testimony in Belgium. His SLA story would not have been taken seriously enough to threaten Israel - in fact, the ridiculousness of the story would have undermined the credibility of the lawsuit. Indeed, the assassination worked against Israeli interests insofar as it allowed Hobeika's vague allegations of direct Israeli involvement to attract international media attention without being formally specified or cross-examined in a courtroom.
The Palestinians?
In light of the large numbers of Palestinians that Hobeika was responsible for killing during the war in Lebanon, the possibility that an armed Palestinian faction carried out the assassination cannot be discounted. Just last year, in fact, a senior official of Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement in Lebanon, Bassam Abu Sharif, threatened to kill Hobeika.5 Notwithstanding such boasts, assassinating Hobeika would not really have advanced Palestinian interests since he was already politically irrelevant. Moreover, Palestinians in Lebanon are extremely vulnerable and would have risked severe retaliation had they conducted such an operation without Syria's blessing and it was traced to a Palestinian faction. After the assassination, Fatah officials in Lebanon apparently feared that they might be blamed - they moved quickly to prevent any public celebrations in camps under their control and issued a decree prohibiting residents of Sabra and Shatila from speaking to journalists for a 48-hour period. "Emotionally, people may feel some relief from Hobeika's death," acknowledged a Fatah military bureau member in Lebanon, "but if you look at it from a political perspective, this is not a good thing for us."6
The Lebanese Forces
Another possible culprit is the radical wing of the LF. In 1991, according to the Lebanese authorities, LF operatives loyal to Samir Geagea carried out a 1991 bombing which destroyed Hobeika's car and killed one of his bodyguards. In June 1998, the Lebanese authorities claimed to have uncovered a plot by former LF intelligence operatives to assassinate Hobeika, as well as Maj. Gen. Ghazi Kanaan, the chief of Syrian military intelligence in Lebanon, and then-Interior Minister Michel Murr. The 13 alleged members of the cell who were arrested by security forces reportedly received their orders via the Internet from an LF office in Australia.
However, as the above failures illustrate, radical LF factions have been thoroughly penetrated by Lebanese and Syrian intelligence over the last ten years. It is highly unlikely that any anti-Syrian faction of the LF could have undertaken an operation of this complexity in Hazmieh unless it was coordinating with the Syrians - which seems unlikely.
Although a Western news agency in Cyprus received a fax claiming responsibility in the name of a previously unknown group called "Lebanese for a Free and Independent Lebanon," this was probably a ploy designed to implicate the anti-Syrian opposition. It is possible that former LF officials currently aligned with the Syrians might have been motivated to assassinate Hobeika, fearing that he might speak candidly about their involvement in the Sabra and Shatila massacre, and received permission from the Syrians to do so. The fact that the Lebanese government's investigation of the massacre was suspended in 1983 suggests that there are politically sensitive details to the case that have not seen the light of day. However, while this remains an outside possibility, there are more plausible explanations.
The Syrians
As the final months of Hobeika's life clearly indicate, the Syrians had completely withdrawn their protection and instructed the Lebanese judiciary to take action against him, or at least threaten to do so. Given the timing of the judicial moves, it appears likely that the Syrian intelligence learned about his attempts to approach the CIA. Had the Syrians learned that he was considering leaving the country (which also appears likely, since his bodyguard was talking freely about it), they would have had a strong motive to eliminate him, or allow others to eliminate him, before he could do so. Moreover, the Syrians stood to gain from the killing in other important ways. The event could serve as a pretext for a massive crackdown on opponents of the Syrian occupation in Lebanon. More generally, the assassination, which bore an uncanny resemblance to killings during the war, lent support to Syria's claim that a withdrawal of its forces from Lebanon would lead to internal violence and instability. However, while it appears that Damascus wanted to see Hobeika dead and permitted the operation to occur in an area with a strong Syrian intelligence presence, it is not all that likely that they carried it out themselves - it would have been more expedient to simply facilitate an operation by a local group.
Hezbollah's Foreign Operations Branch (Imad Mughniyah)
As previously mentioned, Hezbollah's political leadership has its own grudge against Hobeika dating back to the March 1985 car bomb attack against Fadlallah, as does the movement's main external sponsor, Iran, for his role in the deaths of four Iranian diplomats during the civil war. A more immediate motive for eliminating Hobeika would have been the desire to preempt his assistance to the CIA in locating Imad Mughniyah, the head of Hezbollah's Foreign Operations Branch (jihaz al-amaliyyat al-kharijiyya). Although Mughniyah's agency is no longer officially part of Hezbollah, this is mainly a facade designed to allow the group's political leadership to maintain plausible deniability regarding its operations. Logistically it is part of the same organization - the main distinction being that Mughniyah coordinates directly with Iran and Syria, and maintains a degree of operational autonomy.While there is no direct evidence linking Mughniyah to the assassination, he had the most compelling motive of any suspect to order a hit on Hobeika, his operatives in Lebanon were clearly capable of such an operation, and the Syrians appear to have been more than willing to facilitate it.
QUIZ:
Who are the two names missing from this roster of usual suspects?
What is the meaning of Mainly a FACADE?
Who is next?
Jumblatt with the IDF.
http://essenes.net/druzebeing.html
So that is what Al Qaf is all about. Imagine my surprise.
http://essenes.net/druzebeing.html
So that is what Al Qaf is all about. Imagine my surprise.
17.1.06
Bloopers and Practical Jokes
http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/01/16/iran.cnn/index.html
Lesley Howard translaters...now where in the heck have I heard that name before? I dunno but I know I have. Maybe someone will find it here:
http://www.camerairaq.com/2004/05/nick_berg_video.html
(Viewer discretion advised on that one.)
I do know Paul was real. The rest...well....let's just say Nero didn't burn nor fiddle but we all still think he did.
http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/01/16/iran.cnn/index.html
Lesley Howard translaters...now where in the heck have I heard that name before? I dunno but I know I have. Maybe someone will find it here:
http://www.camerairaq.com/2004/05/nick_berg_video.html
(Viewer discretion advised on that one.)
I do know Paul was real. The rest...well....let's just say Nero didn't burn nor fiddle but we all still think he did.
Zoom in Zoom out
What does that mean? Aha. In the first weeks following the assassination of Rafik Hariri, several demonstrations took place in downtown Beirut. The first was called by Nasrallah, the Secretary General of Hezbollah. What did he say? I recorded my thoughts then thusly:
What Isn't Part of CNN
A couple of years ago, I had the wonderful opportunity to sit in an audience of German Christians and listen to the account of one Robert Fisk, a famous British journalist. He presented a landslide of evidence demonstrating how the media corrupts the news each and every day, including the stories he reports. He passed around some "greeting cards" that he was used to receiving, throughout the years of his coverage of Middle Eastern affairs up until the present day. Some were quite revealing and others, well, sinister is an understatement. He put up a slide of an editorial cartoon which showed Thomas Friedman on one side, someone else on the other and Robert Fisk in the middle, Fisk portrayed as a rabid dog and the others, warm, fuzzy puppies. He asked us, "What do you do to a rabid dog?" I think we all know the answer to that question. He also showed actual footage shot in the Palestinian Occupied Territories (somehow synonomous with what could be called, The Country of Palestine) in which sound effects and film editing showed a reality vastly different than the one that was actually shot on location, the edited view spread via syndication. The footage was of the demolition of one Palestinian family's homestead. In the original footage, a crow could be heard clearly. The bull dozers were there but they were, barely audible. The editing crew involved in the production, on the US side had literally eliminated the crow from the soundtrack in order to show that this crappy piece of property was uninhabited by actual life forms. All that could be heard was the sound of industrious bull dozers building immense settlement apartments in the background. The home itself was entirely edited out of the footage but the beautiful and modern buildings which would one day soon belong to Eastern European immigrants shone in the bright light of noon day, a kind of proud wonder at modern mechanics and the construction industry. There were dozens of other pieces Mr. Fisk shared but I think one is enough to demonstrate my point.
Two days ago, Hezbollah leader Sayed Nasrallah staged, perhaps, the largest peaceful demonstration since the days of Mahatma Ghandi. The participants were from all walks of Lebanese society although the majority were Shia muslims from the Bekaa, south Lebanon and the inner city neighborhoods of Beirut like Jiyah and Borj al-Borajne. I watched the protest from a comfortable position, just south of the tarmac, from my living room. I represented only one of the tens of thousands who also support Nasrallah but knew better than to brave the traffic we were certain would clog the narrow streets of downtown Beirut. That was a given. Add to the one and a half million (by French Journalist estimates) at least another 100,000, perhaps 200,000 of us in our homes, clapping, shouting, "Huzzah! There will be no Civil War!" During Nasrallah's speech, when he mentioned George Bush and Condoleeza Rice in order to advise them in a friendly way to take care of US business elsewhere, not here, the crowd overwhelmed his coarse, flu-like voice. It was fine to see Nasrallah break out in a hearty belly laugh as he said, basically, "Come on guys. Listen." He was attempting to diffuse Anti American sentiment which was evident in the crowd as large posters of Bush were beaten on with fists in front of the cameras which were there from every station in Lebanon and several dozens from stations across Asia and Europe. This smile, this open ended and light hearted smile was not shown on CNN. All that was shown was the image of a fiery prophet type mullah, a descendent of the prophet Mohamed himself (hence the name "sayed" indicating this lineage as well as the black top hat instead of the more ordinary white one worn by non descendants who are also "fiery prophet types") beating his fists and trying to overcome the din of the immense crowd with his own voice which was strained to it's extreme with a case of the flu which Nasrallah had been suffering from over the past week, no doubt a reminder of the stress we have all been under in Lebanon.
What Nasrallah advised to the USA was not disseminated to the vast majority of Western households. What he said I will tell you here based on what was told me by a trusted interpreter, my husband of 24 years. Nasrallah told Israel, told George Bush that for them (in the guise of the UN) to demand he give up his right to maintain security in Lebanon against expansivist Israel via the deterrance of heavy weaponry, he required something in return. How logical is that? To ask nicely, to remind the UN, the US and Israel,that Lebanese people spilled their blood and alot of it and lost most of what was then, before the Civil War, called the Paris of the Middle East during a brash Israeli occupation in which nary a building remained after Israeli withdrawal from most areas north of the "security zone". And Israel wants that for what, free? The issue of the immense Golan Heights which at this moment provides over one third of Israel's total water supply looms. It looms over this tiny issue of the Shebaa Farms, a pot hole full of water but only enough for a village or maybe five. Expensive real estate, nothing more and nothing less. He also condemned resolution 1556 as one sided and unreasonable and likely to cause great upheaval in terms of Lebanese security. Isn't that what we always hear on CNN, Israel's Security and the need for same? Isn't that, Israel's prized "security zone" what Nasrallah "liberated" from the covetous hands of a state desperate for more land, more water? Wasn't that called "The Security Zone" or, as I am suggesting, was it something else? As if Israel had a right to use weapons and insurrection to maintain her "security" while devastating the population who chose to resist them? How is it that we fight an individual's right to die, we fight Jack Kevorkian in order that people be forced to live a little longer yet we deny the right of certain individuals the to survive? Nasrallah didn't say that, I did. No, all Nasrallah advised to the dynamic duo called Rice and Bush was that they mind other matters and stay out of a conflict that was being managed by the Lebanese people themselves. When Nasrallah cast his hands over the crowd, sweeping over it like a priest blessing a congregation, he asked "Isn't this democracy?" Isn't that what you want for us?
What happened next?
Several things but most importantly the development of The Opposition. What is the Opposition? Hard to say but their first demonstration followed Nasrallah's by a week or so and to make the crowd look LARGER the camera crews did alot of Zooming in and Zooming out. Nasrallah coined the term Zoom in Zoom out. The Opposition grew and grew and now what is happening? Nasrallah is blamed for the Syrian occupation.
What?
And just why didn't this opposition do something about the Syrians themselves prior to Hariri's assassination? Well, my guess is that they were all on the payroll of key Syrian mob bosses. That's my guess. And now they are going to save us all...and help themselves to lucrative oil contracts for the greasy stuff off shore.
Damn. What next, the plague?
No, it seems that the West always prefers the fiery prophet type, the dumb follower of ancient out-of-date religions. Not the incredibly eloquent statesman that Nasrallah has become. The stateman and strategist that one Israeli commentator called, "The reason we lost. If he'd have been with us, we would have held them down," to paraphrase that comment which appeared in a major Israeli newspaper. Nasrallah has spilled blood to liberate Lebanon and lost his own son to Israeli fire. What has George Bush lost in Iraq other than a few points on an opinion poll? I think GWB ought to consider very carefully his next few steps. A million or more lives depend on it. To support the Shia in Iraq when it serves the purpose of oil revenues and to turn his back on those who've spilled blood fighting for their freedom from Israeli occupation would be the death blow to democracy in the Middle East. It is a tender bud.
George came on the air only moments after Nasrallah's landmark speech reminiscent of something from the Civil Rights wars of the sixties. Bush stated that Washington had a lot of reconsidering to do in the matter of the Lebanon and the Middle East. It is what I didn't hear CNN reveal that worries me most. It really worries me the most. GWB didn't mention the part of the Taif Accords that would demolish the sectarian government here in Lebanon, the one that would make it possible not only for a Syrian pullout, a complete one, but would establish a true democracy representing the majority of the population here which is obviously in support of Nasrallah's viewpoint. George didn't say it, but Sayed did.
What does that mean? Aha. In the first weeks following the assassination of Rafik Hariri, several demonstrations took place in downtown Beirut. The first was called by Nasrallah, the Secretary General of Hezbollah. What did he say? I recorded my thoughts then thusly:
What Isn't Part of CNN
A couple of years ago, I had the wonderful opportunity to sit in an audience of German Christians and listen to the account of one Robert Fisk, a famous British journalist. He presented a landslide of evidence demonstrating how the media corrupts the news each and every day, including the stories he reports. He passed around some "greeting cards" that he was used to receiving, throughout the years of his coverage of Middle Eastern affairs up until the present day. Some were quite revealing and others, well, sinister is an understatement. He put up a slide of an editorial cartoon which showed Thomas Friedman on one side, someone else on the other and Robert Fisk in the middle, Fisk portrayed as a rabid dog and the others, warm, fuzzy puppies. He asked us, "What do you do to a rabid dog?" I think we all know the answer to that question. He also showed actual footage shot in the Palestinian Occupied Territories (somehow synonomous with what could be called, The Country of Palestine) in which sound effects and film editing showed a reality vastly different than the one that was actually shot on location, the edited view spread via syndication. The footage was of the demolition of one Palestinian family's homestead. In the original footage, a crow could be heard clearly. The bull dozers were there but they were, barely audible. The editing crew involved in the production, on the US side had literally eliminated the crow from the soundtrack in order to show that this crappy piece of property was uninhabited by actual life forms. All that could be heard was the sound of industrious bull dozers building immense settlement apartments in the background. The home itself was entirely edited out of the footage but the beautiful and modern buildings which would one day soon belong to Eastern European immigrants shone in the bright light of noon day, a kind of proud wonder at modern mechanics and the construction industry. There were dozens of other pieces Mr. Fisk shared but I think one is enough to demonstrate my point.
Two days ago, Hezbollah leader Sayed Nasrallah staged, perhaps, the largest peaceful demonstration since the days of Mahatma Ghandi. The participants were from all walks of Lebanese society although the majority were Shia muslims from the Bekaa, south Lebanon and the inner city neighborhoods of Beirut like Jiyah and Borj al-Borajne. I watched the protest from a comfortable position, just south of the tarmac, from my living room. I represented only one of the tens of thousands who also support Nasrallah but knew better than to brave the traffic we were certain would clog the narrow streets of downtown Beirut. That was a given. Add to the one and a half million (by French Journalist estimates) at least another 100,000, perhaps 200,000 of us in our homes, clapping, shouting, "Huzzah! There will be no Civil War!" During Nasrallah's speech, when he mentioned George Bush and Condoleeza Rice in order to advise them in a friendly way to take care of US business elsewhere, not here, the crowd overwhelmed his coarse, flu-like voice. It was fine to see Nasrallah break out in a hearty belly laugh as he said, basically, "Come on guys. Listen." He was attempting to diffuse Anti American sentiment which was evident in the crowd as large posters of Bush were beaten on with fists in front of the cameras which were there from every station in Lebanon and several dozens from stations across Asia and Europe. This smile, this open ended and light hearted smile was not shown on CNN. All that was shown was the image of a fiery prophet type mullah, a descendent of the prophet Mohamed himself (hence the name "sayed" indicating this lineage as well as the black top hat instead of the more ordinary white one worn by non descendants who are also "fiery prophet types") beating his fists and trying to overcome the din of the immense crowd with his own voice which was strained to it's extreme with a case of the flu which Nasrallah had been suffering from over the past week, no doubt a reminder of the stress we have all been under in Lebanon.
What Nasrallah advised to the USA was not disseminated to the vast majority of Western households. What he said I will tell you here based on what was told me by a trusted interpreter, my husband of 24 years. Nasrallah told Israel, told George Bush that for them (in the guise of the UN) to demand he give up his right to maintain security in Lebanon against expansivist Israel via the deterrance of heavy weaponry, he required something in return. How logical is that? To ask nicely, to remind the UN, the US and Israel,that Lebanese people spilled their blood and alot of it and lost most of what was then, before the Civil War, called the Paris of the Middle East during a brash Israeli occupation in which nary a building remained after Israeli withdrawal from most areas north of the "security zone". And Israel wants that for what, free? The issue of the immense Golan Heights which at this moment provides over one third of Israel's total water supply looms. It looms over this tiny issue of the Shebaa Farms, a pot hole full of water but only enough for a village or maybe five. Expensive real estate, nothing more and nothing less. He also condemned resolution 1556 as one sided and unreasonable and likely to cause great upheaval in terms of Lebanese security. Isn't that what we always hear on CNN, Israel's Security and the need for same? Isn't that, Israel's prized "security zone" what Nasrallah "liberated" from the covetous hands of a state desperate for more land, more water? Wasn't that called "The Security Zone" or, as I am suggesting, was it something else? As if Israel had a right to use weapons and insurrection to maintain her "security" while devastating the population who chose to resist them? How is it that we fight an individual's right to die, we fight Jack Kevorkian in order that people be forced to live a little longer yet we deny the right of certain individuals the to survive? Nasrallah didn't say that, I did. No, all Nasrallah advised to the dynamic duo called Rice and Bush was that they mind other matters and stay out of a conflict that was being managed by the Lebanese people themselves. When Nasrallah cast his hands over the crowd, sweeping over it like a priest blessing a congregation, he asked "Isn't this democracy?" Isn't that what you want for us?
What happened next?
Several things but most importantly the development of The Opposition. What is the Opposition? Hard to say but their first demonstration followed Nasrallah's by a week or so and to make the crowd look LARGER the camera crews did alot of Zooming in and Zooming out. Nasrallah coined the term Zoom in Zoom out. The Opposition grew and grew and now what is happening? Nasrallah is blamed for the Syrian occupation.
What?
And just why didn't this opposition do something about the Syrians themselves prior to Hariri's assassination? Well, my guess is that they were all on the payroll of key Syrian mob bosses. That's my guess. And now they are going to save us all...and help themselves to lucrative oil contracts for the greasy stuff off shore.
Damn. What next, the plague?
No, it seems that the West always prefers the fiery prophet type, the dumb follower of ancient out-of-date religions. Not the incredibly eloquent statesman that Nasrallah has become. The stateman and strategist that one Israeli commentator called, "The reason we lost. If he'd have been with us, we would have held them down," to paraphrase that comment which appeared in a major Israeli newspaper. Nasrallah has spilled blood to liberate Lebanon and lost his own son to Israeli fire. What has George Bush lost in Iraq other than a few points on an opinion poll? I think GWB ought to consider very carefully his next few steps. A million or more lives depend on it. To support the Shia in Iraq when it serves the purpose of oil revenues and to turn his back on those who've spilled blood fighting for their freedom from Israeli occupation would be the death blow to democracy in the Middle East. It is a tender bud.
George came on the air only moments after Nasrallah's landmark speech reminiscent of something from the Civil Rights wars of the sixties. Bush stated that Washington had a lot of reconsidering to do in the matter of the Lebanon and the Middle East. It is what I didn't hear CNN reveal that worries me most. It really worries me the most. GWB didn't mention the part of the Taif Accords that would demolish the sectarian government here in Lebanon, the one that would make it possible not only for a Syrian pullout, a complete one, but would establish a true democracy representing the majority of the population here which is obviously in support of Nasrallah's viewpoint. George didn't say it, but Sayed did.
16.1.06
BEIRUT ASSASSIN LEAVES MARK
The cocks were storm-crowing that morning
after a real long spell of total
environmental darkness. Two broughams sped by.
(In the land of the prophets
the angels talk out-loud,
people pretend not to notice.
Here it is the status quo.)
All the clocks whirred with quick sighs.
At sunset the clouds were full of the dust.
On the sand hundreds of lovers were kissing
out in the open. Everyone was buying
flowers and the coffee carts were brimming
with hot fluids and stale remedies to the skies.
Then everything just stopped. Windows fell
apart and people ran home, started looking.
Zoom in, zoom out, zoom in, zoom out.
I felt around for my watch to note the time.
School was letting out and I compared JFK,
that unholy day to this one. Must have been similar.
Shapely forms felt their way toward the horizons
and the same herd of goats crossed my path twice.
No more luck, no more money, no more beadsmen.
The predictions are always keen to usurp everyone
and the last unlucky man born will tremble
near a pitcher of water and a set of lost keys.
This benediction quieted all the kinfolk
and the rich slept closer to their quarters
but it does take some time, perhaps forever.
The poor remain indifferent.
One man was found two weeks later in the rubble,
pointing in one direction, holding his cell.
No one called out the dogs because it is said
the canines ate the corpses in Sabra and Shatilla.
I wonder.. to whom was he speaking,
where was he pointing?
The cocks were storm-crowing that morning
after a real long spell of total
environmental darkness. Two broughams sped by.
(In the land of the prophets
the angels talk out-loud,
people pretend not to notice.
Here it is the status quo.)
All the clocks whirred with quick sighs.
At sunset the clouds were full of the dust.
On the sand hundreds of lovers were kissing
out in the open. Everyone was buying
flowers and the coffee carts were brimming
with hot fluids and stale remedies to the skies.
Then everything just stopped. Windows fell
apart and people ran home, started looking.
Zoom in, zoom out, zoom in, zoom out.
I felt around for my watch to note the time.
School was letting out and I compared JFK,
that unholy day to this one. Must have been similar.
Shapely forms felt their way toward the horizons
and the same herd of goats crossed my path twice.
No more luck, no more money, no more beadsmen.
The predictions are always keen to usurp everyone
and the last unlucky man born will tremble
near a pitcher of water and a set of lost keys.
This benediction quieted all the kinfolk
and the rich slept closer to their quarters
but it does take some time, perhaps forever.
The poor remain indifferent.
One man was found two weeks later in the rubble,
pointing in one direction, holding his cell.
No one called out the dogs because it is said
the canines ate the corpses in Sabra and Shatilla.
I wonder.. to whom was he speaking,
where was he pointing?
Where is Mr. "Mr. Abu Adass"?
http://zenbeat.com/index.php?cat=18
To whom was he speaking?
Leila Bassam of Reuters reported that they received one telephone call on 14 February regarding Mr. Abu Adass’s claim of responsibility for the bombing, which records show occurred at 1411 hrs.
Investigative Judge Elias Eid obtained records for and reviewed all of the phone calls on 14 February 2005 to Al-Jazeera. Judge Eid noted one mobile phone call to Al-Jazeera as particularly significant: a call made to Al-Jazeera on a prepaid card at 2207 hrs on 14 February 2005. This same prepaid card received a telephone call one minute after the blast, at 1257 hrs, from a telephone booth located in Tripoli near a building housing Syrian Intelligence Services. On 30 January a call was made to the landline at the home of Mr. Abu Adass’s from that same Tripoli phone booth.
The user or users of this pre-paid card on 14 February 2005 is significant and identification of that individual or individuals is a priority for this investigation.
Down Under
UNIIIC investigators thoroughly reviewed the results of the Lebanese and Australian investigation into these six suspects and, as set forth below, have concluded that there is no basis for believing that they had any involvement in the assassination of Hariri. In pursuing this review, UNIIIC investigators also were aware that there were six sim cards used in connection with the assassination, and that usage on the sim cards terminated at the time of the explosion. Noting that there were six suspicious Australians, and six suspicious sim cards, an unusual coincidence, UNIIIC believed that a review of the Australian and Lebanese investigations into this area would be prudent.
Ghazali, Dead On Arrival Now
Sheikhh Ahmad Abdel-Al, a prominent figure in the Al-Ahbash, was responsible for the public relations and military and intelligence for Al-Ahbash, the Association of Islamic Philanthopic Projects, a Lebanese group with strong historical ties to the Syrian authorities. Abdel-Al has proven to be a significant figure in the light of his links to several aspects of this investigation, especially through his mobile phone which had numerous contacts with all the important figures in this investigation; indeed, it does not appear that any other figure is as linked to all the various aspects of this investigation as Abdel-Al.
197. Abdel-Al was interviewed as a witness and later as a suspect by UNIIIC. Some of his actions, and some statements during his interview, suggest attempts to hide information from the investigation. For example, he tried to hide the origin of his mobile telephone number on giving his prepaid card on 12 March 2005 to his Al-Ahbash friend Mohammed Halawani and requesting that the card be registered in Halawani’s name. During UNIIIC’s interview with Halawani, it took him several hours to admit that the telephone number in question was in fact used by Ahmad Abdel-Al. Additionally, according to Abdel-Al’s statement, on 14 February 2005, he left home and went to the Al-Ahbash office. His telephone records reveal that at 1147 hrs, he had a telephone contact with a number which phoned his home telephone number a number of times immediately before the explosion --- 1226 hrs, 1246 hrs and 1247 hrs. While Abdel-Al told UNIIIC that he called home shortly after the explosion at 1256 hrs, telephone records show that the call was made at 1254 hrs, two minutes before the explosion. Abdel-Al stated, that he did not leave the Al-Ahbash office the day of the blast for security reasons. The telephone records showed four calls to Syrian intelligence officer Jamea Jamea, at 1142 hrs, 1814 hrs, 2023 hrs and 2026 hrs. According to a witness, Abdel-Al visited Jamea Jamea’s office the evening of the blast at 19:30 in which the two discussed Mr. Abu Adass. Moreover, shortly after his visit to Jamea Jamea’s office, Abdel-Al’s mobile phone registered a call to General Ghazali, at 1956 hrs. Abdel-Al also sought to steer the investigation towards Mr. Abu Adass, not only by providing the Lebanese authorities with extensive information on Mr. Abu Adass shortly after the blast, but also stating to UNIIIC that the Al-Ahbash Security Service had seen Mr. Abu Adass before the assassination in the Ain Al-Hilweh Palestinian camp together with Abu Obeida the deputy leader of the terrorist group Asbat al Ansar.
Habashi
Abdel-Al has been in frequent contact with Mahmoud Abdel-Al, his brother, who is also active in Al-Ahbash. Mahmoud Abdel-Al’s telephone calls on 14 February are also interesting: he made a call minutes before the blast, at 1247 hrs, to the mobile phone of Lebanese President Emile Lahoud and at 1249 hrs had contact with Raymond Azar’s mobile telephone.
What do these conversations sound like? Like this:
“Ghazali: I know it is early but I thought we should keep up you posted. The President of the Republic told me this morning that they are two to rule the country the Prime Minister and him. He said that things cannot continue this way. The Prime Minister is always irritating him and we are always shutting him up and yelling at him. He made it clear he cannot continue this way.
(...)
X: Take it easy on me. Can you appoint a new Government at this time?
Ghazali: Yes we can appoint one. What could be the problem? We can name Botros Harb.
(…)
Ghazali: Let me tell you one thing. Let the worker’s movement take the street on the 20th in Solidere and Koraytem.
X: Let’s speak it over. Take it easily. I have to take into consideration the best interests of Syrian and Lebanon.
Ghazali: We are keen on Syria’s best interest but I am now talking about Rafik Hariri.
X: So, the decision is taken.
Ghazali: I wish to tell you one thing. Whenever we need to speak to Hariri we have to suck up to him and he does not always answer.
X: To hell with him. What do I care about him?
Ghazali: What do I care about him? The President can’t stand him so why should I?
X: Fine, may he rot in hell …
(…)
Ghazali: No. Let him be the laughing stock and be pointed at as the person who ruined and indebted the country. Let the people take the street in Koraytem and Solidere; let the manifestations continue until he is forced to resign like a dog.
X: What about another option. I send him a message saying: Resign God damn it.
Ghazali: No, don’t send him a message or else he will say they forced me to resign. Let the street … you know what I mean. Or else he will use this as a bargaining card with his American and French masters.
X: So shall we leave things to the street?
Ghazali: This is better.
X: Let’s go for it.”
Where is Mr. Mr. Abu Adass?
Regarding Mr. Abu Adass, the witness has stated that he played no role in the crime except as a decoy. He was detained in Syria and forced at gunpoint to record the video tape. Subsequently, he was killed in Syria. The videotape was sent to Beirut on the morning of 14 February 2005, and handed over to Jamil AEl Sayyed. A civilian with a criminal record and an officer from the Sûreté Générale were tasked with putting the tape somewhere in Hamra and then calling Ghassan Ben Jeddo, an Al-Jazeera TV reporter.
Jam the Jammer
Even though at least one jamming device was operational, investigation has revealed that there are ways to overcome, avoid, evade or use jamming devices. Different possibilities include a suicide bomber, a wireless explosion using different frequencies from those of the jamming devices or using the frequencies of the jamming devices , a wireless explosion using the jamming devices themselves, a wireless explosion using a satellite phone from Thuraya, the only telephone company working on Lebanese territory with satellite links,; a wired explosion using a TNT cable, or a wired explosion using another kind of installed cable such as a telephone line as a connecting wire. Although it appears to the Commission based on its investigation to date, specifically, the results of the Dutch forensic examination of the crime scene, that it is possible that a suicide bomber caused this explosion, these other possibilities warrant further investigation, both as to whether they were feasible standing alone or in conjunction with a suicide bomber.
Calling out the dogs:
a) There was a state of chaos in the crime scene not only during the first few hours following the explosion, during which much focus is on extinguishing the fire, saving the injured and looking for the missing, but regrettably and unnecessarily for a much longer time.
b) There was no coordination between all the security organs present on the crime scene.
c) Looking for the missing persons was done in an irresponsible, unprofessional and careless way. Some were later found by accident or by their families. The following controversial elements were recorded:
§ The body of Zahi Abu Rujaili, a Lebanese citizen, was found on 15 March 2005. According to the medical examiner, the victim had survived the explosion for approximately 12 hours.
§ The body of one of the victims was found by coincidence 8 days after the explosion.
§ The body of Abdel-Hameed Ghalayeeni, a Lebanese citizen, was found 16 days after the explosion by his family and not the judicial or civil defense officers.
§ The fate of Farhan Ahmad Al-Issa is still unknown, he is still missing. It is feared that finding his body would constitute yet another scandal.
d) A few hours after the explosion took place, around 2300 hrs, major evidence was removed from the crime scene. The convoy cars of the late former Prime Minister were transferred to Helou Barracks under the pretext of preserving them although what was left of the cars did not justify their preservation except for their value as criminal evidence because they were the target of the explosion. This was not the only instance bearing proof of the tampering with the crime scene. A BMW car that was not part of the convoy was also removed whereas focus should have been on not removing any cars and maintaining them the way they rested after the explosion in order to determine how the crime was committed.
e) A bulldozer was introduced into the crime scene on the day of the explosion, 14 February 2005, in the evening for no justifiable reason. As soon as the Minister of Interior and Municipalities got knowledge of it, he gave orders to retrieve it and preserve the crime scene as it was.
Huh?
At approximately 1411 hrs on 14 February 2005, barely an hour after the explosion, Leila Bassam of Reuters received an anonymous telephone call from a man with an accent that was not Lebanese but which she could not identify. According to Ms. Bassam, as soon as she answered the call, the man directed her to “[w]rite this down,” told her to be quiet, and then read the following statement in classical Arabic:
“We, al nasra wal-jihad fee bilad Al-Sham, declare that we have meted out due punishment to the infidel Rafik Hariri so that he may be an example to others.”
Oh, I get it!
After the blast on 14 February 2005, General Hamdan took all necessary measures to protect the President and the Presidential areas. He did not recall any details, but he did not go to the scene of the blast. He did not issue any orders or directives regarding the activities at the crime scene, since it did not fall within his responsibilities. Thus, he had nothing to do with any orders to clean the street, to fill the crater or to remove the motorcade vehicles (witness statement).
Head of Internal Security Forces, General Ashraf Rifi
76. In a meeting with UNIIIC on 1 June 2005, General Rifi stated that the person who gave the order to get a bulldozer or bulldozers to the crime scene to fill the hole caused by the explosion etc. was General Mustapha Hamdan, who at the time of the incident was the Commander of President Lahoud’s security detail and therefore by Lebanese law had nothing to do with issues related to crime scene investigation (witness statement).
So that is the long long story of the Prince.
http://zenbeat.com/index.php?cat=18
To whom was he speaking?
Leila Bassam of Reuters reported that they received one telephone call on 14 February regarding Mr. Abu Adass’s claim of responsibility for the bombing, which records show occurred at 1411 hrs.
Investigative Judge Elias Eid obtained records for and reviewed all of the phone calls on 14 February 2005 to Al-Jazeera. Judge Eid noted one mobile phone call to Al-Jazeera as particularly significant: a call made to Al-Jazeera on a prepaid card at 2207 hrs on 14 February 2005. This same prepaid card received a telephone call one minute after the blast, at 1257 hrs, from a telephone booth located in Tripoli near a building housing Syrian Intelligence Services. On 30 January a call was made to the landline at the home of Mr. Abu Adass’s from that same Tripoli phone booth.
The user or users of this pre-paid card on 14 February 2005 is significant and identification of that individual or individuals is a priority for this investigation.
Down Under
UNIIIC investigators thoroughly reviewed the results of the Lebanese and Australian investigation into these six suspects and, as set forth below, have concluded that there is no basis for believing that they had any involvement in the assassination of Hariri. In pursuing this review, UNIIIC investigators also were aware that there were six sim cards used in connection with the assassination, and that usage on the sim cards terminated at the time of the explosion. Noting that there were six suspicious Australians, and six suspicious sim cards, an unusual coincidence, UNIIIC believed that a review of the Australian and Lebanese investigations into this area would be prudent.
Ghazali, Dead On Arrival Now
Sheikhh Ahmad Abdel-Al, a prominent figure in the Al-Ahbash, was responsible for the public relations and military and intelligence for Al-Ahbash, the Association of Islamic Philanthopic Projects, a Lebanese group with strong historical ties to the Syrian authorities. Abdel-Al has proven to be a significant figure in the light of his links to several aspects of this investigation, especially through his mobile phone which had numerous contacts with all the important figures in this investigation; indeed, it does not appear that any other figure is as linked to all the various aspects of this investigation as Abdel-Al.
197. Abdel-Al was interviewed as a witness and later as a suspect by UNIIIC. Some of his actions, and some statements during his interview, suggest attempts to hide information from the investigation. For example, he tried to hide the origin of his mobile telephone number on giving his prepaid card on 12 March 2005 to his Al-Ahbash friend Mohammed Halawani and requesting that the card be registered in Halawani’s name. During UNIIIC’s interview with Halawani, it took him several hours to admit that the telephone number in question was in fact used by Ahmad Abdel-Al. Additionally, according to Abdel-Al’s statement, on 14 February 2005, he left home and went to the Al-Ahbash office. His telephone records reveal that at 1147 hrs, he had a telephone contact with a number which phoned his home telephone number a number of times immediately before the explosion --- 1226 hrs, 1246 hrs and 1247 hrs. While Abdel-Al told UNIIIC that he called home shortly after the explosion at 1256 hrs, telephone records show that the call was made at 1254 hrs, two minutes before the explosion. Abdel-Al stated, that he did not leave the Al-Ahbash office the day of the blast for security reasons. The telephone records showed four calls to Syrian intelligence officer Jamea Jamea, at 1142 hrs, 1814 hrs, 2023 hrs and 2026 hrs. According to a witness, Abdel-Al visited Jamea Jamea’s office the evening of the blast at 19:30 in which the two discussed Mr. Abu Adass. Moreover, shortly after his visit to Jamea Jamea’s office, Abdel-Al’s mobile phone registered a call to General Ghazali, at 1956 hrs. Abdel-Al also sought to steer the investigation towards Mr. Abu Adass, not only by providing the Lebanese authorities with extensive information on Mr. Abu Adass shortly after the blast, but also stating to UNIIIC that the Al-Ahbash Security Service had seen Mr. Abu Adass before the assassination in the Ain Al-Hilweh Palestinian camp together with Abu Obeida the deputy leader of the terrorist group Asbat al Ansar.
Habashi
Abdel-Al has been in frequent contact with Mahmoud Abdel-Al, his brother, who is also active in Al-Ahbash. Mahmoud Abdel-Al’s telephone calls on 14 February are also interesting: he made a call minutes before the blast, at 1247 hrs, to the mobile phone of Lebanese President Emile Lahoud and at 1249 hrs had contact with Raymond Azar’s mobile telephone.
What do these conversations sound like? Like this:
“Ghazali: I know it is early but I thought we should keep up you posted. The President of the Republic told me this morning that they are two to rule the country the Prime Minister and him. He said that things cannot continue this way. The Prime Minister is always irritating him and we are always shutting him up and yelling at him. He made it clear he cannot continue this way.
(...)
X: Take it easy on me. Can you appoint a new Government at this time?
Ghazali: Yes we can appoint one. What could be the problem? We can name Botros Harb.
(…)
Ghazali: Let me tell you one thing. Let the worker’s movement take the street on the 20th in Solidere and Koraytem.
X: Let’s speak it over. Take it easily. I have to take into consideration the best interests of Syrian and Lebanon.
Ghazali: We are keen on Syria’s best interest but I am now talking about Rafik Hariri.
X: So, the decision is taken.
Ghazali: I wish to tell you one thing. Whenever we need to speak to Hariri we have to suck up to him and he does not always answer.
X: To hell with him. What do I care about him?
Ghazali: What do I care about him? The President can’t stand him so why should I?
X: Fine, may he rot in hell …
(…)
Ghazali: No. Let him be the laughing stock and be pointed at as the person who ruined and indebted the country. Let the people take the street in Koraytem and Solidere; let the manifestations continue until he is forced to resign like a dog.
X: What about another option. I send him a message saying: Resign God damn it.
Ghazali: No, don’t send him a message or else he will say they forced me to resign. Let the street … you know what I mean. Or else he will use this as a bargaining card with his American and French masters.
X: So shall we leave things to the street?
Ghazali: This is better.
X: Let’s go for it.”
Where is Mr. Mr. Abu Adass?
Regarding Mr. Abu Adass, the witness has stated that he played no role in the crime except as a decoy. He was detained in Syria and forced at gunpoint to record the video tape. Subsequently, he was killed in Syria. The videotape was sent to Beirut on the morning of 14 February 2005, and handed over to Jamil AEl Sayyed. A civilian with a criminal record and an officer from the Sûreté Générale were tasked with putting the tape somewhere in Hamra and then calling Ghassan Ben Jeddo, an Al-Jazeera TV reporter.
Jam the Jammer
Even though at least one jamming device was operational, investigation has revealed that there are ways to overcome, avoid, evade or use jamming devices. Different possibilities include a suicide bomber, a wireless explosion using different frequencies from those of the jamming devices or using the frequencies of the jamming devices , a wireless explosion using the jamming devices themselves, a wireless explosion using a satellite phone from Thuraya, the only telephone company working on Lebanese territory with satellite links,; a wired explosion using a TNT cable, or a wired explosion using another kind of installed cable such as a telephone line as a connecting wire. Although it appears to the Commission based on its investigation to date, specifically, the results of the Dutch forensic examination of the crime scene, that it is possible that a suicide bomber caused this explosion, these other possibilities warrant further investigation, both as to whether they were feasible standing alone or in conjunction with a suicide bomber.
Calling out the dogs:
a) There was a state of chaos in the crime scene not only during the first few hours following the explosion, during which much focus is on extinguishing the fire, saving the injured and looking for the missing, but regrettably and unnecessarily for a much longer time.
b) There was no coordination between all the security organs present on the crime scene.
c) Looking for the missing persons was done in an irresponsible, unprofessional and careless way. Some were later found by accident or by their families. The following controversial elements were recorded:
§ The body of Zahi Abu Rujaili, a Lebanese citizen, was found on 15 March 2005. According to the medical examiner, the victim had survived the explosion for approximately 12 hours.
§ The body of one of the victims was found by coincidence 8 days after the explosion.
§ The body of Abdel-Hameed Ghalayeeni, a Lebanese citizen, was found 16 days after the explosion by his family and not the judicial or civil defense officers.
§ The fate of Farhan Ahmad Al-Issa is still unknown, he is still missing. It is feared that finding his body would constitute yet another scandal.
d) A few hours after the explosion took place, around 2300 hrs, major evidence was removed from the crime scene. The convoy cars of the late former Prime Minister were transferred to Helou Barracks under the pretext of preserving them although what was left of the cars did not justify their preservation except for their value as criminal evidence because they were the target of the explosion. This was not the only instance bearing proof of the tampering with the crime scene. A BMW car that was not part of the convoy was also removed whereas focus should have been on not removing any cars and maintaining them the way they rested after the explosion in order to determine how the crime was committed.
e) A bulldozer was introduced into the crime scene on the day of the explosion, 14 February 2005, in the evening for no justifiable reason. As soon as the Minister of Interior and Municipalities got knowledge of it, he gave orders to retrieve it and preserve the crime scene as it was.
Huh?
At approximately 1411 hrs on 14 February 2005, barely an hour after the explosion, Leila Bassam of Reuters received an anonymous telephone call from a man with an accent that was not Lebanese but which she could not identify. According to Ms. Bassam, as soon as she answered the call, the man directed her to “[w]rite this down,” told her to be quiet, and then read the following statement in classical Arabic:
“We, al nasra wal-jihad fee bilad Al-Sham, declare that we have meted out due punishment to the infidel Rafik Hariri so that he may be an example to others.”
Oh, I get it!
After the blast on 14 February 2005, General Hamdan took all necessary measures to protect the President and the Presidential areas. He did not recall any details, but he did not go to the scene of the blast. He did not issue any orders or directives regarding the activities at the crime scene, since it did not fall within his responsibilities. Thus, he had nothing to do with any orders to clean the street, to fill the crater or to remove the motorcade vehicles (witness statement).
Head of Internal Security Forces, General Ashraf Rifi
76. In a meeting with UNIIIC on 1 June 2005, General Rifi stated that the person who gave the order to get a bulldozer or bulldozers to the crime scene to fill the hole caused by the explosion etc. was General Mustapha Hamdan, who at the time of the incident was the Commander of President Lahoud’s security detail and therefore by Lebanese law had nothing to do with issues related to crime scene investigation (witness statement).
So that is the long long story of the Prince.
15.1.06
Death Smells Like Bleach in the ICU
(For Tammy)
Cleaning up the little things
immaculate, and the potent
dilators, the anti dilators
the balancers and the optic fibers,
the dross of modern man,
all that bleach baby slag.
I know jazz. It sounds like that.
Real good, like a laugh in the face
of danger. Ka-ching tchsshh,
bleach baby slag. Dross and Fosse.
Hey there Tams we miss your
blue light specials,
bleach baby slag. Rag doll.
Polly wolly doodle all day,
bleach baby slag, you're
whistling the laudenum
a fine good tune. Ka-ching tchsshh,
bleach baby slag. Dross and Fosse.
Once upon a midnight
ring a ling a ling
ching ching ching
hit the keys on your way out
would you Tams, we've
got bleach baby slag to sing.
The other noises, well that's just annoying.
Lights done up in the curtains
charcoal on my bodice
my ripped torn bodice
a red deal with a bonnet
slim heels and toe tappers
mean old guys named Joe.
Bleach baby blues
and death smells like
the bleachwater that the baby
died-in, mean old guys named Joe.
Cops racing in to the speakeasy
cafes closed on a sunday,
mean old guys named Joe.
Picking up tin cans full
of bleach water blues
and all the UDAs calling home.
(For Tammy)
Cleaning up the little things
immaculate, and the potent
dilators, the anti dilators
the balancers and the optic fibers,
the dross of modern man,
all that bleach baby slag.
I know jazz. It sounds like that.
Real good, like a laugh in the face
of danger. Ka-ching tchsshh,
bleach baby slag. Dross and Fosse.
Hey there Tams we miss your
blue light specials,
bleach baby slag. Rag doll.
Polly wolly doodle all day,
bleach baby slag, you're
whistling the laudenum
a fine good tune. Ka-ching tchsshh,
bleach baby slag. Dross and Fosse.
Once upon a midnight
ring a ling a ling
ching ching ching
hit the keys on your way out
would you Tams, we've
got bleach baby slag to sing.
The other noises, well that's just annoying.
Lights done up in the curtains
charcoal on my bodice
my ripped torn bodice
a red deal with a bonnet
slim heels and toe tappers
mean old guys named Joe.
Bleach baby blues
and death smells like
the bleachwater that the baby
died-in, mean old guys named Joe.
Cops racing in to the speakeasy
cafes closed on a sunday,
mean old guys named Joe.
Picking up tin cans full
of bleach water blues
and all the UDAs calling home.
14.1.06
For Mr. Paul Street on the notion of who dies, who lives and why bother? Paul Street one day you too shall die. So will I and no one person on the face of this planet will be alive in another 150 years...maybe less depending on alot of things: bird flu being one of them and nuclear weapons another. I'm just not going to reformat this into poetic form...figure what the hell...P Street won't mind and in fact, he probably won't read it anyway and if he does he might miss the point so why waste my time telling someone that thin coated refers to the Aleutian Islands and that yes...innocent people die all the time but we don't always know why.
The Ascent of a Sherpa
He was common, ordinary so to speak nothing special about him, the usual clothing worn by Sherpawarm, useful.Not thin coated. Engaged as he was in public debate he found it difficult to make a decision,whether to lead or to follow. It came down, in the end, to the need for enough diesel fuel for winter to pour into a certain kind of heater that escapes description universally.Twelve Nepalese were killed in Baghdad today, someone whispers to me. Not that it matters. So he put together some things: bread, cheese, Sherpa Foods, the usual fare and set out to rendezvous with the ten or so moralistically staunch climbers engaging him. Moralistic in that they insisted on the unusual. Very moral. We should say ethical but that is just not physical enough. They met and he collected the agreed upon Sherpa coin. No one knows what it looks like. It might be Chinese or in this case, Ben Franklin-like because of the universality of Empirialistic trade, so it goes in the impoverished world. Doesn't matter to us or to the Sherpa who Ascends. He turned to the leader of the group who had learned Sherpa Language easily enough, certain tough families of words useful to climbing: torch, fire, food, oxygen,death, liquor, book, socks, cold, die-ing (being a progressive form of the former), pain, mother, father, and of course, candy...he said, "I'll have to stay ahead of you all, I'm uncomfortable in the company of others." The leader was puzzled but agreed to this stipulation all the same. It must be some sort of standard in Nepal he thought, some sort of requirement."How will we follow then?"
"I'll leave my footprints in the snow of course." "Oh," the leader said, chastened at his own stupidity. The trek began the next morning which happens pretty early up there, finishes pretty late, with the Sherpa starting off at night, slipping out as fast as he could go, like an angel in the moon's glow, one mustn't dally on a short night.The moralistically inclined group set out, pleased to see the tracks well defined, deep and the weather pleasant, the mountaintopin view, achievable. Very optimistic,if you will. Occasionally they caught sight of the Sherpa, his head bobbing up and downin the distance, disappearing behind rocks, reappearing. The tracks were still quite good. The second day was much the same only the Sherpa was no longer in sight, the tracks slightly obscured by the light snows. Some of the tracks looked a bit altered, a yeti paw here or a goat print there, but that was expected. No one bristled yet. The climber at the end of the rope disappeared yet no one noticed, each of them caught in their own meanings, their own cold. By the third day however, the bristling was looking more like a forest fire, the cold was like a burning heat, the sun was no longer just the sun but an actual star, the sky was no longer so far away, the shells of gas, the rings of Jupiter, all of them somehow related.The tracks had completely disappeared and were replaced by paw prints: first a snow leopard then some kind of bird, a Wolf and finally, a palimpsest. The party finally noticed one after the other,the disappearances of the others until they were all gone and the final moralistic climber was left to himself and felt the Sherpa beside him, pulling him strenuously, dragging him, whipping him with a leather strap, the Sherpa's nails digging into his frozen flesh. He'd been there all along and had dismissed the members one at a time, disguised as a snow leopard, a yeti, a Wolf until he decided which one he could keep company with.
"Here we are." he said, peaceful and not very excited,he'd been to the spot how many times now,"How do you like it?"
"Die-ing," he replaced the form deliberately. The Sherpa deliberately replied, "Death."
So Paul Street...what makes you think that muslims in Iraq aren't happy to die for what they believe in? They (the Sunnis) seem to think they are RIGHT about something and the Shia think they too are right about something (hypocrisy and some other tangential matters involving Islam). I'd say keep your worries to the coal mines. They are better off there.
http://blog.zmag.org/index.php/weblog/comments/709/P10/
The Ascent of a Sherpa
He was common, ordinary so to speak nothing special about him, the usual clothing worn by Sherpawarm, useful.Not thin coated. Engaged as he was in public debate he found it difficult to make a decision,whether to lead or to follow. It came down, in the end, to the need for enough diesel fuel for winter to pour into a certain kind of heater that escapes description universally.Twelve Nepalese were killed in Baghdad today, someone whispers to me. Not that it matters. So he put together some things: bread, cheese, Sherpa Foods, the usual fare and set out to rendezvous with the ten or so moralistically staunch climbers engaging him. Moralistic in that they insisted on the unusual. Very moral. We should say ethical but that is just not physical enough. They met and he collected the agreed upon Sherpa coin. No one knows what it looks like. It might be Chinese or in this case, Ben Franklin-like because of the universality of Empirialistic trade, so it goes in the impoverished world. Doesn't matter to us or to the Sherpa who Ascends. He turned to the leader of the group who had learned Sherpa Language easily enough, certain tough families of words useful to climbing: torch, fire, food, oxygen,death, liquor, book, socks, cold, die-ing (being a progressive form of the former), pain, mother, father, and of course, candy...he said, "I'll have to stay ahead of you all, I'm uncomfortable in the company of others." The leader was puzzled but agreed to this stipulation all the same. It must be some sort of standard in Nepal he thought, some sort of requirement."How will we follow then?"
"I'll leave my footprints in the snow of course." "Oh," the leader said, chastened at his own stupidity. The trek began the next morning which happens pretty early up there, finishes pretty late, with the Sherpa starting off at night, slipping out as fast as he could go, like an angel in the moon's glow, one mustn't dally on a short night.The moralistically inclined group set out, pleased to see the tracks well defined, deep and the weather pleasant, the mountaintopin view, achievable. Very optimistic,if you will. Occasionally they caught sight of the Sherpa, his head bobbing up and downin the distance, disappearing behind rocks, reappearing. The tracks were still quite good. The second day was much the same only the Sherpa was no longer in sight, the tracks slightly obscured by the light snows. Some of the tracks looked a bit altered, a yeti paw here or a goat print there, but that was expected. No one bristled yet. The climber at the end of the rope disappeared yet no one noticed, each of them caught in their own meanings, their own cold. By the third day however, the bristling was looking more like a forest fire, the cold was like a burning heat, the sun was no longer just the sun but an actual star, the sky was no longer so far away, the shells of gas, the rings of Jupiter, all of them somehow related.The tracks had completely disappeared and were replaced by paw prints: first a snow leopard then some kind of bird, a Wolf and finally, a palimpsest. The party finally noticed one after the other,the disappearances of the others until they were all gone and the final moralistic climber was left to himself and felt the Sherpa beside him, pulling him strenuously, dragging him, whipping him with a leather strap, the Sherpa's nails digging into his frozen flesh. He'd been there all along and had dismissed the members one at a time, disguised as a snow leopard, a yeti, a Wolf until he decided which one he could keep company with.
"Here we are." he said, peaceful and not very excited,he'd been to the spot how many times now,"How do you like it?"
"Die-ing," he replaced the form deliberately. The Sherpa deliberately replied, "Death."
So Paul Street...what makes you think that muslims in Iraq aren't happy to die for what they believe in? They (the Sunnis) seem to think they are RIGHT about something and the Shia think they too are right about something (hypocrisy and some other tangential matters involving Islam). I'd say keep your worries to the coal mines. They are better off there.
http://blog.zmag.org/index.php/weblog/comments/709/P10/
The Commerce of Doors
Back from the south again
from all of that and the cold rain,
the walks over the hill past mules,
past little old men, past recognition.
You want to say a little something
about the heaters and conversations,
about Haj Ibrahim wanting to steal doors again.
In Ayn Ibil they've got these great doors,
big wooden doors and real old.
They've been stolen back and forth
for a century now and Haj wants one back
from the Christians. They burned that town
and then the Christians burned their town
and then they all stole each other's chickens
at given interims when opportunity presented itself.
Like now when the insults are traded
on the evening news. Everyone ready
for a little door stealing and chicken catching.
Haj has his guns loaded already.
Lots of folks do and they are in training.
What next, the plague?
Back from the south again
from all of that and the cold rain,
the walks over the hill past mules,
past little old men, past recognition.
You want to say a little something
about the heaters and conversations,
about Haj Ibrahim wanting to steal doors again.
In Ayn Ibil they've got these great doors,
big wooden doors and real old.
They've been stolen back and forth
for a century now and Haj wants one back
from the Christians. They burned that town
and then the Christians burned their town
and then they all stole each other's chickens
at given interims when opportunity presented itself.
Like now when the insults are traded
on the evening news. Everyone ready
for a little door stealing and chicken catching.
Haj has his guns loaded already.
Lots of folks do and they are in training.
What next, the plague?
7.1.06
Seri toddler
My sister Radi Ann Porter took this amazing photo. Isn't it great!
Allah Ahkbar! Viva la Raza!
Allah Ahkbar! Viva la Raza!
ODE TO ESPERANTO
Towards the box canyons
towards El Paso, we headed.
A bluebird with a Cuban
at the helm, flagging and flagging
swaying in the waves of wind
through camino, beyond
the back window mystery
unfolding, missed our chances so far.
Missed them all. One after the other
beckoning, sirens bellowing
in our wake as we charged on.
Todos ventanas son abiertos,
all the wind and sky coming in.
Fresh from tests, champions
of La Cucaracha y domingo.
I have hunger we said,
yo tengo yo tengo,
not I am, tu tengas
informal but not to Havana,
with all her cautions
against revolution, no!
Fidel was not our savior!
No soy la isquierda,
cierran las ventanas, cierran!
Yo soy de Cuba, yo soy
not this, yo soy aqui con ustedes,
yo soy de Coobah.
De donde aqui? De donde?
circa de eso, eso es mujer,
usted es de Cooba, yo soy Margarita...
When at last we held tight
from the momentum, the pummelling
winds para el camino, east from iglesia San Xavier
del Bac that dropped us like sand
through the funnels: plip plop plip plop
through the stiles: chink chink
past all the kachinas and fast running
phoenixes, the sands of Hohokam in tiny glass jars,
casa grande with his ancient clocks
abandoned, wholly abandoned and al dentro
awestruck antes de the curled up squaw,
her curled up baby, the curled up stones
of the two of them, Dios Mio!
Que triste! Que bien!
Porque no abierto sus ojos?
"Porque yo no tengo hambre, no tengo
nada o nadie o nunca,
todo es fin." Despues,
they found her, an illusion,
sold her bones for the dineros.
Vieja, circa de las otras:
no cuerpo, no vestido, no hay nada.
A dimestore injun with painted-on eyes.
Nuestras profesora a long way from Cuba.
Viva la raza!
*Some explanation is in order here. That is border Spanish and Esperanto of course is the universal language. Root word: Hope. Cuba? That is the Cuban refugee named Ines Bidot (peace on her wherever she is or isn't) my high school Spanish teacher who insisted on Castillian.
Her hair was always done exactuly the same way...swept into a graceful bun to the back of her head. Her stockings never had runs in them and of course, she didn't like Castro very much nor revolution. I was her star gringo pupil and we went on a journey to the state championships...me and a bus full of Messicans. On our way home we stopped off to see the famous tHiNg. What is it? Ah...what was it the better question. Seems it was a fake Injun mummy, a squaw with her mummy baby clenched tightly in her arms. The tourist attraction was sold after I saw it that day and what I saw was a real mummy but now most people say it is a fake. Wonder where that mummy went and I wonder where Miss Ines Bidot is now?
6.1.06
4.1.06
THE STORY OF THE DJINN
A Picture Of Divinia
They are called up from their places,
the dead, the representatives
as they are often referred to, or as djinn.
They show up unexpectedly
and wear various disguises,
speak foreign languages and do
foreign types of things.
Divinia fell off the wall last week and broke.
Although it is never an emergency to fix
a broken piece of glass, it became one.
Two days before I touched glass to take her
to the shop on a litter and the man there
told to treat her with the utmost concern,
she only breaks for a reason. She jumped
off the wall with the most tremendous crash!
It took a few hours to find the debris
as it lay hidden for a while wanting discovery
or rather, Divinia, the dead aunt clawed
her way into the sound of the environment.
She finally spoke.
The dead and djinn arrive too early,
sometimes too late, flow into your blood,
their interpreters mute imposters.
They cannot be paid or tortured, only coaxed.
And then they go away again.
They stay inside their glass
or you invite them to your own religion.
http://www.clydelewis.com/dis/djinn/djinn.htm
A Picture Of Divinia
They are called up from their places,
the dead, the representatives
as they are often referred to, or as djinn.
They show up unexpectedly
and wear various disguises,
speak foreign languages and do
foreign types of things.
Divinia fell off the wall last week and broke.
Although it is never an emergency to fix
a broken piece of glass, it became one.
Two days before I touched glass to take her
to the shop on a litter and the man there
told to treat her with the utmost concern,
she only breaks for a reason. She jumped
off the wall with the most tremendous crash!
It took a few hours to find the debris
as it lay hidden for a while wanting discovery
or rather, Divinia, the dead aunt clawed
her way into the sound of the environment.
She finally spoke.
The dead and djinn arrive too early,
sometimes too late, flow into your blood,
their interpreters mute imposters.
They cannot be paid or tortured, only coaxed.
And then they go away again.
They stay inside their glass
or you invite them to your own religion.
http://www.clydelewis.com/dis/djinn/djinn.htm
3.1.06
Love Islamic Style
http://www.imamreza.net/eng/imamreza.php?id=265
The greatest love story ever told and all the tremendous details of the birth of a woman from the seed of the apple of Eden where Eve had "no navel" (James Joyce).
Her husband's elegy:
"O the Prophet of Allah salam upon you from me and your daughter who is being buried near to you and who has joined you so soon. O the messenger of Allah, the passing away of your daughter has lessened my patience and I have lost my energy and power. After having endured your separation I have to bear this catastrophe also so patiently. I laid you down in the grave with my own hands; your soul departed from your body while your head was lying between my neck and heart. 'Surely we belong to Allah and to Him we shall return'. (Fatimah) was a trust (entrusted to me) and a souvenir that is taken back from me. Now my sorrow grief and pain is eternal, lasting and overwhelming. It has left me with sleepless nights till Allah chooses for one Realm where you abide. Soon your daughter will inform you that how your Ummah made alliance to ill-treat and oppress her. You ask her the details of what all has happened to her, even though neither a long period passed away after your departure nor people stopped from talking about you. My farewell salam upon both of you (You and Your daughter) not such a salam which is from sad and weary heart (it is from sincere heart which loved and will always love you both). If I go back from (this place) it is not because I am tired of your company; and if I make a permanent abode by your grave it will not be because I am distrustful and suspicious from that reward which Allah has promised with those who bear sorrows patiently".
http://www.jafariyanews.com/august2k2/13_patheticwords.htm
Ah...if we could all appreciate a love like that. Some of us actually do.
http://www.imamreza.net/eng/imamreza.php?id=265
The greatest love story ever told and all the tremendous details of the birth of a woman from the seed of the apple of Eden where Eve had "no navel" (James Joyce).
Her husband's elegy:
"O the Prophet of Allah salam upon you from me and your daughter who is being buried near to you and who has joined you so soon. O the messenger of Allah, the passing away of your daughter has lessened my patience and I have lost my energy and power. After having endured your separation I have to bear this catastrophe also so patiently. I laid you down in the grave with my own hands; your soul departed from your body while your head was lying between my neck and heart. 'Surely we belong to Allah and to Him we shall return'. (Fatimah) was a trust (entrusted to me) and a souvenir that is taken back from me. Now my sorrow grief and pain is eternal, lasting and overwhelming. It has left me with sleepless nights till Allah chooses for one Realm where you abide. Soon your daughter will inform you that how your Ummah made alliance to ill-treat and oppress her. You ask her the details of what all has happened to her, even though neither a long period passed away after your departure nor people stopped from talking about you. My farewell salam upon both of you (You and Your daughter) not such a salam which is from sad and weary heart (it is from sincere heart which loved and will always love you both). If I go back from (this place) it is not because I am tired of your company; and if I make a permanent abode by your grave it will not be because I am distrustful and suspicious from that reward which Allah has promised with those who bear sorrows patiently".
http://www.jafariyanews.com/august2k2/13_patheticwords.htm
Ah...if we could all appreciate a love like that. Some of us actually do.
2.1.06
Life!
one must possess a certain vainglorious self righteousness
tinged, with just enough self- depracating humor
in order to make the idea seem more palatable.
Arrogance should be exhibited in conscientious degrees
meant to fabricate a kind of ignorance to one's own
self-evident intelligence, it is absolutely necessary.
Neechay dismissed Wagner in a brilliant act
of relatively pedestrian martyrdom, a typical
kind of thing for a martyr to do in light of noticing
Everyone-Selling-Out.
Denying a particular type of idiosyncracy to oneself
would mean to parlay the whole enchilada into cryptic
references, belligerent innuendoes and pouty charm.
It is, the Angry Voice of Reason in the face of
a Midwestern Tornado, an avalanche of Americana-
realizing that this commodity is not much in demand anywhere else.
To recognize that, one would have to go anywhere else
to notice the epitome of the nuance (a fine line here)
in a bookstore somewhere on the outskirts of Oz,
definitely not the Mecca of our nightspot dreams.
This is the anomaly, the critical factor of Achilles
encamped by his Troy saving his Helen.
To be innocuous as hell one could say it's a Nintendo goal
to save that girl, kill that dragon.
That's what universal soldiers do.
31.12.05
Tarbouche
Another year walks away,
another one starts to pass on by.
Before you know it
they are all gone.
30.12.05
28.12.05
The Nightclubs and Restaurant Reviews,
The Vacation Destinations,
Without the Word:
MECCA
The road to Mecca is dry
the mountains near Taif
angular, unforgiving.
Baboons scurry in front
of the car, begging for handouts -
most of them maimed in some way
hit by cars. In Oz, they could fly.
A dozen kilometers or so
from our destination we pass
under a giant concrete book
in awe of human ingenuity.
Hardened pages spread
over two gray lanes.
I wonder: Can I go here?
The signs warn of dangers
outside the Emerald City.
The wizard has concocted
and created a disturbing motto:
Infidels, those of us who don't believe
a highway sign might
sentence one to Hell for all eternity,
turn back at once.
Dorothy, go home.
I've got the green document
it says I can do this,
I won't be arrested.
I'm wearing these white sheets,
yet somehow I don't believe.
I doubt that Mecca knows my name.
Inside the rocky town
most people never see,
a Pizza Hut stands catercorner
to the prize. Over there,
a Five Star Hotel under construction.
The castle doors are all the same,
angels guarding every single direction.
We leave our plastic shoes
near the most conspicuous looking one and go in,
barefoot and murmuring in a thousand voices.
Seven times around the Kaaba,
we circle drenched in the sweat
of others, the crimes we all bear.
The malodorous throng contracts on one corner
hands reaching for a meteorite.
I the imposter
have stained my white clothes
with Arid Extra Dry,
I've got Hanes Her Way under these limpid sheets.
We run for water
we run like Hajar,
the Generous Stone.
We run seeking water,
decanted into plastic containers, from her well.
Zam Zam! Our shoes disappear,
picked up by a stranger.
Mecca for the unbelievers
this is where you go
to find yourself,
stone the devil himself
and why not?
Signs are only signs.
An Explanation of the word: Niggeritis
Some words cannot be spoken,
written, referred to, carried out,
plagiarized or otherwise utilized.
Simply put, we must discriminate.
I've got niggeritis.
Realizing this,
I appointed myself to the Nigger Watch.
A declaration was made,
I am the muslim Nigger,
I am watching you like you watch me,
watching you at the fountainheads
of language.
Please explain this niggeritis.
No problem I say, Constance wouldn't mind.
Constance with her big white teeth
and her big White name.
She and I have an understanding
about that sort of thing.
Niggeritis is a feeling.
"You've got what?"
I said that just as we stepped
gingerly over those concrete barriers
in a parking lot, those that slam
into car bumpers.
Niggeritis.
It was two o'clock, lunchtime.
It was hot. We'd been working hard,
well, hardly working in the ICU,
in our pure and white uniforms.
Some days are like that in a hospital.
Constance, where's your niggeritis when it's needed?
I felt so very white, so white
next to this African Canadian
with niggeritis,
so very ignorant from a colorless
redneck town. Where's the red?
Niggeritis comes from Africa.
She opened her big wide mouth,
the one that got her into trouble
most of the time, that one
with big white teeth and explained:
Niggeritis is nigger laziness.
Can I have it?
I'd like some of that.
In the end though,
I found out I can't have niggeritis
unless I am a nigger.
So I declared,
in light of being an Islamofascist
in some people's eyes,
in their carelessly chosen rhetoric,
to be a new kind of nigger.
So now I can say nigger,
as much as I want.
People generally don't like it,
but you know,
we niggers don't care.
The Vacation Destinations,
Without the Word:
MECCA
The road to Mecca is dry
the mountains near Taif
angular, unforgiving.
Baboons scurry in front
of the car, begging for handouts -
most of them maimed in some way
hit by cars. In Oz, they could fly.
A dozen kilometers or so
from our destination we pass
under a giant concrete book
in awe of human ingenuity.
Hardened pages spread
over two gray lanes.
I wonder: Can I go here?
The signs warn of dangers
outside the Emerald City.
The wizard has concocted
and created a disturbing motto:
Infidels, those of us who don't believe
a highway sign might
sentence one to Hell for all eternity,
turn back at once.
Dorothy, go home.
I've got the green document
it says I can do this,
I won't be arrested.
I'm wearing these white sheets,
yet somehow I don't believe.
I doubt that Mecca knows my name.
Inside the rocky town
most people never see,
a Pizza Hut stands catercorner
to the prize. Over there,
a Five Star Hotel under construction.
The castle doors are all the same,
angels guarding every single direction.
We leave our plastic shoes
near the most conspicuous looking one and go in,
barefoot and murmuring in a thousand voices.
Seven times around the Kaaba,
we circle drenched in the sweat
of others, the crimes we all bear.
The malodorous throng contracts on one corner
hands reaching for a meteorite.
I the imposter
have stained my white clothes
with Arid Extra Dry,
I've got Hanes Her Way under these limpid sheets.
We run for water
we run like Hajar,
the Generous Stone.
We run seeking water,
decanted into plastic containers, from her well.
Zam Zam! Our shoes disappear,
picked up by a stranger.
Mecca for the unbelievers
this is where you go
to find yourself,
stone the devil himself
and why not?
Signs are only signs.
An Explanation of the word: Niggeritis
Some words cannot be spoken,
written, referred to, carried out,
plagiarized or otherwise utilized.
Simply put, we must discriminate.
I've got niggeritis.
Realizing this,
I appointed myself to the Nigger Watch.
A declaration was made,
I am the muslim Nigger,
I am watching you like you watch me,
watching you at the fountainheads
of language.
Please explain this niggeritis.
No problem I say, Constance wouldn't mind.
Constance with her big white teeth
and her big White name.
She and I have an understanding
about that sort of thing.
Niggeritis is a feeling.
"You've got what?"
I said that just as we stepped
gingerly over those concrete barriers
in a parking lot, those that slam
into car bumpers.
Niggeritis.
It was two o'clock, lunchtime.
It was hot. We'd been working hard,
well, hardly working in the ICU,
in our pure and white uniforms.
Some days are like that in a hospital.
Constance, where's your niggeritis when it's needed?
I felt so very white, so white
next to this African Canadian
with niggeritis,
so very ignorant from a colorless
redneck town. Where's the red?
Niggeritis comes from Africa.
She opened her big wide mouth,
the one that got her into trouble
most of the time, that one
with big white teeth and explained:
Niggeritis is nigger laziness.
Can I have it?
I'd like some of that.
In the end though,
I found out I can't have niggeritis
unless I am a nigger.
So I declared,
in light of being an Islamofascist
in some people's eyes,
in their carelessly chosen rhetoric,
to be a new kind of nigger.
So now I can say nigger,
as much as I want.
People generally don't like it,
but you know,
we niggers don't care.
26.12.05
THE LONGER FARTHER
The poem that got him into heaven
had apologies, to Whitman I think.
It spoke of a desert watering hole
all God's creatures, crying
the same way, a manzanita bush.
He must have eye watered while he wrote it
laughed when it was published in the local rag.
He must have laughed. Not loved either
but published finally. His life story
on the front page, with apologies:
Lili Marlene, the frozen toes of Aleutia,
the family part of mining.
Part one concludes.
II
Here is the day he was discharged
honorably from eight years of his life,
a wallet sized picture of a road grader in microfiche.
III
This is the time he leapt
like the elk over the Impala at Tonto,
my body waiting below in the gully for transport
between my sister's big breasts under
a Catholic style shirt front, she held me in c-spine.
Those were good times: a father saving a daughter,
a sister to lean on, a hospital to go to.
IV
Back over there he kept the nuts and bolts.
Jar lids screwed to the bottoms of cupboards,
nailed the latch back into place on the back door
broken from the banging.
He fixed the washer with his specs
perched low on his nose,
his eyes peeking over them and shining.
V
Right there above his long celtic brow
was a hole too small to hold a bullet
but it was a bull's eye and in his casket
I noticed it still as large as ever.
The snapshot of his dead body is in the album.
VI
She came for a spell to sit at the dinner table
tell stories with certain embellishments.
His mother had an ax to grind:
grandpa's mistress out in the valley,
some other children named the Driggers, distant cousins.
How mean grandma got over that.
How she hit with a crutch.
It is strange how long one can remember, how details
hidden come to the forefront in Riyadh,
long distance sisterhood and her swollen ankles
aching from the flight. It matters because I never knew.
VII
"Just a piece of metal, a broken one now
but you are okay, you are okay." Driving isn't
always easy on Laundry Hill but you are okay.
The new brougham wholly dented fender to rear.
It was all a daughter ever wanted to hear,
caught me a little off guard. Mom advised:
You've got to tell your father, not me.
It'll be good for the both of you.
I think it was our only conversation
because he saved up the rest of his talk
for that poem, to get him into heaven,
the only time he ever mentioned the word God, in there.
A certain kind of self confidence you get from fighting in a war.
VIII
We were in the lumber yard,
I was holding a grape Nehi,
Red was adding up the total,
two by fours and four by fours.
We tooled around town like that for a couple years
when he was sober, preparing to die.
Just a pause he was taking between drinks,
about five years of dry wall and fixing the electric,
balancing on ladders, picking stucco out of my eye.
He'd take a hit of oxygen between corners.
Sometimes I held a hammer or a jar of nails
taken from the washroom. Someone changed my name
to Lolita, showed me Last Tango in Paris,
a funny kind of thing to do to a kid.
My father decided to drink himself to death
instead of shoot the bastard
and he did. May 23 to May 23
but they got it backwards at the printers:
b.1983 - d.1913
I've got it here in his mother's jewelry box,
absolute proof. I look at it sometimes
and think about the wars and sexual exploitation.
IX
His poem is somewhere else,
yellowed;
out of date;
with apologies.
Yet I keep writing it longer, farther.
*Sorry no time to correct the band of pink on the edge of the old photo...or no will to. Some things just don't matter to Pig Pen.
Ode to Seven
"But they are dead; those two are dead!
Their spirits are in heaven!"
-William Wordsworth, We Are Seven
"If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles."
-Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
THE SEANCE
If Elvis was here
he could do it
but we lost him
in the back seat
of a bluebird.
Me and Sarah
sobered up like
Katherine in the closet
when we asked Lori's dead dad to knock,
we all sobered up,
kicked our way out-
saw locked windows and doors
all around, pleasant grass outside
not the fake kind
but real, stable grass,
Country Squire in the carport,
the avocado Frigidaire
opened and closed
bilaterally, as was the style.
SQUIRREL DUENDE
St. Pat's let out at three
no one moved until
Sister Josepha left with her
cross-kissing Judas stories
hanging around her ankles
like worn out socks on a poor kid,
no one dared.
A squirrel huddled behind 15 miles an hour,
tried to give me rabies
in trade for my cuddle,
his eye a brown globe
the color of a monk.
I denied this in the confession.
MARY'S OD
Mary, Mary quite contrary
how did your urgent need grow?
Knick Knack Paddy Whack
your old man rolled home.
Here we go round the Mulberry Bush,
so he beat the shit out of her.
She died in her own vomit
several years later,
her bracelet landing
on heaven in the hopskotch.
BURN
We tried to burn the town down
a stampede put it out
as an afterthought
right near the big circle
that drains into several
asphalt tributaries
Wood Canyon, Spring Canyon
Perley Street-
We should have known
by the water marks
on the library walls
the flood couldn't take
it down neither,
a hundred some years before.
It just kept on melting.
MEDITATION
Old Man Ham
had a Hills Bros can,
his wife was really lean.
She kept a Baptist house
no smoke inside, her pies never burned.
He stood and puffed
out by the garden gate,
heard the cottonwoods say:
wow amen.
US
All our fights looked the same
mom's skirts blowed up
as she fell down
her soft perfect bottom
as clean as a whistle.
Old man Ham a trusty witness
as we pushed him out the door,
his false teeth clicked
in the roof of his mouth.
Inside their place next door, Grace
popped her gum incessantly near
something they called an "ottoman".
Sometimes we felt a little poor.
AFTER HE DIED
At night one night
running past the ankle high
black gully windows,
wicked little transoms
under houses built on flash floods,
up past the garden gate,
his chair under that pear tree,
almost empty,
the air was very, very clear.
Through our newest
old door I kept running -
and on the last breath I summoned
his soul from the cotton we kicked
off our shoes in spring.
When I told mom this,
she called for a Nitro.
This is how I remember it.
GRACE HAM'S ADDENDUM
On a muggy afternoon
in late summer three quarters
of the way from Tucson
Grace Ham's daughter
took a turn for the worse on I-10.
Mom turned into puddles
all around the house.
It was wetter than the day
our spaniel Maxi got rigor mortis on the front porch.
"But they are dead; those two are dead!
Their spirits are in heaven!"
-William Wordsworth, We Are Seven
"If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles."
-Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
THE SEANCE
If Elvis was here
he could do it
but we lost him
in the back seat
of a bluebird.
Me and Sarah
sobered up like
Katherine in the closet
when we asked Lori's dead dad to knock,
we all sobered up,
kicked our way out-
saw locked windows and doors
all around, pleasant grass outside
not the fake kind
but real, stable grass,
Country Squire in the carport,
the avocado Frigidaire
opened and closed
bilaterally, as was the style.
SQUIRREL DUENDE
St. Pat's let out at three
no one moved until
Sister Josepha left with her
cross-kissing Judas stories
hanging around her ankles
like worn out socks on a poor kid,
no one dared.
A squirrel huddled behind 15 miles an hour,
tried to give me rabies
in trade for my cuddle,
his eye a brown globe
the color of a monk.
I denied this in the confession.
MARY'S OD
Mary, Mary quite contrary
how did your urgent need grow?
Knick Knack Paddy Whack
your old man rolled home.
Here we go round the Mulberry Bush,
so he beat the shit out of her.
She died in her own vomit
several years later,
her bracelet landing
on heaven in the hopskotch.
BURN
We tried to burn the town down
a stampede put it out
as an afterthought
right near the big circle
that drains into several
asphalt tributaries
Wood Canyon, Spring Canyon
Perley Street-
We should have known
by the water marks
on the library walls
the flood couldn't take
it down neither,
a hundred some years before.
It just kept on melting.
MEDITATION
Old Man Ham
had a Hills Bros can,
his wife was really lean.
She kept a Baptist house
no smoke inside, her pies never burned.
He stood and puffed
out by the garden gate,
heard the cottonwoods say:
wow amen.
US
All our fights looked the same
mom's skirts blowed up
as she fell down
her soft perfect bottom
as clean as a whistle.
Old man Ham a trusty witness
as we pushed him out the door,
his false teeth clicked
in the roof of his mouth.
Inside their place next door, Grace
popped her gum incessantly near
something they called an "ottoman".
Sometimes we felt a little poor.
AFTER HE DIED
At night one night
running past the ankle high
black gully windows,
wicked little transoms
under houses built on flash floods,
up past the garden gate,
his chair under that pear tree,
almost empty,
the air was very, very clear.
Through our newest
old door I kept running -
and on the last breath I summoned
his soul from the cotton we kicked
off our shoes in spring.
When I told mom this,
she called for a Nitro.
This is how I remember it.
GRACE HAM'S ADDENDUM
On a muggy afternoon
in late summer three quarters
of the way from Tucson
Grace Ham's daughter
took a turn for the worse on I-10.
Mom turned into puddles
all around the house.
It was wetter than the day
our spaniel Maxi got rigor mortis on the front porch.
Those are the old stories now. All of them that will be revealed here for now. I can only do so much you know...there are laws. One of the reasons I cannot publish is because the laws lack complete specificity until they are utterly known and then...oh then Goethe and Gogol go to their respective positions regarding matters of art.
The new stories though are always okay to relate because to relate them in ignorance is ALWAYS allowed. Always. Determination regarding their validity and response can be delayed for a certain amount of time required for the decision to be revealed. But they can be revealed.
Yesterday I heard the wind of the grave for the first time. Do you have any idea what that sounds like? Oh...you hear it all the time and don't know it. Everyone does but they've neglected defining it often enough to make it into an everyday occurrence.
It sounded like the wind. That is all. Ordinary enough eh? But when you hear it you remember Bill Porter talking about that psalm that goes: through the valley of death I will fear no evil...and you hear what he was hearing. He was remembering the war and all it had done to him and he only heard it later and felt no one would understand what it was he heard as he slashed pages out of the bible to send them to Vietnam and my brother (not his son...his step son whom he supposedly never accepted). Ah. You hear the wind and it sounds differently all of a sudden and you know inside that seashells will also offer up the sound and some other things too.It is a lesson to start listening better to the sounds. You really have to hear the earth in her groaning. You've got to see the lights as being stored energy mostly from dead bodies.You see the MOON as what it is...for the first time maybe...a stored source of solar energy which is something you don't know what but it is something widely studied. Particle physicists and the like do alot of work in that field. They don't know much about it except measurements on instruments and call that truth. They do and they make alot of sense sometimes but they usually neglect to tell you what they are really after.
They are after God you know. They just don't like to say it out loud or to themselves or even to God. They think their work is enough justification because it leads to a more "sustainable" universe. How funny. As if the universe needed them to be sustainable. That is really funny.
The new stories though are always okay to relate because to relate them in ignorance is ALWAYS allowed. Always. Determination regarding their validity and response can be delayed for a certain amount of time required for the decision to be revealed. But they can be revealed.
Yesterday I heard the wind of the grave for the first time. Do you have any idea what that sounds like? Oh...you hear it all the time and don't know it. Everyone does but they've neglected defining it often enough to make it into an everyday occurrence.
It sounded like the wind. That is all. Ordinary enough eh? But when you hear it you remember Bill Porter talking about that psalm that goes: through the valley of death I will fear no evil...and you hear what he was hearing. He was remembering the war and all it had done to him and he only heard it later and felt no one would understand what it was he heard as he slashed pages out of the bible to send them to Vietnam and my brother (not his son...his step son whom he supposedly never accepted). Ah. You hear the wind and it sounds differently all of a sudden and you know inside that seashells will also offer up the sound and some other things too.It is a lesson to start listening better to the sounds. You really have to hear the earth in her groaning. You've got to see the lights as being stored energy mostly from dead bodies.You see the MOON as what it is...for the first time maybe...a stored source of solar energy which is something you don't know what but it is something widely studied. Particle physicists and the like do alot of work in that field. They don't know much about it except measurements on instruments and call that truth. They do and they make alot of sense sometimes but they usually neglect to tell you what they are really after.
They are after God you know. They just don't like to say it out loud or to themselves or even to God. They think their work is enough justification because it leads to a more "sustainable" universe. How funny. As if the universe needed them to be sustainable. That is really funny.
13.12.05
The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls. - Paul Simon, The Sound of Silence
I was discussing with Samson Shillitoe regarding the existence of God and whatnots. As usual the conversation took a turn for the worse because Samson is Anti Bush and I am not. Read on:
But I am going to tell you...as a poet there is just nothing that compares to the series of signs you receive when in this state (on the verge of life changes). It is a bittersweet reunion with spirituality as always but don't knock it until you've tried it.
Not that brand(Christianity)...no of course not. Ridiculous and actually..I pity those that are left with the half truths of the Bible...it is a damn shame really. But in the end as long as they meander along with that and try to be faithful to what they believe in and do 'good works' then they still get a shot at the final show. Fence sitters and arrogants as well...special clauses JUST for them (or you as the case may be and no offense intended).
That brand though lost me when Jesus (Isa, (saw)) asked himself about himself on the cross not to mention the part where the devil tempted him with Las Vegas AND Amsterdam....can't tempt God you know. They lost me about right there or maybe it was at my mother's funeral...the priest walked by scenting us with his magical smells and I heard the ringy bells (alter boys, special effects) and said, "What on earth is going on here?" Could have been then.
So...to make a short story even longer and funnier....December 11 is a day that will go down in history for my son Ali. He shaved. Finally. I was so tired of the mixmatched facial hair and his dad filled with all those superstitious myths about shaving and what it might do to a boy (CHIA PET MENTALITY)...
But that isn't all that happened...no sirree. He also went to church yesterday for the first time...and worse yet...we had to sing in German (a charity function at the retarded school in Tyre) and even WORSE STILL...(I cannot believe I've contaminated my son in this way...) Worse still...the preacher was awoman. I'm nearly collapsed by now in the candlelit hall. I'm there and some guy behind me trying to indicate which song it is that they are on and I tell him I don't speak German and he keeps pointing to the hymn book...so I say, "Anyway I am a muslim." The usual reflection on HIS face...huh?
But this isn't really the whole story. My son passed so many landmarks yesterday we all agreed to put a special bookmark on December 11th...decided it was a REALLY BIG DAY for our family because....something FAR WORSE had happened in the morning...I should have stayed in bed you know.
On our way to Tyre I gassed up at a station-slash-liquor store.I needed something to drink. Banana milk specifically and Sarah ordered one for herself and Ali ordered a beverage...called FREEZE...and he wanted the green kind.So I go grab my two bananas and my green one and get in the car. Around the time we are halfway between Sidon and Beirut (on our way to church and shaving (in the evening)) my son declares from the back seat, "It's a BUZZ!"
Dear God in heaven. I almost went over the edge into the great big sea. You see...FREEZE is non alcoholic and BUZZ is the cousiin...same company and same bottle size/shape/beverage colors. I only grabbed a 'green one' in haste and ended up getting the poor sod loaded on vodka.Oh dear...by the time we reached Tyre he was asking for Chinese Food. Yes I said....that always happens.
I was discussing with Samson Shillitoe regarding the existence of God and whatnots. As usual the conversation took a turn for the worse because Samson is Anti Bush and I am not. Read on:
But I am going to tell you...as a poet there is just nothing that compares to the series of signs you receive when in this state (on the verge of life changes). It is a bittersweet reunion with spirituality as always but don't knock it until you've tried it.
Not that brand(Christianity)...no of course not. Ridiculous and actually..I pity those that are left with the half truths of the Bible...it is a damn shame really. But in the end as long as they meander along with that and try to be faithful to what they believe in and do 'good works' then they still get a shot at the final show. Fence sitters and arrogants as well...special clauses JUST for them (or you as the case may be and no offense intended).
That brand though lost me when Jesus (Isa, (saw)) asked himself about himself on the cross not to mention the part where the devil tempted him with Las Vegas AND Amsterdam....can't tempt God you know. They lost me about right there or maybe it was at my mother's funeral...the priest walked by scenting us with his magical smells and I heard the ringy bells (alter boys, special effects) and said, "What on earth is going on here?" Could have been then.
So...to make a short story even longer and funnier....December 11 is a day that will go down in history for my son Ali. He shaved. Finally. I was so tired of the mixmatched facial hair and his dad filled with all those superstitious myths about shaving and what it might do to a boy (CHIA PET MENTALITY)...
But that isn't all that happened...no sirree. He also went to church yesterday for the first time...and worse yet...we had to sing in German (a charity function at the retarded school in Tyre) and even WORSE STILL...(I cannot believe I've contaminated my son in this way...) Worse still...the preacher was awoman. I'm nearly collapsed by now in the candlelit hall. I'm there and some guy behind me trying to indicate which song it is that they are on and I tell him I don't speak German and he keeps pointing to the hymn book...so I say, "Anyway I am a muslim." The usual reflection on HIS face...huh?
But this isn't really the whole story. My son passed so many landmarks yesterday we all agreed to put a special bookmark on December 11th...decided it was a REALLY BIG DAY for our family because....something FAR WORSE had happened in the morning...I should have stayed in bed you know.
On our way to Tyre I gassed up at a station-slash-liquor store.I needed something to drink. Banana milk specifically and Sarah ordered one for herself and Ali ordered a beverage...called FREEZE...and he wanted the green kind.So I go grab my two bananas and my green one and get in the car. Around the time we are halfway between Sidon and Beirut (on our way to church and shaving (in the evening)) my son declares from the back seat, "It's a BUZZ!"
Dear God in heaven. I almost went over the edge into the great big sea. You see...FREEZE is non alcoholic and BUZZ is the cousiin...same company and same bottle size/shape/beverage colors. I only grabbed a 'green one' in haste and ended up getting the poor sod loaded on vodka.Oh dear...by the time we reached Tyre he was asking for Chinese Food. Yes I said....that always happens.
10.12.05
A letter of interest arrived from one Lanny Muss. It has only been a few days since his friend doogs interest renewed in my condition...doogs an older fellow with the world inside of himself and one who never lets the smallest thing bother him...aside from a comment about "literary artifice" which was made with the most humble respect for the glory of ages gone by and styles of performance in gentlemanly circles towards women, 'in my condition'. Ah...it is so good to hear from a friend of a decade....a whole decade. Here we are wondering why we bother at all to write to one another...knowing that it really is the most gentle solace one can ever know...a kind and friendly letter with all the necessary obscurities that are enacted to sit in a parlor with one another and chat awhile. It was only to preserve the poem which we arrived at...as we always arrive at some nonsense or another that I relate to you my reply to my gentlemanly friend, Lanny Muss, old doogs friendly butler:
Dear Lan,
In this our series of chaotic missions
perserverence, detection, destruction
marriages and wars, streams of conflict
seemingly all around
women arrive in dreams offering zakat
unrecognizable except to a simple few.
She wants to understand betrayal,
the unseen, the protected law of the universe
in all of its blinding capacity
although it is wrong and impossible.
She tries anyway. Leaves everything else alone:
socks, ashtrays and friendly letters,
platonic unifications of her very own soul
which is so valuable anymore to her
and no one else. No one else bothers
about another man's soul any more,
his own wife's or her dog's soul -
the same to him as they are to her
but in a different way. In such a different way.
All I can say is I know Lanny. I'm much better acquainted with the quietish doogs and have long missed him. It is good though to hear pippa once again and wonder where that must lead a person...because dreams and these things always do lead to a something...never bitter and certainly only mildly scorned and infrequently.I wish doogs could sit a while on the Corniche and tell me once again I'll be alright because I'm truly not sure about alright. Alright is a creation that fends off the not so good, the absolutely intolerable and the ever present hypocrisy...my own and everyone else's....all too painful to encounter as much as I do....all too painful and leaving the rottenest sores..sores of the mind that never heals..only remembers what it is told.I am so glad to hear from you once again. I need something to help me from losing my mind once and for all time.LJ(Layla and Lilac send their regards and Lilac sends her photo as well. My God she was a beautiful maiden...where on earth did she go?
4.12.05
Link to the general debate regarding big mouth non participants in the political process. In memory of the famous Wolf O'Meara, compatriot of the oppressed and the sexy.
http://www.bisbeemarquee.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=913
http://www.bisbeemarquee.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=913
3.12.05
http://al-islam.org/LWM/mutahari.htm
The Ascent of the Sherpa
He was common, ordinary so to speak
nothing special about him,
the usual clothing worn by Sherpa
warm, useful.
Not thin coated.
Engaged as he was in public debate
he found it difficult to make a decision,
whether to lead or to follow.
It came down, in the end,
to the need for enough diesel fuel for winter
to pour into a certain kind of heater
that escapes description universally.
Twelve Nepalese were killed in Baghdad today,
someone whispers to me. Not that it matters.
So he put together some things,
bread, cheese, Sherpa Foods,
the usual fare. And set out to rendezvous
with the ten or so moralistically staunch
climbers engaging him, moralistic in that they
insisted on the unusual. Very moral.
We should say ethical but that is just not physical enough.
They met and he collected the agreed upon
Sherpa coin. No one knows what it looks like.
It might be Chinese or in this case, Ben Franklin-like
because of the universality of Empirialistic trade,
so it goes in the impoverished world.
Doesn't matter to us or to the Sherpa who Ascends.
He turned to the leader of the group
who had learned Sherpa Language easily enough,
certain tough families of words useful
to climbing, torch, fire, food, oxygen,
death, liquor, book, socks, cold, die-ing (being a
progressive form of the former), pain,
mother, father, and of course, candy...
he said, "I'll have to stay ahead of you all,
I'm uncomfortable in the company of others."
The leader was puzzled but agreed to this stipulation
all the same. It must be some sort of standard
in Nepal he thought, some sort of requirement.
"How will we follow then?"
"I'll leave my footprints in the snow of course."
"Oh," the leader said, chastened at his own stupidity.
The trek began the next morning which happens pretty
early up there, finishes pretty late,
with the Sherpa starting off at night,
slipping out as fast as he could go,
like an angel in the moon's glow,
one mustn't dally on a short night.
The moralistically inclined group set out,
pleased to see the tracks well defined,
deep and the weather pleasant, the mountaintop
in view, achievable. Very optimistic,
if you will. Occasionally they caught sight
of the Sherpa, his head bobbing up and down
in the distance, disappearing behind rocks,
reappearing. The tracks were still quite good.
The second day was much the same only the Sherpa
was no longer in sight, the tracks slightly obscured
by the light snows. Some of the tracks looked
a bit altered, a yeti paw here or a goat hoof there,
but that was expected. No one bristled yet.
The climber at the end of the rope disappeared
yet no one noticed, each of them caught
in their own meanings, their own cold.
By the third day however, the bristling
was looking more like a forest fire,
the cold was like a burning heat,
the sun was no longer just the sun
but an actual star, the sky was no longer
so far away, the shells of gas,
the rings of Jupiter, all of them
somehow related.
The tracks had completely disappeared
and were replaced by paw prints:
first a snow leopard, some kind of bird,
a Wolf and finally, a palimpsest.
The party began noticing, one after the other,
the disappearances of the others until the final
moralistic climber was left to himself
and felt the Sherpa beside him, pulling him strenuously,
dragging him, whipping him with a leather strap,
the Sherpa's nails digging into the frozen flesh of the last one.
He'd been there all along and had dismissed the members
one at a time, disguised as a snow leopard, a yeti, a Wolf
until he decided which one he could keep company with.
"Here we are." he said, peaceful and not very excited,
he'd been to the spot how many times now,
"How do you like it?"
"Die-ing," he replaced the form deliberately.
The Sherpa deliberately replied, "Death."
The Ascent of the Sherpa
He was common, ordinary so to speak
nothing special about him,
the usual clothing worn by Sherpa
warm, useful.
Not thin coated.
Engaged as he was in public debate
he found it difficult to make a decision,
whether to lead or to follow.
It came down, in the end,
to the need for enough diesel fuel for winter
to pour into a certain kind of heater
that escapes description universally.
Twelve Nepalese were killed in Baghdad today,
someone whispers to me. Not that it matters.
So he put together some things,
bread, cheese, Sherpa Foods,
the usual fare. And set out to rendezvous
with the ten or so moralistically staunch
climbers engaging him, moralistic in that they
insisted on the unusual. Very moral.
We should say ethical but that is just not physical enough.
They met and he collected the agreed upon
Sherpa coin. No one knows what it looks like.
It might be Chinese or in this case, Ben Franklin-like
because of the universality of Empirialistic trade,
so it goes in the impoverished world.
Doesn't matter to us or to the Sherpa who Ascends.
He turned to the leader of the group
who had learned Sherpa Language easily enough,
certain tough families of words useful
to climbing, torch, fire, food, oxygen,
death, liquor, book, socks, cold, die-ing (being a
progressive form of the former), pain,
mother, father, and of course, candy...
he said, "I'll have to stay ahead of you all,
I'm uncomfortable in the company of others."
The leader was puzzled but agreed to this stipulation
all the same. It must be some sort of standard
in Nepal he thought, some sort of requirement.
"How will we follow then?"
"I'll leave my footprints in the snow of course."
"Oh," the leader said, chastened at his own stupidity.
The trek began the next morning which happens pretty
early up there, finishes pretty late,
with the Sherpa starting off at night,
slipping out as fast as he could go,
like an angel in the moon's glow,
one mustn't dally on a short night.
The moralistically inclined group set out,
pleased to see the tracks well defined,
deep and the weather pleasant, the mountaintop
in view, achievable. Very optimistic,
if you will. Occasionally they caught sight
of the Sherpa, his head bobbing up and down
in the distance, disappearing behind rocks,
reappearing. The tracks were still quite good.
The second day was much the same only the Sherpa
was no longer in sight, the tracks slightly obscured
by the light snows. Some of the tracks looked
a bit altered, a yeti paw here or a goat hoof there,
but that was expected. No one bristled yet.
The climber at the end of the rope disappeared
yet no one noticed, each of them caught
in their own meanings, their own cold.
By the third day however, the bristling
was looking more like a forest fire,
the cold was like a burning heat,
the sun was no longer just the sun
but an actual star, the sky was no longer
so far away, the shells of gas,
the rings of Jupiter, all of them
somehow related.
The tracks had completely disappeared
and were replaced by paw prints:
first a snow leopard, some kind of bird,
a Wolf and finally, a palimpsest.
The party began noticing, one after the other,
the disappearances of the others until the final
moralistic climber was left to himself
and felt the Sherpa beside him, pulling him strenuously,
dragging him, whipping him with a leather strap,
the Sherpa's nails digging into the frozen flesh of the last one.
He'd been there all along and had dismissed the members
one at a time, disguised as a snow leopard, a yeti, a Wolf
until he decided which one he could keep company with.
"Here we are." he said, peaceful and not very excited,
he'd been to the spot how many times now,
"How do you like it?"
"Die-ing," he replaced the form deliberately.
The Sherpa deliberately replied, "Death."
1.12.05
The Secret Eye of the Apocalypse
Could someone please
in all honesty explain
why Bonaparte was exiled,
why he was the first Anti Christ
and what was going on over there
at the time? Could it be...but no.
No way.He was a liberator or sought
to be one, he did travel to North Africa,
liked it well enough impressed
by the solidarity of slavery there,
but really, was it worth a trip to Elba?
I don't know but the Piltdown man must
have some clue, his Cherry Red Cranium,
his darling Oranguatan chin, he simply must
have at least one idea in that empty head of his.
I know I don't.
Don't know much at all 'cept what I's told.
I's told that history is a fact. Mystery is a clue.
Illuminated Enlightenment, I's told that too
and now they's tellin' me things are not the same,
tellin' me things are secretly oriented to the top
of some damn geometrical principle full of scorcerers bones.
I'd say I's told wrong. I's been fooled.
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