- Once, before WWII, an American reporter asked German
Reichsminister for Propaganda, Dr Josef Goebbels, why his propaganda was
so primitive, and the clever Doctor unabashedly replied: "Because
our PEOPLE are primitive!"
-
- Immediately following the events of September 11, 2001,
came news that a car with Florida license plates, open flight manuals and
Korans, was found at the airport where the supposed hijackers bad boarded
their planes.
-
- AN UNSANITISED CAR? -- NOBODY does an operation like
that! -- certainly no-one who had purportedly planned it over a long period
of time ... what about the people on the ground, the helpers and helpers'
assistants, who had lent support to what was described as a well-organised
operation long in the planning - what would happen to all those people,
exposed by the foolishness of leaving an unsanitized car behind, complete
with plates leading straight back to a training field in Florida, where
students incapable of flying even the smallest plane - as evidenced by
the last-minute glances into flight-manuals, prayers for guidance - turned
suddenly into pros throwing heavy aircraft at full throttle about the skies
with all the aplomb of experienced fighter-pilots - dear God! -- Dr Goebbels,
are the American people primitive enough to swallow even THAT?
-
- Even as I myself blushed to the roots of my hair just
at the thought of such an unlikely, klutzy disinformation-operation being
set up that way, somewhere far off, a tiny, triumphantly-oratory voice
seemed to be shouting loudly: Jawohl, mein Fuehrer!
-
- Then came the story of an intact passport being found
in the street outside the ruins of the WTC, thrown out of one of the gigantic
fireballs, the passport of one of the alleged hijackers who must have been
in the very cockpit crushed by entry into the building and then consumed
by the fireball allegedly hot enough to have melted the steel supports
of the building, even though chemistry gives a different burning temperature,
especially in an oxygen-low, fuel-rich atmosphere -- grosser Gott! -- could
the American people swallow ... (gulp!) ... even THAT?
-
- But somewhere from afar, came an educated German chuckle,
as someone refined poured themselves an ice-cold glass of fine, white Riesling-Sylvaner
and leaned back to enjoy the heroes' sunset in Valhalla.
-
- At the time of 9-11, it was pressing that the USA have
an excuse to establish bases in Central Asia.
-
- Now, after America has been mobilisd and largely turned
into a de-facto one-party, police-state, a few crises for the rightly or
wrongly ruling incumbents, have reared their heads:
-
- Following perceived election irregularities, the vote
recounts in some states such as Ohio must be completed before the electoral
college meets on December 13, else bad feeling will arise in the USA, as
truth gets out of more votes being counted than people there to vote.
-
- Then there is dropping investor confidence, as the world
loses its democratic glitz image of the USA, and realises it is a banana
republic instead.
-
- And this, while independent Internet correspondents keep
leaking bad news about US troops taking a pounding in Iraq unpublicised
by mainstream US media.
-
- And on money markets, the Dollar is on the steep slope
to an ice-cold hell, losing ground daily against the Euro, while big investors
- according to unsubstantiated insider rumours here in Canton Zuerich in
Switzerland, home of the big banks - are quietly getting rid of their dollars,
and it must be a small step between that and the oil price being pegged
in Euros, as well as massive disinvestment in the US by Saudi Arabia and
Japan, if they can get out with cut losses while the going is good, without
the entire house of cards collapsing?
-
- What to do, what to do? Wag the dog? Why, yes - or --
Jawohl!
-
- Now, although a new crisis "attack" like 9-11
might send the dollar plummeting - for a while at least - investors know
a good thing when they see one, and a juicy, major war might crank up wartime
production very nicely, thank you, especially in the USA, as long as a
crisis were big enough to get all those boys not yet in uniform to have
to forcibly wear it and man all those high-tech killing toys that Uncle
Sugar is getting ready for them to use on unsuspecting innocents worldwide
... whereas leaving things as they are now, the present status-quo, will
have the USA reduced to a third-world country within a few years, as the
dollar slides down into oblivion and capital disinvests from the USA.
-
- An "attack"? - where? -- and when?
-
- As an Internet writer friend pointed out to me on the
phone last night: On Christmas Day, people get together with their families,
the TV might actually be OFF - but on Thanksgiving Day, people are cooking
for the evening Thanksgiving meal - and it is always ON.
-
- What better time to stage an "attack", than
when you have a full audience?
-
- What would I do - how would I, as a total novice, do
this thing - and against whom?
-
- Well, the USA owes China big-time for all those imports,
and in a few years, China might be militarily simply too big to tackle,
even though all those US warships doing manoeuvres in the Pacific earlier
this year was the equivalent of the heavies cruising the red-light district
... and a really BIG war, one in which nukes might be used to knock off
offending rivals and burn the books, in so many, many ways, would also
wag that dog most mightily?
-
- Let me see ... to gain the maximum psychodynamic effect
from my audience - and this is just pure fantasy, pure speculation, you
understand -- what I'd do, would be for a "North Korean" missile
to hit a place which it just barely can reach, by intelligence estimates,
with its last gasp --- say the West Coast of the USA?
-
- Even more effect would be gained if it were carrying
a primitive nuclear warhead ... but a simple smack!-BLAM? -- the TENSIONS
in my audience would not be high enough! - it would be a simple, if terrible
shock, an outrage! -- but even as tempers flared in most people, other,
calmer and saner heads would be simultaneously calling for calm, for clear
thinking, for first identifying the attackers, no matter what the NSA's
or whoever's tracking systems claimed sent it, and ordinary people could
not get a handle on exactly who was responsible, whodunnit, goddammit?
-
- And as a frightened nation waits for news, dire threats
against "terrorism" spout from the White House, the United Nations
Security Council convenes in emergency session beneath a barrage of accusations
and denials, North Korea vehemently distancing itself from any involvement
in, or even knowledge of, the incident, and Congress and Senate are quickly
evacuated to the deep bunkers beneath Greenbrier Hotel in White Sulphur
Springs.
-
- Meanwhile, the frightened nation waits.
-
- And North Korea, with its ally, China, knowing they have
been set-up, quietly draw the consequences from this and with their backs
to the wall, arm and target everything they've got - at the USA.
-
- Russia has likewise seen the writing on the wall, that
a pirate-crew American administration with nothing more to lose, supremely
overconfident that it can take on the whole wide world and win - or go
down, anyway, heading either for an international war-crimes tribunal for
their unprovoked invasions and crimes against humanity, or the electric
chair at home for their treason on 9-11, plays its last card in a terminal
poker-game - and it is a low one:
-
- At first launch against North Korea, the rest of the
world may have to let fly at the USA with everything they have - or lose
it all, themselves. Even a minor nuclear war can spread between neighbours
in any area of tension, the area of ultimately general destruction is far
too comprehensive, the winner takes it all, the stakes are far too high
to remain passive, and even India and Pakistan draw their conclusions.
-
- So a nation - and the world - waits, as specialists go
in, to defuse ... what?
-
- Remember the Falklands War and the British ship, "HMS
Antelope" struck by a bomb which did not detonate, and an expert was
sent in to defuse it after the ship was evacuated? The fleet and the world
waited then too - and suddenly, after an intolerably tense situation filled
with despair, hope and confidence that all would go well - poof! -- a bright
puff of light - and ship and man were no more.
-
- Herr Dr? -- your comment, please?
-
- Ach! -- remember the panic that resulted from Orson Welles'
War of the Worlds broadcast back on October 30, 1938 - and that was simply
a one-hour play, keeping John Q Public on the edge of his seat for merely
one hour on the evening before Halloween...? --
-
- Now! -- IMAGINE if one could keep him on the edge of
his seat for, say - an ENTIRE DAY - especially ... Thanksgiving Day? --
-
- You really think so, Herr Dr Goebbels? -- could it be
that we all wait an entire day - Thanksgiving Day - and then ... POOF!
-- some US city?
-
- Jawohl!!!
-
- So now imagine that rocket, sent in by the unameliorated
chutzpah of an "axis of evil" nation giving their "Paper
Tiger" the middle finger - for what reason, we shall leave to the
Pentagon script-writers after the event - if there IS an after-the-event
- and a primitive warhead which does not go off, and the panic of people
being evacuated from some major West Coast city, say San Francisco?
-
- Why San Francisco?
-
- Well, purely for its photogenic drama-value, you understand
... the truly great Hollywood film footage of such an event: the Golden
Gate Bridge, national landmark and symbol of Yankee ingenuity and drive,
now clogged with cars and people evacuating on foot - America under threat!
-- AMERICA UNDER SIEGE! -- and the Gubernator, stony-hewn just like in
his movies where he plays the big, brainless robot, a terminally-invincible
guy with nothing to kill in him and big fists, who everybody who is nobody
wants for President, grim-faced and calling for calm, "Zhere iss no
needt dto bpanik!", and the first media reports -- cut to the wind-blown
face and hair of TV newsman high up above the bridge:
-
- "It went down in the residential district, -- the
business district? -- the park? -- the Bay -- (insert one) ... specialists
have been flown in on -- cut to a cavalcade of giant army helicopters -
and backup teams from Los Alamos National Laboratory (LOS ALAMOS???!!!
-- mild panic nation-wide) are due to arrive in just ... ah ... 55 minutes?
-- Bob? --
-
- -- 'Latest estimates are 75 minutes, now, Steve!' --
-
- -- ah .. SEVENTY-FIVE MINUTES, folks - Whoops! -- sorry!
-- this paper I have just been handed says FEMA and military spokespersons
have categorically DENIED that report about Los Alamos specialists - strike
that from the record, will you, Bob? -- and as the crisis here in San Francisco
continues, we have all been advised to evacuate to a distance of at least
SIX MILES from impact point - confirm that, Bob? -- so we are cutting back
to the studio, and will get right back to you from Flashpoint San Francisco,
within the hour! - now over to the studio!"
-
- Nationwide, hearts beat, hearts THUD ...
-
- "Forget the turkey, Martha, come an' sit down! --
this here is a National Emergency!"
-
- "Well, I AM a PACIFIST, myself, but I MUST SAY,
if this is as bad as it SOUNDS ... I MEAN, Los Alamos? ..."
-
- By evening, everyone is exhausted: nerves and tempers
are intolerably frayed, fear and grief and hope all turn to anger, people
are ready to fight with each other, with anyone, minds and hearts are glued
to the tube, an audience rating never before seen in recorded history,
a nation welded together as one, emotionally and in expectation, hands
unconsciously reaching out across party lines, and being gratefully accepted
and held fast by other hands, the gun is now to all our heads ... wait,
and watch ... every second seems like an interminable hour ... POOF! ...
a ball of light, then silence.
-
- Shock.
-
- Panic.
-
- Calm voice of President, face grim, pale and drawn, sombre
on screen: My fellow Citizenzsss ... fellow Murrkanns, I have just authorised
the full force of our noo-kill-yer deterrent to be unleashed against that
rogue nation, one of the Axis of Evil, that has perpetrated this cowardly
attack against our great nation - God Bless you, God Bless us all, God
Bless America!
-
- The Star-Spangled Banner, everyone stands, voices rise
in a choir of indignation and mutually-attested righteousness -- Oh Say
Can you See ... and Old Glory waving sadly, and a nation stands in mourning,
grief and righteous anger - and the burning lust of a revenge justly wrought
upon an incontrovertibly-proven offender - did we not all sit together
in anguish for hours and hours, while those bastards denied and denied
it? -- if anyone is guilty of doing something wrong, then we ALL are! (...
so none of us are ...)
-
- .... and meanwhile, on distant early warning radar screens,
and on giant screens under Cheyenne Mountain, a sudden swarm of dots lights
up the night almost brighter than the fireball that was 'Frisco, coming
from North Korea, Russia, China, Japan -- and operators jump from their
seats, earphones stretched to the limits of their cords, eyes goggling,
unable to believe what they are seeing, and the first hoarse cries arise:
-
- INCOMING!
-
- Let's all hope this is a terrifying fairy-tale, a paranoid,
Dr Strangelove shadow that crossed my desk and my mind tonight, and that
the day after tomorrow, we can all laugh about it ...
-
- I wish you all a Happy Turkey Day!
-
- George
|
