Lamentation of Nostradamus

"Prophecy is a poor career choice."


R.W. Twain, paraphrasing Jesus.

Many of the essays I publish are forward-looking but, despite the thought and labor expended in formulation, I rarely get credit and esteem for having been correct. When others express reservation or indignation at my claims of prophetic genius, I generally discount such discourtesy to the unconscious proclivity of the American mind to reject the notion of another individual being quicker of mind with regard to a well-known backdrop of accepted truths. Oddly, I turn to a John Travolta role to address this curious set of affairs: remembering Phenomenon. where Travolta's character, infected with foresight, is demanded to explain many of life's unknown unknowns (scene and another). Having Hollywood provide the premise for my own conclusion is evidence enough that I am correct-- prophets dominate the Writer's Guild.

Would you really want to know?

In response to Glenn Greenwald's "Vital unresolved anthrax questions and ABC News"
(http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/08/01/anthrax/index.html) on Friday Aug. 1, 2008, I wrote:

"I've long been convinced that neoconservative elements were involved with the planning and execution of the 9/11 attacks, the anthrax scare, the Patriot Act, warrantless wiretapping (see http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/14/business/14qwest.html) and a thousand other nefarious plots to aid them in dominating the American government and its resources. Given that position, your article served to deepen that belief with regard to the oft-forgotten anthrax scare. As you note, the scare occurred just as the public psyche was attempting to come to terms with the 9/11 attacks. The scare operated to elongate the public's panic and invigorate its need to feel secure. Much like 9/11, the scare was never solved (unless you consider the coerced confession of KSM that served as the backbone for the 9/11 report's conclusions) and the scare's perpetrator, like bin Laden, was never ferreted out.

Despite all of this, in my many years of sharing these thoughts with others, the seminal question I always return to is: would you really want to know if neoconservative elements in this country were responsible for effectuating the 9/11 attacks and the subsequent global war on terror? This sentiment was well presented in the movie "V" in the scene where the policeman, who has discovered that the British government was behind an attack on its own people, asks his unwitting partner, "would you really want to know if you own government had betrayed you?"

It's an interesting exercise to ask yourself the same question with regard to the anthrax scare. If Locy, Stewart, Kristof or Ross were forced to reveal their sources and those sources (if they didn't commit "suicide" themselves) confirmed that the scare was an internal operation, then what? Would putting the responsible elements on trial for treason repair the wounds of the last eight years? Lower gas prices? Lead to a withdrawal from Iraq? What if every notion this country has been operating on for the last eight years turned out to be a scheme concocted by neoconservative elements to dominate the very populace they pretend to protect? Would you want to know?"

Beating Up on Krauthammer

In response to this, I posted:

Kraut: Saw you on Fox the other day, thought it was a scene from 28 Days Later.

Do me a favor and drop into your next pro-Israel column a breif discussion of the history of the formation of the modern state of Israel. The history begins with Skyes-Picot and the covenants of the Anglo-French Declaration of 1918. The Arabs of Palestine (and their 3,00 years of history) have a right to exist as well. They carved out Ottomans in World War I and provided support throughout WWII. The Arabs who fought those battles, having controlled Palestine, since the end of the Last Crusade, were "dispossessed" by a body in which they had no representation. Their land, their property, taken away not at the end of a sword, but with the stroke of a pen. Throughout the Middle East, a sense of "dispossession" persists-- maybe it was the betrayal of Sharif Hussein for Saud, or the installation of the Shah; hell, they might even be a bit peeved about the occupation of Iraq.

Against this backdrop of this oft-unmentioned history, Krauthammer wields a sense of condescension towards what he seems to assert are backwards-thinking "victims."

Look, Chuck, I refuse to subscribe to anti-Semitism, yet often ignore pleas of an "isolated Israel." I believe Israel to be a state imposed on the Palestinians with unwielding support from the United States; which support includes indifference towards, and likely a continuous supply of, military hardware and nuclear technology to Israel. That's not fair to anyone in the neighborhood, yet you rattle your pen at Iran for exercising its rights within the NNPT.

Ask yourself, if Mezicals were granted an independent state in Southern California, or the Cherokee nation in Missouri, would you support their right to soverignty? Each of those races has a claim to the land, and history as aged and rich as the Jews. Why not return them to their homeland? What if the Chinese armed them wth nuclear weapons? Think you might get upset? Maybe fight against the existence of a Mezical state? Oh, that's right, you do fight against that...


Two more things:

This comment above was insightful. If it's true, then I wish it were broadcast more often.
"But the number of Arab members of Israeli Parliament exceeds the number of Jews in the parliaments of all the Arab countries combined."

Second, and returning to China, Kraut bloviated that Israel is:
"the only nation in the world that is governing itself in the same territory, under the same name, and with the same religion and same language as it did 3,000 years ago."

The Chinese, as well as the Arabs, have a proven history of civilization dating back much longer than 3,000 years. Absent invasion, those Arabs did a noble job in advancing mathematics and science, enough so to bring Eurpoe out of the Dark Ages.