The Construct

Gold Leaves

2009-04-07T14:26:00.000+07:00

Lo! I am come to autumn,
When all the leaves are gold;
Grey hairs and golden leaves cry out
The year and I are old.

In youth I sought the prince of men,
Captain in cosmic wars,
Our Titan, even the weeds would show
Defiant, to the stars.

But now a great thing in the street
Seems any human nod,
Where shift in strange democracy
The million masks of God.

In youth I sought the golden flower
Hidden in wood or wold,
But I am come to autumn,
When all the leaves are gold.

G. K. Chesterton

[italics added]

The Blog is Moving

2009-01-03T03:04:00.000+07:00

The Construct has evolved into Illuminata Sol Invictus

Please go to this URL: http://www.isi-ias.blogspot.com

The Construct will no longer be maintained. Thank you.

Light

2006-05-17T21:34:00.000+07:00

The purpose of this discourse is to consider light, darkness, and neutrality. They are all energy. They all interact with each other. These three forces are simply a model of reality. They do not ultimately define reality in and of themselves. Nothing save for direct experience of reality itself can define reality. It comes at you on a multidimensional continuum, and most of the dimensions are not observed by yours truly, though they may be observed by yours faithfully, God.

What a comforting thought that there is a benevolent power that created a malevolent power because he had to in order to create the conflict/dance that facilitates the existence of the universe. I’ve never met such a power, and to have faith in something based on rumors is a tremendously naïve position on the face of it. However, it is sometimes useful to use this faith, and it does produce results when used properly. Monotheism remains an indispensable tool in paradigm shifting.

When one can become a Jew, Christian, or Mohammedan, read the holy book, and experience it, one can see through the priests, and one can understand the underlying unity and balance of the system of the Gods in those tomes despite the control mechanisms of the priests who wrote them. The religions would not have power if they did not contain universal truths hiding among the profane lies of the clergy who have convinced us that the records are more important that what the records are recording. They, along with politicians, have convinced us that clothes make a person.

As Allan Watts pointed out, persona is from Latin. When we say person, we mean persona, or mask. Having studied Latin myself, I can confirm that it does literally mean, through [it] sound, sound travels through it. It is necessary to add words to Latin in order that the meaning can be understood in English; there is a word that is added frequently when reading the myths in Latin or listening to them is performed. A persona was a mask. Old Roman masks have the orifice of sound; they worked as a road cone does in amplifying one’s voice. A person is a mask. Your clothes make up, decorations, and accessories are that mask, or glamour.

Those who disagree should consider that naked people have no authority in any civilized society. Take off your clothes and walk around trying to get things done and see how many days you last before you’re taken to jail or worse. Your clothes are what allow you to function in society, and they are what allow you to be who you are in society. A Turkish scientist once went to speak to some European scientists, he wore traditional Turkish dress, and he was laughed at. When he came back years later in a suit, he was listened to and his ground breaking theory was accepted.

This is actually no great secret. People who pay attention to their dreams will note that they often have dreams of showing up naked to school, business, or other engagements, or where everyone else or everyone is naked. People are told to think of everyone sitting there in their underwear if they are nervous and so on. This fact is advertised to us by the very society that hides it from us. Look around and see how many naked people you see respected in society. It’s not even polite to talk about nakedness, and forget about anything remotely sexual, it’s all taboo.

Nudist colonies cause such a stir. These people were interviewed on talk shows like Donahue and all sorts of accusations were thrown at them from the audience, accusations that could easily apply to them, and with the same amounts of evidence to support either charge. One wonders if this isn’t because a vast majority of society is overcompensating for the sins they commit behind closed doors that they can’t bear the thought that someone else might be getting away with. Their lies reflect their own lies and they can’t stand it.

Janet Jackson’s nipple gets some time of the idiot box and the country is up in arms about the indecency and shock that it caused, and when they get home, they flip through the channels that show the bombing of Iraq, the demonstrations against it, the hushed tones of the VP, and the construct Prez created by his various advisers who has become quite a strong and powerful character in the cast, and nobody really minds that this man just lied to them, and continues to lie to them and destroy the Constitution through psychological, intelligence, and counterintelligence operations on the people in addition to the abuse of the people’s military and the good order and discipline of the United States of America.

This shows you what the people really believe in, and in the end, the people get the government that they deserve. It’s a sad and hard fact. Most people need the system, they need the wars, they need politics, and they need the lies. The deeper into the fabric of society they become, the more dependent upon these processes they become. How many of them can hunt, fish, butcher, farm, survive, fight off a giant cat, organize into groups of six, create fire, use the human ingenuity that has secured us our position at the top of the food chain. Now animals invade our cities attacking people, it’s a strange phenomenon now, but, I predict that it will increase in the future because nobody knows how to deal with the older survival tactics of human life.

Some will say, “We don’t need those things now, we have a system.” What if the system fails? What then? What about roving blackouts? Hurricane? Floods? Earthquakes? Did anyone pay attention to Katrina? The debacle was due to lack of cooperation between the governments at State and Federal levels; one cannot put all the blame on the Prez, which is the easy bullshit non conformists’ easy answer to the problem. The answer is, those people were not adequately prepared to deal with such a thing, and it’s not the Federal Governments responsibility to train them! By putting that on the Federal government, you’re giving them more power to spy on people.

A human is not neutral, perhaps not even when the human incarnation has deceased. There is a relationship between the observer and the observed. Therefore, an observer cannot be neutral. In making the choice to be neutral he still affects the outcome of the observed simply by his presence. This effect may be subtle, even imperceptible, but, the effect is there simply because the relationship exists. Because of this, it is said that neutrality is an excuse to do nothing. They say a lot don’t they?

Yet in the state of no mind, a human can be neutral. He is then filled with whatever is around him. If an observer in a state of no mind encounters a riot, he will become that riot unless instructions have been given to him as to how to react in this situation. The energy can be transformed and utilized as a function of the operators’ choice. This can be thought of as the eye of the hurricane, action and inaction.

A human is composed of light and darkness. A human is a unified entity that is composed to two halves. There is a mirror in your body. The universe is unified and dualistic, as we are, and as everything is. DNA divides, and so does everything else. Thus, we get unity and duality all at the behest of a force that we can probably never know, at least not in our human state.

Energy: An Automatic Writing

2006-04-29T21:20:00.000+07:00

A hostile energy was harmonized by a banishing energy.  The banishing
energy re-sequenced into chaos.  Chaos created a psychic energy
interaction, the purpose of which was to gain more insight into the
energies and their synergy.  Will dictated that the interaction should
cease and automatic writing should be utilized by the Chaos to create
the energy paradigm.

The energy paradigm will allow us to transcend the labels of language.
These labels cut reality into un-natural positions.  The easiest way
to demonstrate this is by looking at Euclidean Geometry and Fractals.
In nature, we observe fractals, mirrors, simple code systems i.e. DNA
giving rise to complex fractal, symmetrical, and asymmetrical forms.

Euclidean Geometry is not observed in the universe.  In fact, the only
time I ever saw a line was when a Mathematician drew a line segment
with two arrows pointing out from each side indicating that it went on
forever.  I'm still not sure if I really saw a line, and I'm wondering
if maybe I was conned.

This understanding extends to language.  Forms are created in language
that simply do not exist outside of the construct / convention /
whatever you want to call it.  While it may have been obvious to
humankind at one time that this was the case, it seems to have escaped
the awareness of many, and there are a few who do recognize and ask,
so what?  We need better models.  Did you create the English language?
Whose language are you reading in now?  Whose language do you think
in?  Would it be unfair to say that when you control language you
control thought?

The energy paradigm is a step towards de-conditioning some of the
fixed subjective associations between objects, systems, and events in
objective reality.   Those associations were taught to you, as they
were taught to the people who taught them to you.   By simplifying
life into energy, things can become so much simpler and easier to
understand.

Reality wiggles, and we use constructs to put a net around this
wiggle.  This catches it and forms a grid so that we can navigate upon
it.  Of course, this net is a useful and necessary tool, yet, how many
nets have you woven?  Language is a net of reality.  When we lose
sight of the wiggle, we are lost.  If I were to point at the moon and
you kept looking at my finger, someone might think you are foolish,
but, this is what we do with our models, and it is equally foolish to
some people.

Quarks, neutrinos, neutrons, electrons are all made of something, some
type of energy/force/wave/particle synchronicity.  In this, we can
agree that everything is made of one thing, energy.  Perception and
will also fall into energy itself as the perceptions are formed by
another energy, and will is exerted by energy to another.  There are
many dreams, and a few dreams, and one dream.

By undertaking this automatic writing discussing the events of the
past and what is happening now in the consciousness is important, and
it may help us to better assimilate this energy paradigm.  We know
this is a child's tool, but, we realize that in this we are children
and we must proceed as such.

It is desirable for us to observe the world differently.  Our current
thought process enforces upon us that this is a computer, and that I
am typing into it.  This new paradigm will create process where the
Chaos is manipulating energy to create a pattern of light energy
expressing perception and will.  It makes reality easier to
understand, and allows us to be more in contact with it while removing
the shackles of the previous conditioning.  As one learns a new
language, one's thought processes change, and learning a new paradigm
does the same thing.

The President is a dolt – how can America be a success?

2006-02-03T16:47:00.000+07:00

The President is a dolt – so how can America be such a
success story?
Anatole Kaletsky

TWO CEREMONIAL events occurred in Washington on
Tuesday evening that shone a spotlight on one of the
most important but paradoxical features of a modern
democratic society.
The more widely reported was President Bush’s State of
the Union address, a weak and defensive speech even by
his undemanding standards. At the other end of
Washington, meanwhile, Alan Greenspan, the retiring
chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, was bidding
farewell to the institution whose skilful management
of US monetary policy made him the dominant figure in
the world economy for the past 18 years. What connects
these two events is a paradox that has baffled many
people, especially in Europe, ever since George W.
Bush became President.

For the past five years, America has been led by a
president who is clearly not up to the job — a man who
is not just inarticulate, but lacking in judgment,
intelligence, integrity, charisma or staying power.
Yet America as a nation seems to be stronger, more
prosperous and self-confident than ever.

As the State of the Union address made clear,
President Bush has more or less given up on all the
grand goals that were supposed to define his
presidency: social security reform, peace in the
Middle East, even the axis of evil doctrine, which was
supposed to disarm North Korea and Iran. Most
embarrassingly, President Bush seems to have given up
on capturing Osama bin Laden or bringing to justice
the perpetrators of 9/11.

But now comes the paradox. While America has been run
by one of the most doltishly ineffectual governments
in history, it has forged ever further ahead of Europe
in terms of wealth, science, technology, artistic
creativity and cultural dominance.

Why does America’s prosperity and self-confidence seem
to bear so little relationship to the competence of
its government? The obvious answer is that America,
founded on a libertarian theory of minimal government,
has always had low expectations of politicians. In
America, it is not just business that thrives
independently of government, perhaps even in spite of
government. The same is also true of other areas of
excellence which in Britain are considered
quintessentially in the public domain — higher
education, leading-edge science, culture and academic
research. Because Americans expect so little of their
government, they are rarely disappointed. They do not
slump into German-style angst when their governments
fail to find solutions to the nation’s problems.

This anarchic spirit was summed up by Ronald Reagan:
“The ten most dangerous words in the English language
are ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help
you’.” In Europe, by contrast, the public expect
government to solve all problems, and the media try to
hold politicians accountable for everything. The
result is a culture of dependency that extends far
beyond the welfare state, to business and to the
worlds of education, medicine, arts and science.

The American approach has a powerful advantage rooted
in human nature: private sector activity is powered by
economic incentives, while the State must operate by
rules and sanctions. Since incentives, as Adam Smith
observed, are much more likely to stimulate creativity
and effort than sanctions, private enterprise tends to
achieve ambitious objectives, while government often
fails.

But while the weakness of US government may in some
ways have helped to widen the gulf of achievement
between America and Europe, there is another and
opposite side to the story — which is where we must
return to Mr Greenspan. American politicians may be
incompetent and venal, even by European standards, but
this is not true of the public realm as a whole.
America has a host of public institutions, ranging
from government bodies such as the Federal Reserve and
the National Institutes of Health to charities such as
the great universities, museums and hospitals, that
are driven by a sense of public service that puts
British and European bureaucracies to shame.

The American system recognises that a capitalist
economy has areas of market failure where incentives
alone will not produce socially desirable results. But
American public institutions try to maximise private
activity and incentives, rather than rein them in,
within their realms — whether it is universities
encouraging professors to start businesses, or health
administrators creating incentives for drugs companies
to do medical research. It is in this respect that Mr
Greenspan most clearly represented the genius of the
American system.

Mr Greenspan realised that his job at the Fed was not
just to control inflation, the goal that other central
bankers recognise. His real task, he explained last
year, was “to achieve the maximum sustainable economic
growth, with price stability pursued as a necessary
condition to promote that goal”. Although a passionate
advocate of small government, he realised that
well-judged public intervention was necessary, not
just to maintain stable prices but also to create the
incentives for private enterprise to accelerate
economic growth. He also understood that the best way
to deal with the imbalances in the changing world
economy was by supporting growth and allowing the
greatest possible freedom for financial markets.
Private investors, he believed, were more likely to
find solutions to the complex challenges created by
globalisation than central bankers or politicians.

But while Mr Greenspan believed that private
incentives solve economic problems more successfully
than government diktats, he also understood that
capitalism works at its best if it operates in a
sound, simple framework of ambitiously pro-growth
monetary policy. His genius was to understand that
public policy could be simultaneously minimalist and
ambitious. In a sense, this is the genius of the
American system. And this is why America does not need
a genius in the White House.

a.kaletsky@thetimes.co.uk

Some friendly advice...

2006-01-29T14:48:00.000+07:00

Maintain balance control by allowing your body weight to sink and be carried by deeply flexed knees.

Remember to breathe along with your movement. Unconsciously holding your breath can unknowingly produce unneeded muscle tension, and could result in gasping release of breathe if you are startled or accidentally unbalanced.

Stay alert to the entire scene. Do not become so engrossed in watching your feet that you do not notice other people an elements entering the surroundings.

Use all joints for movement, emphasizing fluidity through the engagement of the ankles, knees, and hips for stepping. Avoid the lazy and dangerous habit of stiffening knees and swinging the entire leg from the hip.

Maintain your weight and balance on your grounded leg while you move the other leg into position to bear the weight. When absolute silence is a must, avoid distributing your weight over both legs at the same time.

If practical, allow your hands to float lightly in front of and beside your torso, one arm higher and one arm lower, to detect possible obstructions before your committed body weight encounters them.

Pause and hold your position if you feel that you have accidentally caused too much noise. Listen for signs that you were heard, such as the movement of others or the immediate silencing of background noise following your slip. Sink a little lower on your knees to physically relax that could normally jump into your body with alarm. Take a deep breathe and release it slowly to further relax. Continue your pause for as long as you feel is necessary to regain composure and allow possible listeners to decide they did not hear anything after all.

Be as patient as possible. If speed of travel is not important, take as much time as you can. Impatience and the resultant hasty movement that it encourages are the greatest dangers to the person who must move silently without detection.

Keep your movement appropriate to your surroundings. Do not go to greater lengths than necessary to conceal your movement, while at the same being aware of what others entering the area may see if they cannot hear. Total silence may not be needed when moving through wooded or densely populated areas where scattered noise is a natural part of the environment. Also be aware that low profile crawling or sliding ma be the only way to move silently without being seen in some locations.

Chaos Magic Theory

2006-01-27T16:02:00.000+07:00

Chaos Magick Theory

Fra. Ratatosk, 2nd degree

Chaos Magick remains a unique discipline in the clutter of occult practices, theories and methods, which litter the landscape of modern magical endeavors. It resembles no other system because it purports to not be a system. Chaos Magic eludes the boundaries, clichés and preconceptions, which cling to every previous system of enchantment devised by man. It holds to no dogma, foists no belief or lifestyle upon the practitioner, prescribes no limits to the aspirant, and presumes no one set of beliefs is inherently better than any other set of beliefs.

Chaos Magick arises out of meta-paradigmal theory. Which is to say, that everyone exists within a set of beliefs (a paradigm) and that it takes something greater (meta) to explain the parallel workings of multiple belief systems. Chaos Magick Theory, therefore is only that – a theory. It does not function as a paradigm, a set of beliefs.

An error made by many who have read the works of Peter Carroll, Phil Hine and other chaos magick authors, is to partially digest the writings of these men and then go around claiming to be a chaos magician. Nothing could hold a higher degree of inaccuracy than this fallacious claim. Upon further examination of chaos magick theory, one realizes that its core ideas themselves preclude it existing as a self-sustaining belief system. One may practice chaos magick theory within a belief system (i.e. a paradigm), one may even use the tenets of CMT to create a paradigm and then to dwell within it, however; one cannot live within a meta-paradigm. One cannot live within a theory.

So there really exists no such thing as a chaos magician per se, although, others and I will use that term in order to distinguish practitioners of CMT from other magicians. So how can you tell a chaos magician apart from your run-of-the-mill occultists?

There is a litmus test. Quite simply ask of yourself, or another, the question, "Do you believe in an ultimate truth or being?" A 'wrong' answer consists of "yes" or "god" or "goddess" or "self" or "country" or whatever. A 'right' answer may fall along the following lines: "Maybe" or "no" or "not today", depending upon the respondent.

The litmus test is based upon the oft-coined and misunderstood phrase, "Nothing is true, everything is permitted." A statement, which pretty much describes the universe in which we all seem to share an existence in. To some, it means: "Nothing - not even this statement holds objective truth, and therefore every conceivable action can and will occur." To others it means, "The absence of existence (void) exists and therefore reality consists of complete subjectivity." To others, "Everything I've been taught up till now is a lie, therefore I can do whatever the hell I want to do." A license to revolt.

There exist many other possible interpretations of the statement, the above only applies to my so-called "litmus test." Others have stated that it implies: "Believe Nothing, Dare all, on Earth there is no reckoning", and I find this makes sense. Others hold that the phrase is not a rejection of responsibility but a statement of freedom.

To Thelemites restriction is a sin. To a chaos magician restriction means self-imposed limitations in order to fully enjoy life. For a while, a chaos magician may understand that the only thing stopping him or her from committing rape, murder, arson, assault, lies, etc. etc. is him or herself. The chaos magician understands that the only thing keeping him or her from getting killed, raped, set on fire, assaulted, lied to, etc. etc. is the restraint that others impose upon themselves. (Whether or not they understand this.)

Chaos Magick Theory also distinguishes itself from non-meta-paradigmal magical theory in that it first and foremost attempts to obtain results. Chaos Magick itself holds that several techniques have been known to produce magical results regardless of the belief system in which they were practiced. These techniques have been classified under the term "Gnosis" (Greek for 'direct knowledge', connoting 'direct experience of god') and are sub-divided into two categories. Excitatory is best described as pushing physical, mental and emotional limits to their breaking point (without losing complete control. Examples include, but are not limited to: drumming, dancing, chanting, extreme states of anger, fear, etc.. The other category is termed inhibitory, the best example of which is a state of total quittance brought about by prolonged meditation.

What Pete Carroll and other chaos magick authors observed, is that extreme states of consciousness often lead to para-psychological events. That extremes of stress often precluded unexplainable events and happenings. The supernatural intruded upon the lives of individuals who had the capacity of whipping themselves up into a frenzy or of stilling themselves to single-pointed consciousness.

Chaos magic is the conscious effort to harness these states to produce controlled results. While it remains difficult to quantify these results and the states which cause them, chaos magicians will obtain results on a regular basis. A claim which few others in the occult world will make. Chaos magicians might even be the first to respond to, "well prove it", with something besides an evasive answer. Asking a chaos magician to "prove it" just might garner the rather frightening response "I'll see what I can do."

Chaos magicians will also do something that few others in the occult world will do. A chaos magician will take responsibility for his success or his failure to achieve a result. You'll NEVER hear a chaos magician say, "it was not god's will" or "the stars were not right." (Oh alright, you may hear a chaos magician say these things, but I think that they'll be having a laugh.) Chaos magicians also walk through the world gleefully ignoring such 'powerful' lines of dogma like, "that's bad karma dude" or "if you do evil it will come back on you three times."

Chaos magicians practice magic which center on obtaining results. Those results are dependent of several factors; the first is the ability of the magician, the second is the probability of the event occurring naturally. Novice chaos magicians begin by obtaining reasonable results, experienced chaos magicians have been known to do achieve what some might consider impossible.

Paradigmal Piracy

This act of eclectic gathering combined with the habit of never staying within the confines of one paradigm too long, is what we call paradigmal piracy. The chaos magician takes on the belief system necessary to obtain the desired results. As the chaos magician grows within that system he or she will add elements from other paradigms. Conversely speaking, the chaos magician will also ignore or "delete" elements of the paradigm which are spiritual 'clap-trap' or do not produce the desired results.

Chaos magicians may practice the techniques of chaos magick but they must do so within a specific paradigm, which roughly means that a chaos magician must believe in something in order to obtain results. What specifically the chaos magician believes in is entirely up to them. I've seen those that think the Cthulhu mythos of H.P. Lovecraft is a powerful paradigm. Others have worked within the Wiccan paradigm for years and obtained fantastic results. Still others are hardcore atheists (like the author). Chaos magicians are Setians, Satanists, Santeros, Sorcerers, Kitchen Witches, Thelemites, Cabalists, etc. etc.

A simple way of understanding chaos magic theory vis a vis any paradigm is to think of a meta-paradigm and a specific paradigm in the following manner: Consider the paradigm itself as the explanation and the meta-paradigm as the action. Chaos Magick Theory consists of a series of techniques, actions if you will. The results of which depend upon what the practitioner desires as an outcome. The paradigm, and it can be any paradigm, consists of how we explain our universe to others. The paradigm is the why. "Why did you do that?" "Why did you want that?" The meta-paradigm is the how. "How did you do that?" The techniques are devoid of meaning. The paradigm, in many cases, devoid of method. Everyone exists in a paradigm. Some people who exist in a paradigm use a meta-paradigmal theory to move through that paradigm.

Perhaps this is why many occultists who are ONE THING fear chaos magicians. The chaos magician will take what they need from a paradigm and then move on. Don't like something about being a Wiccan? Ignore it! Don't like treating Set as an objective entity while being a Setian? Believe that he is a metaphor.

What rather frightens non-chaos magicians is the ability for chaos magicians to get results while treating the paradigms in which they dwell with such a cavalier attitude. Nothing frustrates a 'true believer' more than someone who acts like a 'true believer', because he has to do it in order to get what he wants; and then is no longer a 'true believer' once he gets what he needs.

While a 'true believer' will stomach the idiocies of his or her paradigm without complaint, a chaos magician will simply ignore them BECAUSE they are idiotic. A chaos magician will never accept, "that's true because I/the bible/the high priestess said so." The chaos magician will treat things as true when it suits him and ignore them when it does not.

The fact that various god forms, egregores, demons and goddesses don't strike down chaos magicians left and right must really be starting to annoy some people! What's worse is that chaos magicians are currently having their cake and eating it too when it comes to the beliefs of others. We take what we need and then move on. Works for you? Maybe it will work for us. Doesn't work for you? Too bad. The chaos magician will move onto something that does work.

Many existing occult groups have come up with tons of useful magical material. The chaos magician should feel free to use whatever system works best for him. The chaos magician should also not hesitate to join a group of non-chaos magicians in order to learn what they are teaching.

One more point on the subject of paradigmal piracy. Attitude is everything. You'll never gain an ounce of real knowledge from anyone or any group by going in cock-sure and know-it-all. Show these magicians deference and respect; many of them have been at this magick thing for decades and could possibly teach you a lot, if your mind is open to it. While their beliefs are a matter of convenience for you; it is a matter of lifestyle for them. I've found many groups open to me even though I was a chaos magician. I was honest with them, up front and they still shared everything.

Nuts and Bolts

As mentioned above, chaos magick theory involves the use of altered states of consciousness in order to effect magical change upon the world. While many paradigms use altered states in order to obtain results, they do so in a rather haphazard fashion usually attributing the results of the magician to "the goddess/god, the stars, true will" and not giving credit (or blame) where it is due.

Peter Carroll outlines chaos magick theory in a precise (and pedantic) fashion in Liber Kaos, with several magical formulas. I like these formulas for their simplicity and the obvious absence of any extraneous forces, but then I'm an atheist magician. I've included them here so that the reader can get a taste of the underlying theory. A far better explanation of these formula comes from the author himself.

M = G x L(1-A)(1-R)

Pm = P - P x M 1/(1/-p)

All factors are between 0 and 1.

M equals the force of your magic. Which is dependent upon your G (Gnosis) and L (magical Link) multiplied by two negative factors. (Things working against you). Your conscious awareness of the desired result (1-A) and your subconscious resistance to doing magic (1-R) -i.e. "Mommy told me magick doesn't work."

In the other formula, P equals the chance the event you desire occurs by itself; (1/(1/-p)) equals the chance that the result you desire will not occur. Pm equals the combination of the Probability that the event will occur combined with your magical effort to make it occur.

So we're really looking at the two steps of magical activity. The first step is "How good was my magical act?" The second step is "Did it work?" These formula have the nice component of including the rather random nature of the universe. For example, you do a really good magical rite.

Absolutely great. However, it was to make the your High School Principle disappear in a big "poof!" on graduation day. As your High School Principle is not in the habit of going "poof!" this event has a ridiculously low probability of occurring naturally, thus dragging down significantly (but not eliminating) the probability of him going "poof!" during graduation.

Regarding the first formula, to get a really good magical result you have to get M as close to 1 as possible. So the better the Gnosis and the stronger the Magical Link, the better. The factors of conscious awareness (1-A) and subconscious resistance (1-R) are factors which must be reduced or brought closer to 0.

As anyone who does magick knows, it is not hard to get a good magical link, if you want something bad enough, odds are you are close enough to get a piece or representation of it. As many chaos magicians know, it is also fairly easy to obtain a state of Gnosis. So these bases are covered. What separates the "men from the boys" are the negative side of the equation. Chaos Magicians are aware of the annoying fact that a lot of things will come to be a long time AFTER we have desired them to be. Conscious Awareness hit 0 and the event occurred. How often have you heard anyone, not just a magician say, "It happened when I least expected it", or, "I had completely forgotten about it, then it happened." No lust for result anymore, objective manifests.

Subconscious resistance is a factor which vanishes with time and success. The more magick you do, the better your results; the smaller this factor becomes. More experienced magicians simply get better results more frequently. They BELIEVE in themselves and that contributes to their success. The same factor comes into play for faith healers – they and the patient BELIEVE that the patient will be healed and thus, it happens.

The second formula brings the capricious nature of the universe into play. Lets face it, we want something bad to happen to someone and it happens. Now, did it happen because we cursed them or did it happen because they finally pissed off one person too many and someone in a bar took a swing at them?

This question should remain an academic one for the novice chaos magician. He should take credit whenever possible. Not in order to build up an inflated ego, but in order to get into the habit of thinking "Heh, I did that!" Slowly wearing down that factor of subconscious resistance in the first formula. With time, and in an effort to stave off megalomania, the more experienced magician should ask themselves, "Did I do that or did it occur by chance?"

The most experienced magicians realize, in my opinion, that magical results are usually a combination of chance and magick. Accepting that things just sometimes happen, but that the magician may also be playing a part, keeps the mind balanced and the goals of the magician reasonable.

Another thing, which the novice chaos magician should keep in mind, uses the nature of the universe to help you achieve the results that you desire. Enchant for events that have a high degree of probability of occurring naturally. This will get you used to success and will allow you to build confidence for more difficult workings. Flowers don't bloom in the dead of winter. Don't attempt to cut your teeth on making the impossible happen, you will fail and your magickal ego will suffer accordingly.

Another gem of wisdom from the mind of the man whose been there before. Don't enchant for something and then DO NOTHING about it. You can't meet the man/woman of your dreams by sitting at home all night, you can't pass that physics test by not studying. You can't get a big pay raise by always showing up late for work etc.. As your workings become progressively more difficult seek to tip the hand of chance by creating "avenues of manifestation" – help the universe give you what you want.

Chaos magick theory is a meta-paradigmal theory. Specifically it contains the techniques necessary to accomplish successful acts of magick. Chaos magick theory will not, in and of itself, make a successful magician. That is up to the practitioner himself. However, there exists within chaos magick theory the idea that only RESULTS are the measure of a successful magician. Results take time, energy and effort. A little fact that many may ignore to their own peril.

Fra. Ratatosk

Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Luminous Superstructure

2006-01-24T14:19:00.000+07:00

A Kiasphere is visualized by the Magician. I am not sure if "Kiasphere" is the proper name for this glowing, rotating, dual system structure*. It appeared to me in a cosmic trance party that I was invited to in a dream. I was on the cosmic beach dancing and in communion with the universe itself. Suddenly, in the sky there was a beautiful sphere structure that had lines of latitude and longitude contained within the structure of the sphere. They left wide gaps at their borders created by the four intersections found in all of the patches that constitute its surface. There are other lines that must form some sort of rectangle that is bent and warped somehow so that it surrounds the sphere and rotates in the opposite direction! Through this manner, it oscillates! It glows a deep, penetrating medium blue with strong purple imperfect beauty. The structure is majestic and beautiful and a pleasure to behold. For lack of a name, I call it Kiasphere, but, this has no more meaning than Chaos or God. The name is part of a complex relationship of convenience.

The Kiasphere should be composed of kia molded by the magician for the purposes of banishing, and in creating a kind of status field where nothing happening outside of the sphere at that moment will affect the magician in any way until the kiasphere is given back to the universe with thanks.

For now, the Kiasphere rotates in its binary systematical manner being, in reality, two different systems fused together for the desired length of time. The magician first clears his body and mind of tension, desire, dialogue, and all other constants. He becomes empty. He enters the state known among certain circles in Japan and students of those circles across the seas as "mushin" ( 'moo' –like a cow does, 'shin' –opposite your calf').

Some might have a magical identity that they use exclusively for work, as a ninjya in ancient Japan would when he operated. At this point, after the creation of the Kiasphere and entering mushin, one should change to that identity. At this time, one should evoke the necessary elements to get in character.

In the interests of efficiency, I will shorten the formula for the next part of the process and simplify it greatly from the originally intended text. The magician will look and point in the appropriate direction and give the appropriate grunt for the particular entity being invoked. After doing this, the magician will visualize a ray of light of the appropriate color using the Chaosphere system to determine the entities, colors, and directions with some modifications made by the author.

All of the rays originate from an empty construct 6 inches in front of the magician's heart with a three inch diameter. The rays penetrate the Kiasphere, and when inside they mesh together with it joining the systems. There is no problem if the magician wishes to take time, or say a verbal or silent prayer or incantation and whatever the magician needs to give the grunt that will say it all. The grunt should say it all, so whatever is needed to create that grunt is to be determined by individual discretion and suggestions from valued sources.

The list below shows the directions in the interests of efficiency:



1. down                    –                     ego
2. back                    –                     death
3. right                   –                     thinking
4. random                  –                     love
5. up                      –                     psyche
6. front                   –                     sex
7. left                    –                     health/wealth
8. random                  –                     war

The center of the construct is empty, and that center is placed in the magician's heart. This connects the magician's heart to the Kiasphere which, in turn, connects him to the universe itself. The heart then pushes the sphere up where it jumps out of the head for a moment before descending below the feet and bouncing back up to rest in the hara, an area slightly above your belly button, your center of gravity. *Through this method an axis mundi is created which connects all of the worlds, all of existence, and all of space-time. This is the place where magic can be performed
effectively. One must know that one is doing this, and must assume the responsibility involved with doing such a thing.

The magician then gives some sort of mantra or chant that symbolizes the completion of the axis mundi and the necessary substructures needed to facilitate its creation. The author has always liked, "Look into the eyes of the dragon and despair, I dispel you into oblivion!" The area is clean and ready for you to execute your magic. The actual magic is performed including the gnosis. After the working is complete, the magician stands with great majesty and authority and says "Forget!" , and immediately begins laughing in whatever manner suits the magician. The magician laughs the structure away, and laughs himself into the world where his magical self resides behind the masks.

The Doctrine of Concealment

2005-05-25T19:11:00.000+07:00

THE DOCTRINE OF CONCEALMENT (TAQIYYA)

-or-

WHY PAGANS DON'T HAVE TO COME OUT, JUST YET

by Shakudion

In this essay I will discuss the problems neo-pagans face in our "Christian-based society" about being public with their faith and in the creation of a free space wherein one is safe to practice their faith. In doing so, I will use the principle of comparative religion and show what modern pagans can learn from the experience of Ismailism. Ismailism, considered by the dominant Sunni Muslims as an Islamic heresy, was in a similar position concerning their society. However, Ismailism found a way to survive and for a while to prosper (until it's center was destroyed by the Mongols) , a story from which we post-modern pagans can learn.

The Ismaili's used the doctrine of taqiyya, concealment, as a means of survival in a hostile religious environment. Passive martyrdom is rare in Islam; if one is attacked then one should defend oneself and strike back if possible. However, senseless dying doesn't do anyone any good. Taqiyya allows one to take on the outward appearance of orthodoxy while remaining faithful to one's true beliefs. This meant taking on the chains of the Law (shariah) through performing orthodox religious acts. To Islamic orthodoxy this was usually enough as it was your actions and not mere belief which made one a Moslem. And while taking on the outward appearance of orthodoxy, Ismaili missionaries spread their doctrines throughout the Islamic world. And when they could safely come out of concealment they did as when they founded the Fatimid Imamate in Eygpt during the 10th century.

Modern pagans can also choose to conceal their true faith, if to come out would cause senseless martyrdom (loss of family, job, life, etc.). Remember, the gods and goddesses call you to life and not to self-destruction. So if you cannot come out safely, then don't! And you should not feel guilty about it either. If you can come out safely do so, but do not look down upon or feel you are more pagan than those who cannot come out safely.

Concealment is not personal oppression; it does not mean you are not free. The pagan closet is the first free space one creates. Within it neither church nor state has any real power. These powers have no way of knowing your existence much less of oppressing you (unless you let them). The very act of concealment shows that you have more power than they do over your own life. Your secret practice of paganism makes a mockery of all means of power and control.

This leads us to another point of Ismailism: the expansion of free space through evangelicalism (paganism is also good news!). The freedom of an individual is always a fragile freedom easily crushed if exposed. By linking up with others one can use the strength of solidarity to defend each other against the powers. Ismaili missionaries would travel the Islamic world looking for those who were capable of experiencing gnosis (enlightenment) linking them up into a world-wide free space. And wherever they became significantly numerous, they would rise in socio-religious rebellion and come out openly (abandoning Islamic religious practice). One of the most inspiring religious event in history was the Feast of the Great Resurrection. The Ismaili's had established a mini-state centered around the fortress of Alamut in northern Iran about 1074 AD. This fortress served as a free space for Ismailism and was a center of learning and science. Within its bounds Islamic law was not obeyed. This went on for about three generations till Hasan II came to be religious leader of the community. Then on the 17th of Ramadon (the month of fasting) Imam Hasan II called the community together from its dispersion and at mid-day broke the fast with the drinking of wine (forbidden in Islam on earth, but allowed in heaven). He proclaimed the Great Resurrection and ended the concealment. "The Chains of the
Law had been Broken." By doing so he extended the free space to the whole community thereby universalizing the enlightenment experience. By the drinking of wine and the breaking of the fast, he declared this world is already Paradise once one awakens to it in gnosis. The ressurection of the dead was in fact a religious awakening to unity with the One through the Imam. To awaken is to cast off the religious law in trust and act in freedom.

Of course, this freedom did not last and within a few years Hasan II was murdered and after a few generations Alamut was destroyed by the Mongol armies of the Khan. But the story is still inspiring in how the Ismaili's adapted themselves to a hostile environment and pagans can learn much from its history. What is important immediately is to create and to expand our personal freedom through the creation of free spaces (which may be temporary and mobile) where the authority of church and state no longer have any hold. The basis of this freedom is the individual who has the freedom and creativity to act (either openly or in concealment). And remember:

THE CHAINS OF THE LAW HAVE BEEN BROKEN

THIS WORLD IS ALEADY PARADISE

IT IS TIME TO WAKE UP

WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?

This essay is based upon the writings of Peter Lamborn Wilson (aka Hakim Bey) a proponent of Islamic heresy in the West. I recommentd reading: Sacred Drift: essays on the margins of Islam; Scandal: essays n Isalmic heresy; and T.A.Z.: the temporary autonomous zone, ontological anarchy, & poetic terrorism (Under the name Hakim Bey)

The Power of Nightmares

2005-04-28T15:20:00.000+07:00

The Power of Nightmares Documentary, BBC 2, Transcript

VO: In the past, politicians promised to create a better world. They had different ways of achieving this. But their power and authority came from the optimistic visions they offered to their people. Those dreams failed. And today, people have lost faith in ideologies. Increasingly, politicians are seen simply as managers of public life. But now, they have discovered a new role that restores their power and authority. Instead of delivering dreams, politicians now promise to protect us from nightmares. They say that they will rescue us from dreadful dangers that we cannot see and do not understand. And the greatest danger of all is international terrorism. A powerful and sinister network, with sleeper cells in countries across the world. A threat that needs to be fought by a war on terror. But much of this threat is a fantasy, which has been exaggerated and distorted by politicians. It’s a dark illusion that has spread unquestioned through governments around the world, the security services, and the international media.

VO: This is a series of films about how and why that fantasy was created, and who it benefits. At the heart of the story are two groups: the American neoconservatives, and the radical Islamists. Both were idealists who were born out of the failure of the liberal dream to build a better world. And both had a very similar explanation for what caused that failure. These two groups have changed the world, but not in the way that either intended. Together, they created today’s nightmare vision of a secret, organized evil that threatens the world. A fantasy that politicians then found restored their power and authority in a disillusioned age. And those with the darkest fears became the most powerful.

[ OPENING TITLES: THE POWER OF NIGHTMARES / THE RISE OF THE POLITICS OF FEAR

Part One: BABY IT’S COLD OUTSIDE ]

VO: The story begins in the summer of 1949…

[ TITLE: COLORADO 1949 ]

VO: ...when a middle-aged school inspector from Egypt arrived at the small town of Greeley, in Colorado. His name was Sayyed Qutb. Qutb had been sent to the U.S. to study its educational system, and he enrolled in the local state college. His photographs appear in the college yearbook. But Qutb was destined to become much more than a school inspector. Out of his experiences of America that summer, Qutb was going to develop a powerful set of ideas that would directly inspire those who flew the planes on the attack of September the 11th. As he had traveled across the country, Qutb had become increasingly disenchanted with America. The very things that, on the surface, made the country look prosperous and happy, Qutb saw as signs of an inner corruption and decay.

JOHN CALVERT, Islamist historian: This was Truman’s America, and many Americans today regard it as a golden age of their civilization. But for Qutb, he saw a sinister side in this. All around him was crassness, corruption, vulgarity—talk centered on movie stars and automobile prices. He was also very concerned that the inhabitants of Greeley spent a lot of time in lawn care. Pruning their hedges, cutting their lawns. This, for Qutb, was indicative of the selfish and materialistic aspect of American life. Americans lived these isolated lives surrounded by their lawns. They lusted after material goods. And this, says Qutb quite succinctly, is the taste of America.

VO: What Qutb believed he was seeing was a hidden and dangerous reality underneath the surface of ordinary American life. One summer night, he went to a dance at a local church hall. He later wrote that what he saw that night crystallized his vision.

CALVERT: He talks about how the pastor played on the gramophone one of the big-band hits of the day, “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.” He dimmed the lights so as to create a dreamy, romantic effect. And then, Qutb says that “chests met chests, arms circled waists, and the hall was full of lust and love.”

VO: To most people watching this dance, it would have been an innocent picture of youthful happiness. But Qutb saw something else: the dancers in front of him were tragic lost souls. They believed that they were free. But in reality, they were trapped by their own selfish and greedy desires. American society was not going forwards; it was taking people backwards. They were becoming isolated beings, driven by primitive animal forces. Such creatures, Qutb believed, could corrode the very bonds that held society together. And he became determined that night to prevent this culture of selfish individualism taking over his own country.

[ TITLE: CHICAGO ]

VO: But Qutb was not alone. At the same time, in Chicago, there was another man who shared the same fears about the destructive force of individualism in America. He was an obscure political philosopher at the University of Chicago. But his ideas would also have far-reaching consequences, because they would become the shaping force behind the neoconservative movement, which now dominates the American administration. He was called Leo Strauss. Strauss is a mysterious figure. He refused to be filmed or interviewed. He devoted his time to creating a loyal band of students. And what he taught them was that the prosperous liberal society they were living in contained the seeds of its own destruction.

Professor HARVEY MANSFIELD, Straussian Philosopher, Harvard University: He didn’t give interviews, or write political essays, or appear on the radio—there wasn’t TV yet—or things like that. But he did want to get a school of students to see what he had seen: that Western liberalism led to nihilism, and had undergone a development at the end of which it could no longer define itself or defend itself. A development which took everything praiseworthy and admirable out of human beings, and made us into dwarf animals. Made us into herd animals—sick little dwarves, satisfied with a dangerous life in which nothing is true and everything is permitted.

VO: Strauss believed that the liberal idea of individual freedom led people to question everything—all values, all moral truths. Instead, people were led by their own selfish desires. And this threatened to tear apart the shared values which held society together. But there was a way to stop this, Strauss believed. It was for politicians to assert powerful and inspiring myths that everyone could believe in. They might not be true, but they were necessary illusions. One of these was religion; the other was the myth of the nation. And in America, that was the idea that the country had a unique destiny to battle the forces of evil throughout the world. This myth was epitomized, Strauss told his students, in his favorite television program: Gunsmoke.

Professor STANLEY ROSEN, Pupil of Leo Strauss 1949: Strauss was a great fan of American television. Gunsmoke was his great favorite, and he would hurry home from the seminar, which would end at, you know, 5:30 or so, and have a quick dinner so he could be at his seat before the television set when Gunsmoke came on. And he felt that this was good, this show. This had a salutary effect on the American public, because it showed the conflict between good and evil in a way that would be immediately intelligible to everyone.

BAD MAN on Gunsmoke: Let’s see what happens!

JAMES ARNESS: No! [ SHOOTS bad man; bad man DROPS to the ground ]

ROSEN: The hero has a white hat; he’s faster on the draw than the bad man; the good guy wins. And it’s not just that the good guy wins, but that values are clear. That’s America! We’re gonna triumph over the evils of… of… that are trying to destroy us and the virtues of the Western frontier. Good and evil.

VO: Leo Strauss’ other favorite program was Perry Mason. And this, he told his students, epitomized the role that they, the élite, had to play. In public, they should promote the myths necessary to rescue America from decay. But in private, they didn’t have to believe in them.

ROSEN: Perry Mason was different from Gunsmoke. The extremely cunning man who, as far as we can see, is very virtuous and uses his great intelligence and quickness of mind to rescue his clients from dangers, but who could be fooling us—because he’s cleverer than we are. Is he really telling the truth? Maybe his client is guilty!

VO: In 1950, Sayyed Qutb traveled back to Egypt from America. He too was determined to find some way of controlling the forces of selfish individualism. And as he traveled, he began to envisage a new type of society. It would have all the modern benefits of Western science and technology, but a more political Islam would have a central role to play, keeping individualism in check. It would provide a moral framework that would stop people’s selfish desires from overwhelming them. But Qutb realized that American culture was already spreading to Egypt, trapping the masses in its seductive dream. What was needed, he believed, was an élite, a vanguard who could see through these illusions of freedom, just as he had in America, and who would then lead the masses to realize the higher truth.

Dr AZZAM TAMIMI, Institute of Islamic Political Thought: The masses need to be led. And it is this vanguard group that will be responsible for the task of leading the people out of the darkness and into the light of Islam. Because the masses had succumbed to their own selfish desires, and he wanted the vanguard to be different, to be pure, to be standing together outside all of this corrupt situation, bringing people back to the truth.

VO: On his return, Qutb became politically active in Egypt. He joined a group called the Muslim Brotherhood, who wanted Islam to play a major role in governing Egyptian society. And in 1952, the Brotherhood supported the revolution led by General Nasser that overthrew the last remnants of British rule. But Nasser very quickly made it clear that the new Egypt was going to be a secular society that emulated Western morals. He quickly forged an alliance with America. And the CIA came to Egypt to organize security agencies for the new r�gime. Faced with this, the Muslim Brotherhood began to organize against Nasser, and in 1954 Qutb and other leading members of the Brotherhood were arrested by the security services. What then happened to Qutb was going to have consequences for the whole world.

[ ARABIC-SPEAKING VOICE FROM PRISON CAMP FILM ]

VO: In the 1970s, this film was made, that showed what happened in Nasser’s main prison in the ‘50s and ‘60s. It was based on the testimony of survivors. Torturers who had been trained by the CIA unleashed an orgy of violence against Muslim Brotherhood members accused of plotting to overthrow Nasser. At one point, Qutb was covered with animal fat and locked in a cell with dogs trained to attack humans. Inside the cell, he had a heart attack.

General FOUAD ALLAM, Interrogator Interior Ministry 1958-87 (speaking in Arabic; subtitled): Sayyed Qutb thought of himself as a superior sort of person. He saw himself as an important Islamist thinker and a strong character. And so on and so on. But at the end of the day, when he was in the military prison he gave us the exact details about his secret group and the orders he had given. The most dangerous was the order to flood the whole of the Nile delta and drown this corrupt land of infidels.

VO: Qutb survived, but the torture had a powerful radicalizing effect on his ideas. Up to this point, he had believed that the Western secular ideas simply created the selfishness and the isolation he had seen in the United States. But the torture, he believed, showed that this culture also unleashed the most brutal and barbarous aspects of human beings. Qutb began to have an apocalyptic vision of a disease that was spreading from the West throughout the world. He called it jahilliyah—a state of barbarous ignorance. What made it so terrifying and insidious was that people didn’t realize that they were infected. They believed that they were free, and that their politicians were taking them forward to a new world. But in fact, they were regressing to a barbarous age.

ROXANNE EUBEN, Political Scientist: The sense is that jahilliyah is so dangerous now, because not only is it advanced by Western powers, but Muslims—this is like a charge of false consciousness—Muslims have become infected with this jahilliyah, so now the threat to Islam is also from within. It’s from without, and within. It’s a state of emergency, because jahilliyah is a condition that pervades everything and everybody. It’s even infected our powers of imagination—we don’t even know that we’re sick! That we now worship materialism, and the self, and individual truths over the real truths. Um, so it’s an incredible sense of epic confrontation, where Islam is being insulted on all fronts—from within, from without, culturally, militarily, economically, politically. And under those circumstances, any way of fighting it becomes justified and legitimate, and in fact has a kind of existential weight, because somehow it’s doing God’s will on earth.

VO: To Qutb, this force of jahilliyah had now gone so deep into the minds of Muslims that a dramatic way had to be found to free them. In a series of books he wrote secretly in prison, which were then smuggled out, Qutb called upon a revolutionary vanguard to rise up and overthrow the leaders who had allowed jahilliyah to infect their countries. The implication was that these leaders could justifiably be killed, because they had become so corrupted, they were no longer Muslims, even though they said they were. Faced with this, Nasser decided to crush Qutb and his ideas, and in 1966 Qutb was put on trial for treason. This is the only known film of Qutb as he awaits sentence. The verdict was a foregone conclusion, and on August 29, 1966, Qutb was executed. But his ideas lived on. The day after his execution, a young schoolboy set up a secret group. He hoped that it would one day become the vanguard that Qutb had hoped for. His name was Ayman Zawahiri, and Zawahiri was to become the mentor to Osama bin-Laden.

[ TITLE: AMERICA 1967 ]

VO: But at the very moment when Sayyed Qutb’s ideas seemed dead and buried, Leo Strauss’ ideas about how to transform America were about to become powerful and influential, because the liberal political order that had dominated America since the war started to collapse.

[ TITLE: 11pm, JULY 25th 1967 ]

PRESIDENT LYNDON B. JOHNSON: Law and order have broken down in Detroit, Michigan. Pillage, looting, murder…

VO: Only a few years before, President Johnson had promised policies that would create a new and a better world in America. He had called it “the Great Society.”

[ TITLE: President LYNDON JOHNSON, 1964 ]

JOHNSON: The Great Society is in place where every child can find knowledge to enrich his mind. It is a place where the City of Man…

VO: But now, in the wake of some of the worst riots ever seen in America, that dream seemed to have ended in violence and hatred. One prominent liberal journalist called Irving Kristol began to question whether it might actually be the policies themselves that were causing social breakdown.

IRVING KRISTOL: If you had asked any liberal in 1960, we are going to pass these laws, these laws, these laws, and these laws, mentioning all the laws that in fact were passed in the 1960s and ‘70s, would you say crime will go up, drug addiction will go up, illegitimacy will go up, or will they get down? Obviously, everyone would have said, they will get down. And everyone would have been wrong. Now, that’s not something that the liberals have been able to face up to. They’ve had their reforms, and they have led to consequences that they did not expect and they don’t know what to do about.

VO: In the early ‘70s, Irving Kristol became the focus of a group of disaffected intellectuals in Washington. They were determined to understand why the optimistic liberal policies had failed. And they found the answer in the theories of Leo Strauss. Strauss explained that it was the very basis of the liberal idea—the belief in individual freedom—that was causing the chaos, because it undermined the shared moral framework that held society together. Individuals pursued their own selfish interests, and this inevitably led to conflict. As the movement grew, many young students who had studied Strauss’ ideas came to Washington to join this group. Some, like Paul Wolfowitz, had been taught Strauss’ ideas at the University of Chicago, as had Francis Fukuyama. And others, like Irving Kristol’s son William, had studied Strauss’ theories at Harvard. This group became known as the neoconservatives.

WILLIAM KRISTOL: Well, many of them couldn’t get academic jobs, and the political science and philosophy faculties were not terribly friendly to those of a conservative or moderately conservative disposition. And the truth is that a lot of people who ended up in Washington started out as academics. I did; Paul Wolfowitz did; and decided they probably didn’t have very good prospects in the academy. What we all had in common, I think, was a certain doubt about what once seemed a kind of great certainty and confidence in liberal progress. The philosophic grounds for liberal democracy had been weakened. So I think Straussians who came to Washington, they didn’t think of themselves as Churchill or Lincoln, let me assure you, but they did that, you know, there’s something noble about public life, and about politics, and they tried to make a contribution in many different areas.

VO: The neoconservatives were idealists. Their aim was to try and stop the social disintegration they believed liberal freedoms had unleashed. They wanted to find a way of uniting the people, by giving them a shared purpose. One of their great influences in doing this would be the theories of Leo Strauss. They would set out to recreate the myth of America as a unique nation whose destiny was to battle against evil in the world. And in this project, the source of evil would be America’s Cold War enemy: the Soviet Union. And by doing this, they believed that they would not only give new meaning and purpose to people’s lives, but they would spread the good of democracy around the world.

Professor STEPHEN HOLMES, Political Philosopher: The United States would not only, according to these—the Straussians, be able to bring good to the world, but would be able to overcome the fundamental weaknesses of American society, a society that has been suffering, almost rotting, in their language, from relativism, liberalism, lack of self-confidence, lack of belief in itself. And one of the main political projects of the Straussians during the Cold War was to reinforce the self-confidence of Americans, and the belief that America was fundamentally the only force for good in the world, that had to be supported, otherwise evil would prevail.

VO: But to do this, the neoconservatives were going to have to defeat one of the most powerful men in the world. Henry Kissinger was the Secretary of State under President Nixon, and he didn’t believe in a world of good and evil. What drove Kissinger was a ruthless, pragmatic vision of power in the world. With America’s growing political and social chaos, Kissinger wanted the country to give up its ideological battles. Instead, it should come to terms with countries like the Soviet Union, to create a new kind of global interdependence. A world in which America would be safe.

HENRY KISSINGER, Interviewed 1975: I believe that with all the dislocations we know—now experience, there also exists an extraordinary opportunity to form, for the first time in history, a truly global society, carried by the principle of interdependence. And if we act wisely and with vision, I think we can look back to all this turmoil as the birth pangs of a more creative and better system.

VO: Kissinger had begun this process in 1972, when he persuaded the Soviet Union to sign a treaty with America limiting nuclear arms. It was the start of what was called “détente.” And President Nixon returned to Washington to announce triumphantly that the age of fear was over.

PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON, June 1, 1972: Last Friday, in Moscow, we witnessed the beginning of the end of that era which began in 1945. With this step, we have enhanced the security of both nations. We have begun to reduce the level of fear, by reducing the causes of fear—for our two peoples, and for all peoples in the world.

VO: But a world without fear was not what the neoconservatives needed to pursue their project. They now set out to destroy Henry Kissinger’s vision. What gave them their opportunity was the growing collapse of American political power, both abroad and at home. The defeat in Vietnam, and the resignation of President Nixon over Watergate, led to a crisis of confidence in America’s political class. And the neoconservatives seized their moment. They allied themselves with two right-wingers in the new administration of Gerald Ford. One was Donald Rumsfeld, the new Secretary of Defense. The other was Dick Cheney, the President’s Chief of Staff. Rumsfeld began to make speeches alleging that the Soviets were ignoring Kissinger’s treaties and secretly building up their weapons, with the intention of attacking America.

DONALD RUMSFELD, US Secretary of Defense, Speaking in 1976: The Soviet Union has been busy. They’ve been busy in terms of their level of effort; they’ve been busy in terms of the actual weapons they’ve been producing; they’ve been busy in terms of expanding production rates; they’ve been busy in terms of expanding their institutional capability to produce additional weapons at additional rates; they’ve been busy in terms of expanding their capability to increasingly improve the sophistication of those weapons. Year after year after year, they’ve been demonstrating that they have steadiness of purpose. They’re purposeful about what they’re doing. Now, your question is, what ought one to be doing about that?

VO: The CIA, and other agencies who watched the Soviet Union continuously for any sign of threat, said that this was a complete fiction. There was no truth to Rumsfeld’s allegations. But Rumsfeld used his position to persuade President Ford to set up an independent inquiry. He said it would prove that there was a hidden threat to America. And the inquiry would be run by a group of neoconservatives, one of whom was Paul Wolfowitz. The aim was to change the way America saw the Soviet Union.

MELVIN GOODMAN, Head of Office of Soviet Affairs CIA, 1976-87: And Rumsfeld won that very intense, intense political battle that was waged in Washington in 1975 and 1976. Now, as part of that battle, Rumsfeld and others, people such as Paul Wolfowitz, wanted to get into the CIA. And their mission was to create a much more severe view of the Soviet Union, Soviet intentions, Soviet views about fighting and winning a nuclear war.

VO: The neoconservatives chose, as the inquiry chairman, a well-known critic and historian of the Soviet Union called Richard Pipes. Pipes was convinced that whatever the Soviets said publicly, secretly they still intended to attack and conquer America. This was their hidden mindset. The inquiry was called Team B, and the other leading member was Paul Wolfowitz.

Professor RICHARD PIPES: And the idea was then to appoint a group of outside experts who have access to the same evidence as the CIA used to arrive at these conclusions, and to see if they could come up with different conclusions. And I was asked to chair it, because I was not an expert on nuclear weapons. I was, if anything, an expert on the Soviet mindset, but not on the weapons. But that was the real key, was the question of the Soviet mindset, because the CIA looked only at—they were known as “bean counters,” always looking at weapons. But weapons can be used in various ways. They can be used for defensive purposes or offensive purposes. Well, all right, I collected this group of experts, and we began to sift through the evidence.

VO: Team B began examining all the CIA data on the Soviet Union. But however closely they looked, there was little evidence of the dangerous weapons or defense systems they claimed the Soviets were developing. Rather than accept that this meant that the systems didn’t exist, Team B made an assumption that the Soviets had developed systems that were so sophisticated, they were undetectible. For example, they could find no evidence that the Soviet submarine fleet had an acoustic defense system. What this meant, Team B said, was that the Soviets had actually invented a new non-acoustic system, which was impossible to detect. And this meant that the whole of the American submarine fleet was at risk from an invisible threat that was there, even though there was no evidence for it.

Dr ANNE CAHN, Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, 1977-80: They couldn’t say that the Soviets had acoustic means of picking up American submarines, because they couldn’t find it. So they said, well maybe they have a non-acoustic means of making our submarine fleet vulnerable. But there was no evidence that they had a non-acoustic system. They’re saying, “we can’t find evidence that they’re doing it the way that everyone thinks they’re doing it, so they must be doing it a different way. We don’t know what that different way is, but they must be doing it.”

INTERVIEWER (off-camera): Even though there was no evidence.

CAHN: Even though there was no evidence.

INTERVIEWER: So they’re saying there, that the fact that the weapon doesn’t exist…

CAHN: Doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. It just means that we haven’t found it.

PIPES: Now, that’s important, yes. If something is not there, that’s significant.

INTERVIEWER: By its absence.

PIPES: By its absence. If you believe that they share your view of strategic weapons, and they don’t talk about it, then there’s something missing. Something is wrong. And the CIA wasn’t aware of that.

VO: What Team B accused the CIA of missing was a hidden and sinister reality in the Soviet Union. Not only were there many secret weapons the CIA hadn’t found, but they were wrong about many of those they could observe, such as the Soviet air defenses. The CIA were convinced that these were in a state of collapse, reflecting the growing economic chaos in the Soviet Union. Team B said that this was actually a cunning deception by the Soviet r�gime. The air-defense system worked perfectly. But the only evidence they produced to prove this was the official Soviet training manual, which proudly asserted that their air-defense system was fully integrated and functioned flawlessly. The CIA accused Team B of moving into a fantasy world.

PIPES: The CIA was very loath to deal with issues which could not be demonstrated in a kind of mathematical form. I said they could consider the soft evidence. They deal with realities, whereas this was a fantasy. That’s how it was perceived. And there were battles all the time on this subject.

INTERVIEWER: Did you think it was a fantasy?

PIPES: No! I thought it was absolute reality.

CAHN: I would say that all of it was fantasy. I mean, they looked at radars out in Krasnoyarsk and said, “This is a laser beam weapon,” when in fact it was nothing of the sort. They even took a Russian military manual, which the correct translation of it is “The Art of Winning.” And when they translated it and put it into Team B, they called it “The Art of Conquest.” Well, there’s a difference between “conquest” and “winning.” And if you go through most of Team B’s specific allegations about weapons systems, and you just examine them one by one, they were all wrong.

INTERVIEWER: All of them?

CAHN: All of them.

INTERVIEWER: Nothing true?

CAHN: I don’t believe anything in Team B was really true.

VO: The neoconservatives set up a lobby group to publicize the findings of Team B. It was called the Committee on the Present Danger, and a growing number of politicians joined, including a Presidential hopeful, Ronald Reagan.

[ TITLE: The Price of Peace and Freedom / Committee on the Present Danger, propaganda film 1978 ]

VO: Through films and television, the Committee portrayed a world in which America was under threat from hidden forces that could strike at any time, forces that America must conquer to survive.

ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYN, through interpreter: A concentration of world evil, of hatred for humanity, is taking place. And it is fully determined to destroy your society. Must you wait until the young men of America have to fall defending the borders of their continent?!

VO: This dramatic battle between good and evil was precisely the kind of myth that Leo Strauss had taught his students would be necessary to rescue the country from moral decay. It might not be true, but it was necessary, to re-engage the public in a grand vision of America’s destiny, that would give meaning and purpose to their lives. The neoconservatives were succeeding in creating a simplistic fiction—a vision of the Soviet Union as the center of all evil in the world, and America as the only country that could rescue the world. And this nightmarish vision was beginning to give the neoconservatives great power and influence.

HOLMES: The Straussians started to create a worldview which is a fiction. The world is not divided into good and evil. The battle in which we are engaged is not a battle between good and evil. The United States, as anyone who observes understands, has done some good and some bad things. It’s like any great power. This is the way history is. But they wanted to create a world of moral certainties, so therefore they invent mythologies—fairytales—describing any force in the world that obstructs the United States as somehow Satanic, or associated with evil.

TITLE: EGYPT 1979

[ CLIPS FROM WESTERN – STYLE EGYPTIAN TV COMMERCIALS ]

VO: By the late 1970s, Egypt had been transformed. On the surface, it had become a modern, Westernized state with a prosperous middle class who were benefiting from a flood of Western capital that was being invested in the country. One member of this prosperous Egyptian élite was Ayman Zawahiri. He was now a young doctor, just starting his career.

OMAR AZZAM, Cousin of Ayman Zawahiri: Ayman, he was an ideal person, who was a doctor coming from a very good family. His father was a professor in the university, his grandfather was an ambassador, his other grandfather was Sheikh of al-Azhar; very well-respected family. He used to be the the sort of person that acted by the book. Not looking for prestige, not looking for money, not looking for propaganda. Ayman became a leader because of his attitudes.

VO: In reality, Zawahiri was the leader of an underground Islamist cell. The group that he had started as a schoolboy, which he had modeled on the ideas of Sayyed Qutb, had grown. Sayyed Qutb’s ideas were now spreading rapidly in Egypt— above all, among students—because his predictions about the corruption from the West seemed to have come true. The government of President Sadat was controlled by a small group of millionaires, who were backed by Western banks. The banks had been let in by what Sadat called his open-door policy. To the Western media, Sadat denied any corruption. All Egyptians knew that this was a blatant lie.

PRESIDENT SADAT 1977: Who has benefited now from the open-door policy? Taxi drivers. The liberals. All of those have benefited from the open-door policy. It is not like they say, that there are millionaires here and so. No, not at all. This is pure, um, pure black propaganda from the side of the Soviet Union and agents here in the country.

VO: Zawahiri was convinced that the time was now approaching to fulfill Qutb’s vision. The vanguard should rise up and overthrow this corrupt régime. And the man who would give the Islamists that opportunity would be Henry Kissinger. As part of his attempt to create a stable and balanced world, Kissinger had persuaded President Sadat to begin peace negotiations with the Israelis. To Kissinger, the ruthless pragmatist, religious divisions and hatreds were irrelevant. The most important thing was to create a safer world. And in 1977, Sadat had flown to Jerusalem to start the peace process. To the West, it was a heroic act. But to the Islamists, it was a complete betrayal. It showed that Sadat’s mind had become so corrupted by the West that he was now completely under their control. And under the theories of Sayyed Qutb, this meant that he was no longer a Muslim, and so could justifiably be killed. And then, in 1979, the Ayatollah Khomeini showed Zawahiri that his dream of creating an Islamist state was possible.

[ SUBTITLE OVER RIOT SCENE : God is great! ]

VO: Khomeini had inspired an uprising against the Shah of Iran. The Shah was another leader who had allowed Western banks to corrupt his country.

[ SUBTITLE OVER RIOT SCENE : Armed struggle is the road to freedom! ]

VO: Khomeini had put forth the idea of an Islamist state…

[ SUBTITLE OVER RIOT SCENE : Death to the Shah’s mercenary army! ]

VO: ... that was remarkably similar to Qutb’s ideas. He acknowledged this by placing Qutb’s face on one of the postage stamps of the new Islamic republic. In his first sermon, Khomeini addressed the West. “Yes,” he told them, “we are reactionaries, and you are enlightened intellectuals. You who want freedom for everything, the freedom that will corrupt our country, corrupt our youth, and freedom that will pave the way for the oppressor—freedom that would drag our country to the bottom.”

REPORTER (off-camera): You sound very dissatisfied with what’s happening in Iran now.

PRESIDENT SADAT 1979: Not… MORE than dissatisfied, this is disgraceful! Really! I was myself, I was the Secretary-General of the Muslim Congress at one time. This, putting the name “Islamic revolution,” is a crime. A crime against Islam in the first hand.

REPORTER : President Sadat, do you expect that the Shah will accept the invitation? It seems like a good solution right now.

SADAT : Quote me: My aeroplane is ready to bring him here. Any moment.

VO: At the end of 1980, Ayman Zawahiri, with a number of other followers of Qutb who had formed cells, came together. They created an organization they called Islamic Jihad. Its leader was a man called Abdel Salam Faraj. And Faraj argued that they should kill Sadat in a spectacular way that would shock the masses. It would make them see the true reality of the corruption surrounding them, and they would rise up and overthrow the r�gime.

KAMAL HABIB , Founder member of Islamic Jihad (speaking in Arabic, subtitled): The jihadi movement – some of the leaders are still alive – I was one and so was Ayman Zawahiri. We spearheaded the jihadi state of mind rather than the earlier, more moderate ideas in the liberal era that simply accepted reality. Psychologically we thought we were superior to reality. We despised the everyday vision of the world, and we wanted to transform or change this reality. Therefore our dream was to get rid of Sadat.

[ SCENES OF SADAT ’ S ASSASSINATION ]

VO: Those who carried out the assassination were a group of Army officers who were a part of Islamic Jihad. They were immediately arrested, and the régime launched a massive manhunt for those behind the plot. But the effect of the assassination on the Egyptian people was not what Zawahiri had hoped for. That night, Cairo remained calm. The masses failed to rise up. And in the following weeks, Zawahiri and many other conspirators were arrested. The assassins were tried immediately and executed. But then, nearly 300 Islamists, including Zawahiri, were put on trial in a pavilion in Cairo’s industrial exhibition park. It was agreed that Zawahiri would be their spokesman.

MAN IN CAGE , shouting: ... for [unintelligible], for the whole world, this is our world… Doctor Ayman Zawahiri!

AYMAN ZAWAHIRI , in cage, shouting: Now, we want to speak to the whole world! Who are we? Who are we? Why did they bring us here? And what we want to say? About the first question: we are Muslims! We are Muslims who believed in their religion, in their broad feelings, as both an ideology and practice. We believed in our religion, both as an ideology and practice. And hence, we tried our best to establish [unintelligible] Islamic state and Islamic society!

PRISONER , shouting: La illah la-illallah!

PRISONERS : La illah la-illallah! (etc.)

GILLES KEPEL , Historian of Islamist Movement: Zawahiri, the man is an aristocrat. He comes from a major Egyptian -Saudi family. And he thinks that, you know, he is a visionary, and the means do not matter, just as in Lenin—I mean, revolution in one country or revolution worldwide. He was convinced that this was a means to mobilize the masses, that they had tried something, that it had not worked, then he failed that—you know, the masses that were still under the spell of ideology, the ideology of America. And he is looking for a new strategy.

VO: At the trial, Zawahiri was sentenced to three years in prison, along with many others of Islamic Jihad. He was taken to cells behind the Police National Museum, where, like Sayyed Qutb, he was tortured. And under this torture, he began to interpret Qutb’s theories in a far more radical way. The mystery, for Zawahiri, was why the Egyptian people had failed to see the truth and rise up. It must be because the infection of selfish individualism had gone so deep into people’s minds that they were now as corrupted as their leaders. Zawahiri now seized on a terrible ambiguity in Qutb’s argument. It wasn’t just leaders like Sadat who were no longer real Muslims, it was the people themselves. And Zawahiri believed that this meant that they too could legitimately be killed. But such killing, Zawahiri believed, would have a noble purpose, because of the fear and the terror that it would create in the minds of ordinary Muslims. It would shock them into seeing reality in a different way. They would then see the truth.

Dr AZZAM TAMIMI , Institute of Islamic Political Thought: Ayman Zawahiri came to the conclusion that because you have what you believe to be a sublime objective, then the means can be as ugly as they can get. You can kill as many people as you wish, because the end means is noble. The logic is that “we are the vanguards, we are the correct Muslims, everybody else is wrong. Not only wrong, but everybody else is not a Muslim, and the only means available to us today is just to kill our way to perfection.”

[ TITLE : AMERICA 1981 ]

COUNTRY SINGER : I’m goin’ to a city where the roses never fade…

VO: And at this very same moment, religion was being mobilized politically in America, but for a very different purpose. And those encouraging this were the neoconservatives. Many neoconservatives had become advisers to the Presidential campaign of Ronald Reagan. And as they became more involved with the Republican Party, they had forged an alliance with the religious wing of the party, because it shared their aim of the moral regeneration of America.

IRVING KRISTOL , Founder of Neoconservative movement: The notion that a purely secular society can cope with all of the terrible pathologies that now affect our society, I think has turned out to be false. And that has made me culturally conservative. I mean, I really think religion has a role now to play in redeeming the country. And liberalism is not prepared to give religion a role. Conservatism is, but it doesn’t know how to do it.

VO: By the late ‘70s, there were millions of fundamentalist Christians in America. But their preachers had always told them not to vote. It would mean compromising with a doomed and immoral society. But the neoconservatives and their new Republican allies made an alliance with a number of powerful preachers, who told their followers to become involved with politics for the first time.

JAMES ROBISON , Fundamentalist Preacher, 1980: I’m sick and tired of hearing about all of the radicals, and the perverts, and the liberals, and the leftists, and the Communists coming out of the closet! It’s time for God’s people to come out of the closet, out of the churches, and change America! We must do it!

PAUL WEYRICH , Religious activist – Republican Party: The conservative movement, up to that point, was essentially an intellectual movement. It had some very powerful thinkers, but it didn’t have many troops. And as Stalin said of the Pope, “where are his divisions?”. Well, we didn’t have many divisions. When these folks became active, all of a sudden the conservative movement had lots of divisions. We were able to move literally millions of people. And this is something that we had literally no ability to do prior to that time.

INTERVIEWER (off-camera): Literally millions?

WEYRICH : Literally millions.

VO: And at the beginning of 1981, Ronald Reagan took power in America. The religious vote was crucial in his election, because many millions of fundamentalists voted for the first time. And as they had hoped, many neoconservatives were given power in the new administration. Paul Wolfowitz became head of the State Department policy staff, while his close friend Richard Perle became the Assistant Secretary of Defense. And the head of Team B, Richard Pipes, became one of Reagan’s chief advisers. The neoconservatives believed that they now had the chance to implement their vision of America’s revolutionary destiny—to use the country’s power aggressively as a force for good in the world, in an epic battle to defeat the Soviet Union. It was a vision that they shared with millions of their new religious allies.

UNIDENTIFIED PREACHER : I take a personal and public stand as a minister, a stand against Communism. To destroy it, to wipe it from the face of the Earth, because believe you me, these people are dedicated to the destruction of the United States of America and freedom as we know it.

VO: But the neoconservatives faced immense opposition to this new policy. It came not just from the bureaucracies and Congress, but from the President himself. Reagan was convinced that the Soviet Union was an evil force, but he still believed that he could negotiate with them to end the Cold War.

Professor RICHARD PIPES , Adviser to President Reagan 1980-83: Reagan at first didn’t quite understand that their aggressiveness is rooted in the system. He had a rather benign view of human beings. He was a very kindly man, and he attributed kind motives to others. There was another form of mirror imaging. And he would say on more than one occasion, something like this: “If I could just sit down with the Soviet leaders and explain to them that they’re following a wrong ideology, and if they adopt the right ideologies, they could make their people happy and prosperous.” So [unintelligible] “Mr. President, that is not going to do it! You have to go after the system. Force them to reform the system.” It took him a very long time to assimilate this view.

VO: To persuade the President, the neoconservatives set out to prove that the Soviet threat was far greater than anyone, even Team B, had previously shown. They would demonstrate that the majority of terrorism and revolutionary movements around the world were actually part of a secret network, coordinated by Moscow, to take over the world. The main proponent of this theory was a leading neoconservative who was the special adviser to the Secretary of State. His name was Michael Ledeen, and he had been influenced by a best-selling book called The Terror Network. It alleged that terrorism was not the fragmented phenomenon that it appeared to be. In reality, all terrorist groups, from the PLO to the Baader-Meinhof group in Germany, and the Provisional IRA, all of them were a part of a coordinated strategy of terror run by the Soviet Union. But the CIA completely disagreed. They said this was just another neoconservative fantasy.

MICHAEL LEDEEN , Special Adviser to the US Secretary of State 1981-1982: The CIA denied it. They tried to convince people that we were really crazy. I mean, they never believed that the Soviet Union was a driving force in the international terror network. They always wanted to believe that terrorist organizations were just what they said they were: local groups trying to avenge terrible evils done to them, or trying to rectify terrible social conditions, and things like that. And the CIA really did buy into the rhetoric. I don’t know what their motive was. I mean, I don’t know what people’s motives are, hardly ever. And I don’t much worry about motives.

VO: But the neoconservatives had a powerful ally. He was William Casey, and he was the new head of the CIA. Casey was sympathetic to the neoconservative view. And when he read the Terror Network book, he was convinced. He called a meeting of the CIA’s Soviet analysts at their headquarters, and told them to produce a report for the President that proved this hidden network existed. But the analysts told him that this would be impossible, because much of the information in the book came from black propaganda the CIA themselves had invented to smear the Soviet Union. They knew that the terror network didn’t exist, because they themselves had made it up.

MELVIN GOODMAN , Head of Soviet Affairs CIA, 1976-87: And when we looked through the book, we found very clear episodes where CIA black propaganda—clandestine information that was designed under a covert action plan to be planted in European newspapers—were picked up and put in this book. A lot of it was made up. It was made up out of whole cloth.

INTERVIEWER (off-camera): You told him this?

GOODMAN : We told him that, point blank. And we even had the operations people to tell Bill Casey this. I thought maybe this might have an impact, but all of us were dismissed. Casey had made up his mind. He knew the Soviets were involved in terrorism, so there was nothing we could tell him to disabuse him. Lies became reality.

VO: In the end, Casey found a university professor who described himself as a terror expert, and he produced a dossier that confirmed that the hidden terror network did, in fact, exist. Under such intense lobbying, Reagan agreed to give the neoconservatives what they wanted, and in 1983 he signed a secret document that fundamentally changed American foreign policy. The country would now fund covert wars to push back the hidden Soviet threat around the world.

President RONALD REAGAN : The specter of Marxist-Leninist controlled governments with ideological and political loyalties to the Soviet Union proves that there’s a direct challenge to which we must respond. They are the focus of evil in the modern world.

VO: It was a triumph for the neoconservatives. America was now setting out to do battle against the forces of evil in the world. But what had started out as the kind of myth that Leo Strauss had said was necessary for the American people increasingly came to be seen as the truth by the neoconservatives. They began to believe their own fiction. They had become what they called “democratic revolutionaries,” who were going to use force to change the world.

LEDEEN : We were aiming for an expansion of the zone of freedom in the world. And in part that had to do with fighting Communism, and in part that had to do with fighting other kinds of tyrannies. But that’s what we were about, and that’s what we’re still about.

INTERVIEWER (off-camera): When you say you were democratic revolutionaries, what do you mean?

LEDEEN : It meant that we wanted to support the people who wanted to carry out revolutions against tyrannical régimes in the name of democracy, in order to install a democratic system.

INTERVIEWER : As simple as that.

LEDEEN : Yeah. It’s not nuclear physics, you know. I mean, freedom is a fairly simple thing to get.

JAMES ARNESS on Gunsmoke (VO): It’s a chancy job—makes a man watchful and a little lonely. But somebody has to do it.

VO: The neoconservatives now set out to transform the world. In next week’s episode, they find themselves joining forces with the Islamists in Afghanistan, and together they fight an epic battle against the Soviet Union. And both come to believe that they had defeated the Evil Empire. But this imagined victory would leave them without an enemy. And in a world disillusioned with grand political ideas, they would need to invent new fantasies and new nightmares, in order to maintain their power.

[ END CREDITS – MUSIC : “Baby It’s Cold Outside” ]

Transcript provided by: http://www.silt3.com/index.php?id=573

The making of the terror myth

Since September 11 Britain has been warned of the 'inevitability' of catastrophic terrorist attack. But has the danger been exaggerated? A major new TV documentary claims that the perceived threat is a politically driven fantasy - and al-Qaida a dark illusion. Andy Beckett reports

Friday October 15, 2004
The Guardian

Since the attacks on the United States in September 2001, there have been more than a thousand references in British national newspapers, working out at almost one every single day, to the phrase "dirty bomb". There have been articles about how such a device can use ordinary explosives to spread lethal radiation; about how London would be evacuated in the event of such a detonation; about the Home Secretary David Blunkett's statement on terrorism in November 2002 that specifically raised the possibility of a dirty bomb being planted in Britain; and about the arrests of several groups of people, the latest only last month, for allegedly plotting exactly that.
Starting next Wednesday, BBC2 is to broadcast a three-part documentary series that will add further to what could be called the dirty bomb genre. But, as its title suggests, The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear takes a different view of the weapon's potential.

"I don't think it would kill anybody," says Dr Theodore Rockwell, an authority on radiation, in an interview for the series. "You'll have trouble finding a serious report that would claim otherwise." The American department of energy, Rockwell continues, has simulated a dirty bomb explosion, "and they calculated that the most exposed individual would get a fairly high dose [of radiation], not life-threatening." And even this minor threat is open to question. The test assumed that no one fled the explosion for one year.

During the three years in which the "war on terror" has been waged, high-profile challenges to its assumptions have been rare. The sheer number of incidents and warnings connected or attributed to the war has left little room, it seems, for heretical thoughts. In this context, the central theme of The Power of Nightmares is riskily counter-intuitive and provocative. Much of the currently perceived threat from international terrorism, the series argues, "is a fantasy that has been exaggerated and distorted by politicians. It is a dark illusion that has spread unquestioned through governments around the world, the security services, and the international media." The series' explanation for this is even bolder: "In an age when all the grand ideas have lost credibility, fear of a phantom enemy is all the politicians have left to maintain their power."

Adam Curtis, who wrote and produced the series, acknowledges the difficulty of saying such things now. "If a bomb goes off, the fear I have is that everyone will say, 'You're completely wrong,' even if the incident doesn't touch my argument. This shows the way we have all become trapped, the way even I have become trapped by a fear that is completely irrational."

So controversial is the tone of his series, that trailers for it were not broadcast last weekend because of the killing of Kenneth Bigley. At the BBC, Curtis freely admits, there are "anxieties". But there is also enthusiasm for the programmes, in part thanks to his reputation. Over the past dozen years, via similarly ambitious documentary series such as Pandora's Box, The Mayfair Set and The Century of the Self, Curtis has established himself as perhaps the most acclaimed maker of serious television programmes in Britain. His trademarks are long research, the revelatory use of archive footage, telling interviews, and smooth, insistent voiceovers concerned with the unnoticed deeper currents of recent history, narrated by Curtis himself in tones that combine traditional BBC authority with something more modern and sceptical: "I want to try to make people look at things they think they know about in a new way."

The Power of Nightmares seeks to overturn much of what is widely believed about Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida. The latter, it argues, is not an organised international network. It does not have members or a leader. It does not have "sleeper cells". It does not have an overall strategy. In fact, it barely exists at all, except as an idea about cleansing a corrupt world through religious violence.

Curtis' evidence for these assertions is not easily dismissed. He tells the story of Islamism, or the desire to establish Islam as an unbreakable political framework, as half a century of mostly failed, short-lived revolutions and spectacular but politically ineffective terrorism. Curtis points out that al-Qaida did not even have a name until early 2001, when the American government decided to prosecute Bin Laden in his absence and had to use anti-Mafia laws that required the existence of a named criminal organisation.

Curtis also cites the Home Office's own statistics for arrests and convictions of suspected terrorists since September 11 2001. Of the 664 people detained up to the end of last month, only 17 have been found guilty. Of these, the majority were Irish Republicans, Sikh militants or members of other groups with no connection to Islamist terrorism. Nobody has been convicted who is a proven member of al-Qaida.

In fact, Curtis is not alone in wondering about all this. Quietly but increasingly, other observers of the war on terror have been having similar doubts. "The grand concept of the war has not succeeded," says Jonathan Eyal, director of the British military thinktank the Royal United Services Institute. "In purely military terms, it has been an inconclusive war ... a rather haphazard operation. Al-Qaida managed the most spectacular attack, but clearly it is also being sustained by the way that we rather cavalierly stick the name al-Qaida on Iraq, Indonesia, the Philippines. There is a long tradition that if you divert all your resources to a threat, then you exaggerate it."

Bill Durodie, director of the international centre for security analysis at King's College London, says: "The reality [of the al-Qaida threat to the west] has been essentially a one-off. There has been one incident in the developed world since 9/11 [the Madrid bombings]. There's no real evidence that all these groups are connected." Crispin Black, a senior government intelligence analyst until 2002, is more cautious but admits the terrorist threat presented by politicians and the media is "out of date and too one-dimensional. We think there is a bit of a gulf between the terrorists' ambition and their ability to pull it off."

Terrorism, by definition, depends on an element of bluff. Yet ever since terrorists in the modern sense of the term (the word terrorism was actually coined to describe the strategy of a government, the authoritarian French revolutionary regime of the 1790s) began to assassinate politicians and then members of the public during the 19th century, states have habitually overreacted. Adam Roberts, professor of international relations at Oxford, says that governments often believe struggles with terrorists "to be of absolute cosmic significance", and that therefore "anything goes" when it comes to winning. The historian Linda Colley adds: "States and their rulers expect to monopolise violence, and that is why they react so virulently to terrorism."

Britain may also be particularly sensitive to foreign infiltrators, fifth columnists and related menaces. In spite, or perhaps because of, the absence of an actual invasion for many centuries, British history is marked by frequent panics about the arrival of Spanish raiding parties, French revolutionary agitators, anarchists, bolsheviks and Irish terrorists. "These kind of panics rarely happen without some sort of cause," says Colley. "But politicians make the most of them."

They are not the only ones who find opportunities. "Almost no one questions this myth about al-Qaida because so many people have got an interest in keeping it alive," says Curtis. He cites the suspiciously circular relationship between the security services and much of the media since September 2001: the way in which official briefings about terrorism, often unverified or unverifiable by journalists, have become dramatic press stories which - in a jittery media-driven democracy - have prompted further briefings and further stories. Few of these ominous announcements are retracted if they turn out to be baseless: "There is no fact-checking about al-Qaida."

In one sense, of course, Curtis himself is part of the al-Qaida industry. The Power of Nightmares began as an investigation of something else, the rise of modern American conservatism. Curtis was interested in Leo Strauss, a political philosopher at the university of Chicago in the 50s who rejected the liberalism of postwar America as amoral and who thought that the country could be rescued by a revived belief in America's unique role to battle evil in the world. Strauss's certainty and his emphasis on the use of grand myths as a higher form of political propaganda created a group of influential disciples such as Paul Wolfowitz, now the US deputy defence secretary. They came to prominence by talking up the Russian threat during the cold war and have applied a similar strategy in the war on terror.

As Curtis traced the rise of the "Straussians", he came to a conclusion that would form the basis for The Power of Nightmares. Straussian conservatism had a previously unsuspected amount in common with Islamism: from origins in the 50s, to a formative belief that liberalism was the enemy, to an actual period of Islamist-Straussian collaboration against the Soviet Union during the war in Afghanistan in the 80s (both movements have proved adept at finding new foes to keep them going). Although the Islamists and the Straussians have fallen out since then, as the attacks on America in 2001 graphically demonstrated, they are in another way, Curtis concludes, collaborating still: in sustaining the "fantasy" of the war on terror.

Some may find all this difficult to swallow. But Curtis insists,"There is no way that I'm trying to be controversial just for the sake of it." Neither is he trying to be an anti-conservative polemicist like Michael Moore: "[Moore's] purpose is avowedly political. My hope is that you won't be able to tell what my politics are." For all the dizzying ideas and visual jolts and black jokes in his programmes, Curtis describes his intentions in sober, civic-minded terms. "If you go back into history and plod through it, the myth falls away. You see that these aren't terrifying new monsters. It's drawing the poison of the fear."

But whatever the reception of the series, this fear could be around for a while. It took the British government decades to dismantle the draconian laws it passed against French revolutionary infiltrators; the cold war was sustained for almost half a century without Russia invading the west, or even conclusive evidence that it ever intended to. "The archives have been opened," says the cold war historian David Caute, "but they don't bring evidence to bear on this." And the danger from Islamist terrorists, whatever its scale, is concrete. A sceptical observer of the war on terror in the British security services says: "All they need is a big bomb every 18 months to keep this going."

The war on terror already has a hold on western political culture. "After a 300-year debate between freedom of the individual and protection of society, the protection of society seems to be the only priority," says Eyal. Black agrees: "We are probably moving to a point in the UK where national security becomes the electoral question."

Some critics of this situation see our striking susceptibility during the 90s to other anxieties - the millennium bug, MMR, genetically modified food - as a sort of dress rehearsal for the war on terror. The press became accustomed to publishing scare stories and not retracting them; politicians became accustomed to responding to supposed threats rather than questioning them; the public became accustomed to the idea that some sort of apocalypse might be just around the corner. "Insecurity is the key driving concept of our times," says Durodie. "Politicians have packaged themselves as risk managers. There is also a demand from below for protection." The real reason for this insecurity, he argues, is the decay of the 20th century's political belief systems and social structures: people have been left "disconnected" and "fearful".

Yet the notion that "security politics" is the perfect instrument for every ambitious politician from Blunkett to Wolfowitz also has its weaknesses. The fears of the public, in Britain at least, are actually quite erratic: when the opinion pollsters Mori asked people what they felt was the most important political issue, the figure for "defence and foreign affairs" leapt from 2% to 60% after the attacks of September 2001, yet by January 2002 had fallen back almost to its earlier level. And then there are the twin risks that the terrors politicians warn of will either not materialise or will materialise all too brutally, and in both cases the politicians will be blamed. "This is a very rickety platform from which to build up a political career," says Eyal. He sees the war on terror as a hurried improvisation rather than some grand Straussian strategy: "In democracies, in order to galvanize the public for war, you have to make the enemy bigger, uglier and more menacing."

Afterwards, I look at a website for a well-connected American foreign policy lobbying group called the Committee on the Present Danger. The committee features in The Power of Nightmares as a vehicle for alarmist Straussian propaganda during the cold war. After the Soviet collapse, as the website puts it, "The mission of the committee was considered complete." But then the website goes on: "Today radical Islamists threaten the safety of the American people. Like the cold war, securing our freedom is a long-term struggle. The road to victory begins ... "

The Power of Nightmares Part II: The Phantom Victory, BBC2, Transcript

Transcript: VO: In the past, politicians promised to create a better world. They had different ways of achieving this. But their power and authority came from the optimistic visions they offered their people. Those dreams failed. And today, people have lost faith in ideologies. Increasingly, politicians are seen simply as managers of public life. But now, they have discovered a new role that restores their power and authority. Instead of delivering dreams, politicians now promise to protect us from nightmares. They say that they will rescue us from dreadful dangers that we cannot see and do not understand. And the greatest danger of all is international terrorism. A powerful and sinister network, with sleeper cells in countries across the world. A threat that needs to be fought by a war on terror. But much of this threat is a fantasy, which has been exaggerated and distorted by politicians. It’s a dark illusion that has spread unquestioned through governments around the world, the security services, and the international media.

VO: This is a series of films about how and why that fantasy was created, and who it benefits. At the heart of the story are two groups: the American neoconservatives, and the radical Islamists. In this week’s episode, the two groups come together to fight the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. And both believe that they defeat the Evil Empire, and so had the power to transform the world.

[ SUBTITLE OVER CROWD SCENE : We will fight for an Islamic State, we will die for it! ]

VO: But both failed in their revolutions. In response, the neoconservatives invent a new fantasy enemy, Bill Clinton, to try and regain their power; while the Islamists descend into a desperate cycle of violence and terror to try and persuade the people to follow them. Out of all this come the seeds of the strange world of fantasy, deception, violence, and fear in which we now live.

[ OPENING TITLES : THE POWER OF NIGHTMARES / THE RISE OF THE POLITICS OF FEAR

Part Two: THE PHANTOM VICTORY ]

AFGHAN BOY (holding a gun and making gun noises): Ka-choo! Daga daga daga daga! Pum pum pum! (etc.)

VO: In 1982, Ronald Reagan dedicated the Space Shuttle Columbia to the resistance fighters in Afghanistan.

President RONALD REAGAN : Just as the Columbia, we think, represents man’s finest aspirations in the field of science and technology, so too does the struggle of the Afghan people represent man’s highest aspirations for freedom. I am dedicating, on behalf of the American people, the March 22nd launch of the Columbia to the people of Afghanistan.

VO: Since 1979, the mujaheddin resistance had been fighting a vicious war in Afghanistan against the Soviet invasion. But now, a small group in the Reagan White House saw in these fighters a way of achieving their vision of transforming the world. To them, they were not just nationalists; they were freedom fighters, who could bring down the Soviet Union and help spread democracy around the world. It was called the Reagan Doctrine.

JACK WHEELER , Adviser to the Reagan White House, 1981-1984: It was a small group of people and—yes, we did have. Everyone thinks, “oh, the Reagan Doctrine, the Reagan Administration,” like everybody was for. No. It was a small little cabal within the Soviet—within the Reagan White House, that really pulled this off. What united this small group of ours was the vision of bringing more freedom to the world, more security to the world, to actually get rid of the Soviet Union itself. As a result, supporting the freedom fighters became the premier cause for the entire conservative movement during the Reagan years.

VO: But the Americans were setting out to defeat a mythological enemy. As last week’s episode showed, the neoconservatives, who were now in power in Reagan’s White House, had created an exaggerated and distorted vision of the Soviet Union as the source of all evil in the world. One of their main influences were the theories of the philosopher Leo Strauss. He believed that liberal societies needed simple, powerful myths to inspire and unite the people. And in the 1970s, the neoconservatives had done just this. Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, and other neoconservatives had set out to reassert the myth of America as a unique country, whose destiny was to struggle against evil throughout the world. Now in power, they had come to believe this myth. They saw themselves as revolutionaries who were going to transform the world, starting with the defeat of the Evil Empire.

RICHARD PERLE , Assistant Secretary of Defense 1981-1987: We’re closer to being revolutionaries than conservatives, in the sense that we want to change some deeply entrenched notions about the proper role of American power in the world. We want to see that power used constructively, and to enlarge the opportunity for decent governance around the world. We’re not happy about the old, cozy relationships with dictators.

VO: And the man who was going to help the neoconservatives do this was the new head of the CIA, William Casey. He was convinced that Afghanistan was one of the keys to this aggressive new policy. America was already sending limited amounts of aid to the mujaheddin. But now, Casey ordered one of his agents to go and form an alliance with the freedom fighters, and give them as much money as they wanted and the most sophisticated weapons to defeat the Soviet military forces.

MILTON BEARDEN , CIA Field Officer, Afghanistan, 1985-89: For Casey, Afghanistan seemed to be possibly one of the keys. So he tapped me one day to go. He says, “I want you to go out to Afghanistan, I want you to go next month, and I will give you whatever you need to win.” Yeah. He said, “I want you go to there and win.” As opposed to, “let’s go there and bleed these guys,” make a [unintelligible] Vietnam, “I want you to go there and win. Whatever you need, you can have.” He gave me the Stinger missiles and a billion dollars.

[ SUBTITLE OVER AFGHAN WAR SCENE : God is great!]

VO : American money and weapons now began to pour across the Pakistan border into Afghanistan. CIA agents trained the mujaheddin in the techniques of assassination and terror, including car bombing. And they gave them satellite images of Russian troops to help in their attacks.

[ SUBTITLE OVER AFGHAN WAR SCENE : Move your fat arse and shoot the f…ing rocket!]

VO: At the very same time, another group began to arrive in Afghanistan to fight alongside the mujaheddin. They were Arabs from across the Middle East, who had been told by their religious leaders that their duty was to go and free Muslim lands from the Soviet invader.

ABDULLAH ANAS , General Commander Afghan Arabs, Northern Afghanistan, 1984-1989: I saw the fatwa, the order saying that every Muslim has a duty to help the Afghans to liberate their land. But I had no idea, where is this Afghanistan? How can I go there? I’ve never heard about Afghanistan, and I’ve never heard—in the map. Which airline goes there? From where can I take the visa? It—100 questions! But I did meet Abdullah Azzam.

VO: Abdullah Azzam was a charismatic religious leader who had begun to organize the Arab volunteers in Afghanistan. He had set up what he called the Services Bureau, in Peshawar on the Afghan border. It became the headquarters of an international brigade of Arab fighters. Azzam quickly became one of the most powerful figures in the battle against the Soviets. He was allowed to visit America on many occasions, both to raise funds and recruit volunteers for the jihad.

Dr. AZZAM TAMIMI , Institute of Islamic Political Thought: When, Abdullah Azzam became so instrumental in marketing the Afghan cause among the Arabs, he became very important. He became called “the emir of the Arab mujaheddin.” The leader of the Arab mujaheddin. And he set up an office in Peshawar which provided services to Arabs who came and wanted to participate in the jihad. There were no doors closed, so all doors were opened, because the Americans, the Saudis, the Pakistanis, and many other people wanted the Soviet Union to lose in Afghanistan, and to be humiliated. That brought about huge numbers of Arabs from different backgrounds in the jihad in Afghanistan. He went to America, he went to Saudi Arabia, he traveled wherever he wanted, because the Afghan cause was a cause that everybody was happy supporting.

VO: But like the neoconservatives, Azzam also saw the struggle against the Soviets as just the first step in a much wider revolution. He was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, who wanted Islam to play a political role in governing Muslim societies. And Abdullah Azzam believed that the Arabs in Afghanistan could be the nucleus of a new political force. They would return to their own countries and persuade the people to reject the corrupt, autocratic r�gimes that dominated the Middle East. But these r�gimes, Azzam insisted, must be overthrown by political means. He made every fighter pledge they would not use terrorism against civilians in the pursuit of their vision. One of Azzam’s closest aides was a Saudi, Osama bin-Laden.

ANAS : Osama came to participate in ‘85. When he was—when he came, as you know, he is, he came from a rich family from Saudi, and he had much, much money to spend. Sheikh Abdullah Azzam was a scholar, he can organize the Afghans, but he is not a rich man. So when Osama came, he filled in this gap. So the main duty of Osama at that time was spending money. Beside his good personal qualities.

VO: But then, in 1985, a new force began to arrive in Afghanistan, who were going to challenge Azzam’s approach. They were the extreme radical Islamists, who were being expelled from prisons across the Arab world.

BEARDEN : And then, very quietly, most of the governments in the Middle East, the Arab governments, began to empty their prisons of their bad guys and send them off to the jihad with the very fondest hope that they would become martyred. Many of them were the people in Egypt that had not been executed after the murder of Sadat, but were implicated in it and had been in prison. Off they go.

VO: One of the most powerful of these newcomers was Ayman Zawahiri. He was the leader of a radical faction from Egypt called Islamic Jihad. And he was convinced that they, not the moderates, were the true Islamists.

AYMAN ZAWAHIRI , in cage: We are here! We are here! The real Islamic front! We are here! The real Islamic front and the real Islamic opposition against Zionist. We are here! The real Islamic front against Zionism, Communism, and imperialism.

VO: Ayman Zawahiri was a follower of the Egyptian revolutionary Sayyed Qutb, who had been executed in 1966. As last week’s program showed, Qutb believed that the liberal ideas of Western societies corrupted the minds of Muslims, because they unleashed the most selfish aspects of human nature. Zawahiri had interpreted Qutb’s theories to mean that this corruption included the Western system of democracy. Democracy, Zawahiri believed, encouraged politicians to set themselves up as the source of all authority, and by doing this, they were rejecting the higher authority of the Koran. This meant they were no longer true Muslims, and so they, and those who supported them, could legitimately be killed. The terror this created, he said, would shock the masses into seeing the truth behind the corrupt fa�ade of democracy.

ANAS : When the Egyptians, the jihadi group, came from Egypt with their own explanation, with their own ideas, that anybody participating in any parliament, or any political party, or going to elect, or call people for the election, and sort of these activities, is totally rejecting the Koran. So when you say that, it means when a Muslim is rejecting the Koran, simply must be killed. And should be killed, must be killed! And that’s what happened.

VO: Zawahiri and his small group settled in Peshawar. They began to spread this new idea among the foreign fighters, radicalizing the Islamist movement. It was not only a direct challenge to the moderate ideas of Abdullah Azzam, but it also involved a militant rejection of all American influence over the jihad, because America was the source of this corruption.

BEARDEN : The only times that I ever ran into any real trouble in Afghanistan was when I ran into these guys. You know, there’d be kind of a moment or two, where it looked a little bit like the bar scene in Star Wars, each group kind of jockeying around, and finally somebody has to sort of defuse the situation.

[ TITLE : MOSCOW 1987 ]

NEWS ANNOUNCER (speaking in Russian, subtitled): The indicator lights aren’t on. Please adjust them. (pause) Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev has issued a decree…

VO: Then, in 1987, the new Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev decided he was going to withdraw Russian troops from Afghanistan. Gorbachev was convinced that the whole Soviet system was facing collapse. He was determined to try and save it through political reform, and this meant reversing the policies of his predecessors, including the occupation of Afghanistan.

MIKHAIL GORBACHEV , General Secretary, Soviet Communist Party (speaking in Russian, via interpreter) : The state of the Soviet Union and its society could be described very simply with a phrase used by people across the country: “We can’t go on living like this any longer.” And that applied to everything. The economy was stagnating. There were shortages. And the quality of goods was very poor. We had to finish this war, but in such a way that the Russian people would understand why tens of thousands had died. We couldn’t just run away from there in shame, no. We needed to find a process.

VO: Gorbachev asked the Americans to help him negotiate a peace that would create a stable government in Afghanistan. But the hard-liners in Washington refused point-blank. They would continue to help the mujaheddin until the last Russians left, without any negotiation. The future of Afghanistan would then be decided, they said, by the freedom fighters.

VLADIMIR POZNER , Soviet Spokesman in the United States, 1987: I think that basically, we’ve asked the United States to help us get out, if you’re really interested in stopping the bloodshed.

MODERATOR : But can you get out and leave a government in Afghanistan that supports, that is a friend of the Soviet Union?

POZNER : I believe that we can get out, provided that no more aid is given to what people here call freedom fighters, and we call counterrevolutionaries. I believe that’s possible, provided that the United States is also interested in the same.

RICHARD PERLE , Assistant Secretary of Defense 1981-1987 : Well, it’s not very complicated. They arrived in a matter of days, on Christmas Eve in 1979; they could be home by Christmas Eve, if they decided to leave Afghanistan and let the Afghans decide their own future. If you leave, the problem of support to the mujaheddin solves itself.

VO: Gorbachev was shocked by the intransigence of the U.S. Administration. He sent a private message through the KGB, warning the Americans that if they allowed the mujaheddin to take control in Afghanistan, it would not produce democracy. Instead, he predicted, the most extreme forms of Islamism would rise up and triumph. But Gorbachev’s warning was ignored. As Soviet troops left Afghanistan, both the Americans and the Islamists came to believe that they had not only won the battle for Afghanistan, they had also begun the downfall of the entire Evil Empire.

BEARDEN : I felt we won, because I was part of it; I’m sure that the Afghan Arabs thought “we won,” and then all summer long, the East Germans begin to gather—a hundred here, a thousand there, tens of thousands—until November 9th, when the wall was opened. And that’s it. Start the clock running on the Soviet Union. And it was over. So the Soviet Union was all crapped up and broken. And that was done.

VO: For the neoconservatives, the collapse of the Soviet Union was a triumph. And out of that triumph was going to come the central myth that still inspires them today: that through the aggressive use of American power, they could transform the world and spread democracy. But in reality, their victory was an illusion. They had conquered a phantom enemy, an exaggerated and distorted fantasy they had created in their own minds. The real reason the Soviet Union collapsed was because it was a decrepit system, decaying from within.

MELVIN GOODMAN , Head of Office of Soviet Affairs CIA, 1976-1987: I think probably one of the greatest myths in America, in the political discourse now, right now, is that actions of the American government were responsible for the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union collapsed like a house of cards because it was a house of cards. It rotted away from within. The economy was rotten, the political process was rotten, they had developed a central government that was no longer believed by people outside of Moscow, there was total cynicism throughout the Soviet system of governance, there was no real civil society. But the Reagan Administration and their—the minions of the Reagan Administration, will tell you that Afghanistan led to the collapse of the Soviet Union itself—the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the collapse of the East European empire. We were saying that this was entirely fanciful. And the United States missed all of this, because they believed their own myths and their own fanciful notions. They had become their own victims of their own lies.

VO: And for the Islamists too, a great myth was born out of the struggle in Afghanistan—that it was they who had conquered the Soviet Union.

[ SUBTITLES OVER MUJAHEDDIN GATHERING : God is great! Death to Gorbachev! Long live Afghanistan!]

VO: The Islamists believed that this great victory would start a revolution that would sweep across the Arab world and topple the corrupt leaders. But as with the neoconservatives, this dream was built on an illusion.

GILLES KEPEL , Historian of the Islamist Movement: The Islamists were convinced that they were the key instrument in the demise of the Soviet Army in Afghanistan. They just would not like to remember that without U.S. military help and training, they couldn’t have done anything. And also the Afghans were the ones who ousted the Soviets, not the Arab jihadis, who didn’t really fight, who were trained, but they were not the fighters. But the myth has it that they were the ones who won. I mean, this was a jihad that had triumphed. This was something very powerful that was a mobilizing force for Islamists worldwide.

VO: But there was a deep rift within the Islamist fighters based in Peshawar—between the moderates, led by Abdullah Azzam, who believed this revolution could be accomplished politically; and the extremists, like Ayman Zawahiri, who saw violent revolution as the only way. And Zawahiri now set out to extend his influence over the movement, and to undermine Abdullah Azzam. To do this, he seduced Osama bin-Laden—and his money—away from Azzam. He promised bin-Laden that he could become the emir, the leader of Zawahiri’s small extremist group, Islamic Jihad.

ANAS : Ayman Zawahiri and another group of Egyptians, they refused to pray behind Abdullah Azzam in Peshawar. They used to create rumors in Peshawar against Abdullah Azzam. That’s why we became angry about Osama, why he became—he closed these people to him. They accepted him as an emir, and he accepted them as a group. Finally, I don’t know who did use the other.

INTERVIEWER (off-camera): What do you think?

ANAS : I think the other used him.

INTERVIEWER : Because he had the money.

ANAS : Yes.

VO: Then, at the end of 1989, Abdullah Azzam was assassinated by a huge car bomb in Peshawar. It is still unknown who carried out the assassination. But despite his death, it seemed as if Azzam’s vision of a political revolution might prevail. In the early ‘90s, in countries across the Arab world, Islamist parties began to gather mass support.

[ SUBTITLE OVER POLITICAL RALLY : Islamic State! ]

VO: In Algeria, the Islamic Salvation Front won overwhelming victories in local elections, and looked certain to win the coming general election. And at the same time in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood began to win mass support, and a growing number of seats in Parliament. Both parties were riding to power on an idealistic vision. They would use Islam in a political way to create a new type of model society through peaceful means.

SAIF AL BANNA , Senior member, Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt (speaking in Arabic, subtitled): We can change people through education and religious conviction. We want to build a popular base. This is the right way. We do not want a military coup; we do not want violence; we want our rights. If people believe in us, the government must comply with the people’s wishes.

VO: But the governments in both Egypt and Algeria faced a terrible dilemma. At the heart of the Islamist vision was the idea that the Koran should be used as the political framework for the society. An absolute set of laws, beyond debate, that all politicians had to follow. The implication of this was that political parties would be irrelevant, because there could be no disagreement. The people were about to vote in parties that might use that power to end democracy.

ALI HAROUN , Algerian Minister for Human Rights (1991-1992) (speaking in French, subtitled): But what a dilemma! Do you find a way of stopping the electoral process and cancelling the second round? Or do you let power go to a party which claims: “One man, one vote, but only once! We won’t have any elections after this, because democracy is non-religious. Once we’re in power, we’ll stay there forever, because we alone are the keepers of religious truth, and we alone shall apply the Koran.”

VO: Faced by this dilemma, in Algeria the army decided to step in, and in June 1991 they staged a coup d’�tat and immediately canceled the elections. Mass protests by the Islamists were repressed violently, and their leaders arrested. At the same time, in Egypt, the government also clamped down. They arrested hundreds of Muslim Brotherhood members, and banned the organization from any political activity.

ESSAM EL ERIAN , Senior member of the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt: What happened is a wave of arresting Muslim brothers, a wave of military courts for Muslim brothers, going to kill some of Muslim brothers under torture. They stopped all the free elections in all of their society and institutions. And this wave, in this manner, you open the doors of hell for the violent groups who were hidden underground—and stopped the moderates, open the door for the violence.

VO: For Ayman Zawahiri, this was a dramatic confirmation of his belief that the Western system of democracy was a corrupt sham. Groups of radical Islamists who had developed his theories into even more extreme forms now set out to create violent revolutions in Algeria and Egypt. It would be the start of a jihad that would liberate the Muslim world from corruption.

OSAMA BIN-LADEN (speaking in Arabic, subtitled): The only way to eradicate the humiliation and Kufr that has overcome the land of Islam is Jihad, bullets, and martyrdom operations.

KEPEL : Bin-Laden and the others started, from now on, to wage their own jihad, i.e. not to compromise, not to try to compromise with more moderate groups, but thinking that an armed vanguard would be able to implement the seizing of power. They were convinced that they could duplicate the Afghan victory, quote-unquote victory, that they could establish an Islamist state in Algeria, in Egypt, and the like. They thought that would capture the hearts and minds of of the Muslim masses, that people realize that the strength and victory were on the side of the jihadis.

[ TITLE : AMERICA 1991 ]

VO: At this same time, in Washington, the other group who believed that they had brought down the Soviet Union—the neoconservatives—were also determined to push on with their revolutionary agenda. They were convinced that the Soviet Union was just one of many evil r�gimes in the world led by tyrants that threatened America. R�gimes they had to conquer to liberate the world and spread democracy.

MICHAEL LEDEEN , Neoconservative theorist: We want, you know, down with tyranny. We want free countries. We think that America is better off if we live in a world primarily populated with free countries, who have to appeal to their own people for the source of their power, and to ratify their decisions. And we think that if the whole world were like that, then we would be much more secure, and that typically we were attacked by tyrants. I think it’s America’s destiny, because I think that America’s always going to come under attack from tyrants. So I think that our only choice is whether we’re going to win or lose, and when we will fight, and under what circumstances, but that we’re gonna have to fight. That’s automatic, because they’re gonna come after us.

VO: One of the most evil of these tyrants, the neoconservatives decided, was Saddam Hussein. In the 1980s, Saddam had been America’s close ally. But in 1990, he invaded Kuwait. The neoconservatives now saw him as a key to pursuing the next stage of their transformation of the world. An American-led coalition had been created by President Bush senior, to liberate Kuwait. But the neoconservatives, like Paul Wolfowitz, who was Undersecretary of Defense, wanted to push on to Baghdad, and bring about a transformation of the Middle East. It would fulfill America’s unique role to defeat evil in the world.

Professor STEPHEN HOLMES , Political Philosopher: You see already, in 1991, the hopes of Wolfowitz and others, that the battle against Saddam Hussein, or other petty tyrants, could take the place of the battle against the Soviet Union, and could bear this interpretation of a battle between good and evil. So, what you’re seeing is the attempt to keep alive the idea that America is engaged in a battle of pure good against pure evil, and to preserve that framework for a world after the end of the Soviet Union.

VO: But President Reagan was no longer in charge. The neoconservatives now had a leader who did not share their vision.

President GEORGE HW BUSH : Kuwait is liberated. Iraq’s army is defeated. Our military objectives are met. And I am pleased to announce that all United States and Coalition forces will suspend combat operations.

VO: Once Kuwait was freed, Bush ordered the fighting to stop. His view was that America’s role was to create stability in the world, not to try and change it. Like Henry Kissinger, who had been the enemy of the neoconservatives in the 1970s, Bush saw questions of good and evil as irrelevant. The higher aim was to achieve a stable balance of power in the Middle East.

BRENT SCOWCROFT , National Security Adviser to President George Bush Snr., Interviewed in 1996: Saddam Hussein is not a threat to his neighbors. He’s a nuisance; he’s an annoyance; but he’s not a threat. That we achieved. It was never our objective to get Saddam Hussein. Indeed, had we tried, we still might be occupying Baghdad. That would have turned a great success into a very messy probably defeat.

VO: In private, the neoconservatives like Paul Wolfowitz were furious. Not just because Saddam Hussein had been left in power, but because they saw this as a clear expression of the corrupt liberal values that dominated America—a moral relativism that was prepared to compromise with the forces of evil in the world.

HOLMES : Wolfowitz’ anger is fundamentally an anger against the weakness of American liberalism: the compromising nature of a man like George Bush senior. His willingness to make concessions, to negotiate, not to drive to the bitter end. And his anger is motivated, interestingly, less by hatred of Saddam Hussein, than by hatred of American liberals, who are a source of weakness, and a source of rot, and a source of relativism, that had been corroding American society for decades.

VO: Faced by this defeat, the neoconservative movement now turned inwards, to try and defeat the forces of liberalism that were holding it back. And to do this, they turned again to the theories of Leo Strauss. Strauss believed that good politicians should reassert the absolute moral values that would unite society, and this would overcome the moral relativism that liberalism created. One of the most influential Straussians was the new assistant to the Vice-President, William Kristol.

WILLIAM KRISTOL , Chief of Staff to the Vice President, 1988-92: For Strauss, liberalism produced a decent way of life, and one that he thought was worth defending, but a dead end where nothing could be said to be true; one had no guidance on how to live, everything was relative. Strauss suggests that maybe we didn’t just have to sit there and accept that that was our fate. Politics could help shape the way people live, that politics could help shape the way that people live, teach them some good lessons about living decent and noble human lives. And can we think about what cultures, and what politics, what social orders produce more admirable human beings? I mean, that whole question was put back on the table by Strauss, I think.

VO: The neoconservatives set out to reform America. And at the heart of their project was the political use of religion. Together with their long-term allies, the religious right, they began a campaign to bring moral and religious issues back into the center of conservative politics. It became known as the “culture wars.”

[ TITLE : Christian Coalition commercial ]

VO (on commercial) : Your tax dollars are being used to sponsor obscene and pornographic displays.

PAT ROBERTSON : I don’t like Jesus Christ, who is my Lord and Savior, being dumped in a vat of urine by a homosexual, and then have my money to pay for it! I think that’s obscene.

ROBERTSON : Satan, be gone! Out from this [unintelligible]! C’mon!

VO: For the religious right, this campaign was a genuine attempt to renew the religious basis of American society. But for the neoconservatives, religion was a myth, like the myth of America as a unique nation that they had promoted in the Cold War. Strauss had taught that these myths were necessary to give ordinary people meaning and purpose, and so ensure a stable society.

TV COMMERCIAL MOM : Do you ever worry that they’re playing too much Nintendo?

MOM 2 : Oh, not anymore. See, Matt has Bible Adventures. They’re actually learning Bible stories while they’re playing Nintendo.

MICHAEL LIND , Journalist and former neoconservative: For the neoconservatives, religion is an instrument of promoting morality. Religion becomes what Plato called a “noble lie.” It is a myth which is told to the majority of the society by the philosophical �lite in order to ensure social order.

ANNOUNCER ON CHRISTIAN FITNESS COMMERCIAL : What better way to enjoy God’s creation than a Praise Walk?

[ TITLE : INTEGRITY MUSIC FITNESS ]

LIND : In being a kind of secretive �litist approach, Straussianism does resemble Marxism. These ex-Marxists, or in some cases ex-liberal Straussians, could see themselves as a kind of Leninist group, you know, who have this covert vision which they want to use to effect change in history, while concealing parts of it from people incapable of understanding it.

VO: Out of this campaign, a new and powerful moral agenda began to take over the Republican Party. It reached a dramatic climax at the Republican Convention in 1992, when the religious right seized control of the party’s policy-making machinery. George Bush became committed to running for President with policies that would ban abortion, gay rights, and multiculturalism. Speakers who tried to promote the traditional conservative values of individual freedom were booed off the stage.

WILLIAM WELD , Republican Governor of Massachusetts : I happen to think that individual freedom should extend to a woman’s right to choose.

CONVENTION DELEGATES : (whistles and boos)

WELD : I want the government out of your pocketbook and your bedroom!

VO: For the neoconservatives, the aim of this new morality was to unite the nation. But in fact, it had completely the opposite effect. Mainstream Republican voters were frightened away by the harsh moralism that had taken over their party. They turned instead to Bill Clinton, a politician who connected with their real concerns and needs, like tax and the state of the economy.

DIANE BLAIR , Clinton Campaign : In the week after the Republican Convention, Republican moderates, young people, and particularly women saying, “I’ve been sort of torn between the two parties, but where do I sign up to help Clinton get elected? I am frightened by this ultraconservative agenda that I hear coming out of Houston.”

BOB MATERA : I’ve been a lifelong Republican. I’m a registered Republican. I am voting for Bill Clinton this time. Enough is enough. It is time for a change.

VO: At the end of 1992, Bill Clinton won a dramatic victory. But the neoconservatives were determined to regain power. And to do this, they were going to do to Bill Clinton what they had done to the Soviet Union: they would transform the President of the United States into a fantasy enemy, an image of evil that would make people realize the truth of the liberal corruption of America.

[ TITLE : ALGERIA 1992 / June 1992 ]

UNIDENTIFIED POLITICIAN (speaking in Arabic, subtitled): We realize that other nations have surpassed us. In what? In knowledge. And Islam—

[ GUNSHOTS , CHAOS ]

VO: In the early ‘90s, Algeria, Egypt, and other Arab countries were being torn apart by a horrific wave of Islamist terror. The jihadists who had returned from Afghanistan were trying to topple the r�gimes. At the heart of their strategy was the idea that Ayman Zawahiri and others had taught them: that those who were involved in politics could legitimately be killed, because they had become corrupted and thus were no longer Muslims. This violence, they believed, would shock people into rising up, and the corrupt r�gimes would then be overthrown.

ABDULLAH ANAS , Member of the Political Council, Islamic Salvation Front, Algeria 1993: “They must die!” Not only “must die,” they DID kill. They did kill people. Not just any—it’s not just an idea from far, it became true. People were killed.

[ TITLE : 4th June 1993 ]

ANAS : Many many rulers; many many holy men; many many scholars; many many politicians in Islamic world have been killed because of these ideas. Why? Because simply they are against the Koran. They rejected the Koran. Why they rejected the Koran? Because they did elect.

VO: Ayman Zawahiri was now based with bin-Laden on this farm in the Sudan. He used it as a base for his group, Islamic Jihad, to launch attacks on politicians in Egypt. But as one of the leading ideologues of the revolution, he also traveled throughout the Arab world, advising other groups on their strategy. But the revolutionaries soon found that the masses did not rise up and follow them. The r�gimes stayed in power, and the radical Islamists were hunted down. Faced by this, the Islamists widened their terror. Their logic was brutal: it was not just those who were involved with politics who should be killed, but the ordinary people who supported it. Their refusal to rise up showed that they, too, had become corrupted, and so had condemned themselves to death.

Dr. AZZAM TAMIMI , Institute of Islamic Political Thought: There was definitely a logic. The logic is that you assault the leaders, you assault those who are associated with them, and eventually you assault the people who have consented to the presence of such a despotic leader, even if they are passively supportive through their silence. And then you start attacking economic institutions, you start attacking the tourists, because the tourists bring money to the country, and that money goes into the pockets of the corrupt �lite. So, it is an endless process.

VO: In Algeria, this logic went completely out of control. The Islamist revolutionary groups killed thousands of civilians, because they believed that all these people had become corrupted.

MAN (speaking in Arabic, subtitled): All these innocents, what did they ever do? Legs blown off! Such horror! Even the French extremists never did things like this. Why? What have we done? What have our children done? Leave me alone! I want to die!

VO: In turn, the generals running Algeria infiltrated the revolutionary groups. They told their agents to persuade the Islamists to push the logic even further, to kill even more people. This would create such horror that the groups would lose any remaining support, and the generals could use the fear and revulsion to increase their grip on power.

ANAS : The generals infiltrated the jihad ideas, the jihad groups, to put the society under fear. By creating terror and violence, [unintelligible] everything in the society, no politic, no economy, no everything, just to stay and saying to the West, “we are facing terror.”

INTERVIEWER (off-camera): Using fear.

ANAS : Using fear to stay on the power.

MAN WITH GUN (speaking in French, subtitled): Today they kill, they kill everybody: innocent people, children, old people. They have even cut up their victims. Who will trust them if tomorrow they take power?

DEMONSTRATORS (shouting in French, subtitled): Down with fundamentalism! Down with fundamentalism!

VO: By 1997, the Islamist revolution was failing. There were mass demonstrations against the Islamist groups by thousands of people horrified by the violence. And then, in June of that year, a group of Egyptian Islamists attacked Western tourists at the ruins of Luxor. 58 were killed in three hours of random violence. The massacre shocked the Egyptian people, and the leaders of the revolutionary groups agreed to call a cease-fire. In Algeria, a few groups held out. But they began to tear each other apart, as they followed the logic that had driven their revolution to its ultimate—and logical—end: they started to kill each other.

TAMIMI : It led to their own destruction. A group that believes in 100% pure Muslim will not see that purity in anybody else but themselves. So whoever disagrees with them becomes the enemy, becomes out of the House of Islam, and then if they happen to disagree with each other themselves, then they will start liquidating each other. And they keep fighting each other; there will be infighting. Eventually it ends in suicide.

VO: The main Islamist group in Algeria, the GIA, ended up being led by a Mr. Zouabri, a chicken farmer, who killed everyone who disagreed with him. He issued a final communiqu�, declaring that the whole of Algerian society should be killed, with the exception of his tiny remaining band of Islamists. They were the only ones who understood the truth.

[ TITLE : AMERICA 1996 ]

VO: By the mid-’90s, politics in Washington was dominated by one issue: the moral character of the President of the United States.

WOMAN IN TV COMMERCIAL : If you believe you’ve been a victim of sexual harassment by the President, we want to help.

VO: Behind this were an extraordinary barrage of allegations against Clinton that were obsessing the media. These included stories of sexual harassment; stories that Clinton and his wife were involved in Whitewater, a corrupt property deal; stories that they had murdered their close friend Vince Foster; and stories that Clinton was involved in smuggling drugs from a small airstrip in Arkansas. But none of these stories were true. All of them had been orchestrated by a young group of neoconservatives, who were determined to destroy Clinton. The campaign was centered on a small right-wing magazine called the American Spectator, which had set up what was called the “Arkansas Project” to investigate Clinton’s past life. The journalist at the center of this project was called David Brock.

CROSSFIRE ANNOUNCER : Tonight, the Arkansas allegations. In the crossfire: David Brock, of the American Spectator magazine.

DAVID BROCK : She was dressed in a raincoat and a hat, and came in at 5:15 in the morning, and had a liaison with Clinton in the game room in the bottom floor of the Governor’s mansion.

CROSSFIRE HOST : David, this is getting a little bizarre. Next thing, we’re gonna see… Jane Fonda’s gonna…

BROCK : It’s bizarre! But hey, Bill Clinton is a bizarre guy.

HOST : Wait a sec.

VO: Since then, Brock has turned against the neoconservative movement. He now believes that the attacks on Clinton went too far, and corrupted conservative politics.

INTERVIEWER (off-camera): Was Whitewater true?

BROCK : No! I mean, there was no criminal wrongdoing in Whitewater. Absolutely not. It was a land deal that the Clintons lost money on. It was a complete inversion of what happened.

INTERVIEWER : Was Vince Foster killed?

BROCK : No. He killed himself.

INTERVIEWER : Did the Clintons smuggle drugs?

BROCK : Absolutely not.

INTERVIEWER : Did those promoting these stories know that this was not true, that none of these stories were true?

BROCK : They did not care.

INTERVIEWER : Why not?

BROCK : Because they were having a devastating effect. So why stop? It was terrorism. Political terrorism.

INTERVIEWER : But you were one of the agents.

BROCK : Absolutely. Absolutely.

VO: The stories began to grip America, and despite Clinton’s denials, the Republicans in Congress seized on the scandals and began to press for investigations into this immorality at the heart of government.

President BILL CLINTON : Basically, the press has editorialized and pressured the politicians into saying, “Here’s a guy that as far as we know hasn’t done anything wrong, nobody’s accused him of doing anything wrong, there’s no evidence that he’s done anything wrong, but we think the presumption of guilt almost should be on him. You should somehow prove his innocence.”

VO: Out of this pressure, Clinton was forced to agree to an independent investigation into Whitewater. It was headed by a senior judge in Washington called Kenneth Starr. But what was not widely known was that Starr was a member of a right-wing group of lawyers called the Federalist Society, that had financial and ideological links to the neoconservatives. And like the neoconservatives, they saw Clinton as a danger to the country, and they were determined to prove this to the American people.

Judge ROBERT BORK , Senior member, Federalist Society: In the Merck manual—Merck is a pharmaceutical company—they have a manual listing various disorders, and they listed “sociopath.” And if you look at “sociopath,” it describes Clinton exactly. Somebody who’s charming, who has no particular feeling at all for the people he’s charming, unable to resist instant gratification, and so on and so on. Goes right down the list. We had a very dysfunctional man in the Presidency. That was very dangerous, both as a model and as, if a crisis had arisen, I had no confidence that he would meet it.

VO: But despite all his efforts, Kenneth Starr could find no incriminating evidence in Whitewater. Nor could he find any evidence to support any of the sexual scandals that had come from the Arkansas Project. Until finally, his committee stumbled upon Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky, which Clinton denied. And in that lie, the neoconservative movement believed they had found what they had been looking for: a way to make the American people see the truth about the liberal corruption of their country. A campaign now began to impeach the President. And in the hysteria, the whole conservative movement portrayed Clinton as a depraved monster who had to be removed from office. But yet again, the neoconservatives had created a fantasy enemy by exaggerating and distorting reality.

JOE CONASON , Author ‘The Hunting of the President’ : They were trapped by a mythological person that they had constructed, or persons—the Clintons, these scheming, terrible people who they, the noble pursuers, were going to vanquish. I think, in the leadership of conservatism, during the Clinton era there was an element of corruption. There was an element of a willingness to do anything to achieve the goal of bringing Clinton down. There was a way in which the people who perceived Clinton as immoral behaved immorally themselves. They ended up behaving worse than the people who they were attacking.

VO: But all the moral fury, and the deception, came to nothing. The impeachment failed because the polls consistently showed that Americans still did not care about these moral issues. One leading neoconservative, William Bennett, wrote a book called The Death of Outrage, which blamed the people. He accused the public of making a deal with the devil. Their failure, he said, to support the impeachment, was evidence of their moral corruption.

[ TITLE : AFGHANISTAN 1997 ]

VO: By 1997, bin-Laden and Ayman Zawahiri had returned to Afghanistan, where they had first met ten years before. Back then, it had seemed as if Islamism might succeed as a popular revolutionary movement. But now, they were facing failure. All attempts to topple r�gimes in the Arab world had not succeeded. The people had turned against them because of the horrific violence, and Afghanistan was the only place they had left to go.

GILLES KEPEL , Historian of the Islamist Movement: Well, 1997 was their failure. Egypt, Algeria; it worked nowhere. It went wrong because populations would not back them. Because even people who were sympathetic to them in the beginning were frightened away by their violence, by their incapacity to communicate and to have access to the people, and this was very clear in Zawahiri’s book Knights under the Prophet’s Banner, where he sort of goes back from this experiment, and laments over their incapacity to raise the consciousness of the masses, and feels that, you know, as a vanguard they did not manage to communicate. They remained isolated, and this is why they failed. And this is when they started this new strategy.

VO: In May, 1998, bin-Laden and Zawahiri invited a group of journalists to this press conference, where they announced a new jihad. Zawahiri was convinced that it was not their theories that were to blame for the failure; it was the fault of the Muslim masses. Their minds had been corrupted by the liberal ideas from the West. But rather than give up, they believed that the solution was to attack the source of the corruption directly. The new jihad would be against America itself.

MAN (reading from paper): As I mentioned before, we focus our efforts to fight against the Jews and Christians or Americans. We have no objection against any party or any person who fights Americans all over the world. And we want to carry it out within the war against Americans. America will be defeated. Americans know our power, and…

VO: This was a strategy of desperation, born out of failure by a small group whose revolution had failed. And the anger that came from that failure was about to be directed at the United States. What Zawahiri and bin-Laden were about to do would dramatically affect the future of the neoconservative movement. By 1998, all their attempts to transform America by creating a moral revolution had failed. Faced with the indifference of the people, the neoconservatives had become marginalized, in both domestic and foreign policy. But with the attacks that were about to hit America, the neoconservatives would at last find the evil enemy that they had been searching for ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union. And in their reaction to the attacks, the neoconservatives would transform the failing Islamist movement into what would appear to be the grand revolutionary force that Zawahiri had always dreamed of. But much of it would exist only in people’s imaginations. It would be the next phantom enemy.

VO: In the past, politicians promised to create a better world. They had different ways of achieving this. But their power and authority came from the optimistic visions they offered to their people. Those dreams failed. And today, people have lost faith in ideologies. Increasingly, politicians are seen simply as managers of public life. But now, they have discovered a new role that restores their power and authority. Instead of delivering dreams, politicians now promise to protect us from nightmares. They say that they will rescue us from dreadful dangers that we cannot see and do not understand. And the greatest danger of all is international terrorism. A powerful and sinister network, with sleeper cells in countries across the world. A threat that needs to be fought by a war on terror. But much of this threat is a fantasy, which has been exaggerated and distorted by politicians. It�s a dark illusion that has spread unquestioned through governments around the world, the security services, and the international media.

VO: This is a series of films about how and why that fantasy was created, and who it benefits. At the heart of the story are two groups: the American neoconservatives, and the radical Islamists. Last week’s episode ended in the late ‘90s with both groups marginalized and out of power. But with the attacks of September 11th, the fates of both dramatically changed. The Islamists, after their moment of triumph, were virtually destroyed within months, while the neoconservatives took power in Washington. But then, the neoconservatives began to reconstruct the Islamists. They created a phantom enemy. And as this nightmare fantasy began to spread, politicians realized the newfound power it gave them in a deeply disillusioned age. Those with the darkest nightmares became the most powerful.

[ OPENING TITLES : THE POWER OF NIGHTMARES / THE RISE OF THE POLITICS OF FEAR / THE SHADOWS IN THE CAVE ]

[ TITLE: AFGHANISTAN 1998 ]

VO: At the end of the 1990s, Osama bin Laden had returned to Afghanistan. He was accompanied by Ayman Zawahiri, the most influential ideologist of the Islamist movement. For 20 years, Zawahiri had struggled to create revolutions in the Arab world, but all attempt had ended in bloody failure.

[ EXCERPT , CNN EXCLUSIVE VIDEO ]

INTERVIEWER (in Arabic, English subtitles): We haven’t had any information about your whereabouts for some time. Where were you?

AYMAN ZAWAHIRI: {?} I was just home and clubs.

INTERVIEWER: Not in Afghanistan? Somewhere else?

ZAWAHIRI: Everywhere, everywhere.

INTERVIEWER : Everywhere?

ZAWAHIRI: I am a Muslim. Being a Muslim, you are wanted everywhere. Because if you—just if you say no to the superpowers, this immediately in itself is a crime you are wanted for.

INTERVIEWER: {?} Yes, but isn’t what you do not to do with arms?

ZAWAHIRI: {?} It�s aggressive but ask Allah, and he is greater than superpower.

VO: Zawahiri was a follower of the Egyptian revolutionary, Sayyed Qutb, who had been executed in 1966. Qutb’s vision had been of a new type of modern state. It would contain all of the benefits of Western science and technology, but it would use Islam as a moral framework to protect people from the culture of Western liberalism. Qutb believed that this culture infected the minds of Muslims, turning them into selfish creatures who threatened to destroy the shared values that held society together. Throughout the 80s and 90s, Zawahiri had tried to persuade the masses to rise up and topple the rulers who had allowed this corruption to infect their countries.

[ EXCERPT , VIDEOTAPE OF SADAT ASSASSINATION ]

[ CUT TO AYMAN ZAWAHIRI IN EGYPTIAN COURTROOM CELL ]

ZAWAHIRI [haranguing courtroom]: We want to speak to the whole world. Who are we?

VO: But the revolutionaries became trapped in a horrific escalation of violence, because the masses refused to follow them. Islamism failed as a mass movement, and Zawahiri now came to the conclusion that a new strategy was needed.

GILLES KEPEL , HISTORIAN OF ISLAMIST MOVEMENT: They had no revolution at all. I mean, they had failed in their takeover, they had failed to topple the powers that be, and, you know, they became more and more interested in this idea that only a small vanguard could be successful. I mean, they had lost confidence in the spontaneous capacity of the masses to be mobilised. Then they decided to change strategy completely, and instead of striking at what they called the “near enemy”—i.e., the local régimes—they decided that they could strike at the “far away enemy”—i.e., at the West, at America—and that would impress the masses, and the masses would be mobilised.

[ TITLE : NAIROBI , AUGUST 1998 ]

VO: Zawahiri and bin Laden began implementing this new strategy in August, 1998. Two huge suicide bombs were detonated outside American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing more than 200 people. The bombings had a dramatic effect on the West. For the first time, the name “bin Laden” entered the public consciousness as a terrorist mastermind.

[ CUT TO AFGHANISTAN ]

VO: The suicide bombers had been recruited by bin Laden from the Islamist training camps in Afghanistan. But his and Zawahiri’s operation was very much on the fringes of the Islamist movement. The overwhelming majority of the fighters in these camps had nothing at all to do with bin Laden or international terrorism. They were training to fight régimes in their own countries, such as Uzbekistan, Kashmir, and Chechnia. Their aim was to establish Islamist societies in the Western world, and they had no interest in attacking America. Bin Laden helped fund some of the camps, and in return was allowed to look for volunteers for his operations. But a number of senior Islamists were against his new strategy, including members of Zawahiri’s own group, Islamic Jihad.

[ EXCERPT , CNN EXCLUSIVE VIDEO : BIN LADEN, SURROUNDED BY ARMED , MASKED SOLDIERS ]

VO: Even bin Laden’s displays of strength to the Western media were faked. The fighters in this video had been hired for the day and told to bring their own weapons. For beyond this small group, bin Laden had no formal organisation—until the Americans invented one for him.

[ CUT TO MANHATTAN CITYSCAPE ]

[ TITLE : MANHATTAN , JANUARY 2001 ]

VO: In January, 2001, a trial began in a Manhattan courtroom of four men accused of the embassy bombings in east Africa. But the Americans had also decided to prosecute bin Laden in his absence. But to do this under American law, the prosecutors needed evidence of a criminal organisation because, as with the Mafia, that would allow them to prosecute the head of the organisation even if he could not be linked directly to the crime. And the evidence for that organisation was provided for them by an ex-associate of bin Laden’s called Jamal al-Fadl.

JASON BURKE , AUTHOR, “AL QAEDA” : During the investigation of the 1998 bombings, there is a walk-in source, Jamal al-Fadl, who is a Sudanese militant who was with bin Laden in the early 90s, who has been passed around a whole series of Middle East secret services, none of whom want much to do with him, and who ends up in America and is taken on by—uh—the American government, effectively, as a key prosecution witness and is given a huge amount of American taxpayers’ money at the same time. And his account is used as raw material to build up a picture of Al Qaeda. The picture that the FBI want to build up is one that will fit the existing laws that they will have to use to prosecute those responsible for the bombing. Now, those laws were drawn up to counteract organised crime: the Mafia, drugs crime, crimes where people being a member of an organisation is extremely important. You have to have an organisation to get a prosecution. And you have al-Fadl and a number of other witness, a number of other sources, who are happy to feed into this. You’ve got material that, looked at in a certain way, can be seen to show this organisation’s existence. You put the two together and you get what is the first bin Laden myth—the first Al Qaeda myth. And because it’s one of the first, it’s extremely influential.

VO: The picture al-Fadl drew for the Americans of bin Laden was of an all-powerful figure at the head of a large terrorist network that had an organised network of control. He also said that bin Laden had given this network a name: “Al Qaeda.” It was a dramatic and powerful picture of bin Laden, but it bore little relationship to the truth.

[ EXCERPT, CNN EXCLUSIVE VIDEO : BIN LADEN AND SOLDIERS ]

VO: The reality was that bin Laden and Ayman Zawahiri had become the focus of a loose association of disillusioned Islamist militants who were attracted by the new strategy. But there was no organisation. These were militants who mostly planned their own operations and looked to bin Laden for funding and assistance. He was not their commander. There is also no evidence that bin Laden used the term “Al Qaeda” to refer to the name of a group until after September the 11th, when he realized that this was the term the Americans have given it.

[ CUT TO MANHATTAN SKYLINE ]

VO: In reality, Jamal al-Fadl was on the run from bin Laden, having stolen money from him. In return for his evidence, the Americans gave him witness protection in America and hundreds of thousands of dollars. Many lawyers at the trial believed that al-Fadl exaggerated and lied to give the Americans the picture of a terrorist organisation that they needed to prosecute bin Laden.

SAM SCHMIDT , DEFENCE LAWYER EMBASSY BOMBINGS TRIAL: And there were selective portions of al-Fadl’s testimony that I believe was false, to help support the picture that he helped the Americans join together. I think he lied in a number of specific testimony about a unified image of what this organisation was. It made Al Qaeda the new Mafia or the new Communists. It made them identifiable as a group and therefore made it easier to prosecute any person associated with Al Qaeda for any acts or statements made by bin Laden—who talked a lot.

BURKE : The idea—which is critical to the FBI’s prosecution—that bin Laden ran a coherent organisation with operatives and cells all around the world of which you could be a member is a myth. There is no Al Qaeda organisation. There is no international network with a leader, with cadres who will unquestioningly obey orders, with tentacles that stretch out to sleeper cells in America, in Africa, in Europe. That idea of a coherent, structured terrorist network with an organised capability simply does not exist.

VO: What did exist was a powerful idea that was about to inspire a single, devastating act that would lead the whole world into believing the myth that had begun to be constructed in the Manhattan courtroom.

[ CUT TO MANHATTAN SKYLINE : WORLD TRADE CENTER TOWERS . ONE TOWER HAS BEEN HIT , AND IS ON FIRE .]

MAN (off-camera) : What’s this other jet doing? What’s this other jet doing?

WOMAN (off-camera) : What the hell’s that?

[ AIRCRAFT ENTERS VIEW FROM LEFT , CRASHES INTO SECOND TOWER. FIREBALL ERUPTS .]

MAN : Holy—fuck!

WOMAN : Oh my God! Oh my God! Jesus fucking Christ!

[ ARM PASSES BEFORE CAMERA LENS ]

MAN #2 : Don’t touch it!

WOMAN [ SOBBING ]: Oh my God! Oh my God!

[ OTHER EXCLAMATIONS AND SOBBING IN BACKGROUND AS SMOKE BILLOWS FROM TOWERS ]

VO: The attack on America by 19 hijackers shocked the world. It was Ayman Zawahiri’s new strategy, implemented in a brutal and spectacular way. But neither he nor bin Laden were the originators of what was called the “Planes Operation.” It was the brainchild of an Islamist militant called Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who came to bin Laden for funding and help in finding volunteers. But in the wake of panic created by the attacks, the politicians reached for the model which had been created by the trial earlier that year: the hijackers were just the tip of a vast, international terrorist network which was called, “Al Qaeda.”

[ CUT TO INTERIOR, HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, UNITED STATES CONGRESS ]

GEORGE W BUSH , PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES [ ON SPEAKER’S PODIUM ] : Al Qaeda is to terror what the Mafia is to crime. There are thousands of these terrorists in more than 60 countries. They are recruited from their own nations and neighborhoods, and brought to camps in places like Afghanistan, where they are trained in the tactics of terror.

[ CUT TO PENTAGON BRIEFING ROOM ]

DONALD RUMSFELD , SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: This one network, Al Qaeda, that’s receiving so much discussion and publicity make have activities in 50 to 60 countries, including the United States.

[ CUT TO OTHER INTERIOR, PODIUM ]

BUSH: Our war is against networks and groups, people who coddle them, people who try to hide them, people who fund them. This is our calling.

VO: And the attacks had another dramatic effect: they brought the neoconservatives back to power in America. When George Bush first became president, he had appointed neoconservatives like Paul Wolfowitz, and their allies like Donald Rumsfeld, to his administration. But their grand vision of America�s role in the world was largely ignored by this new r�gime.

[ TITLE : SEPTEMBER 2000 ]

[ CUT TO PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE ]

BUSH : I just don’t think it�s the role of the United States to walk into another country and say, “We do it this way, so should you.”

[ TITLE: BUT NOW ]

BUSH : We’re going to find those who, uh, who, uh, uh, those evil-doers.

VO: But now, the neoconservatives became all-powerful, because this terror network proved that what they had been predicting through the 1990s was correct: that America was at risk from terrifying new forces in a hostile world. A small group formed that began to shape America’s response to the attacks. At its heart were Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, along with the vice-president, Dick Cheney, and Richard Perle, who was a senior advisor to the Pentagon. The last time these men had been in power together was 20 years before, under President Reagan. Back then, they had taken on and, as they saw it, defeated a source of evil that wanted to take over America: the Soviet Union. And now they saw this new war on terror in the same epic terms.

RICHARD PERLE , CHAIRMAN PENTAGON DEFENSE POLICY BOARD 2001-2003: The struggle against Soviet totalitarianism was a struggle between fundamental value questions. “Good” and “evil” is about as effective a shorthand as I can imagine in this regard, and there’s something rather similar going on in the war on terror. It isn’t a war on terror, it’s a war on terrorists who want to impose an intolerant tyranny on all mankind, an Islamic universe in which we are all compelled to accept their beliefs and live by their lights, and in that sense this is a battle between good and evil.

VO: But, as previous episodes have shown, the neoconservatives distorted and exaggerated the Soviet threat. They created the image of a hidden, international web of evil run from Moscow that planned to dominate the world, when, in reality, the Soviet Union was on its last legs, collapsing from within. Now, they did the same with the Islamists. They took a failing movement which had lost mass support and began to reconstruct it into the image of a powerful network of evil, controlled from the center by bin Laden from his lair in Afghanistan. They did this because it fitted with their vision of America’s unique destiny to fight an epic battle against the forces of evil throughout the world.

VINCENT CANNISTRARO , HEAD OF COUNTER – TERRORISM , CIA , 1988-90: What the neoconservatives are doing is taking a concept that they developed during the competition with the Soviet Union, i.e., Soviet Communism was evil, it wanted to take over our country, wanted to take over our people, our classrooms, our society. It was that kind of concept of evil that they took—an exaggerated one, to be sure—and then apply it to a new threat, where it didn’t apply at all, and yet it was layered with the same kind of cultural baggage. The policy says there’s a network, the policy says that network is evil, they want to infiltrate our classrooms, they want to take our society, they want all our women to wear, you know, veils, and this is what we have to deal with and therefore since we know it’s evil let’s just kill it, and that will make it go away.

[ CUT TO TANKS AND VEHICLES ROLLING DOWN A ROAD IN AFGHANISTAN ]

VO: And so the Americans set off to invade Afghanistan, to find and destroy the heart of this network.

[ TITLE: AFGHANISTAN, NOVEMBER 2001 ]

[ CUT TO DESOLATE TERRAIN , MOUNTAINS IN BACKGROUND , SHOOTING IN FOREGROUND ]

VO: To do this, the Americans allied themselves with a group called the Northern Alliance. They were a loose collection of warlords, fighting a war of resistance against the Taliban, the Islamists who controlled Afghanistan. The Taliban’s best troops were the thousands of foreign fighters from the training camps who the Northern Alliance hated.

[ NORTHERN ALLIANCE TROOPS RETRIEVE IDENTITY PAPERS FROM DEAD TALIBAN FIGHTERS . ONE HOLDS AN IDENTITY CARD UP TO THE CAMERA ]

NORTHERN ALLIANCE SOLDIER : Pakistan, eh! Pakistan! Pakistan!

VO: And now, they took their revenge on the foreign fighters. The Americans believed that these men were Al Qaeda terrorists, and the Northern Alliance did nothing to disabuse them of this, because they were paid by the Americans for each prisoner they delivered. But the majority of these fighters had never had anything to do with bin Laden or international terrorism. Both they and the Taliban were radical nationalists who wanted to create Islamist societies in their own countries. But now, they were either killed or taken off to Guantánamo Bay and Islamism, as an organised movement for changing the Muslim world, was obliterated in Afghanistan. But as it disappeared, it was replaced by ever more extravagant fantasies about the power and reach of the Al Qaeda network.

[ TITLE : TORA BORA ]

VO: In December, the Northern Alliance told the Americans that bin Laden was hiding in the mountains of Tora Bora. They were convinced they had found the heart of his organisation.

[ EXCERPT , “MEET THE PRESS ,” NBC TV ]

TIM RUSSERT : The search for Osama bin Laden: there was constant discussion about him hiding out in caves and I think many times the American people have a perception that it�s a little hole dug out of the side of a mountain.

DONALD RUMSFELD [ OFF CAMERA ]: Oh, no.

[ CUT TO DIAGRAM OF HIDDEN CAVE HEADQUARTERS MARKED “SOURCE: THE TIMES OF LONDON”, DEPICTING A MULTI-STORY UNDERGROUND COMMAND POST ]

RUSSERT : This is it. This is a fortress.

RUMSFELD: Yes.

RUSSERT : A complex. Multi-tiered. [ READING , AS LABELS ARE DISPLAYED ON DIAGRAM ] “Bedrooms and Offices” on the top, as you can see. “Secret Exits” on the side, and on the bottom. “Cut Deep to Avoid Thermal Detection.” A ventilation system, to allow people to breathe and to carry on. The entrances, large enough to drive trucks and even tanks. Even computer systems and telephone systems. It’s a very sophisticated operation.

[ CUT TO STUDIO ]

RUMSFELD : Oh, you bet. This—this is serious business. And—and there’s not one of those; there are many of those.

[ CUT TO TORA BORA , AFGHANISTAN : B-52S BOMBING MOUNTAINS ]

VO: For days, the Americans bombed the mountains of Tora Bora with the most powerful weapons they had. The Northern Alliance had been paid more than a million dollars for their help and information, and now their fighters set off up the mountains to storm bin Laden’s fortress and bring back the Al Qaeda terrorists and their leader.

[ NORTHERN ALLIANCE SOLDIERS SEARCHING CAVE OPENINGS ]

VO: But all they found were a few small caves, which were either empty or had been used to store ammunition. There was no underground bunker system, no secret tunnels: the fortress didn�t exist. The Northern Alliance did produce some prisoners they claimed were Al Qaeda fighters, but there was no proof of this, and one rumor was that the Northern Alliance was simply kidnapping anyone who looked remotely like an Arab and selling them to the Americans for yet more money.

[ FADE TO AMERICAN FORCES IN TORA BORA ]

VO: The Americans now began to search all the caves in all the mountains in eastern Afghanistan for the hidden Al Qaeda network.

AMERICAN SOLDIER , SPEAKING INTO RADIO : We found a cave. The rest of it is open. Break.

[ CUT TO INTERIOR , COMMAND POST ]

AMERICAN ARMY SERGEANT : If nobody went up to look into that cave, people could’ve been hiding up there for days and watching everything that we did.

[ CUT TO VIEW OF MISSILE STRIKING CAVE OPENING , SOLDIERS INSPECT DAMAGE ]

VO: But wherever they looked, there was nothing there. Al Qaeda seemed to have completely disappeared.

[ FADE TO VIEW OF HELICOPTERS FLYING OVER AFGHANISTAN MOUNTAIN RANGE ]

VO: But then, the British arrived to help. They were convinced they could hunt down Al Qaeda because of what they said was their unique experience in fighting terrorism in Northern Ireland. They could succeed where others had failed.

[ CLOSE UP ON BRIGADIER ROGER LANE , COMMANDER , BRITISH FORCES , ADDRESSING AN OFF-CAMERA AUDIENCE ]

BRIGADIER LANE : The hunt for Al Qaeda Taliban goes on, and we stand shoulder to shoulder with the United States and our other coalition allies in the global war on terrorism.

[ TITLE : FIVE WEEKS LATER ]

INTERVIEWER : But how many Al Qaeda have you captured?

LANE : We haven’t, uh, captured any Al Qaeda, but…

INTERVIEWER : And how many have you actually managed to kill here in south-east Afghanistan?

LANE : We haven’t killed any.

[ EXCERPT , THE THIEF OF BAGHDAD : MARKETPLACE SCENE , SCROLL IS UNROLLED READING :
Ten thousand pieces of gold for the body of Ali Baba and the destruction of the band of thieves.

by order of
Hulagu, Khan of the Mongols
and Ruler of Baghdad ]

[ SCENES OF MEN ON HORSEBACK JUMPING CHASMS AND ESCAPING ]

[ CUT TO CNN EXCLUSIVE VIDEO OF BIN LADEN , WAVING .]

[ FADE TO BLACK ]

[ FADE TO AFGHANISTAN EXTERIOR ]

VO: The terrible truth was that there was nothing there because Al Qaeda as an organisation did not exist. The attacks on America had been planned by a small group that had come together around bin Laden in the late 90s. What united them was an idea: an extreme interpretation of Islamism developed by Ayman Zawahiri. With the American invasion, that group had been destroyed, killed or scattered. What was left was the idea, and the real danger was the way this idea could inspire groups and individuals around the world who had no relationship to each other. In looking for an organisation, the Americans and the British were chasing a phantom enemy and missing the real threat.

JASON BURKE , AUTHOR, “AL QAEDA” : I was with the Royal Marines as they trooped around eastern Afghanistan, and every time they got a location for a supposed Al Qaeda or Taliban element or base, they’d turn up and there was no one there, or there’d be a few startled shepherds, and that struck me then as being a wonderful image to the war on terror, because people are looking for something that isn’t there. There is no organisation with its terrorist operatives, cells, sleeper cells, so on and so forth. What there is is an idea, prevalent among young, angry Muslim males throughout the Islamic world. That idea is what poses a threat.

[ CUT TO WASHINGTON , D.C., MONUMENTS AND SKYLINE ]

VO: But the neoconservatives were now increasingly locked into this fantasy, and next they set out to uncover the network in America itself.

PAUL WOLFOWITZ , US DEPUTY SECRETARY OF DEFENSE : This is a network that has penetrated into some 60 countries, including very definitely our own, and it�s got to be rooted out. Our intelligence priority, in many ways, is getting after the network here in the United States first. We will do whatever we need to do to go after these networks and dismantle them.

[ CUT TO FLYOVER OF NEW ENGLAND TOWN ]

VO: The American government set out to search for the Al Qaeda organisation inside its own country. Thousands were detained as all branches of the law and the military were told to look for terrorists.

[ CUT TO VIEW OF GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE , SAN FRANCISCO ]

CALIFORNIA HIGHWAY PATROL OFFICER : You don’t really know what a terrorist looks like, what kind of car they drive, or anything else, so it’s just basically everything and everybody and anything out here.

[ CUT TO NEWS TITLE : “AMERICA UNDER ATTACK” ]

[ CUT TO SCENES OF EMERGENCY RESPONSE VEHICLES ]

VO: And, bit by bit, the government found the network: a series of hidden cells in cities around the country from Buffalo to Portland.

[ CUT TO PRESIDENTIAL PODIUM ]

GEORGE W BUSH : We’ve thwarted terrorists in Buffalo and Seattle, Portland, Detroit, North Carolina, and Tampa, Florida. We’re determined to stop the enemy before he can strike our people.

VO: The Americans called them “sleeper cells,” and decided that they had just been waiting to strike. But in reality there is very little evidence that any of those arrested had anything at all to do with terrorist plots. From Portland to the suburb of Buffalo called Lackawanna, yet again the Americans were chasing a phantom enemy.

DAVID COLE , PROFESSOR OF LAW , GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY : They say “terrorist sleeper cell.” That’s what—they—they call the Lackawanna people a terrorist sleeper cell, the Detroit people a terrorist cell, the Portland people a terrorist cell. But when you look at the details, the facts just don’t support that, and they have not proved that any group within the United States has plotted to engage in any terrorist—uh—activity within the United States in all of the cases that they�ve brought since 9/11.

[ CUT TO HOME VIDEO OF YOUTHS AT DISNEYLAND, CALIFORNIA ]

VO: The evidence behind all of the sleeper cell cases is flimsy and often bizarre. This tape was one of the central pieces of evidence in the first of the cases. It was found in a raid on this house…

[ CUT TO EXTERIOR VIEW OF HOUSE ]

VO ... in Detroit. Four Arab men were arrested on suspicion of being an Al Qaeda sleeper cell.

[ VIEWS OF ARREST PHOTOGRAPHS OF SUSPECTS . TITLE : DETROIT ACCUSED ]

VO: They had been accused by another immigrant called Mr Hmimssa. But Mr Hmimssa was, in reality, an international con man with 12 aliases and wanted for fraud across America.

[ CUT TO PHOTOGRAPH ; TITLE : YOUSSEF HMIMSSA , US GOVERNMENT WITNESS ]

VO: Despite this, the FBI offered to reduce his sentence for fraud if he testified against the men. And to back up Mr Hmimssa’s allegations, the FBI turned to the videotape. On the surface it was the innocent record of a trip to Disneyland by a group of teenagers who had nothing to do with the accused, but the government had discovered a hidden and sinister purpose to the tape.

RON HANSEN , REPORTER – THE DETROIT NEWS : The government expert who has looked into surveillance tapes—“casing tapes,” as he referred to them—said that one of the objectives of making these kinds of tapes is to disguise the nature, the real purpose, of the tape, and he explained it that the tape is made to look benign, made to look like a tourist tape to obscure its real purpose as a tape to case Disneyland, and that the very appearance of it as being just a tourist tape is actually evidence that it�s not a tourist tape.

[ CUT TO DISNEYLAND VIDEO ; YOUTH IS SPEAKING TO CAMERA ]

YOUTH [ HOLDING IMAGINARY MICROPHONE ]: Al-Jazeera, Hollywood, Los Angeles, California. Hello?

[ CUT TO DISNEYLAND VIDEO ; INTERIOR OF INDIANA JONES RIDE ]

RON HANSEN : I could never get past the fact that the tape just looked like a tourist tape. The Disneyland ride, for example, was a lengthy queue, people just making their way to the ride. The camera occasionally pans to look at the rocks on the wall, made to look like an Indiana Jones movie, and after several minutes the camera pans across and shows a trash can momentarily, and then continues off to look into the crowd. The expert basically said that, by flashing on that trash can for a moment, the people who are part of this conspiracy to conduct these kinds of terrorist operations, they would understand what this is all about: how to locate a bomb in Disneyland in California.

[ CUT TO VIEW OF YOUTHS IN RESTAURANT ]

YOUTH , WAVING : Hello!

RON HANSEN : All the talking and bantering were intended to disguise the hidden message contained within the tape.

[ CUT TO VIEW OF YOUTHS DANCING ON VIDEOTAPE ]

VO: The government was convinced that the tape was full of hidden messages. A brief shot of a tree outside the group’s hotel room was there, they said, to show where to place a sniper to attack the cars on the freeway.

[ CUT TO SHAKY VIEW OF SHADOW ALONG SIDEWALK AS INDIVIDUAL CARRIES CAMERA ]

VO: And what looked like a camera which had accidentally been left running was in reality a terrorist secretly counting out distances to show others where to place a bomb.

[ CUT TO VIEW OF US AIR FORCE JET LANDING ]

VO: And the government also said that the Detroit cell was planning to attack US military bases around the world. Yet again, they found hidden evidence of this in a day planner they discovered under the sofa in the house in Detroit. What looked like doodles were in reality, they said, a plan to attack a US base in Turkey.

WILLIAM SWOR , DEFENCE LAWYER , DETROIT SLEEPER CELL TRIAL , INDICATING COPY OF DRAWINGS FROM DAY PLANNER : The government brought in its security officer from the base to testify that she interpreted this as being the main runways. She identified these as being AWACS airplanes and these as being fighter jets. She said that these solid lines were lines of fire and she also said that this down here was a hardened bunker.

VO: But the drawings in the day planner were discovered to have actually been the work of a madman. They were the fantasies of a Yemeni who believed that he was the minister of defence for the whole of the Middle East. He had committed suicide a year before any of the accused had arrived in Detroit, leaving the day planner lying under the sofa in the house. Despite this, two of the accused were found guilty. But then, the government’s only witness, Mr Hmimssa, told two of his cellmates that he had made the whole thing up to get his fraud charges reduced. The terrorism convictions have now been overturned by the judge in the case, but it was acclaimed by the President as the first success in the war on terror at home.

[ INTERIOR , HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES , SPEAKER’S DAIS ]

GEORGE W BUSH : We have the terrorists on the run. We’re keeping them on the run. One by one the terrorists are learning the meaning of American justice.

[ CUT TO VIDEOTAPE , YOUTHS HAVING A PILLOW FIGHT ]

[ CUT TO BUFFALO , NEW YORK , SKYLINE ]

VO: Another case, in the city of Buffalo, New York, seemed on the surface to be more substantial. Six young Yemeni-Americans had gone to an Islamist training camp in Afghanistan.

[ CUT TO AFGHANISTAN , TRAINING CAMP ]

VO: They travelled there in early 2001 and spent between 2 and 6 weeks training and being taught Islamist revolutionary theory. Two of them even met bin Laden on one of his tours of the camp. They then returned to the Buffalo suburb of Lackawanna, where they lived, but they did nothing. The FBI heard about their trip and they watched the six men around the clock for nearly a year, but there was no suspicious behavior.

[ CUT TO LACKAWANNA , SUBURBAN STREET ]

VO: But then, one of the men, Mr al-Bakri, went to Bahrain and sent his friends an E-mail. It said he was going to get married and that he wouldn’t be seeing them for awhile. The CIA, who had been monitoring their E-mails, understood this to be a coded message: the cell was about to launch a suicide attack on the US Fifth Fleet.

JOHN MOLLOY , DEFENCE LAWYER , LACKAWANNA TRIAL : The FBI, the government, took that phrase to mean something sinister. They believed that the word “wedding” was a code. They believed that the phrase “not seeing you anymore” indicated that Muktar al-Bakri was a suicide bomber. The reality is that Mr al-Bakri was in Bahrain to get married and the reality of him getting married was that he wouldn�t be around his friends anymore.

[ CUT TO NEWS FOOTAGE OF POLICE ]

[ CUT TO US JUSTICE DEPARTMENT PRESS ANNOUNCEMENT ]

JUSTICE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL: Good afternoon. In the past 24 hours, United States law enforcement has identified and disrupted an Al Qaeda-trained terrorist cell on American soil.

VO: The arrests were announced proudly by Washington as another sleeper cell plotting an attack. But it soon became clear that there was no evidence for this at all, other than the E-mail.

COLE : And the best the government can point to as a sleeper cell are these, you know, young men in Lackawanna, in New York, who, yes, went to Afghanistan, trained in an Al Qaeda training camp, but to all appearances had no intention to ever take any action on the basis of that. One of them faked an injury to try to get out early. They came back to the United States. We had them under intensive surveillance and we found no evidence—not one shred of evidence—that they ever planned or intended to engage in any kind of criminal, much less terrorist, act. That�s the best they can show for a sleeper cell.

VO: Faced with the fact that there was no evidence, the government quietly dropped any charges of their being a terrorist cell. Instead, they were prosecuted simply for having gone to the training camp, and for having bought uniforms there. And all the other cases were even flimsier: A group of students who supported the liberation of Kashmir were found paint-balling in the woods of Virginia. They were convicted of training to attack America. A group of African-Americans from Oregon tried to go to Afghanistan to support the Taliban but got lost in China. All these groups, the government said, were part of a hidden and terrifying Al Qaeda network.

SWOR : The government had a legitimate concern at the beginning, but they let that concern, and they took it, and they made it a panic. They had reasonable questions and took them and made a complete fantasy out of them. They started out with a conclusion and then filled in all the blanks to the questions. So this was totally driven by the need—or the desire—to have terrorists. You build this conclusion based on this assumption, and this assumption, and this assumption, and, sure, if you go—if you build assumptions upon assumptions, you can go anywhere!

INTERVIEWER : It’s a work of imagination.

SWOR : It is. It’s a fantasy, and it�s a fantasy that it was politically expedient to sell.

[ CUT TO PRESIDENTIAL PRESS CONFERENCE ]

GEORGE W BUSH : And make no mistake about it: we got a war here just like we got a war abroad.

[ CUT TO BRITAIN : GOLF COURSES ; INTERIOR , DOWNING STREET : DAVID BLUNKETT ]

VO: In Britain, too, the government and most of the media have created the overwhelming impression that there is a hidden network of Al Qaeda sleeper cells waiting to attack.

[ CUT TO POLICE OFFICERS AT CRIME SCENE ]

VO: But, yet again, there is very little evidence for this. Of the 664 people arrested under the Terrorism Act since September the 11th, none of them have been convicted of belonging to Al Qaeda. Only 3 people have so far been convicted of having any association with any Islamist groups, and none of those convictions were for being involved in a terror plot; they were for fundraising, or posessing Islamist literature. The majority of people convicted under the Terrorism Act since September the 11th have actually been members of Irish terrorist groups like the UVF or the Real IRA. And many of the arrests that were dramatically announced as being part of a hidden Al Qaeda network were, in reality, as absurd as the cases in America. For example, the London police swooped on a Mr Zain ul-Abedin who they said was running an international network for terrorist training. It turned out to be a self-defence course for bodyguards. He called it “Ultimate Jihad Challenge.” His only client was a security guard from a supermarket, who wanted to learn how to defend himself against shoplifters. Mr Zain ul-Abedin was cleared of all charges. Then there was the Hogmanay terror cell who, it was alleged, were planning to attack Edinburgh. All charges against them were quietly dropped when it was revealed that a key part of the evidence, a map that showed the targets they were going to attack, turned out to have been left in their flat by an Australian backpacker who had ringed the tourist sites he wanted to see. And even the most frightening and high profile of the plots uncovered turned out to be without foundation. No one was ever arrested for planning gas attacks on the London tube; it was a fantasy that swept through the media. Just as in America, there is no evidence yet of the terrifying and sinister network lurking under the surface of our society which both government and the media continually tell us is there.

[ CUT TO MEETING ROOM ]

INTERVIEWER : So there was no network.

BILL DURODIE , DIRECTOR , INTERNATIONAL CENTRE FOR SECURITY ANALYSIS , KINGS COLLEGE : No.

INTERVIEWER : Never.

DURODIE : Probably not.

INTERVIEWER : We invented it.

BILL DURODIE : “Invention” is too string a term. I think we projected it—um, we projected our own worst fears, and that what we see is a fantasy that’s been created.

[ CUT TO BBC NEWS INTERVIEW ]

GOVERNMENT SPOKESMAN : Al Qaeda is a global network with global reach.

[ CUT TO BBC NEWS READER ]

READER : The target, a deadly web of terror.

[ CUT TO BILL DURODIE IN MEETING ROOM ]

DURODIE : I’m not saying that an atrocity might not happen on the British mainland. What I am saying is that we have an exaggerated perception of the possibility of terrorism that is quite disabling, and we only need to look at the evidence to understand that the figures simply don�t bear out the way that we have responded as a society.

[ CUT TO LONDON SKYLINE , WESTMINSTER , ETC . ]

VO: What the British and American governments have done is both distort and exaggerate the real nature of the threat. There are dangerous and fanatical groups around the world who’ve been inspired by the extreme Islamist theories, and they are prepared to use the techniques of mass terror on civilians. The bombings in Madrid showed this only too clearly. But this is not a new phenomenon. What is new is the way the American and other governments have transformed this complex and disparate threat into a simplistic fantasy of an organised web of uniquely powerful terrorists who may strike anywhere and at any moment. But no one questioned this fantasy because, increasingly, it was serving the interests of so many people. For the press, television, and hundreds of terrorism experts, the fact that it seemed so like fiction made it irresistible to their audiences. And the Islamists, too, began to realise that by feeding this media fantasy they could become a powerful organisation—if only in people’s imaginations.

The prime mover in this was one of bin Laden’s associates, who had been captured by the Americans. He was called Abu Zubaydah. He began to tell his interrogators of terrifying plots that Al Qaeda was preparing, some of which, he said, they had copied from Hollywood movies like Godzilla, which they had watched in Afghanistan.

[ CUT TO INTERIOR, BRIEFING ROOM ]

DR JOHN PRADOS , NATIONAL SECURITY ARCHIVE , WASHINGTON DC : Zubaydah told the interrogators a set of stories based on what he thought would alarm us. He told us, for example—coming out of a movie that had been recent at that time, Godzilla, in which the Brooklyn Bridge was destroyed by the monster—he told us that Al Qaeda was interested in destroying the Brooklyn Bridge. He told us of attacks on mass transit sources like subway trains. He told us there were intentions of attacking apartment buildings and shopping centers, the Statue of Liberty, all manner of things.

[ EXCERPT , GODZILLA : MONSTER RISING OVER BROOKLYN BRIDGE ]

[ CUT TO PRESS CONFERENCE ROOM, DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, WASHINGTON, D.C. ]

JOHN ASHCROFT , ATTORNEY GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES : Recent intelligence reports suggest that Al Qaeda leaders have emphasised planning for attacks on apartment buildings, hotels, and other soft or lightly-secured targets in the United States.

[ CUT TO ANOTHER PRESS CONFERENCE ]

ASHCROFT : Terrorists are considering physical attacks against US financial institutions.

[ EXCERPT , GODZILLA: MONSTER RAMPAGING THROUGH STREETS , CRUSHING CARS ]

VO: And Abu Zubaydah also told his interrogators of a terrifying new weapon the Islamists intended to use: an explosive device that could spray radiation through cities, the “dirty bomb.”

[ EXCERPT , CBS EVENING NEWS ]

DAN RATHER : First, a CBS News exclusive about a captured Al Qaeda leader who says his fellow terrorists have the know-how to build a very dangerous weapon and get it to the United States.

VO: And the media took the bait. They portrayed the dirty bomb as an extraordinary weapon that would kill thousands of people, and, in the process, they made the hidden enemy even more terrifying. But, in reality, the threat of a dirty bomb is yet another illusion. Its aim is to spread radioactive material through a conventional explosion, but almost all studies of such a possible weapon have concluded that the radiation spread in this way would not kill anybody because the radioactive material would be so dispersed, and, providing the area was cleaned promptly, the long-term effects would be negligible. In the past, both the American army and the Iraqi military tested such devices and both concluded that they were completely ineffectual weapons for this very reason.

[ CUT TO INTERIOR , LIVING ROOM ]

INTERVIEWER : How dangerous would a dirty bomb be?

DR THEODORE ROCKWELL , NUCLEAR SCIENTIST AND RADIATION RISK EXPERT : The deaths would be few, if any, and the answer is, probably none.

INTERVIEWER : Really?

ROCKWELL : Yes. And that’s been said over and over again, but then people immediately say after that, “But, you know, people won’t believe that, and they’ll panic.” And then all the people working on this project, you know, the defence and so forth, breathe a big sigh of relief because they got their problem back: you know, we’re gonna all panic. I don�t think it would kill anybody and I think you’ll have trouble finding a serious report that would claim otherwise. The Department of Energy actually set up such a test and they actually measured what happened. And they—they—the measurements were extremely low. They calculated that the most exposed individual would get a fairly high dose—not life-threatening, but fairly high—and I checked into how the calculation was done, and they assume that after the attack, no one moves for one year. One year. Now, that’s ridiculous.

[ CUT TO ANOTHER INTERIOR , LIVING ROOM ]

LEWIS Z KOCH , BULLETIN OF ATOMIC SCIENTISTS : The dirty bomb—the danger from radioactivity is basically next to nothing. The danger from panic, however, is horrendous. That’s where the irony comes. This—instead of the government saying, “Look, this is not a serious weapon; the serious danger of this is the panic that would ensue, and there is no reason for panic. Don’t panic.”

[ CUT TO VIEW OF ATOMIC BOMB EXPLODING , DESTROYING TEST HOUSES AND OBJECTS ]

BRITISH NARRATOR : Ladies and gentlemen, this is not the end of our show; however, something very much like this could happen at any moment. We just thought we ought to prepare you and more or less put you in the mood. Thank you.
And now, back to our story.

[ CUT , CITY SKYLINE ]

VO: The scale of this fantasy just kept growing as more and more groups realised the power it gave them—above all, the group that had been instrumental in first spreading the idea: the neoconservatives. Because they now found that they could use it to help them realise their vision: that America had a special destiny to overcome evil in the world, and this epic mission would give meaning and purpose to the American people.

[ CUT , INTERIOR , ROOM IN IRAQ , SADDAM HUSSEIN AND OFFICERS ]

VO: To do this, they were going to start with Iraq, and, just as they had discovered a hidden reality of terror beneath the surface in America, they now found hidden links that previously no one had suspected between the Al Qaeda network and Saddam Hussein.

[ CUT , SPEAKER’S DAIS, UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES ]

GEORGE W BUSH : Evidence from intelligence sources, secret communications, and statements by people now in custody reveal that Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of Al Qaeda. Imagine those 19 hijackers with other weapons and other plans, this time armed by Saddam Hussein.

[ CUT , OFFICE INTERIOR ]

RICHARD PERLE , CHAIRMAN, PENTAGON DEFENSE POLICY BOARD, 2001-2003: I continue to be amazed at the people who say there are no links. It simply isn’t true. What hasn’t been established is a direct link between Saddam’s intelligence and the 9/11 plotters, although even there there is evidence that suggests, very possibly, facilitation and assistance to the 9/11 hijackers.

INTERVIEWER : There really is evidence?

PERLE : There really is evidence.

INTERVIEWER : So, when people say there is no association between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, they�re wrong.

RICHARD PERLE : They’re flatly wrong.

INTERVIEWER : Really?

RICHARD PERLE : Absolutely wrong.

[ CUT , INTERIOR, AL-JAZEERA STUDIOS ; ARABIC VOICES IN BACKGROUND ]

[ SUBTITLE : THE BOMBING HAS STARTED ]

[ VIEW OF TELEVISION MONITORS DISPLAYING ATTACK ON BAGHDAD ; CUT TO REACTION OF NEWSROOM STAFF ]

VO: The driving force behind these new global policies in the war on terror was the power of a dark fantasy: a sinister web of hidden and interlinked threats that stretched around the world. And such was the power of that fantasy that it also began to transform the very nature of politics because, increasingly, politicians were discovering that their ability to imagine the future and the terrible dangers it held gave them a new and heroic role in the world.

[ CUT TO SCENE OF FUTURISTIC ROADWAY AND COUPLE DRIVING IN FUTURE CAR ]

VO: In the post-War years, politicians had also used their imaginations, but to project optimistic visions of a better future that they could create for their people, and it was these visions that gave them power and authority.

[ CUT , INTERIOR , DOWNING STREET : ANGLE ON TONY BLAIR ]

VO: But those dreams collapsed, and politicians like Tony Blair became more like managers of public life, their policies determined often by focus groups. But now, the war on terror allowed politicians like Blair to portray a new, grand vision of the future. But this vision was a dark one of imagined threats, and a new force began to drive politics: the fear of an imagined future.

[ CUT , INTERIOR, TONY BLAIR ADDRESSING AUDIENCE ]

TONY BLAIR : Not a conventional fear about a conventional threat, but the fear that one day these new threats of weapons of mass destruction, rogue states, and international terrorism combine to deliver a catastrophe to our world. And then the shame of knowing that I saw that threat, day after day, and did nothing to stop it.

[ CUT , ANOTHER ADDRESS ]

BLAIR : It may not erupt and engulf us this month or next, perhaps not even this year or next …

[ CUT , CLOSE-UP ON TONY BLAIR , SPEAKING TO INTERVIEWER BEFORE STUDIO AUDIENCE ]

BLAIR : I just think these—these dangers are there, I think that it’s difficult sometimes for people to see how they all come together—I think that it’s my duty to tell it to you if I really believe it, and I do really believe it. I may be wrong in believing it, but I do believe it.

[ CUT , EXTERIOR , MOONLIT , DARK CITY SKYLINE ]

VO: What Blair argued was that faced by the new threat of a global terror network, the politician�s role was now to look into the future and imagine the worst that might happen and then act ahead of time to prevent it. In doing this, Blair was embracing an idea that had actually been developed by the Green movement: it was called the “precautionary principle.” Back in the 1980s, thinkers within the ecology movement believed the world was being threatened by global warming, but at the time there was little scientific evidence to prove this. So they put forward the radical idea that governments had a higher duty: they couldn’t wait for the evidence, because by then it would be too late; they had to act imaginatively, on intuition, in order to save the world from a looming catastrophe.

[ CUT , INTERIOR , MEETING ROOM ]

DURODIE : In essence, the precautionary principle says that not having the evidence that something might be a problem is not a reason for not taking action as if it were a problem. That’s a very famous triple-negative phrase that effectively says that action without evidence is justified. It requires imagining what the worst might be and applying that imagination upon the worst evidence that currently exists.

[ CUT , INTERIOR , HALL ; ANGLE ON TONY BLAIR ADDRESSING STATE FUNCTION ]

BLAIR : Would Al Qaeda buy weapons of mass destruction if they could? Certainly. Does it have the financial resources? Probably. Would it use such weapons? Definitely.

[ CUT , INTERIOR , MEETING ROOM ]

DURODIE : But once you start imagining what could happen, then—then there’s no limit. What if they had access to it? What if they could effectively deploy it? What if we weren’t prepared? What it is is a shift from the scientific, “what is” evidence-based decision making to this speculative, imaginary, “what if”-based, worst case scenario.

[ CUT , EXTERIOR , CAMP X-RAY , Guant�namo Bay, Cuba ]

VO: And it was this principle that now began to shape government policy in the war on terror. In both America and Britain, individuals were detained in high-security prisons, not for any crimes they had committed, but because the politicians believed—or imagined—that they might commit an atrocity in the future, even though there was no evidence they intended to do this. The American attorney general explained this shift to what he called the “paradigm of prevention.”

[ CUT , INTERIOR , HEARING ROOM , UNITED STATES CONGRESS ]

ASHCROFT : We had to make a shift in the way we thought about things, so being reactive, waiting for a crime to be committed, or waiting for there to be evidence of the commission of a crime didn’t seem to us to be an appropriate way to protect the American people.

[ CUT , INTERIOR , OFFICE ]

DAVID COLE : Under the preventive paradigm, instead of holding people accountable for what you can prove that they have done in the past, you lock them up based on what you think or speculate they might do in the future. And how—how can a person who’s locked up based on what you think they might do in the future disprove your speculation? It’s impossible, and so what ends up happening is the government short-circuits all the processes that are designed to distinguish the innocent from the guilty because they simply don’t fit this mode of locking people up for what they might do in the future.

VO: The supporters of the precautionary principle argue that this loss of rights is the price that society has to pay when faced by the unique and terrifying threat of the Al Qaeda network. But, as this series has shown, the idea of a hidden, organised web of terror is largely a fantasy, and by embracing the precautionary principle, the politicians have become trapped in a vicious circle: they imagine the worst about an organisation that doesn�t even exist. But no one questions this because the very basis of the precautionary principle is to imagine the worst without supporting evidence, and, instead, those with the darkest imaginations become the most influential.

[ CUT , INTERIOR , RESTAURANT ]

DAVID JOHNSTON , INTELLIGENCE SPECIALIST , NEW YORK TIMES : You’ll hear about meetings where terrorist matters are discussed in the intelligence community, and always the person with the most dire assessment, the person with the—who has the, kind of, the strongest sense that something should be done will frequently carry the day at meetings. We thus believe the most dire estimate of what could happen here. The sense of disbelief has vanished.

INTERVIEWER : So the person with the most vivid imagination becomes the most powerful.

JOHNSTON : In a sense, that’s correct.

[ CUT , INTERIOR , FBI OFFICE ]

FBI OFFICIAL : We knew that Al Qaeda’s tentacles were beginning to become far-reaching.

[ CUT , INTERIOR , BRITISH MEETING ROOM ]

BRITISH OFFICIAL : There will be an attack. It is “when” within the United Kingdom; I think the “if” is academic.

[ CUT , TONY BLAIR AT PODIUM , ADDRESSING AUDIENCE ]

BLAIR : It is only a matter of time, and its potential is huge.

[ EXCERPT , GODZILLA: WALL OF WATER SLAMS INTO CITY ]

[ CUT , INTERIOR , RESTAURANT ]

JOHNSTON : How will we ever know when it’s over? How will we ever know when the threat is gone? In the mindset we are now in, once we declare it to be over will be exactly the time that we believe that they will strike.

[ CUT , BRITISH NEWSSTAND ]

NEWS VENDOR : You know, uh, it’s just—it’s the way we live today. We’re living on a knife edge.

[ CUT , AERIAL VIEW OF LONDON , FOLLOWED BY SCENES OF DISASTERS , ETC ]

VO: This story began over 30 years ago as the dream that politics could create a better world began to fall apart. Out of that collapse came two groups: the Islamists and the neoconservatives. Looking back, we can now see that these groups were the last political idealists who, in an age of growing disillusion, tried to reassert the inspirational power of political visions that would give meaning to people’s lives.

[ CUT, VIEW OF ARABIC CROWD ]

[ SUBTITLES OVER CROWD SCENES: We will fight for an Islamic state, we will die for it.]

[ CUT , PAUL WOLFOWITZ ENTERING PRESS BRIEFING ROOM ]

VO: But both have failed in their attempts to transform the world and, instead, together they have created today’s strange fantasy of fear which politicians have seized on. Because in an age when all the grand ideas have lost credibility, fear of a phantom enemy is all the politicians have left to maintain their power.

[ CUT , INTERIOR , HALL , REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION ]

BUSH : And we have seen Americans in uniform storming mountain strongholds and charging through sandstorms. We have fought the terrorists across the earth because the lives of our citizens are at stake. And America and the world are safer.

[ CUT , INTERIOR , HALL , DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION ]

JOHN KERRY , UNITED STATES SENATOR AND PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: The stakes are high. We are a nation at war, a global war on terror against unlike we’ve ever known before….

[ CUT , RNC ]

BUSH : Faced with that choice I will defend America every time.

[ CUT , ANGLE ON CHEERING CROWDS OF REPUBLICANS ]

[ CUT , INTERIOR , MEETING ROOM ]

DURODIE : In a society that believes in nothing, fear becomes the only agenda. Whilst the 20th century was dominated between a conflict between a free-market Right and a socialist Left, even though both of those outlooks had their limitations and their problems, at least they believed in something, whereas what we are seeing now is a society that believes in nothing. And a society that believes in nothing is particularly frightened by people who believe in anything, and, therefore, we label those people as fundamentalists or fanatics, and they have much greater purchase in terms of the fear that they instill in society than they truly deserve. But that’s a measure of how much we have become isolated and atomised rather than of their inherent strength.

[ CUT , EXTERIOR DOWNING STREET , TONY BLAIR WALKING TOWARD DOOR ]

VO: But the fear will not last, and just as the dreams that politicians once promised turned out to be illusions, so, too, will the nightmares, and then our politicians will have to face the fact that they have no visions, either good or bad, to offer us any longer.

[ END CREDITS:

MUSIC: “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head”]

WITH THANKS TO
CBS TELEVISION
NBC NEWS ARCHIVE
SONY TRISTAR PICTURES
TESSA HUNKIN

CAMERA: LUCY KELSALL

SOUND: NIALL PODSON

RESEARCHERS: SATIYESH MANOHARAJAH , HOSSAM AL-HAMALAWY

ADDITIONAL RESEARCH: NEIL STEVENSON

PRODUCTION EXECUTIVE: EMMANUELE PASQUALE

PRODUCTION MANAGER: CLAIRE ASKEW

COLOURIST: COLIN PETERS

ONLINE EDITOR: TAMER OSMAN

DUBBING MIXER: BOB JACKSON

FILM RESEARCH: STUART ROBERTSON

ASSISTANT PRODUCER: LUCY KELSALL

EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS: STEPHEN LAMBERT , PETER HORROCKS

WRITTEN AND PRODUCED BY: ADAM CURTIS

© BBC MMIV

The Essence

2005-04-01T20:56:00.000+07:00

氷山社会秘訣分
氷山流忍術

The essence of our paradigm(s), strategies, and tactics is protection, preservation, and the prevention of danger. This understanding extends to all things, and it goes beyond the physical, mental, emotional, and more. It transcends all concepts, all codes, and all things, and more. Our way is the way of enduring, surviving, maintaining balance, harmonizing, understanding, and prevailing over all that would have undesirable consequences and repercussions. More than merely delivering strikes and slashes, and deeper in significance than the simple out-witting of an enemy; our way is the way of attaining that which we need while making the world a better place.

In the beginning study of any discipline, proper motivation is crucial. Without the proper frame of mind, continuous exposure to the discipline can lead to ruin instead of self-development. But this fact is not different from any other practice in life carried to extremes. Medical science is dedicated to the betterment of health and the relief of suffering, and yet the misuse of drugs and the exultation of the physician's skills can lead people to a state where an individual's health is no longer within his or her personal control. A nutritious well-balanced diet works to keep a person alive, vital, and healthy, but grossly over-eating, over-drinking, or taking in too many chemicals is a sure way to poison the body.

Governments are established with the intent to oversee the harmonious interaction of all parts of society, but when the rulers become greedy, hungry for power, or lacking in wisdom, the country is subjected to needless wars, disorder, and/or civil and economic chaos. A religion, when based on faith developed through experience, a broad and questing mind, and an unflagging pursuit of universal understanding, is of inspiration and comfort to people. Once a religion loses its original focus, however, it becomes a deadly thing with which to deceive, control, and tax the people through the manipulation of their beliefs and fears.

It is the same with the martial science. The skills of self-protection, which should provide a feeling of inner peace and security for the martial scientist, so often develop without a balance in the personality and lead the lesser martial scientist into warped realms of unceasing conflict and competition which eventually consume him. We should understand and assimilate the wisdom that we are not in competition, unless we choose to be in competition. To choose to be in competition is to choose to allow our hand to be forced into reaction by another, or worse, by another aspect of ourselves.

If we grow with sincerity and non-attachment/non-disinterest we will progressively come to realize the ultimate secret for becoming invincible. The combatant who would win must be in harmony with the scheme of totality, and must be guided by an intuitive knowledge of the playing out of fate. In tune with the providence of heaven and the impartial justice of the universe, and following a clear and pure heart full of trust in the inevitable, we capture the insight that will guide us successfully into battle when we must conquer and conceal ourselves protectively from hostility when we must acquiesce.

The vast universe, beautiful in its coldly impersonal totality, contains all that we call good/bad, and all the answers for all the paradoxes we see around us. By opening our eyes and our mind, we can responsively follow the subtle seasons, reasons, nuances, and undercurrents of heaven, changing just as change is necessary, adapting always, so that in later in the process there is no such thing as surprise for us.

We maintain and develop a harmonious personal insight which binds thoughts, movement, and emotions. Regarding this insight, that which cannot be said can be done. However, one's attitudes, beliefs, mannerisms, paradigms, and choices will prove limiting. One should be aware of these self imposed limitations, and should make sure that he is the one who imposes them on himself.

We develop friendships between ourselves and those who exist in our circles. This is the greatest achievement and the basis of all spiritual progress. This application is a fundamental base that expresses humanity, concession of tangible achievements and compassion. We also realize that our attachments and aversions to people will prove limiting. If we form our friendships with partners of heart/mind and have worthy exchanges, then our limits will be abolished, even as our boundaries are abolished, though we must maintain the account books of life at the same time. Great understanding is necessary for friendship to be healthy, this great understanding is love.

We do not use our power beyond what is needed. If there is a need for power, it shall be done with wisdom, patience, and a state of non-attachment/non-disinterest. To act out of compassion is to blind one's self just as one is blinded by hate. Consider that a bright light blinds you as effectively as total darkness. Consider that hate is love standing on its head and the opposite of them both is indifference. We must also empathize. When we empathize, we must realize that we are empathizing, not sympathizing, unless we choose to sympathize. We must remain aware, or we will not be able to act in a manner that will produce the desired effect and still make the world a better place.

We pay attention to detail and act appropriately. We strive to secure and maintain the tactical angle. Our tactical angle and our power comes from our strength, wisdom, intelligence, honor, loyalty, tact, candor, cohesion, knowledge, courage, valor, efficiency, decisiveness, initiative, integrity, discipline, effort, intuition, and many other things that each of us will discover in turn, and help others to discover on their path. There are many faces, meanings, and applications of all of these sources of power and tactical angle. Indeed, there are many faces to powers and tactical angles themselves. Other factors from the account books of life can also be sources of power and tactical angles; these include, but, are not limited to: money, connections, social class, worldly experience, etc.

Using power beyond what is necessary, corrupts and distances the warrior from what is dear. We understand the balance. There is no difference between the light side, and the dark side. They both become part of something greater. It is not yin. It is not yang. It is the interface. To have real power is to be at the interface, and that requires the most discipline and control of all. It is only at the interface where unity is achieved. Yet, there are three interfaces in the yin yang, not only one. There are also more dynamics in the yin yang that show the direction of energy, and how it can change harmoniously and how there is really only one side, one edge. E pluribus, Unum; conversely, e Unum, pluribus. Scientia est potentia.

We transcend above difficulties, and we remain. We train for many years, and we recognize that all fractal levels of life can be training, and we choose to use these levels and experiences as such. We improvise, modify, adapt, and overcome.

We recognize the cycles of the cosmic forces. We recognize that life is a cycle, and when the cycle ends, a new cycle begins. We are transformed, but, we never truly die. We are the masters of the cosmic dance, if we wish to be. We are truly special, because even a simple movement cannot be performed twice. One can try, but, one will not succeed, because the movement will be off by a slight degree, and as the lines extend, the gulf between them grows. The appearance of an exact copy is a lack of awareness and understanding on the part of the observer. Everything only happens once. Everyday the sun sets in the west, yet, it is never the same sunset.

We are sensitive to the environment, ourselves, and others.

We think sincerely and honestly.

We strive towards results, practicality, and accomplishment in accordance with that which is able to manifest the formality of actually occurring.

We are responsible. We recognize our obligation to the responsibilities that are bound to the power that we maintain. This responsibility flows from our power. Responsibilities include, but, are not limited to: Responsibility for one's own well being, for his partners of heart/mind, to others that comes from being a member (or non member) of society, and ultimately for the preservation of life and information. Such preservation is paramount. It is the ultimate process, and the ultimate reason for why we are who we are.

We realize that life has been progressing towards something. We realize that the universe moves towards greater complexity and towards greater novelty. Whether these complexities and novelties remain or not does not matter. We have the right to exist and to advance our agenda, but, we recognize our responsibilities in doing so, and we make the world a better place as we gratify our needs and desires, and pursue excellence. This recognition of responsibility and transcendental awareness is what makes us different from those whose dreams destroy the dreams of others.

The process is never finished. We do not simply become enlightened and wander around while people fall to our feet and beg to be initiated. We laugh upon such childish things, and then attempt to help those who we laughed at. There is an immense amount of work to be done with ourselves, and though we mentor others and assist them, we don’t have time for people who are not able to pull their own weight, and who wish to simply submit to us because they want us to do all the work for them. This victim complex, and this inverted inferiority complex that amounts to a psychic double back burn, does not work on us. We recognize such people as the psychic vampires and social parasites that they are. They make themselves useful and conquerable, but, at what cost?

The universe does not take slaves, it has co workers, and so we also do not take slaves. We take co workers. Slaves may be useful at times; yet, ultimately they become more of a liability than an asset, and in the end, the slave will use the master’s power to overcome the master. We do not desire to enter this dynamic, and we choose to avoid it like the plague. Such people use their masters in order to observe them, and allow them to take the risks, all the while, they take copious mental notes, and when the time is right, they overcome the master, and conquer him, and kill him.

We structure ourselves amorphously, and do not react to attack, which would allow our enemies to structure the conflict. We choose to remain at the eye of the storm. Others choose to be part of a microscopic cog in a catastrophic plan. We choose to be at the center of those cogs. We choose to see the design, and to participate in its planning and construction. We experience, absorb, and assimilate all that is around us. Our modes of communication and action may be our own, or they may be someone else’s. We are not afraid to utilize the ideas of others if they suit our purpose, and we are not afraid to cop to that. There is no reason to reinvent the proverbial wheel.

If people did not wish for their ideas to be utilized, they would not have submitted them to the universal consciousness. Those who feel that credit should be given by footnotes and what not should consider that they did not create the English language, and footnotes are not given for every word that is used, and there are no footnotes to give credit to the person who invented footnotes. The idea is to get results and transfer information, and writing down all sorts of notes of who said what, and where such idea came from is simply fat, and is not necessary. The idea is to build upon the constructs that others have crafted.

Therefore, the views expressed by us are not necessarily the views expressed by us.

Agreement is not a requisite of acceptance.
Comprehension is not a requisite of cooperation.
If you don’t have a plan; then your part of someone else’s.

Many of us remain unknown to each other or unaware of our own membership. Do you believe any of this? Do you want to make it happen?

I have returned....

2005-03-31T13:28:00.000+07:00

Well, after a few months of inactivity, I've returned the blog. I ended up dealing with the supreme disillusion that India instilled in me about people in general. It was an intense trip, and there were many lessons to be learned. I still encounter those who think India is a holy country, and I find this laughable. All land is holy. What is so special about India? The putrid water, the millions of people who defecate in the streets, the diseases, and all its splendor and squalor? Well, I guess for some people, who cannot put their finger on what it is about India, then yes.

To say that India is a land of contrasts is an understatement. The thing about India that was so amazing is that you will NEVER see those things in that combination ANYWHERE ELSE in the world. Of course, you could say that about any place, or any time, I know. But, India offers visual stimuli that are simply not encountered elsewhere. India also drains your mental endurance, and after a while, you either break, as many tourists from the UK do, or you just laugh at it, because its a joke, and your a joke for being there.

Then, the whole thing is pretty funny. All the squirrels running around trying to get nuts. Everybody is up in the kool aid, and nobody knows the flavor. Its pretty hilarious, actually, and then you extend this understanding to the rest of the world, and you see what a bunch of clowns everyone is, and what a circus this whole thing is!

I suppose, its wrong to compare the rest of the world to India, since the gulf of differences is huge, however, that country exists HERE and now, and the only thing separating us from them is a very small amount of something we call money. Anyway, its was an intense trip. I wanted to leave some kind of a conclusion here. In the future, the blog will move onto more pressing matters.

The Light at the End of the Tunnel, or a Freight Train???

2005-01-07T17:35:00.000+07:00

One of the things that some independent media gurus have advocated is normal people like us posting certain stories on our blogs so that they are not forgotten. That idea came from Finton Dun at www.breakfornews.com though the site does seem to go off on the deep end sometimes, they report things that others don't, and sometimes, they have some really good stories. Like anything else in life, there is a bullshit content, but, there is really good information there, and sometimes they have some really astounding interviews with people like Nico Haupt. I will post some stories that I like here from time to time among the mayhem.

Specter Questions Patriot Act in Hearing
January 06, 2005 2:43 PM EST

WASHINGTON - Raising the gavel with a grin, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter opened his first hearing Thursday by allowing more criticism of the Bush administration than his predecessor and by questioning some of the Patriot Act's police powers.

With his changes, questions and comments, Specter proclaimed his independence and said he expected the same from Alberto Gonzales, President Bush's nominee to be attorney general.

"While Judge Gonzales is the appointee of the president ... he's representing the people of the United States, a key distinction which I'm pleased to say in advance that Judge Gonzales has noted in the statement which he has submitted," Specter said.

The Pennsylvania Republican traveled a bruising path to the chairman's seat. He almost lost his claim to it last fall when he said just after Bush won re-election that anti-abortion judges might not win Senate confirmation. Administration officials were displeased, and conservatives flooded Republican Senate offices in protest.

A major damage-control effort by Specter helped win over Republican colleagues, who chose him to succeed Orrin Hatch, R-Utah. The Senate on Thursday officially signed off on the change.

Specter wore a bandage on his nose from the removal of pre-cancerous tissue but was in good humor, accepting congratulations from numerous senators during the hearing.

He permitted multiple rounds of questions - and criticism for the White House - from senators of both parties, while Hatch had usually allowed only one round at such hearings.

Specter also agreed to let two law school professors and a human rights advocate testify against Gonzales.

He questioned extending some of the police powers in the Patriot Act passed by Congress after the Sept. 11 attacks, particularly language requiring judges to issue warrants without making police or prosecutors justify them.

"Why can't we have that traditional probable cause requirement on the obtaining of those records?" asked Specter. The law comes up for renewal by Congress this year.

"-And it feels right this time
On this crash course we’re in the big time
Pay no mind to the distant thunder
Beauty fills his head with wonder, boy....

Says it feels right this time
Turn around, found new high lights
Good day to be alive sir
Good day to be alive, he said.....

Then it comes to be that the soothing light at the end of your tunnel
Is just a freight train coming your way-"

excerpt from Metallica "No Leaf Clover"

The emperor's same, old clothes

2004-12-27T19:52:00.000+07:00

H.D.S. GREENWAY

ONCE UPON a time there was an emperor who wanted new clothes. He had ascended to the same throne upon which his father had sat. But for eight long years previously usurpers had ruled. Now they were gone, and the new emperor decreed that everything done in the last eight years would henceforth be considered wrong. From now only the right would prevail.

So saying, he discarded all the royal garments that reminded him of the usurper, and looked about him for a new firm of royal tailors.

He appointed the firm of Cheney, Chalabi, and Wolfowitz, known as the Tailors of Baghdad, as his official clothiers. Although it was a fine old firm, they had never sold their goods to an emperor before. Indeed the emperor's father had rejected them. But because of their wondrous, new, and revolutionary weaving techniques, some of the men in the firm came to be known as neo-tailors.

They promised the monarch that he had only to wear their suit of clothes and all Baghdad would fall before him. And not just Baghdad, but all of Araby as well. These liberated realms would accept the emperor's values, and the empire could have access to their oil, their military bases, and all his new subjects would joyfully fall over one another in praise of the emperor's clothes. Mr. Chalabi even threw in an extra pair of pants for the same price.

The emperor, a man who valued loyalty above all things, ordered the tailors to make a suit of the same cloth for his Grand Vizier, the most powerful and influential man in his Cabinet, who served also as the empire's minister for war. Mr. Chalabi offered an extra pair of pants for the Grand Vizier as well.

The wily tailors explained, however, that their new cloth was so special that it would be visible only to the virtuous. To those who lacked virtue the threads would be invisible.

And so they began to work. And late into the night the sounds of their shuttlecocks and bobbins could be heard clacking and spinning as the weavers plied their trade.

On the appointed day the clothes were ready, and the emperor gathered all his courtiers together for an official viewing of his new garments. There was general applause and compliments from the courtiers, who said that the new clothes were bold and beautiful and symbolized the greatness of the empire. One courtier, who was in a position to know better, even called the new clothes a "slam dunk," and would in due course be given the empire's highest civilian medal.

There were a few who gasped because they saw nothing. But most kept their mouths shut because they didn't want to be seen as without virtue. And the few who did try to warn the emperor were ignored.

It came to pass that all Baghdad did fall before the emperor, and the tailors were happy, the king was happy, and above all the Grand Vizier was happy as his rivals lost influence.

But then things started to go terribly wrong. First of all, the empire's new subjects did not fall down in praise of the emperor's new clothes. They began to take up arms against him. As the days and months progressed things only got worse. The Grand Vizier, it seemed, never had an adequate plan, and the price for the new clothes kept rising. But he was nonetheless asked to continue his good work even as his rivals were banished from court.

One day the Grand Vizier decided to go to Kuwait to boost the morale of his soldiers who were being killed in defense of the empire. He appeared before them in all his shining robes. Generals, colonels, and captains all clapped and admired the preening vizier.

But then a young solider spoke up and said to the Grand Vizier: "But you, sir, have no clothes on; just the way we haven't any armor for our trucks, and we are being sent naked into battle."

Now if Hans Christian Andersen were telling this story, it would become clear to all that both the emperor and his Grand Vizier were standing naked before them, but this has not yet come to pass.

And the tailors? Well, Mr. Chalabi has left the firm, but the rest are busy sewing a new set of clothes of which they hope the emperor will approve. It is to be cut from Iranian whole cloth.

Is this a joke, or did the world take leave of its senses? Perhaps, nobody cared..... Yeh, thats probably it....

2004-12-26T19:21:00.000+07:00

It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world.

– George Washington

Those who give up essential liberties for temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

~Benjamin Franklin

The chain reaction of evil--wars producing more wars -- must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.

~Martin Luther King, Jr.

War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious.

~General Smedley Butler

Imperialism is an institution under which one nation asserts the right to seize the land or at least to control the government or resources of another people.

~John T. Flynn

The great error of nearly all studies of war... has been to consider war as an episode in foreign policies, when it is an act of interior politics...

~Simone Weil

We may extend our dominion over the whole continent...but be assured it will be at the price of our free institutions.

~Rep. William Waters Boyce

I hate war for its consequences, for the lies it lives on and propagates, for the undying hatreds it arouses...

~Harry Emerson Fosdick

Before the war is ended, the war party assumes the divine right to denounce and silence all opposition to war as unpatriotic and cowardly.

~Senator Robert M. La Follette

After every ''victory'' you have more enemies.

~Jeanette Winterson

Wars are inevitable...as long as we believe that wars are inevitable. The moment we don't believe it anymore it is not inevitable.

~Lydia Sicher

The winds that blow our billions away return burdened with themes of scorn and dispraise.

~Garet Garrett

I hope....that mankind will at length, as they call themselves responsible creatures, have the reason and sense enough to settle their differences without cutting throats...

~Benjamin Franklin

[T]he essence of so-called war prosperity; it enriches some by what it takes from others. It is not rising wealth but a shifting of wealth and income.

~Ludwig von Mises

Our children are not born to hate, they are raised to hate.

~Thomas della Peruta

Death has a tendency to encourage a depressing view of war.

~Donald Rumsfeld

Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence.

~Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

The shepherd always tries to persuade the sheep that their interests and his own are the same.

~Marie Beyle

I guess every generation is doomed to fight its war...suffer the loss of the same old illusions, and learn the same old lessons on its own.

~Phillip Caputo

Although tyranny...may successfully rule over foreign peoples, it can stay in power only if it destroys first of all the national institutions of its own people.

~Hannah Areddt

I hate those men who would send into war youth to fight and die for them; the pride and cowardice of those old men, making their wars that boys must die.

~Mary Roberts Rinehart

Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism.

~George Washington

The de facto role of the US armed forces will be to keep the world safe for our economy and open to our cultural assault.

~Major Ralph Peters, US Military

For me war has become a flat, black depression without highlights, a revulsion of the mind and an exhaustion of the spirit.

~Ernie Pyle

Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official...

~Theodore Roosevelt

The worst crimes were dared by a few, willed by more and tolerated by all.

~Tacitus

War creates peace like hate creates love.

~David L. Wilson

War's a game, which, were their subjects wise, Kings would not play at.

~William Cowper

Military glory--that attractive rainbow, that rises in showers of blood--that serpent's eye, that charms to destroy...

~Abraham Lincoln

Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government.

~Hugo Black, Supreme Court Justice

I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.

~George McGovern

War is fear cloaked in courage.

~General William Westmoreland

Because I do it with one small ship, I am called a terrorist. You do it with a whole fleet and are called an emperor.

~A pirate, from St. Augustine's "City of God"

Never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter.

~Sir Winston Churchill

What is morally wrong can never be advantageous, even when it enables you to make some gain that you believe to be to your advantage.

~Marcus Tullius Cicero

We are the ones responsible to determine whether the war that our marines, soldiers and airmen are fighting in is worth the cause...

~Scott Ritter

I am not blaming those who are resolved to rule, only those who show an even greater readiness to submit.

~Thucydides

The life of the nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous.

~Frederick Douglass

Everybody's worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there's a really easy way: stop participating in it.

~Noam Chomsky

It is far easier to make war than peace.

~Georges Clemenceau

The belief in the possibility of a short decisive war appears to be one of the most ancient and dangerous of human illusions.

~Robert Lynd

Nations, like individuals, are punished for their transgressions.

~Ulysses S. Grant

It would be easier to subjugate the entire universe through force than the minds of a single village.

~Voltaire

Those who give up essential liberties for temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

~Benjamin Franklin

Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.

~James Madison

War doesn't make boys men, it makes men dead.

~Ken Gillespie

An army of principles can penetrate where an army of soldiers cannot.

~Thomas Paine

Modern war appears as a struggle led by all the State apparatuses and their general staffs against all men old enough to bear arms...

~Simone Weil

Every nation has its war party. It is not the party of democracy. It is the party of autocracy. It seeks to dominate absolutely.

~Senator Robert M. La Follette

It is the job of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners.

~Albert Camus

We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it.

~Edward R. Murrow

Wars teach us not to love our enemies, but to hate our allies.

~W. L. George

The opinion of 10,000 men is of no value if none of them know anything about the subject.

~Marcus Aurelius

The mere act of believing that some wrongful course of action constitutes an advantage is pernicious.

~Marcus Tullius Cicero

Man was/is born free, and everywhere he is in chains. One who believes himself the master of others is nonetheless a greater slave than they.

~Jean Jaques Rousseau

The dangerous patriot...drifts into chauvinism and exhibits blind enthusiasm for military actions.

~Colonel James A. Donovan, Marine Corps

I've been immersed in it too long. My spirit is wobbly and my mind is confused. The hurt has become too great.

~Ernie Pyle

It is unpatriotic not to tell the truth, whether about the president or anyone else.

~Theodore Roosevelt

Our country is now geared to an arms economy bred in an artificually induced psychosis of war hysteria and an incessant propaganda of fear.

~General Douglas MacArthur

For what can war, but endless war, still breed?

~John Milton

The statesman who yields to war fever...is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events.

~Sir Winston Churchill

Paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people...

~Hugo Black, Supreme Court Justice

Violence is the first refuge of the incompetent.

~Issac Asimov

Liberty and democracy become unholy when their hands are dyed red with innocent blood.

~Mahatma Gandhi

Let not your zeal to share your principles entice you beyond your borders.

~Marquis de Sade

Even if we are spared destruction by war, our lives will have to change if we want to save life from self-destruction.

~Alexander Solzhenitsyn

The demands of internal growth are incomparably more important to us...than the need for any external expansion of our power.

~Alexander Solzhenitsyn

A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny.

~Alexander Solzhenitsyn

It is always more valuable to report the truth.

~Jean-Paul Sartre

Any man who has once proclaimed violence as his method is inevitably forced to take the lie as his principle.

~Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

In times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary act.

~George Orwell

What an immense mass of evil must result...from allowing men to assume the right of anticipating what may happen.

~Leo Tolstoy

Peace is constructed, not fought for.

~Brent Davis

Love of power, operating through greed and through personal ambition, was the cause of all these evils.

~Thucydides

We say that we care about the war, but we don’t even really know what we’re fighting for.

~Scott Ritter

In this war – as in others – I am less interested in honoring the dead than in preventing the dead.

~Butler Shaffer

It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood...War is hell.

~General William Tecumseh Sherman

It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.

~Voltaire

When one doesn’t have the courage needed to be a pacifist, one’s a warrior. The pacifist is always alone.

~Jean Giono

some men...in order to prevent the supposed intentions of their adversaries, have committed the most enormous cruelties...

~Clearchus, in Xenophon

[War] might be avoidable were more emphasis placed on the training to social interest, less on the attainment of egotistical grandeur.

~Lydia Sicher

War is a way of shattering to pieces...materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses... too intelligent.

~George Orwell, "1984"

In 1960, when I came out of prison as an ex-convict, I had more freedom under parolee supervision than there's available...in America right now.

~Merle Haggard

If, finally, violence meets with violence, we have confirmation of the age old adage that war though it kills many men, makes many more men evil.

~Fritz Medicus

It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so...

~Robert A. Heinlein

Everything secret degenerates, even the administration of justice.

~Lord Acton

Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.

~Groucho Marx

In order to rally people, governments need enemies. They want us to be afraid, to hate, so we will rally behind them.

~Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnamese Buddhist monk

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.

~Margaret Mead

No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.

~James Madison

Look at you in war...There has never been a just one, never an honorable one, on the part of the instigator of the war.

~Mark Twain

The power to declare war, including the power of judging the causes of war, is fully and exclusively vested in the legislature.

~James Madison

...Violence as a way of gaining power...is being camouflaged under the guise of tradition, national honor [and] national security...

~Alfred Adler

Every nation has its war party...It is commercial, imperialistic, ruthless. It tolerates no opposition.

~Senator Robert M. La Follette

War is not the continuation of politics with different means, it is the greatest mass-crime perpetrated on the community of man.

~Alfred Adler

As long as we can talk with people, as long as one can keep the guns quiet, one has a chance.

~Lydia Sicher

It is always easier to fight for one’s principles than to live up to them.

~Alfred Adler

We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other's children.

~Jimmy Carter

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

~Martin Luther King, Jr.

I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be.

~Thomas Jefferson

The dangerous patriot...is a defender of militarism and its ideals of war and glory.

~Colonel James A. Donovan, Marine Corps

To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war.

~Winston Churchill

When [men] go to war, what they want is to impose on their enemies the victor's will and call it peace.

~St. Augustine, "The City of God"

War is the continuation of politics by other means.

~Karl Von Clausewitz

Man has no right to kill his brother. It is no excuse that he does so in uniform: he only adds the infamy of servitude to the crime of murder.

~Percy Bysshe Shelley

Is it not a strange blindness on our part to teach publicly the techniques of warfare and to reward with medals those who prove to be the most adroit killers?

~Marquis de Sade

The next war ... may well bury Western civilization forever.

~Alexander Solzhenitsyn

The cry has been that when war is declared, all opposition should be hushed. A sentiment more unworthy of a free country could hardly be propagated.

~William Ellery Channing

...Uncalled-for aggression arouses the hatred of the civilian population...

~Jean-Paul Sartre

War is at best barbarism. Its glory is all moonshine...War is hell.

~General William Tecumseh Sherman

The voice of protest...is never more needed than when the clamor of fife and drum...is bidding all men...obey in silence the tyrannous word of command.

~Charles Eliot Norton

Our neoconservatives are neither new nor conservative, but old as Bablyon and evil as Hell.

~Edward Abbey

The life of the nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous.

~Frederick Douglass

The war...was an unnecessary condition of affairs, and might have been avoided if forebearance and wisdom had been practiced on both sides.

~Robert E. Lee

Where is the justice of political power if it...marches upon neighboring lands, killing thousands and pillaging the very hills?

~Kahlil Gibran

We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.

~Dwight D. Eisenhower

Respect for the rights of others means peace.

~Benito Juárez

War is not a word, it's an acronym for "Wasting Another's Resources."

~Ramman Kenoun

Let us become inspired by inherent beauty, and not impassioned by manufactured hate.

~Nima Shirali, Middle Eastern Reconciliation Forum

Wild animals never kill for sport. Man is the only one to whom the torture and death of his fellow creatures is amusing in itself.

~James Anthony Froude

The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labor.

~Emmanuel Goldstein

War remains the decisive human failure.

~John Kenneth Galbraith

That we are to stand by the president, right or wrong is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.

~Theodore Roosevelt

All nations want peace, but they want a peace that suits them.

~Admiral Sir John Fisher

The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive.

~Thomas Jefferson

The evil that is in the world almost always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding.

~Albert Camus

Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.

~Albert Einstein

All mankind...being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions.

~John Locke

Today the real test of power is not capacity to make war but capacity to prevent it.

~Anne O'Hare McCormick

Under democracy, one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule – and both commonly succeed, and are right.

~H.L. Mencken

One is left with the horrible feeling now that war settles nothing; that to win a war is as disastrous as to lose one.

~Agatha Christie

I hate war...for the dictatorships it puts in the place of democracies, and for the starvation that stalks after it.

~Harry Emerson Fosdick

Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices.

~Voltaire

Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none.

~Thomas Jefferson

To all those who walk the path of human cooperation war must appear loathsome and inhuman.

~Alfred Adler

If there is no sufficient reason for war, the [war] party will make war on one pretext, then invent another...pretext after war is on.

~Sen. Robert M. La Follette

War is a racket. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

~General Smedley Butler

War is not its own end, except in some catastrophic slide into absolute damnation.

~Lois McMaster Bujold

A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.

~Edward Abbey

We thought, because we had power, we had wisdom.

~Stephen Vincent Benét

Chauvinism is a proud and bellicose form of patriotism...which identifies numerous enemies who can only be dealt with through military power...

~Colonel James A. Donovan, Marine Corps

The guns and the bombs, the rockets and the warships, are all symbols of human failure.

~Lyndon B. Johnson

Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.

~James Madison

History teaches that war begins when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap.

~Ronald Reagan

What is more immoral than war?

~Marquis de Sade

When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest...and there is nothing to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war

~Plato

There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights.

~General Smedley Butler

War is wretched beyond description, and only a fool or a fraud could sentimentalize its cruel reality.

~Senator John McCain

Total war is no longer war waged by all members of one national community against all those of another. It is total...because it may well involve the whole world.

~Jean-Paul Sartre

Dulce bellum inexpertis (War is delightful to the inexperienced).

~Erasmus, the 16th-century scholar

Right is right, even if everyone is against it, and wrong is wrong, even if everyone is for it.

~William Penn

The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labor.

~Emmanuel Goldstein

Where is the justice of political power if it executes the murderer and jails the plunderer?

~Kahlil Gibran

Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative.

~Dwight D. Eisenhower

May we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.

~Dwight D. Eisenhower

We first fought...in the name of religion, then Communism, and now in the name of drugs and terrorism. Our excuses for global domination always change.

~Serj Tankian

People do not make wars; governments do.

~Ronald Reagan

Any forces that would impose their will on other nations will certainly face defeat.

~General Vo Nguyen Giap (Vietnam)

Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution.

~Thomas Alva Edison

Protecting the rights of even the least individual among us is basically the only excuse the government has for even existing.

~Ronald Reagan

To announce that there must be no criticism of the president...is morally treasonable to the American public.

~Theodore Roosevelt

To declare that the end justifies the means, to declare that the government may commit crimes, would bring terrible retribution.

~Justice Louis D. Brandeis

When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.

~Thomas Jefferson

If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.

~James Madison

Political language ... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

~George Orwell

Justice in the life and conduct of the State is possible only as first it resides in the hearts and souls of the citizens.

~Plato

I destroy my enemies when I make them my friends.

~Abraham Lincoln

Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people.

~Theodore Roosevelt

This world of ours...must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.

~Dwight D. Eisenhower

War is the business of barbarians.

~Napoleon Bonaparte

The Department of Defense is the behemoth...With an annual budget larger than the gross domestic product of Russia, it is an empire.

~The 9/11 Commission Report (Norton First Edition)

War means blind obedience, unthinking stupidity, brutish callousness, wanton destruction, and irresponsible murder.

~Alexander Berkman

One day the end of the world will come as a result of a 'justified' war.

~Mikhail Gofman, Antiwar.com reader

Our enemies...never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.

~George W. Bush

There should be an honest attempt at the reconciliation of differences before resorting to combat.

~Jimmy Carter

After each war there is a little less democracy to save.

~Brooks Atkinson

Our modern states are preparing for war without even knowing the future enemy.

~Alfred Adler

War is the statesman's game, the priest's delight, the lawyer's jest, the hired assassin's trade.

~Percy Bysshe Shelley

A man who says that no patriot should attack the war until it is over...is saying no good son should warn his mother of a cliff until she has fallen.

~G. K. Chesterton

War is organized murder and torture against our brothers.

~Alfred Adler

Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter...

~Winston Churchill

Chauvinism is a proud and bellicose form of patriotism...which equates the national honor with military victory.

~Colonel James A. Donovan, Marine Corps

Man's enemies are not demons, but human beings like himself.

~Lao Tzu

Social order at the expense of liberty is hardly a bargain.

~Marquis de Sade

War prosperity is like the prosperity that an earthquake or a plague brings.

~Ludwig von Mises

Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac.

~George Orwell

Criticism in a time of war is essential to the maintenance of any kind of democratic government.

~Sen. Robert Taft, (R) Ohio

In times of peace, the war party insists on making preparation for war. As soon as prepared for, it insists on making war.

~Senator Robert M. La Follette

War is a way of shattering to pieces...materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable and...too intelligent.

~Emmanuel Goldstein

There is neither rank nor station nor prerogative in the republic of the grave.

~John James Ingalls

Together we must learn how to compose difference, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose...

~Dwight D. Eisenhower

Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose.

~Dwight D. Eisenhower

There is no glory in battle worth the blood it costs.

~Dwight D. Eisenhower

Cruelty must be whitewashed by a moral excuse, and pretense of reluctance.

~George Bernard Shaw

...no mother would ever willingly sacrifice her sons for territorial gain, for economic advantage, for ideology.

~Ronald Reagan

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.

~Voltaire

It is finer to bring one noble human being into the world and rear it well...than to kill ten thousand.

~Olive Schreiner

The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.

~George Orwell

The evils of government are directly proportional to the tolerance of the people.

~Frank Kent

The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants.

~Albert Camus

In war, there are no unwounded soldiers.

~Jose Narosky

What a cruel thing is war...to fill our hearts with hatred instead of love for our neighbors, and to devastate the fair face of this beautiful world.

~Robert E. Lee

...to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day.

~Theodore Roosevelt

If there is one principle more deeply rooted in the mind of every American, it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest.

~Thomas Jefferson

War paralyzes your courage and deadens the spirit of true manhood.

~Alexander Berkman

There is but one evil, war. All the other proclaimed evils such as hate, greed, descrimination, and jealousy are only sub-categories of it.

~Jose Barreiro

Emphasis on military prowess is an indication of philosophical poverty.

~Henk Middelraad

War vies with magic in its efforts to get something for nothing...

~Louis Mumford (from "Technics and Civilization")

What we need is Star Peace and not Star Wars.

~Mikhail Gorbachev (from speech given 11/28/86)

War brings out the most negative emotional human responses on both sides.

~Henk Middelraad

I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.

~James Baldwin

Don't regard yourself as a guardian of freedom unless you respect and preserve the rights of people you disagree with...

~Gerard K. O'Neill

Our country is not the only thing to which we owe our allegiance. It is also owed to justice and to humanity.

~James Bryce

Don't talk to me about atrocities; all war is an atrocity.

~Lord Kitchener (Horatio Herbert)

There were no international terrorists in Iraq until we went in. It was we who gave the perfect conditions in which Al Qaeda could thrive.

~Jack Straw, UK Foreign Secretary

We cloak ourselves in cold indifference to the unnecessary suffering of others--even when we cause it.

~James Carroll (Boston Globe, 9/21/04)

Those who are asking for more government interference are asking ultimately for more compulsion and less freedom.

~Ludwig von Mises

We know that dictators are quick to choose aggression, while free nations strive to resolve differences in peace.

~George W. Bush (UN address, 9/04)

There is no way to peace. Peace is the way.

~A. J. Muste

The State thrives on war – unless, of course, it is defeated and crushed – expands on it, glories in it.

~Murray Rothbard

Old men declare war. But it is the youth that must fight and die.

~Herbert C. Hoover

The greater the state, the more wrong and cruel its patriotism, and the greater is the sum of suffering upon which its power is founded.

~Leo Tolstoy

How could man rejoice in victory and delight in the slaughter of men?

~Lao Tzu

Most wars are started by well-fed people with time on their hands to dream up half-baked ideologies or grandiose ambitions...

~Thomas Sowell

Society has arisen out of the works of peace; the essence of society is peacemaking.

~Ludwig von Mises

It is for us to refuse loyalty when injustice holds sway.

~Henry T. Laurency, in "The Philosopher's Stone"

Usually, terrible things that are done with the excuse that progress requires them are not really progress at all, but just terrible things.

~Russell Baker

A people free to choose will always choose peace.

~Ronald Reagan

Any excuse will serve a tyrant.

~Aesop

One reason the United States finds itself at the edge of a foreign policy disaster is its underinformed citizenry, a key weakness in a democracy.

~Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke, "America Alone"

Each man must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, which course is patriotic and which isn't.

~Mark Twain

Nothing doth more hurt in a state than that cunning men pass for wise.

~Sir Francis Bacon

The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home.

~James Madison

Let us form a new religion, that which would be called 'humanity', with 'peace' as its prophet.

~Nima Shirali, Middle Eastern Reconciliation Forum

All men having power ought to be mistrusted.

~James Madison

All war is based on deception.

~Sun Tzu

In war, the army is not merely a pure consumer, but a negative producer...

~Louis Mumford (from "Technics and Civilization")

What the people want is very simple - they want an America as good as its promise.

~Barbara Jordan

Dictators have always played on the natural human tendency to blame others and to oversimplify.

~Gerard K. O'Neill

Patriotism consists not in waving the flag, but in striving that our country shall be righteous as well as strong.

~James Bryce

Peace has to be created, in order to be maintained. It will never be achieved by passivity and quietism.

~Dorothy Thompson

We carefully nurture a spirit of detachment toward the wars we pay for.

~James Carroll (Boston Globe, 9/21/04)

These people are trying to shake the will of the Iraqi citizens, and they want us to leave...I think the world would be better off if we did leave...

~George W. Bush (speaking on Iraqi Insurgency, 9/04)

There are no politics in war. Politics is the luxury of the safe-at-home. War is a lottery of survival.

~John Cory

War is never economically beneficial except for those in position to profit from war expenditures.

~Congressman Ron Paul

Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich.

~Patrick J. Buchanan

The reality right now is that the most dangerous opinion in the world is the opinion of a U.S. serviceman.

~Lance Cpl. Devin Kelly (USMC)

National defense is the usual pretext for the policy of fleecing the people.

~Senator John Taylor (1753-1824)

The world cannot continue to wage war like physical giants and to seek peace like intellectual pygmies.

~Basil O'Connor

All government wars are unjust.

~Murray Rothbard

The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders...tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.

~Herman Goering

We must not only cease our present desire for the growth of the state, but we must desire its decrease, its weakening...

~Leo Tolstoy

Violence, even well intentioned, always rebounds upon oneself.

~Lao Tzu

Wars have ever been but another aristocratic mode of plundering and oppressing commerce.

~Richard Cobden

Peace and friendship with all mankind is our wisest policy, and I wish we may be permitted to pursue it.

~Thomas Jefferson

As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand.

~Josh Billings

Tyrants seldom want pretexts.

~Edmund Burke

The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one.

~Albert Einstein

To some degree it matters who's in office, but it matters more how much pressure they're under from the public.

~Noam Chomsky

This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector.

~Plato

Governments have never learned anything from history, or acted on principles deducted from it.

~Friedrich Hebbel, German poet and dramatist

The state has, in order to control us, introduced division into our thinking, so that we come to distrust others and look to the state for protection.

~Butler Shaffer

Misery, mutilation, destruction, terror, starvation and death characterize the process of war and form a principal part of the product.

~Louis Mumford (from "Technics and Civilization")

We Americans have no commission from God to police the world.

~Benjamin Harrison (addressing Congress, 1888)

The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.

~Louis D. Brandeis

Peace...is the product of Faith, Strength, Energy, Will, Sympathy, Justice, Imagination, and the triumph of principle.

~Dorothy Thompson

There is no morality in war. Morality is the privilege of those judging from the distance. War is only death and destruction...

~John Cory

That there are men in all countries who get their living by war, and by keeping up the quarrels of Nations is as shocking as it is true...

~Thomas Paine

The greatest crime since World War II has been U.S. foreign policy.

~Ramsey Clark

Wars based on principle are far more destructive...the attacker will not destroy that which he is after.

~Alan Watts (from "The Way of Zen")

In war, there are no winners.

~Ramman Kenoun

...The very nature of interstate war puts innocent civilians into great jeopardy, especially with modern technology.

~Murray Rothbard

Peace hath higher tests of manhood than battle ever knew.

~John Greenleaf Whittier

A belligerent state permits itself every such misdeed, every such act of violence, as would disgrace the individual.

~Sigmund Freud

It's more humane to cure your enemies than to kill them.

~Hugh Mann

A war for a great principle ennobles a nation. A war for commercial supremacy, upon some shallow pretext, is despicable.

~Albert Pike

There is nothing more frightening than active ignorance.

~Goethe

Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.

~Edward Everett

We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security.

~Dwight D. Eisenhower

The biggest lesson I learned from Vietnam is not to trust [our own] government statements.

~Senator James W. Fulbright

Coercive practices that threaten our neighbor(s) also threaten us.

~Butler Shaffer

We need a type of patriotism that recognizes the virtues of those who are opposed to us.

~Francis John McConnell

A man who kills on his own is a murderer. A man who kills at his government's request is a national hero.

~Ramman Kenoun

We seek peace, knowing that peace is the climate of freedom.

~Dwight D. Eisenhower

War is the tool of small-minded scoundrels who worship the death of others on the altar of their greed.

~John Cory

The State acquires power... and because of its insatiable lust for power it is incapable of giving up any of it. The State never abdicates.

~Frank Chodorov

No great dependence is to be placed on the eagerness of young soldiers for action...fighting is agreeable to those who are strangers to it.

~Vegetius

To the wicked, everything serves as pretext.

~Voltaire

I'm afraid, based on my own experience, that fascism will come to America in the name of national security.

~Jim Garrison

The only security for the American people today, or for any people, is to be found through the control of force rather than the use of force.

~Norman Cousins

In order to rally people, governments need enemies...if they do not have a real enemy, they will invent one in order to mobilize us.

~Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnamese Buddhist monk

We must get away from the idea that America is to be the leader of the world in everything.

~Francis John McConnell

The heights of popularity and patriotism are still the beaten road to power and tyranny...

~David Hume

The coward threatens when he is safe.

~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

If this phrase of the 'balance of power' is to be always an argument for war, the pretext for war will never be wanting, and peace can never be secure.

~John Bright

Mankind deserves sacrifice - but not of mankind.

~Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

We believed ourselves indestructable... watching only the madmen outside our frontiers, and we remained defenseless against our own madmen.

~Jacobo Timerman (Israeli jounralist, 1982)

No matter that patriotism is too often the refuge of scoundrels. Dissent, rebellion, and all-around hell-raising remain the true duty of patriots.

~Barbara Ehrenreich

War is the cemetery of futures promised.

~John Cory

To kill a man is not to defend a doctrine, but to kill a man.

~Michael Servetus

Phony pretexts repeated often enough become real reasons. Things that...are not true become true in the public mind simply through endless repetition.

~Lenny Bloom

The fact that certain planets are uninhabited may very well derive from the fact that their nuclear scientist are more advanced than ours.

~Salon Gahlin (swedish author)

War is eternity jammed into frantic minutes that will fill a lifetime with dreams and nightmares.

~John Cory

In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the interests of the people...

~Leo Tolstoy

'Emergencies' have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded.

~Friedrich August von Hayek

Peace is not absence of conflict, it is the ability to handle conflict by peaceful means.

~Ronald Reagan

Economically considered, war and revolution are always bad business.

~Ludwig von Mises

It is unfortunately none too well understood that, just as the State has no money of its own, so it has no power of its own.

~Albert J. Nock

Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.

~Martin Luther King, Jr.

Great is the guilt of an unnecessary war.

~John Adams

All those who seek to destroy the liberties of a democratic nation ought to know that war is the surest and shortest means to accomplish it.

~Alexis de Tocqueville

The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant.

~John Stuart Mill

The moral and constitutional obligations of our representatives in Washington are to protect our liberty, not coddle the world, precipitating no-win wars, while bringing bankruptcy and economic turmoil to our people.

~Ron Paul

Force always attracts men of low morality.

~Albert Einstein

War is just a racket...I believe in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else.

~General Smedley Butler

War technology is science in the service of obscene anatomical vandalism.

~Stan Goff

There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket.

~General Smedley Butler

We have to face the fact that either all of us are going to die together or we are going to learn to live together and if we are to live together we have to talk.

~Eleanor Roosevelt

The loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or imagined, from abroad.

~James Madison

Allow the president to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such a purpose—and you allow him to make war at pleasure.

~Abraham Lincoln

Our nation is somewhat sad, but we’re angry. There’s a certain level of blood lust, but we won’t let it drive our reaction. We’re steady, clear-eyed and patient, but pretty soon we’ll have to start displaying scalps.

~George W. Bush

It is part of the general pattern of misguided policy that our country is now geared to an arms economy which was bred in an artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and nurtured upon an incessant propaganda of fear.

~General Douglas MacArthur

Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.

~Martin Luther King, Jr.

They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country. But in modern war, there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason.

~Ernest Hemingway

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?

~Mahatma Ghandi

And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.

~John 8:32

War should be the politics of last resort. And when we go to war, we should have a purpose that our people understand and support.

~Colin Powell

War should be the politics of last resort. And when we go to war, we should have a purpose that our people understand and support.

~Colin Powell

War should be the politics of last resort. And when we go to war, we should have a purpose that our people understand and support.

~Colin Powell

Vietnam was the first war ever fought without censorship. Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind.

~General William Westmoreland

Vietnam was the first war ever fought without censorship. Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind.

~General William Westmoreland

The slightest acquaintance with history shows that powerful republics are the most warlike and unscrupulous of nations.

~Ambrose Bierce

War, n: A time-tested political tactic guaranteed to raise a president’s popularity rating by at least 30 points. It is especially useful during election years and economic downturns.

~Chaz Bufe

To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things they misname empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace.

~Calgacus

To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things they misname empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace.

~Calgacus

I learned nothing from war. War is not an activity for human beings; war is for criminals—rape, robbery and murder.

~Roman Podabedov (Russian anti-tank gunner)

There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.

~Howard Zinn

War is a racket.

~Smedley Butler

We have to show the American People that war is not patriotic.

~Justin Raimondo

If my soldiers were to begin to think, not one of them would remain in the army.

~Frederick the Great

They talk about conscription as a democratic institution. Yes; so is a cemetary.

~Rep. Meyer London

Either war is obsolete, or men are.

~R. Buckminster Fuller

You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.

~Jeanette Rankin, first woman member of Congress

Are bombs the only way of setting fire to the spirit of a people? Is the human will as inert as the past two world-wide wars would indicate?

~Gregory Clark

I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.

~George McGovern

If I'm fighting for freedom here, and I go home and I'm opressed, what does that mean?

~Pv2 Frederick Phoenix, MP, US Army

War is too serious a matter to entrust to military men.

~Georges Clemenceau

Nothing except a battle lost can be half as melancholy as a battle won.

~Duke of Wellington

I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.

~Dwight D. Eisenhower

I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.

~James Baldwin

Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind.

~John F. Kennedy

Every government has as much of a duty to avoid war as a ship's captain has to avoid a shipwreck.

~Guy de Maupassant

War is a quarrel between two thieves too cowardly to fight their own battle.

~Thomas Carlyle

To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.

~Abraham Lincoln

Why should you ask blood be spilled for a cause that is not in the interest of the American people?

~Rep. Wally Herger

All wars are fought for money.

~Socrates

Tis nobler to lose honor to save the lives of men than it is to gain honor by taking them.

~David Borenstein

Man is the only animal that is cruel. It kills just for the sake of it.

~Mark Twain

Force is all-conquering, but its victories are short-lived.

~Abraham Lincoln

The first casualty when war comes is the truth.

~Sen. Hiram Johnson

This war is not necessary. We are truly sleepwalking through history.

~Sen. Robert Byrd

The guns and the bombs, the rockets and the warships, are all symbols of human failure.

~Lyndon B. Johnson

They talk about conscription as a democratic institution. Yes; so is a cemetery.

~Rep. Meyer London

Washington...has become an alien city-state that rules America, and much of the rest of the world, in the way that Rome ruled the Roman Empire.

~Richard Maybury

Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness.

~George Washington

Great is the guilt of an unnecessary war.

~John Adams

A belligerent state permits itself every such misdeed, every such act of violence, as would disgrace the individual.

~Sigmund Freud

War is only a cowardly escape from the problems of peace.

~Thomas Mann

The belief in the possibility of a short decisive war appears to be one of the most ancient and dangerous of human illusions.

~Robert Lynd

In peace, sons bury their fathers. In war, fathers bury their sons.

~Herodotus

Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear - kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor - with the cry of grave national emergency.

~General Douglas MacArthur

After each war there is a little less democracy to save.

~Brooks Atkinson

I want to scare the hell out of the rest of the world.

~General Colin Powell

If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator.

~George W. Bush

We will not learn to live together in peace by killing each other's children.

~Jimmy Carter

Violence and arms can never resolve the problems of men.

~Pope John Paul II

If peace...only had the music and pagaentry of war, there'd be no wars.

~Sophie Kerr

God hates violence. He has ordained that all men fairly possess their property, not seize it.

~Euripides

Every man thinks god is on his side.

~Jean Anouilh

All the gods are dead except the god of war.

~Eldridge Cleaver

The bombs in Vietnam explode at home; they destroy the hopes and possibilities for a decent America.

~Martin Luther King, Jr.

Wars should be over in three days or less...and the American people must be all for it from the outset.

~Evan Thomas

We used to wonder where war lived, what it was that made it so vile. And now we realize that we know where it lives...inside ourselves.

~Albert Camus

The supreme excellence is to subde the armies of your enemies without even having to fight them.

~Sun Tzu

From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.

~Denis Diderot

The time has come to stop beating our heads against stone walls under the illusion that we have been appointed policeman to the human race.

~Walter Lippmann

It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world.

~George Washington

We must recognize the chief characteristic of the modern era--a permanent state of what I call violent peace.

~Admiral James D. Watkins

The spirit of this country is totally adverse to a large military force.

~Thomas Jefferson

No nation ever had an army large enough to guarantee it against attack in time of peace, or ensure it of victory in time of war.

~Calvin Coolidge

Can anything be more ridiculous than that a man has a right to kill me because he lives on the other side of the water, and because his ruler has quarrel with mine, although I have none with him?

~Blaise Pascal

An empire founded by war has to maintain itself by war.

~Montesquieu

War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today.

~John F. Kennedy

Most quarrels are inevitable at the time; incredible afterwards.

~E. M. Forster

It is the youth who must inherit the tribulation, the sorrow...that are the aftermath of war.

~Herbert C. Hoover

There's no difference between one's killing and making decisions that will send others to kill. It's exactly the same thing, or even worse.

~Golda Meir

The military doesn't start wars. The politicians start wars.

~General William Westmoreland

It is the merit of a general to impart good news, and to conceal the truth.

~Sophocles

In war, truth is the first casualty.

~Aeschylus

A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.

~Oscar Wilde

Man is the only animal of which I am thoroughly and cravenly afraid...There is no harm in a well-fed lion. It has no ideals, no sect, no party...

~George Bernard Shaw

"My country right or wrong" is like saying, "My mother drunk or sober."

~G. K. Chesterton

As a rule, high culture and military power go hand in hand, as evidenced in the cases of Greece and Rome.

~Baron Colmar Von Der Goltz

History is littered with wars which everybody knew would never happen.

~Enoch Powell

At least we're getting the kind of experience we need for the next war.

~Allen Dulles

War is the greatest plague that can affect humanity; it destroys religion, it destroys states, it destroys families. Any scourge is preferable to it.

~Martin Luther

How vile and despicable war seems to me! I would rather be hacked to pieces than take part in such an abominable business.

~Albert Einstein

Have you ever thought that war is a madhouse and that everyone in the war is a patient?

~Oriana Fallaci

War is the unfolding of miscalculations.

~Barbara Tuchman

War is mainly a catalogue of blunders.

~Winston Churchill

Hate is able to provoke disorders, to ruin a social organization, to cast a country into a period of bloody revolutions; but it produces nothing.

~Georges Sorel

We are all familiar with the argument: Make war dreadful enough, and there will be no war. And we none of us believe it.

~John Galsworthy

War is not an adventure. It is a disease. It is like typhus.

~Antoine De Saint-Exupery

War is the health of the State.

~Randolph Bourne

War is the Health of the State.

~Randolph Bourne

War would end if the dead could return.

~Stanley Baldwin

There are no warlike people--just warlike leaders.

~Ralph Bunche

Name me an emperor who was ever struck by a cannonball.

~Charles V of France

As for being a General, well, at the age of four with paper hates and wooden swords, we're all Generals. Only some of us never grow out of it.

~Peter Ustinov

To wage war, you need first of all money; second, you need money, and third, you also need money.

~Prince Montecuccoli

Wars are not paid for in wartime, the bill comes later.

~Benjamin Franklin

A man may build himself a throne of bayonets, but he cannot sit on it.

~William Ralph Inge

You can wipe out your opponents. But if you do it unjustly you become eligible for being wiped out yourself.

~Ernest Hemingway

No weapon has ever settled a moral problem. It can impose a solution but it cannot guarantee it to be a just one.

~Ernest Hemingway

You can't have this kind of war. There just aren't enough bulldozers to scrape the bodies off the streets.

~Dwight D. Eisenhower

The Atomic Age is here to stay--but are we?

~Bennett Cerf

You've got to forget about this civilian. Whenever you drop bombs, you're going to hit civilians.

~Barry Goldwater

It isn't enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn't enough to believe in it. One must work at it.

~Eleanor Roosevelt

Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding.

~Albert Einstein

Let us not deceive ourselves; we must elect world peace or world destruction.

~Bernard M. Baruch

It is not reasonable that those who gamble with men's lives should not pay with their own.

~H. G. Wells

Only the winners decide what were war crimes.

~Gary Wills

True patriotism hates injustice in its own land more than anywhere else.

~Clarence Darrow

You're not supposed to be so blind with patriotsim that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong no matter who does it or who says it.

~Malcolm X

A time will come when a politician who has willfully made war and promoted international dissension will be...surer of the noose than a private homicide.

~H. G. Wells

It takes twenty years or more of peace to make a man; it only takes twenty seconds of war to destroy him.

~King Baudouin I of Belgium

The time not to become a father is eighteen years before a war.

~E. B. White

In peace, sons bury their fathers; in war, fathers bury their sons.

~Herodotus

When you are winning a war almost everything that happens can be claimed to be right and wise.

~Winston Churchill

If you live long enough, you'll see that every victory turns into a defeat.

~Simon de Beauvoir

One more such victory and we are undone.

~Pyrrhus of Epirus

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.

~Edmund Burke

The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it.

~H. L. Mencken

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

~H. L. Mencken

Those who stand for nothing fall for anything.

~Alexander Hamilton

One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.

~Plato

The obligations of our representatives in Washington are to protect our liberty, not coddle the world, precipitating no-win wars, while bringing bankruptcy and economic turmoil to our people.

~Ron Paul

Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force...Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.

~George Washington

It is our true policy to steer clear of entangling alliances with any portion of the foreign world.

~George Washington

I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone.

~H. L. Mencken

America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy.

~John Quincy Adams

...patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind.

~Julius Caesar

Civilized society is perpetually menaced with disintegration through this primary hostility of men towards one another...

~Sigmund Freud

The coward threatens when he is safe.

~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

People who talk of outlawing the atomic bomb are mistaken — what needs to be outlawed is war.

~Leslie Richard Groves

Peace has its victories no less than war, but it doesn't have as many monuments to unveil.

~Kin Hubbard

A coward is much more exposed to quarrels than a man of spirit.

~Thomas Jefferson

War is just one more big government program.

~Joseph Sobran

The most fundamental purpose of government is defense, not empire.

~Joseph Sobran

How strangely will the Tools of a Tyrant pervert the plain Meaning of Words!

~Samuel Adams

Do not ever say that the desire to "do good" by force is a good motive. Neither power-lust nor stupidity are good motives.

~Ayn Rand

Most wars are started by well-fed people with time on their hands to dream up half-baked ideologies or grandiose ambitions, and to nurse real or imagined grievances.

~Thomas Sowell

We Americans have no commission from God to police the world.

~Benjamin Harrison (addressing Congress, 1888)

The worst evils which mankind has ever had to endure were inflicted by bad governments.

~Ludwig von Mises

Economically considered, war and revolution are always bad business.

~Ludwig von Mises

War can really cause no economic boom, at least not directly, since an increase in wealth never does result from destruction of goods.

~Ludwig von Mises

War is the Health of the State.

~Randolph Bourne

Whoever wishes peace among peoples must fight statism.

~Ludwig von Mises

The attainment of the economic aims of man presupposes peace.

~Ludwig von Mises

History has witnessed the failure of many endeavors to impose peace by war, cooperation by coercion, unanimity by slaughtering dissidents…. A lasting order cannot be established by bayonets.

~Ludwig von Mises

Peace and abstinence from European interferences are our objects, and so will continue while the present order of things in America remain uninterrupted.

~Thomas Jefferson

Commerce with all nations, alliance with none, should be our motto.

~Thomas Jefferson

There never was a good war or a bad peace.

~Benjamin Franklin

Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.

~James Madison

The most fundamental purpose of government is defense, not empire.

~Joseph Sobran

Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none.

~Thomas Jefferson

The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.

~H.L. Mencken

America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all.

~John Quincy Adams

When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.

~Plato

When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.

~Plato

After each war there is a little less democracy to save.

~Brooks Atkinson

An eye for an eye makes us all blind.

~Mahatma Gandhi

In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the interests of the people, to whom war is always pernicious even when successful.

~Leo Tolstoy

If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.

~James Madison

The constitution vests the power of declaring war in Congress; therefore no offensive expedition of importance can be undertaken until after they shall have deliberated upon the subject and authorized such a measure.

~George Washington

The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.

~Justice Louis D. Brandeis

No one has deputized America to play Wyatt Earp to the world.

~Pat Buchanan

the expenditures for such warfare...have crippled the nation's livelihood and exhausted the resources of the people.

~Mo Tzu

All murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.

~Voltaire

You never need an argument against the use of violence, you need an argument for it.

~Noam Chomsky

Anyone who has proclaimed violence his method inexorably must choose lying as his principle.

~Mikhail Gorbachev

A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.

~Edward Abbey

Our ‘neoconservatives’ are neither new nor conservative, but old as Bablyon and evil as Hell.

~Edward Abbey

The tragedy of modern war is that the young men die fighting each other--instead of their real enemies back home in the capitals.

~Edward Abbey

I venture to say no war can be long carried on against the will of the people.

~Edmund Burke

I think war is a dangerous place.

~George W. Bush

War’s a brain spattering windpipe splitting art.

~Lord Byron

It is in war that the State really comes into its own: swelling in power, in number, in pride, in absolute dominion over the economy and the society.

~Murray Rothbard

The belief in the possibility of a short decisive war appears to be one of the most ancient and dangerous of human illusions.

~Robert Lynd

It is harder to preserve than to obtain liberty.

~John C. Calhoun

The only defensible war is a war of defense.

~G. K. Chesterton

All wars come to an end, at least temporarily. But the authority acquired by the state hangs on; political power never abdicates.

~Frank Chodorov

The pertinent question: if Americans did not want these wars should they have been compelled to fight them?

~Frank Chodorov

The State acquires power... and because of its insatiable lust for power it is incapable of giving up any of it. The State never abdicates.

~Frank Chodorov

The more laws, the less justice.

~Marcus Tullius Cicero

The sinews of war are infinite money.

~Marcus Tullius Cicero

Politics is the womb in which war develops.

~Carl P. G. von Clausewitz

The political object is the goal, war is the means of reaching it, and the means can never be considered in isolation form their purposes.

~Carl P. G. von Clausewitz

Wars have ever been but another aristocratic mode of plundering and oppressing commerce.

~Richard Cobden

Remember that a government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take away everything you have.

~Davy Crockett

A standing army is a standing menace to liberty.

~Voltairine de Clayre

When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go and fight it. After my experience, I have come to hate war.

~Dwight D. Eisenhower

War settles nothing.

~Dwight D. Eisenhower

Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding.

~Ralph Waldo Emerson

If you kill one person you are a murderer. If you kill ten people you are a monster. If you kill ten thousand you are a national hero.

~Vassilis Epaminondou

Civilization began the first time an angry person cast a word instead of a rock.

~Sigmund Freud

When American presidents prepare for foreign wars, they lie.

~Robert Higgs

Since the end of the nineteenth century, if not earlier, presidents have misled the public about their motives and their intentions in going to war.

~Robert Higgs

Force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues.

~Thomas Hobbes

What is absurd and monstrous about war is that men who have no personal quarrel should be trained to murder one another in cold blood.

~Aldous Huxley

Conquest is not in our principles. It is inconsistent with our government.

~Thomas Jefferson

We did not raise armies for glory or for conquest.

~Thomas Jefferson

Nations of eternal war [expend] all their energies. . . in the destruction of the labor, property, and lives of their people.

~Thomas Jefferson

I abhor war and view it as the greatest scourge of mankind.

~Thomas Jefferson

The most successful war seldom pays for its losses.

~Thomas Jefferson

Strike against war, for without you no battles can be fought!

~Helen Keller

Be not dumb, obedient slaves in an army of destruction! Be heroes in an army of construction!

~Helen Keller

Nothing good ever comes of violence.

~Martin Luther King, Jr.

Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation.

~Martin Luther King, Jr.

War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it.

~George Orwell

Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac.

~George Orwell

One certain effect of war is to diminish freedom of expression.

~Howard Zinn

War prosperity is like the prosperity that an earthquake or a plague brings.

~Ludwig von Mises

Will . . . the threat of common extermination continue?. . . Must children receive the arms race from us as a necessary inheritance?

~Pope John Paul II

War--after all, what is it that the people get? Why--widows, taxes, wooden legs and debt.

~Samuel B. Pettengill

No matter what political reasons are given for war, the underlying reason is always economic.

~A. J. P. Taylor

No war is inevitable until it breaks out.

~A. J. P. Taylor

Almost all war making states borrow extensively, raise taxes, and seize the means of combat- including men--from reluctant citizens...

~Charles Tilly

All warfare is based on deception.

~Sun Tzu

There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare.

~Sun Tzu

I hate it when they say, ‘He gave his life for his country.’ They don’t die for the honor and glory of their country. We kill them.

~Rear Admiral Gene R. LaRocque

War has become a spectator sport for Americans.

~Rear Admiral Gene R. LaRocque

We all have to be concerned about terrorism, but you will never end terrorism by terrorizing others.

~Martin Luther King III

Always there has been some terrible evil at home or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it.

~General Douglas MacArthur

Of all the enemies of public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.

~James Madison

No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.

~James Madison

The executive has no right, in any case, to decide the question, whether there is or is not cause for declaring war.

~James Madison

If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.

~James Madison

The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home.

~James Madison

War is only a cowardly escape from the problems of peace.

~Thomas Mann

Our poverty will be brought home to us to its full extent only after the war.

~Joseph A. Schumpeter

War is the statesmans game, the priests delight, the lawyers jest, the hired assassins trade.

~Percy Bysshe Shelley

War is just one more big government program.

~Joseph Sobran

This president failed so miserably in diplomacy that we are now forced to war.

~Tom Daschle

The opposite of war is not peace, it's creation.

~Jonathan Larson

The real and lasting victories are those of peace, and not of war.

~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Is it security you want? There is no security at the top of the world.

~Garet Garrett

With no notice to the American people...this country entered the war...Stranger than the fact was the passive acceptance of it.

~Garet Garrett

What a cruel thing is war: to separate and destroy families and friends, and mar the purest joys and happiness god has given us in this world...

~Robert E. Lee

What a cruel thing war is...to fill our hearts with hatred instead of love for our neighbors.

~Robert E. Lee

Either war is obsolete, or men are.

~R. Buckminster Fuller

History teaches that war begins when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap.

~Ronald Reagan

It is not only the living who are killed in war.

~Isaac Asimov

Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.

~General Omar N. Bradley

Wars frequently begin ten years before the first shot is fired.

~K. K. V. Casey

Where is the indignation about the fact that the US and USSR have thirty thousand pounds of destructive force for every human being in the world?

~Norman Cousins

There is nothing that war has ever achieved that we could not better achieve without it.

~Henry Havelock Ellis

The direct use of force is such a poor solution to any problem, it is generally employed only by small children and large nations.

~David Friedman

War grows out of the desire of the individual to gain advantage at the expense of his fellow man.

~Napoleon Hill

The basic problems facing the world today are not susceptible to a military solution.

~John F. Kennedy

We have war when at least one of the parties to a conflict wants something more than it wants peace.

~Jeane J. Kirkpatrick

One does not create a human society on mounds of corpses.

~Louis Lecoin

In war, there are no unwounded soldiers.

~Jose Narosky

A visitor from Mars could easily pick out the civilized nations. They have the best implements of war.

~Herbert V. Prochnow

The real and lasting victories are those of peace, and not of war.

~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Unconditional war can no longer lead to unconditional victory. It can no longer serve to settle disputes...can no longer be of concern to great powers alone.

~John F. Kennedy

[War] can no longer be of concern to great powers alone.

~John F. Kennedy

We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living.

~General Omar N. Bradley

There are no warlike people, just warlike leaders.

~Ralph Bunche

Peace is not the absence of war; it is a virtue; a state of mind; a disposition for benevolence; confidence; and justice.

~Spinoza

Conflict cannot survive without your participation.

~Dr. Wayne Dyer

Probably, no nation is rich enough to pay for both war and civilization. We must make our choice; we cannot have both.

~Abraham Flexner

How far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without?

~Dwight D. Eisenhower

You are not going to get peace with millions of armed men. The chariot of peace cannot advance over a road littered with cannon.

~David Lloyd

When will mankind be convinced and agree to settle their difficulties by arbitration?

~Benjamin Franklin

All wars are follies, very expensive and very mischievous ones.

~Benjamin Franklin

Mankind is becoming a single unit, and that for a unit to fight against itself is suicide.

~Havelock Ellis

I'd like to see the government get out of war altogether and leave the whole field to private individuals.

~Joseph Heller

To kill a man is not to defend a doctrine, but to kill a man.

~Michael Servetus

What a country calls its vital... interests are not things that help its people live, but things that help it make war.

~Simone Weil

Petroleum is a more likely cause of international conflict than wheat.

~Simone Weil

War is never a solution; it is an aggravation.

~Benjamin Disraeli

Force without judgement falls on its own weight.

~Horace

Dress it as we may...huzza it, and sing swaggering songs about it, what is war, nine times out of ten, but murder in uniform?

~Douglas Jerrold

War should be made a crime, and those who instigate it should be punished as criminals.

~Charles Evans Hughes

Yes, we love peace, but we are not willing to take wounds for it, as we are for war.

~John Andrew Holmes

I think that people want peace so much that one of these days government had better get out of their way and let them have it.

~Dwight D. Eisenhower

We have all taken risks in the making of war. Isn't it time that we should take risks to secure peace?

~J. Ramsay MacDonald

We shall never be able to effect physical disarmament until we have succeeded in effecting moral disarmament.

~J. Ramsay MacDonald

I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.

~Dwight D. Eisenhower

The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.

~Albert Einstein

During times of war, hatred becomes quite respectable even though it has to masquerade often under the guise of patriotism.

~Howard Thurman

One is left with the horrible feeling now that war settles nothing; that to win a war is as disastrous as to lose one.

~Agatha Christie

We have guided missiles and misguided men.

~Martin Luther King, Jr.

Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal.

~Martin Luther King, Jr.

If you succumb to the temptation of using violence in the struggle...your chief legacy to the future will be an endless reign of meaningless chaos.

~Martin Luther King, Jr.

It is not enough to say we must not wage war. It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it.

~Martin Luther King, Jr.

We must concentrate not merely on the negative expulsion of war but the postive affirmation of peace.

~Martin Luther King, Jr.

I am a steadfast follower of the doctrine of non-violence which was first preached by Lord Buddha, whose divine wisdom is absolute...

~Dalai Lama

[Iraqis] know we own their country...It's a good thing, especially when there's a lot of oil out there we need.

~U.S. Brig. General William Looney

It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.

~Albert Einstein

I went into the Army believing that if you want peace you must prepare for war. I now believe that if you prepare thoroughly for war you will get it.

~Sir John Frederick Maurice

[Iraqis] know we own their country. We own their airspace... We dictate the way they live and talk. And that's what's great about America right now.

~U.S. Brig. General William Looney

Force is the weapon of the weak.

~Ammon Hennacy

The price of empire is America’s soul, and that price is too high.

~Sen. J. William Fulbright (Ark.)

There is nothing politically right that is morally wrong.

~Daniel O'Connell

Death has a tendency to encourage a depressing view of war.

~Donald Rumsfeld

O peace! how many wars were waged in thy name.

~Alexander Pope

I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we're really talking about peace.

~George W. Bush

If we don’t stop extending our troops all around the world in nation-building missions, we’re going to have a serious problem coming down the road.

~George W. Bush

I can tell you this: If I’m ever in a position to call the shots, I’m not going to rush to send somebody else’s kids into a war.

~George H. W. Bush

In war, there are no unwounded soldiers.

~Jose Narosky

The reason we start a war is to fight a war, win a war, thereby causing no more war.

~George W. Bush

It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad.

~James Madison

War is the most striking instance of the failure of intelligence to master the problem of human relationships.

~Harry Elmer Barnes

We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing that we know about living.

~General Omar N. Bradley

The tragedy of war is that it uses man’s best to do man’s worst.

~Harry Emerson Fosdick

The 1st panacea of a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the 2nd is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; a permanent ruin.

~Ernest Hemingway

The state can be and has often been in the course of history the main source of mischief and disaster.

~Ludwig von Mises

War...is harmful, not only to the conquered but to the conqueror.

~Ludwig von Mises

War...is harmful, not only to the conquered but to the conqueror.

~Ludwig von Mises

Society has arisen out of the works of peace; the essence of society is peacemaking. Peace and not war is the father of all things.

~Ludwig von Mises

To defeat the aggressors is not enough to make peace durable. The main thing is to discard the ideology that generates war.

~Ludwig von Mises

War can really cause no economic boom, at least not directly, since an increase in wealth never does result from destruction of goods.

~Ludwig von Mises

The philosophy of protectionism is a philosophy of war.

~Ludwig von Mises

Sovereignty must not be used for inflicting harm on anyone, whether citizen or foreigner.

~Ludwig von Mises

Whoever wishes peace among peoples must fight statism.

~Ludwig von Mises

Modern society, based as it is on the division of labor, can be preserved only under conditions of lasting peace.

~Ludwig von Mises

Men are fighting...because they are convinced that the extermination of adversaries is the only means of promoting their own well-being.

~Ludwig von Mises

If men do not now succeed in abolishing war, civilization and mankind are doomed.

~Ludwig von Mises

The root of the evil is not the construction of new, more dreadful weapons. It is the spirit of conquest.

~Ludwig von Mises

If some peoples pretend that history or geography gives them the right to subjugate other races, nations, or peoples, there can be no peace.

~Ludwig von Mises

Wars of aggression are popular nowadays with those nations convinced that only victory and conquest could improve their material well-being.

~Ludwig von Mises

Only one thing can conquer war--that attitude of mind which can see nothing in war but destruction and annihilation...

~Ludwig von Mises

Whoever wants peace among nations must seek to limit the state and its influence most strictly.

~Ludwig von Mises

The great armies, accumulated to provide security and preserve the peace, carried the nations to war by their own weight.

~A. J. P. Taylor

War is not an independent phenomenon, but the continuation of politics by different means.

~Carl P. G. von Clausewitz

We...are not really free if we can't control our own government and its policies. And we will never do that if we remain ignorant.

~Charley Reese

War: A wretched debasement of all the pretenses of civilization.

~General Omar N. Bradley

The executive has no right, in any case, to decide the question, whether there is or is not cause for declaring war.

~James Madison

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.

~John F. Kennedy

If there is no sufficient reason for war, the war party will make war on one pretext, then invent another...after the war is on.

~Senator Robert M. La Follette

Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak...

~John Adams

Power always thinks...that it is doing God's service when it is violating all his laws.

~John Adams

Look back over the past, with its changing empires that rose and fell, and you can foresee the future, too.

~Marcus Aurelius

Conquest is not in our principles. It is inconsistent with our government.

~Thomas Jefferson

Oh! it is excellent to have a giant's strengh; but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant.

~William Shakespeare

Loyalty to the country always. Loyalty to the government when it deserves it.

~Mark Twain

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.

~Voltaire

Putting aside all the fancy words and academic doubletalk, the basic reason for having a military is to do two jobs --to kill people and to destroy.

~General Thomas S. Power

The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie: deliberate, continued, and dishonest; but the myth: persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic.

~John F. Kennedy (Yale commencement add., 6/11/62)

The arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and assistance to foreign hands should be curtailed, lest Rome fall.

~Marcus Tullius Cicero

Freedom is to understand, and to be unbounded by that freedom.

~Juan C. Mustelier

Man can be human only in a climate in which he can expect that he and his children will live to see the next year, and many more years to come.

~from "The Heart of Man" (1964) by Erich Fromm

War is the ultimate tool of politics.

~R. Buckminster Fuller

The failure to dissect the cause of war leaves us open for the next installment.

~Chris Hedges

Rulers who want to unleash war know very well that they must procure or invent a first victim.

~Elias Canetti

"Rules of engagement" are a set of guidelines for murder.

~Dr. Theresa Whitehurst

The soldier's main enemy is not the opposing soldier, but his own commander.

~Ramman Kenoun

There are a lot of people who lie and get away with it, and that's just a fact.

~Donald Rumsfeld (Pentagon meeting, 4/17/03)

The occupation and robbery of a nation occurs under the illusion of freeing its citizens from brutal oppression.

~Ramman Kenoun

A great war leaves the country with three armies - an army of cripples, an army of mourners, and an army of thieves.

~German proverb

You can’t legislate morality.

~Jesse Ventura (State Governer of Minnesota)

The truth is that neither British nor American imperialism was or is idealistic. It has always been driven by economic or strategic interests.

~Charley Reese

The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it.

~H. L. Mencken

The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants.

~Albert Camus

Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.

~William Pitt

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.

~Johann W. Von Goethe

Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices.

~Voltaire

The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws.

~Tacitus

Peace and not war is the father of all things.

~Ludwig Von Mises

Society has arisen out of the works of peace; the essence of society is peacemaking.

~Ludwig Von Mises

An army of principles can penetrate where an army of soldiers cannot.

~Thomas Paine

Everybody's worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there's a really easy way: stop participating in it.

~Noam Chomsky

...war doesn't need more participants. It needs fewer participants.

~Michael Badnarik

...no nation is rich enough to pay for both war and civilization. We must make our choice; we cannot have both.

~Abraham Flexner

No nation ever had an army large enough to guarantee it against attack in time of peace, or ensure it of victory in time of war.

~Calvin Coolidge

Our country is now geared to an arms economy bred in an artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and an incessant propaganda of fear.

~General Douglas MacArthur

The politicians in this world... have at their command weapons of mass destruction far more complex than their own thinking processes.

~Charley Reese

If [America] becomes militant, it will be because its people choose to become such; it will be because they think that war and warlikeness are desirable.

~William Graham Sumner (1903)

Whoever wishes peace among peoples must fight statism.

~Ludwig von Mises

War is only a cowardly escape from the problems of peace.

~Thomas Mann

To defeat the aggressors is not enough to make peace durable. The main thing is to discard the ideology that generates war.

~Ludwig von Mises

All wars come to an end, at least temporarily. But the authority acquired by the state hangs on; political power never abdicates.

~Frank Chodorov

I believe in only one thing: liberty, but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone.

~H. L. Mencken

A lasting order cannot be established by bayonets.

~Ludwig von Mises

It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation. War is hell.

~General William Tecumseh Sherman

Setting a good example is a far better way to spread ideals than through force of arms.

~Congressman Ron Paul

The Divine Comedy

2004-11-23T17:25:00.000+07:00

DISCLAIMER: There was no spell check feature on the blog on this PC for SOME reason,, therefore, it will be spellchecked later. Yes, I make mistakes, as most people do, which is why we have spell checkers in the first place, there are probably lots of typos too, if your going to be squeemish about it, then wait until this disclaimer disapears.....

-Thank you for your cooperation.

I find it quite hillarious that a great number of people come to India on some sort of spirtual journey, seeking guidence from one Guru or Yogi, or what have you. Travel guides, travelers, and websites alike warn that there are "fake guru" who take advantage of their students. It seems that wives, wallets, and assholes are all fair game, and the student believes that he has to give these things up in order to fullfil his spiritual journey or whatever.

When one comes to India one's senses are assaulted with millions of sights, sounds, and other things that one has never experienced in ones life. For example, one might be taking a stroll down the streets of Calcutta or Bombay, and see people urinating or deficating in the street in full view of the public. On the railroad tracks at trainstations are large piles of human feces from countless wretched people who did not have the common courtesy to wait until the train was out of the station before they used the toilet, which is actually just a hole in the bottom of the train.

If you have any illusions about Sadu, let me clear them up right now. They are the empitome of a hashhead. The biggest concern in any community of Sadu is to find out how many chillums they can stuff and smoke before they pass out. Now, I don't think that this is necessarily a bad thing, but, many travelers seem to think that all Sadu are magicians, when in fact, very few of them are. Simply dressing in scintelating rags, and carry the trident of Shiva, does not make one a magician anymore then donning the garb of a warrior and carrying a sword makes one a warrior. Having said that, I like and respect most of the Sadu that I have met, though I have yet to meet a magician or any Sadu with any kind of power what so ever. Most of them seem barely able to move from point a to point b, and I often give them bannanas or other forms of sustainance.

People come to this place and seclude themselves in asharms and meditation camps away from all of the bone crushing poverty and putrid squallor that is spread all over this subcontinent like a 3,000 year old sauce of garbage, refuse, swill, and other putrid concontions that one can only begin to imagine. In these places, away from the real culture and condition of this vast dump, they go on their spiritual journey's of enlightenment, and come out talking about how great and spritual this place is, when they could have easily found a comptent guide at home to build up their self esteem, if they needed that. But, whatever, to each his own, I just find it quite amusing.

I've heard several descriptions of India. All of them start with a state of shock at the quality of life, or lack thereof, and how they thought they were in hell, and how they secluded themselves in their guesthouses for days and just watched the dance of the dead unfold around them. Then, it continues into how they discovered some spiritual vibe, and how when the people cheat them, they have the audacity to tell them to calm down, and how amazing it is, and how there is something else. In my opinion, be it ever so humble, that a bunch of horse shit.

The people know how to talk, they know how to cheat, because they've been practicing it for so long. You are just another white wallet comming through, and the grifters are just trying to see how many ruppies they can get from you before you depart the land that God forgot. I see nothing spirtiual in that, unless you've never been conned before, and don't know the feeling, in which case, its great training so that you know to keep your wits about you in the future. Of course, the game is cat and mouse, and there will always be new cons, new angles, and new things to look out for, so one cannot trust anyone or anything that one did not bring with oneself, and even then some people lose themselves here, so you should observe those you are traveling with, yourself included, very carefully.

The "something else" that is so deep and spiritual and profound that nobody can seem to put their finger on, seems to be the fact that human beings can survive like this. They can swim in and drink from the Ganges river, where dead bodies of cows, goats, and human beings float past, and your likely to find a few bodies in the streets as well among the refuse and piles of feces. It is a miracle that so many people are able to live in these kinds of conditions, and its frightening that the "free world" is not all that disimilar from this place. A good war would put any "developed country" right into the same situation that these people find themselves in, and we can only thank our lucky stars that we were born where we were.

Day to day, minute to minute, it is a constant test of self control, awareness, and strength. One is always being challenged, one is always being tested, and evaluated. Of course, there are worse and more violent places, but, this place is unlike any other that I have ever been. One must not give up even one milimeter of ground. If someone gets sideways with you, then you have to find a way to frighten him enough to stand down. Using physical violence is not something that I would advise, but, indirect intimidation can work wonders here. The right glare, the right stance, or the right tone of voice, any of these can let the person your dealing with know that you were not put here to eat his shit, and that he should piss off immediately.

Last night, when securing accomodation, I had some street bum chasing me with business cards and trying to jump into my taxi and take me to a hotel, after I got rid of him, and the taxi driver, I tried to check in, when this bum, the taxi driver, and another bum came in all claiming to be the person who introduced me to this hotel when I knew about it already from the guidebook! I let the manager know that, and he explained that they still had to pay these bums off to leave them alone, and that cost is ultimately passed on to me the customer. So, then these bums are all fighting over the 25 ruppie (50 cent) comission, and trying to get me to take sides. After making it clear that I didnt' want to be part of any reindeer games, I got to my room. Then, after I had checked out, one of the staff got sideways and snatched soemthing out of my hand while I was writing on it.

Then, the manager was telling me to calm down. I made it very clear, that I was only staying in this hotel because all teh others were booked, and I did NOT pay 650 ruppies (a high price for a hotel in India) to eat some bitch boy's shit. After threatening to take the matter up with the owner, the boy was forced to appologize. I only wanted to scare the boy. I wouldn't really have taken his job from him, he might have to sleep in the streets like so many others here, and even though I did not show any sympathy or sensitvity towards him, I would not want to put him in that position. But, the character of these people is despicable. As soon as I go to the bathroom, the boys come and try to make problems with my gf, or if I am sleeping on teh train, they sit really close to her, after I have the seats change, amazingly enough, there is a foot of space between him and the next Indian man.

Their tactics are simple, childish, dispicable, and some of the most grotesque acts of self abasement I've ever seen in my life. They all say the same things, "Different quality, different price." "How much you pay?" "If I cheat you, you never see me again, why I cheat you?" The same bullshit gambits that a 2 year old child would be capable of performing if only he could speak.

On the flipside, these poor bastards are being raped by a system where the rich are extremely rich, and that is by western standards, not by Indian, and the poor are litterally sleeping in rats and human shit. They are very accepting and accomodating people, but, their ruling class has squeezed them almost to death, and its horrible what the ruling class has done to these people, and the poor bastards are trying to survive anyway that they can, and they often piss others off who cannot understand their condition. Its very sad and very disturbing. One cannot empathize too much, or one will be drowned in a sea of empathy and become uneffective. One must realize the suffering is happening, but, that it is not happening to them.

I try to give to the people who really need it, the ones who can't even walk properly, because their bodies are dying on them, the ones who are sleeping in the streets with cars racing past. I've tossed coins out of taxis to them, because they weren't bothering anyone, and just trying to eek out an existance. A cynic would say I do it to make myself feel better, and that is part of it, of course. However, I do it primarily because it does help. I do not have the power or the money to fix all of the problems in a world that I cannot even comprehend, but, I can do a little bit to try to ease the suffering of someone, and that is all that I can do. Its funny, because I thought that I had problems, and I am in the top 10% of the world even in my own financial problems.

It seems that size defeats our minds everytime, it is all about scale. I've never seen things on the scale that I am seeing them here, and it just sideswipes you. However, a lot of people blame the suffering of these people on the West, and on white people. This is also horse shit. In all of these countries is a powerful and rich ruling class who litteraly shit on their own people, much the same as in the west, but, in the west we will only accept a certain amount of shit before we will not stand for it. Here, the bullshit tollerance of these people is pushed to the limit, hence the many wars, insurgencies, rebel groups and terrorist groups. The problems here are the same as the problems everywhere else in the world, the only difference is the scale in which they occur, and the ways in which they are dealt with.

I find it funny that everyone has a finger to point at someone else. Much like Tony Montana in Scar Face, when he gave his drunken speach at the resturant. He says that we need people like him so that we can point our fucking fingers and say, "Thats the bad guy." What does that make us, good? He goes on to say, that we are not good, we just know how to hide, and he doesn't have that problem. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could say that the US was in control of everything, and that all the problems of the world came from them, or from Imperial European Powers, or the Jews, or the Communist Party, or the Aliens. Wouldn't it be nice if we could just point our fingers at anyone other than ourselves. When one is real with one's self, one does not have to look far to find the source of one's suffering. Of course, the actions of others do play a great role in this, and perhaps seclusion is an escape from it all, which is why they all run to the ashrams, or to the temples.

The more I see, the more convinced I become that I would rather grow a thick beard, get weird, and disapear into the mountains. I see nothing but a bunch of clowns down here, and so it has become obvious to me that I should continue training in the arts of survival and combat. That I should take up skills, that I should learn certain services that would get money from the rich, and that I should learn to become a self sustaining entity with as little reliance as possible on the economic, social, and political system which has not accomplished what it was supposed to do. The excuse for the prevailance of this system is all the wonderful toys that it creates. As Terrence McKenna said, this is rather like a medicine show, where if the juggler is good, the medicine must be even better. This is not a rational position to proceed upon.

I don't have the answers for all, but, as my life goes by one minute at a time, it seems that self reliance and independence of the system should be a goal. One has to achieve this independence in such a way that one does not break any of the systems rules, or one will find one's self in a place that is even worse than the system itself, they have various places for those who do not fit in, and I'm not only talking about prisons and mental hospitals, there are things far worse than that.

So far, the biggest thing that I've learned in my few days here is that I need more training. I need training that will allow me to surive with as little reliance on the established system as possible, and where I can extract money from the system to exchange for the goods and services that I would not be skilled enough to create. These skills must be skills that can be utilized anywhere on the planet, so that I can move freely on it, as the political situations allow. This may sound like a no brainer, but, most people's attempts to achieve this involving working for a boss, and being completely at their mercy, and spending their money on more shit that they don't need which further increases their dependence on the system. Their tax monies are then used to create more problems, and to contribute to the broken corportate culture and mismanagement of funds that continues to plauge humanity.

In some instances, these tax monies are used to commit crimes against humanity that must surely corrupt time itself with their sadistic wickedness. Of course, I am focusing on the negative, but, one must focus on the negative in some instances, or one will lose ones effectiveness. One cannot know light without darkness, and only by understanding the nature of both can one be a serious player in the cosmic dance. Financial independence on some scale is necessary to free one's self to do things that actually matter.

Chasing money and buying useless shit accomplishes nothing. I'm sure many have seen the T Shirt "He who dies with the most toys wins." This seems to be the battle cry of capitalists. I've always maintained that he who dies with the most toys still dies, and I see no logic in this collection of junk and taking it with you to the afterlife that was started in ancient Egypt. Look at where THOSE people are now, and what kind of life they live. It is my [un]secret opinion that unless we return to the wisdom of Thomas Paine, that we will share the fate of the other great capitalist empires. I am not speaking only of the US, I am speaking of the world, of all people.

What actually matters, and what is real is as many things as there are people, and even more than that. Each person decides for themselves, and each person decides their own level of involvement, whether they chose conciously, or it is chosen for them does not matter. Agreement is not a requisite of acceptance. Comprehension is not a requisite of cooperation. If you don't have a plan, then your part of someone else's.

Our fathers were seduced by the dark side of the force.....

2004-11-19T13:11:00.000+07:00

Yeh, I can already hear someone making star wars geek comments, if they only knew. Star Wars is one of the deepest and most complex constructs I've ever seen. It takes aspects of many religions, even Islam, and weaves them together with a certain warrior code, and several other aspects of human history. Its really a great model of the duality of man, which of course occurs in the entire universe itself. However, it is normal for fools to laugh at that which they did not understand, though there is no shame in this. If only we all could play the fool when it was necessary, for the fool has immense power, though sometimes taken at great risk.

I was referring more to the seduction of the American people. The America of today is a far cry from the time when Thomas Paine wrote The Crisis and Common Sense. Those works are quite inspiring, and quite sensible, and the forefathers of our great nation envisioned a country that would be free, with little government interference in the affairs of the lives of the citizens, and a country that did not "go overseas in search of monsters to destroy."

My, how the times have changed, but, they really changed with George Washington taking the presidency. If one reads article from the New England Sun, and also does research about Thomas Paine and some of his seething comments to the General, one starts to get pictures. When one further does research into the history of our great father, one starts to see that what is written in the history books and what really happened are completely different things. He didn't make his money by chopping down cherry trees. One simply has to research to find out how Thomas Paine felt about Washington, and how many of the other influencing figures in the formation of our country felt about him. Of course, we are never given this balanced view in our school text books. The seduction and subsequent deception and debauchment of the American people began when the transformation from Confederacy to Republic was completed.

After this transformation was complete, the stage was set to bring the US into several wars. Another war in 1812, the Spanish American War, the Civil War, and the list goes on and on. In fact, there are very few times in the 228 years of American history that we have NOT been at war with SOMEONE, including the original inhabitants of the country, who were victims of an almost completely successful genocide. After WWII, the US emerged as a super power, with Europe destroyed by the war, and the US able to give loans, they build up their economy, and being the only country in WWII that had its industrial structure intact, America was able to become the leader. But, the spirit that built the US up to that position was dwindling.

If Ideal lovers are masters at seducing people by appealing to their higher selves, to something lost from their childhood, politicians can benefit by applying this skill on a mass scale, to an entire electorate. This was what John F. Kennedy quite deliberately did with the American public, most obviously in creating the "Camelot" aura around himself. The word "Camelot" was applied to his presidency only after his death, but the romance he consciously projected through his youth and good looks was fully functioning during his lifetime. More subtly, he also played with America's images of its own greatness and lost ideals. Many Americans felt that with the wealth and comfort of the late 1950s had come great losses; ease and conformity had buried the country's pioneer spirit. Kennedy appealed to those lost ideals through the imagery of the New Frontier, which was exemplified by the space race. The American instinct for adventure could find outlets here, even if most of them were symbolic. And there were other calls for public service, such as the creation of the peace Corps. Through appeals like these, Kennedy resparked the uniting sense of mission that had gone missing in America during the years since WWII. He also attracted to himself a more emotional response than presidents commonly got. People literally fell in love with him and the image.

Politicians can gain seductive power by digging into a countries past, bringing images and ideals that have been abandoned or repressed back to the surface. The only need the symbol; they do not really have to worry about re-creating the reality behind it. The good feelings they stir up are enough to ensure a positive response.

The people of that time recognized that the capitalist materialist paradigm which has dominated western thought for the better part of the last 400 years does in fact bring wealth, comfort, and wonderful toys. Toys such as Apollo Rockets, Jet airplanes, trains, and what not are part of the justification for this type of thinking and system. This is a lot like a medicine show where if the juggler is good, then the medicine must be even better, and this is not an entirely rational position to proceed upon because with wealth, comfort, and wonderful toys, comes a price. Nothing is free, everything has a price, and so it is with wealth comfort and toys, there are prices to pay. SOMEONE has to pay, perhaps this has some sort of relationship to the fact that the US is constantly at war?

Karl Rove, George W. Bush's campaign advisor has crafted Bush in the image of an old style American man. The continued pussification of American man in contemporary, post modern, information age America is disgusting. Harley Davidson theme restaurants seem to prove my point completely. I think of a lot of things when I think of Harley Davidson, but, the last thing I think about is a family restaurant. Of course, this should come as little shock considering that having a Harley is another way to compensate for lack of having a pair of testicles. A lot of rich people who normally store their testes in their wives' purses have their bikes shipping to Sturgess for the big rally, and then they get on their bikes outside of town, and ride into town as though they've ridden cross country like the hardcore bikers do.

With a punch of weak, pathetic, and fake people like this, someone like George W. Bush has appeal to men who are sick of seeing the men of America become weaker. As I travel, I've noticed that American men walk with a certain poise, a certain sense of confidence (sometimes bordering on arrogance), and I've seen the men of Europe and Canada walking a bit less sure of themselves. Though I will admit, that Canadian men come in at a close second behind the US, its just that I notice more Canadians who walk like European men than American men do.

Many men are afraid to discuss such issues with other men, because of homophobia. I also find this hilarious, but, I will not get off on a tangent about it. However, I will say that if men were able to be secure in their own sexuality, and not worry about what the other guy is doing, and not be afraid to look at what is happening to the other men in one's society, things would be a lot easier. As it is, I will make my views on homosexuality very clear. I completely support gay men, I do this because of my interests in women. My theory is that the more gay men there are, the more available women there will be, therefore, my self interested campaign is concentrated more on the marginalization of lesbianism, as this takes away from the pool of available women. OF COURSE, I am joking, sort of.... I don't discriminate against lesbians, but, I think I've made my ideological point pretty clear, though it was said in jest. I'm not formulating any campaigns to marginalize lesbians, but, it is my humble and secret opinion that the more women available the better, and as such I support homosexual men.

Now getting back to the point, with this atmosphere of pussification, weakness, homophobia, and all of the other disgusting traits tattooed on the bloated underbelly of American society, Karl Rove has made the George W. Bush construct that the people of the US and of the world have come to love or hate, there seems to be no in between. Myself, I am indifferent. To me, its all a show, and my voice has little if any power within the system, except maybe to attract the attention of Agents like the Secret Service who visited one Blogger's house, or DHS who made a lady remove her rubix cube copies from her shelves, or the FBI who came to a weight lifters house who had been talking about politics in the gym. Having said that, I do not really care. I spent my time, I had my piece, I said what I had to say, my cries fell upon deaf ears, and now, I will simply sit back and watch the show.

This George W. Bush construct is one where the man does not stop and ask for directions, he does what he feels is right, and if he screws up at the end of the day, then so be it, he is only human after all, right? This is the type of mentality that was prevalent in the US before the pussification of men, and this is the type of man that most weak and fake American men respect and admire, because they themselves lack these qualities, so by all means, their leader MUST have the qualities that they lack, even if this is merely symbolic, superficial, and ridiculous. This is the type of construct Karl Rove has created in George W. Bush submitted for the approval and consumption of the American people, and like all other things that have been fed to them since 1776, they are eating it up.

I prophecize more problems later on in this administration, especially if this thing with Israel and Iran heats up. I don't think the economy will improve all that much, but, I think the next four years are going to be good years for weapons companies and military and weapons related businesses. Karl Rove has done an excellent job seducing the American people, of course, there is also the voting fraud claims running around this year, but, it does not matter. I don't even wish to read these things. It happened in Florida in 2000, and as far as I am concerned from that time things changed, and subsequent study of the descent into fascism and totalitarianism is no longer necessary. It is a slow and gradual process, as it must be, or it would not work, but, that is the direction that the country is going in.

Right now, America is not only deciding what to do, but, what America is. With the re election of George W. Bush, and his subsequent cabinet shake up, it appears that things will stay their course, and continue for four more years, in the same direction. I can only hope that The President sees something that I do not see, or knows something that I do not know. It seems that resistance is futile, and as such I am only watching the show. I can only hope that things turn out for the best, but, it doesn't look like that from where I'm sitting. A great many of our fathers, grandfathers, et al, have been seduced by politicians, and this trend shows no signs of ebbing. In fact, the condition has been exacerbated and the continuance of this process may be foreshadowing a much greater catastrophe than anyone has imagined.

As Kennedy used dreams and lost glories to revive a nation, this administration uses fear. But, fear only works for a short period of time, otherwise the people will have severe mental problems. There are only two ways to go when fear is used to manipulate a person. The person either adjusts to it by minimizing the risks, and ignoring it, or the person becomes a paranoid nervous wreck who loses his control and cannot function in society. The American people can either realize that the odds of being killed by a terrorist are practically zero, and that these scare tactics are simply that, scare tactics. There is big talk about snipers, and that whole "one shot, one kill" mentality, but, snipers are simply for harassment. One sniper is not going to produce a massive amount of casualties, he simply terrorizes the group he is perusing. He fires one shot, and moves, and while his prey is looking for him in one place, he has moved to another, and fires another shot, and moves again.

A machine gun is a massive casualty producing weapon, and it will create a high body count in a short period of time, but, it is easy to see, easy to react to, and eventually, that machine gunner will be neutralized. A good sniper, however, will not be found. He will get a guy's grape in his scope, fire, and there will be grape juice everywhere. Imagine, if you will, walking down the street with your friend, wife, or even a stranger, and suddenly his head explodes. That is the type of situation a sniper creates. He induces fear, while producing very few casualties, and though he is harder to find, it is not impossible to find him and there are methods to disable and neutralize a sniper.

The American people have two choices, they can be motivated by the fear and harassment, which the government is also getting in on to tighten their hold of the people, to make more money, and for whatever other reasons one can imagine. There are many politicians, with many agendas, and so I will not even speculate or move into the realm of what some would call conspiracy theory and practice. The second choice is to simply analyze the risk, minimize the risk, and go on with your lives. More Americans die of alcohol related incidents than terrorism, but, you don't see a massive movement against alcohol. In fact, the times when the government tried to ban it they incited the whiskey rebellion, and the allowed for the formation and growth of a powerful new organized criminal element, that necessitated the creation of an unconstitutional FBI.

There we have it. We hide under the bed, let George W. Bush define reality for us, and cry to "make the bad man go away." -OR- We take some responsibility, do some assessment, analysis, research, and take the appropriate action. It is a choice that EACH person must make, and nobody can make it for anyone else. Anyone who is simply doing it because they see someone else doing it, is simply hiding under the bed. It takes an honest effort from a person who truly believes in what he/she is doing, otherwise, they might as well just hide under the bed, and maybe enough of us will rise up to make the bad man go away for them.

Notes in the margin:

With the visit of the Secret Service to a blogger's home, I must make the point that I in no way advocate the violent overthrow of the United States government, and I am in no way a physical threat to any elected official. I have my ideas, I have my opinions, and I am expressing them. I am often passionate about what I say, but, I'm not a revolutionary. The whole concept of revolution is a socialist concept, it is dead, and it is stupid, and it does not work as history has proven. I simply wish to make the point that I am not violent, and I'm not a physical threat to anyone just in case someone at DHS has taken an interest in what I am saying. Also, how Gestapo is that? I feel that I have to leave a disclaimer at the end of an expression of my political views in a public forum so I don't get harassed. What does that tell you about the state of affairs? Or maybe I'm just paranoid? Or maybe those who think I am, should get a cup of coffee and look around.

Meanwhile, behind the facade of this innocent looking republic....

2004-11-17T15:39:00.000+07:00

I guess that subject line could apply to a lot of places, couldn't it? Well, I went to a temple of Kali today, the goddess of death. She is normally depicted as being black with severed heads on necklaces and what not, and holding another severed head and standing on the body of a smiling god or person. I went there, because I thought I would see some interesting artwork or something, but, the only interesting artwork I saw was in the streets outside of the temple, and I could have seen that anywhere. I was a bit disappointed to say the least, but, I heard the better temples are not in Calcutta anyway. This just reaffirms my earlier suspicions that Calcutta is a British Imperial construct with little or no meaning or purpose other than to be a capital city. I'm getting out of this place soon.

The merchants love to overprice things because your white, but, if you know the price and tell them point blank that you know the price, and you don't have time to fuck around with them, they normally give in pretty quickly, if not, you simply walk away to another shop, they will usually come and stop you and ask you how much your willing to pay, and then you tell them the price, and normally they will agree, if they hesitate, then just keep on walking, because the point still hasn't sunken into their head yet, and probably won't until later that night when they are rhuminating upon it, if they ever bother. However, with equal doses of patience, and forced humor, you can normally get what you need quite cheaply, and you can ask other Indian people near to the market how much things are before you go there, and then you can argue about the price, because you will know the local price, and since everyone sells the same stuff, you just have to find one who realizes that he's not going to screw you today.

I don't blame the people for being this way, I would try to get as much as I could for my wares also, but, its a bit insulting when you know the price, and you see no reason why you should pay more than what it is worth on the local market simply because your skin color is different. Again, I experience racism, but, I am used to it. It works both ways though. We are always cheated and screwed with, at first, being white, but, being white also has its privileges with certain persons and in certain places and situations if one knows how to use one's color to one's advantage. It just takes learning and experimentation. There are no points for retaining one's dignity, and as you will not be living in this place for a long period of time anyway, why bother? Results are what matter. I still make more friends and acquaintances than I know what to do with, and I get a lot less bullshit.

I wish I could have learned this stuff back home. Which brings me to the subject line.....

I don't want to get too political on this blog since the Secret Service already visited one guy who made inappropriate comments about The Bush in his blog, so I will refrain from calling certain persons who shall remain nameless as I see them, as I am obviously no longer free to express myself without getting harassed. The FBI seizure of Indymedia servers in England without coordination with the Royal what-the-fuck-they-are-called police of Her Majesties England, also shows how new laws that have been created and are being created are being abused, and so I do not want to have any problems with these people. Believe, if they come looking, I'll be more than happy to "visit with them", and advise them not to let the door hit their ass on the way out.

Now, with that said, I am quite disturbed with the resignation of George Tenet who took the blame for the failings of the Office of Special plans, which was created by Rummy and his ilk because they were not satisfied with the Company's findings. Now, within the company, there is a huge purge occurring. Officers disloyal to Bush are being pushed out, including an agent who wrote a book sweepingly criticizing the Bush Administration. It seems that the war between the Operators who want the truth to get out, and the Administration is over, and the Administration has placed persons that will do its bidding in place. It is too bad. A lot of people used to talk shit about the company, but, I've always thought that there were good people working there, but, I can't say that now with this purge.

The secret laws about sharing of information of American citizens, and coordination with Pentagon offices and what not should scare the living shit out of Americans, but, as usual, it is better not to think about such things, because we are at war. Well, we have always been at war haven't we? Since WWII there has been a perpetual state of war and or national crisis. Sun Tsu once said, "War is the health of the state." So what does that tell you about the state? Well, any rational person who has any kind of concept about war knows that war only ends when the tanks roll through the streets, and the loud crashing of soldiers boots against the bombed rubble can be heard. That is where war ends, and to be very clear, war is not a good statement it is not good politics, when you see people getting shot and blown up you should know that it is BAD! BAD! BAD! BAD! Of course, to some, it is only bad when it is happening to you, and why care if it is happening to someone else who the boss said deserved it anyway?

A friend of mine made a very good point one night. We were sitting in the room together, Iranians, Americans, Israelis, and Japanese. One person made the point that we had no problems sitting together, despite the history between the US and Japan, and the current events between Iran and Israel. We the people do not have a problem, the bosses have the problem. The bosses send young men who don't know any better to fight for something that they may never understand. THEY have the problem, we don't have a problem. Or perhaps, its just a convenient way to point the finger? I don't know, but, I know I'm not the one running through places, chopping off heads and blowing people up.

The Patriot Act, Homeland Security Act, and other laws infringe on the constitution on the United States, and upon basic human rights. The bullshit that is happening at Camp X-Ray in Gitmo, and the shipping of prisoners to countries like Syria and Jordan for use of tougher interrogation tactics that are not legal in the United States is a violations of the Magna Carte! In fact, the US Supreme Court cited this document in its ruling on Camp X-Ray. I find it disturbing that the highest court in the US has to refer to a document that was not even crafted in the US to make its point, or perhaps, the judge was trying to show that such questions were dealt with centuries ago, and further displays the grotesque nature of what is occurring.

For my part, there is little that I can do. There is simply too much money and too much influence against me. We all have plans, and we all have little things that we can do, but, right now the Bush-Neocon Empire is on the rise. Colin Powell, the only man in the Administration that I had any respect left for has been pushed out and replaced by Rice as Secretary of State. That just scares me. As far as I am concerned, we can hang it up right now.

The rise of the police state, and fascism in my country is disturbing. If I express these beliefs, I may be referred to as unpatriotic. I would be afraid to express my beliefs in mixed and public company at home, because I don't know what the people's reaction would be. However, I do know this much. The people that built America into the superpower that it is are dead now. The country is not being run by the types of men that used to run it, it is being run by people like Bush, Chenney, Perle, Wolfwitz, Rice, et al. Right now, the US is not only trying to decide what to do, but, what to be.

If the US continues its degradation into a fascist state, then the terrorists will truly have won. I've tried to talk to the people, normal people that I've met, and they are very resistant to any other view of reality other than what is presented by the Administration, and that frightens me. The people are scared, and they will do anything that they can to be safe, and that frightens me. Benjamin Franklin once said that those who would give their freedom for security are entitled not entitled to either. I would have to agree.

"The opinion of 10,000 men is of no value if none of them know anything about the subject."

- Marcus Aurelius

Divination Systems

2004-11-17T01:04:00.000+07:00

Since divination systems require more external knowledge than illumination sorcery, I will begin with that. I've decided to jot my mental notes down here since every magickal diary I've kept up to this point seems to get lost, or different things are put in different volumes, and everything is scattered all over different texts, scraps of paper, and computer disks.

I've decided to create a divination system. I'm not exactly sure which one yet, but, I've ruled out a tarot or card based system because cards do not endure the elements very well. Stones and other hard objects are much more enduring, and much more fun to cast.

I don't want to make a system that is too random like astrology where the readings can apply to just about anything are too vague to be of any real use. One might also conclude that the urim and thumim system would not be advisable because it allows for only yes or no answers. However, I wish to use the urim and thumim system as well. It would stand to reason that if one can interact with one's subconscious and the universe itself through the stones, one could also communicate one's intent through them.

Proceeding on that basis, using a system of making a new pattern as prescribed in Huna divination traditions seems promising, and I will definitely use that in my urim and thumim system.

I also wish to create a larger set of Shaman stones based on color associations, and another set of Nordic runes. I like my Obsidian runes that I already have, but, I would like to craft a set of my own. It will be more accurate because my energies were involved in creating the stones more than the ones that I purchased in an occult supply shop.

I realize that creating a new divination system will take time, and that is why I am working with previously established models that I already have experience with first. I want to start making my own sets of stones for these systems, and once I have a better grasp of the theory behind the various divination systems, I will construct a system of my own. I will also be looking more closely at the I Ching at some point to see if that could also aid in the system's construction.

I am finally in a place where raw materials are fairly cheap, and relatively easy to come by, and there is no reason why I should not begin this work now. I should have been studying these things before in preparation for this period, but, so be it.

The Leaning Candle of Calcutta

2004-11-16T17:45:00.000+07:00

A few days have passed since I wrote in this blog. I wish I had a laptop with me, it would make things a lot easier, but, I can't risk losing it, or getting it broken. Anyway, it would be difficult to use it and transport it without calling attention to it, and therefore increasing the risks of it getting lost or broken. I would need a base of some type here before I could even consider having my own machine here.

I met a Korean Monk a few days ago. He was hitting the whisky pretty hard when I met him, and he smoked for the first time. He invited us to his temple to visit him, and I had to translate Korean, Japanese, and English, because two people were Japanese speakers with little English, and I was the only one who spoke Korean, so it was a bit tedious, but, we had a nice time. He was an interesting guy to talk to, and I will definitely take him up on his wonderful offer. It would be nice to live in a temple with nice scenery for a few weeks.

I've never been to the part of Korea that he lives in, its down near Pusan, and I've spent most of my time in Seoul, Gyoungido locations and Jullado locations. He told me that the food was vegetarian, but, that we could sneak out to a restaurant and get some meat, and that it would not be a problem. He's a really cool guy. He was Christian, but, converted to Buddhism, and he is very strict about his monastic lifestyle when he is in the temple, but, not when he is not in the temple, which is another thing I respect about him.

I would like to spend some time in a Korean, Japanese, or Chinese monastery. I spent some time with a monk named "Suk" in Luang Probang Laos a few years ago, and he was pretty cool, and fun to talk to and all, but, the monks seemed to have some sort of an authority structure, one was talking on his cellphone to his girlfriend, and another was guzzling beer. Now, I don't see anything wrong with this, I think its great that people can live like that, but, if I got for the monastic experience, I'd like to be a bit more traditional. Of course, that was in a dormitory for novices, monks are in different quarters and more experienced one's have private quarters, so I guess you pay your dues, you do your time, and you get your place.

Anyway, it will be interesting to be in a monastery with a dude that I was smoking and drinking with in Calcutta. The funny thing will be that nobody else in the monastery will have any idea, it will be quite funny indeed, and I'm looking forward to it. I'm not sure when I will get back to Korea, but, I have one more reason to go back now, as the reasons keep piling up, I'll get myself back over there.

I'm learning to make more practical use of simple items, hence the leaning candle of Calcutta, my unsuccessful attempt to create a candle holder out of a water bottle with a lit cigarette. It worked the first time, but, I failed to pay attention as the candle burned low, further burning the plastic in the cap and enlarging the hole, which caused the subsequent candle to lean to the right. Well, charge that to the game, I am learning.

I also had the severe shock that I forgot my rune stones! But, then I realized that I have been putting off making my own set for far too long, and I've always used the excuse that "India would be a better place to find cheap bones and stones, and things like that." Well, now I'm here, so a sort of Magickal survival training program is going to be created on the fly. I'll be sure to pass that information on to the Adepts of the K.I.A., Z, et al. It is interesting because I left all of my references behind, and so I really have to build everything from scratch. It will be interesting to measure the results of this experiment. I am planning at least one illumination sorcery and the construction of at least one simple model of the universe for the purposes of divination.

It is interesting because the last thing that was said was that I would be losing things which I had used in the past to operate, and that I would have to return to the nucleus of what I knew and approach the gate. I would then have to pause, and step through it, and continue with the chosen path. The stones never lie.

.::Calcutta::. The Eagle has Landed

2004-11-13T21:37:00.000+07:00

The airport looked like it was in the middle of a rain forest or jungle that someone took a giant lawn mower over a long time ago. The foliage was mostly unkept and jutting out in random directions and lengths, but, it must have been cut at some time, or there would not have been an airport there. In the middle of all of this were the runways. As soon as you hit the ground, you knew you were in India.

I arrived early in the morning as the city was waking up. It seems as though everyone else was waking up too, because they gave me the wrong cards in the airplane, so I went to immigration with the wrong cards, but, it didn't seem to matter. The guy interviewed me as I filled out my new card half heartedly asking me questions like what my name was, where I was from, and how long I would be there. After giving the standard answers, I started to ask about taxi fares and what not to ensure that I would not get ripped off too badly comming in the door.

I've come to accept that by being white in the "third world" your almost always going to get ripped off in a place where a substantial percentage of the people just see you as a fat white walking wallet, or an ATM as a Thai bar girl once put it, and the only interest is how much they can get, and how many times they can get it. I used to despise people for being so petty, but, then again, this is an ambiguous conflict that goes back long before the days of European Colonial Empire, and perhaps even before the days that Julius Caesar bled on the stones of Rome.

Having secured a meager portion of information, and armed with my trusty stick and paranoid planet guidebook, I was ready to get some cash, get a taxi, and get the hell out of there. It took eons to finish changing money. There were only 3 Muay Thai competition fighters in front of me changing 30-50 dollars each, but they could have served three times as many people in Bangkok in the time that it took this guy to get through them. Suddenly, I realized that Thailand was not as slow as I had once thought it was, and that there did exist a place slower and more taxing on one's patience. I quickly decided that I was going to have to calm down, and take things even more slowly then I had already adjusted to in Thailand.

I got into the Taxi outside of the airport, ready to go and confront the land where noxious gases come out of cracks in the ground, and the wretched bones of the living dead shamble towards you grasping at the air oblivious to all except their mad hallucinations. The land where naked buttocks stretch as far as the eye can see with excrement pouring freely from the orifices and hitting the road. As I got closer into town, I suddenly realized that they must have been talking about Deli and Calcutta was not quite that bad, but, it was shocking.

Parts of Calcutta look like it had been in one of the World Wars, and they started to repair it, and just said, "Fuck it." and decided to get to it later. The chaos was immense and unstoppable. The feeling in India is different. There is a powerful and energetic feeling. You can feel the struggles, and the passions in the air, or maybe it was the morning heat and humidity, but, there was definitely a feeling there that I have not felt in another place. Maybe it was my own feeling compensating for what was confronting my senses.

On the way in town, I can within small fractions of an inch of hitting several buses. The driver almost ran over so many people, I lost count. After a person came within microns of sure death, they would glare at the taxi as though someone had given them the finger. Yes, people in India were very tolerant, and also completely oblivious to anyone or anything that does not matter to them at the time. I suppose that one must be that way in India.

If one were to take interest in everything and empathize with it all, one would be drowning in a sea of empathy. One has to realize that the pain and suffering is occurring, but, one also has to realize that it is not happening to them. Once one is able to do this, one must never lose sight of one's intent. One can easily get sidetracked in India. With so many things happening around, and so many things of interest and wonder, one can only sit back and take it all in. To follow one thing would exclude the possibility of seeing others. Of course, one can only guess at what marvelous adventures one could have if one but followed one of the choices in one's heart when taking it all in.

The buses all sound like they are on life support. I half expected to see machines hooked up to the engines to keep the pistons running as one would expect to see a 100 year old man on the various machines that would keep him alive. It even sounded as though the bus would choke and die at any minute, as if each revolution of the engine could be its last. Thankfully, the flow of traffic changed, and the buses moved on. The sound was very dismal.

Everything and everyone in India demands recognition, acceptance, and contemplation. From the dying busses, to the haggard people jutting in and out of traffic, and everything else that one encounters. It all demands attention, and it all demands it at the same time. Sensory overload is definitely a danger here. Then, as soon as the taxi ride started, it was over. I had two guys I've never seen before yelling at my taxi driver to take me to my hotel, and not to make me walk. I was grateful for their assistance, and after all that the driver still had the balls to make puppy dog eyes and ask me for a tip. Heh. Well, gotta give them 5 rupees for the effort eh?

The word hotel could not be used to describe the place. It resembled one of the cheaper guesthouses in Thailand that one would pay 50-100 baht for, one of the really cheap one's that one can hardly find these days. Well, after dropping the bags, and resting for a minute, it was time to go outside into the maelstrom of horns, and explosions happening outside of my new residence. They love to use their horns in Calcutta and from 8 in the morning until 8 at night, there has been no relief from the menacing horns that seem to blast from all directions. There are at least 4 distinctly different horns blowing at any instant. I hope it calms down at late night.

As I came into the small street outside my hotel, the blaring of horns was interrupted by one of the men who had helped me earlier, and he was now letting me know that I could purchase several useful items from him including plants and resin. I thanked him for the useful information and said that I might meet him later, and then headed for the morning meal. The food was excellent. 2 pomegranate shakes, a salt lassi, a mango shake, tandoori chicken massala, garlic nan, 2 glasses of Indian Massla Tea cost me three bucks. I ate like a king!

Then it was time to go to the market and get ripped off. I wandered through the market with haggard and decrepit peoples saying things that seem to tear into your soul. One old woman with a dirty baby simply said, "I'm hungry." Though it hits you, if you give something to one person, swarms of them come, and if you work it out mathematically, you'll be out of money in about 10 minutes, so its better to do what little bit you can, and ignore the rest, and hope that others do the same thing. It make you feel a bit guilty, because your doing very little, but, there is very little that you can be expected to do anyway.

The bone crushing poverty and murky squalor of India definitely disillusion you about human beings, and the levels of survival that they are prepared to accept. Another illusion that is ripped away from you is just how close YOU personally are to this level of existence, and how easily a sleight of hand or a twist of fate could put you in that position. Even with the experiences I have, India has already ripped away some illusions that I refused to acknowledge, and I am sure it will rip away a lot more before it is done. This is an intense and amazing country with so many adventures waiting.

The genius plan was to get a guest house with a balcony and sit and smoke and watch people for three days. Well, not guest house with a balcony, but, I was able to get what I needed from a shady looking dude selling jewelry in the market, and I've got a nice view from the roof of the hotel. I need a few days to adjust before I can really experience and assimilate India. I don't want to go though, like a lot of people do when they first get here. Yukko commented that if she had not lived in Thailand this long, she would not want to stay here for even one day.

Magick and Mayhem

2004-11-09T14:57:00.000+07:00

I had an interesting night last night. I've had a friend for a long time now, but, we've never really discussed magick. We've both mentioned it, and hinted that we practice it, but, never really had an in depth conversation about it. I guess the reason is because there are so many people out there who think that they are magicians simply because they do some rituals that they read about in The Satanic Bible or some such nonsense. They read from the books and they practice the rites of Anton LaVey or Alistair Crowley, as though the words themselves held the magick.

What really got it going last night was when she started talking about visualization and belief, which are two really powerful tools in magick. The idea is that if you can visualize it, that it has a higher probability of occuring. The concept is very simple. If you can't see yourself as being rich, or sexy, or whatever, then how can you expect others to see you that way?

Visualization is a basic tool of magick, yet so few magicians ever mention it. They talk about gods and servitors and arcane rites and what not. Ritual is fine if you don't know what your doing. I like ritual because it is fun, but, sometimes, it is pointless. Most of the time, simple dreamworking and sigils will do the trick and there is really no need for an elaborate ritual beyond the normal banishing rituals performed to clear the space for the work.

When someone talks to me about the horrible and unspeakable rites they have performed, I tend to turn them off immediately. What horrible and unspeakable rites have they performed? The same horrible and unspeakable rites that have been performed for centuries, eating of blood, urine, and excrement, perhaps some sexual activities, assuming they could find someone willing to do so. They feel that by performing these unspeakable rites with the words of a self proclaimed worshipper of the devil they can attain power! hahahahaha. In truth, these books were written as psyops to get money and to laugh at idiots who actually drink urine and eat shit because they think it will give them power.

Most "Black Magicians" are so impotent that one would have to be a complete fool to be afraid of them. Most of them could not fight, fuck, or bribe their way out of a wet paper bag! The high point of a Black Magicians career is the part where he gets scratched to death while trying to strangle a cat, and later develops an infection and dies. HA HA HA HA!~

It was refreshing to meet a real magician. Someone who actually understands the nature of the universe and the cosmos, and someone who understands where the power of magick really comes from. I wish I could meet more people like her. But, that is what The Sol Invictus Project has always been about, building the SIIO one mage at a time.

Genesis

2004-11-08T14:30:00.000+07:00

As much as I enjoy writing, it is often difficult to do so. This difficulty exists because I am often very concerned with the quality and content of what I am writing. The English language is, after all, a construct. It is a convention that was created long ago by someone I have never met, and modified throughout the centuries by others that I have never met, by a few that I have met, and also by myself in some small way. English is not a construct which I had or have a major role in creating or modifying.

The fundamental problem of any language is that, language does not correlate to experience.

Since language is a construct which does not correlate to experience, it would seem that most of the things I have to say would have already been said before or thought before, and there would seem to be little point to repeat them, as redundancy tends to irritate people. However, some authors are able to articulate their ideas in ways that have been unexplored or unnoticed in the past. As a writer, I will try to explore positions and ideas that have been unnoticed or unexplored.

I often wonder what, if any, contribution my writing could possibly have to humanity as a whole, but, then I realize that I am thinking on too grand a scale. I might have an affect on individuals who read my work, and who listen to my voice. This alone is sufficient. This is the reason why I choose to write, and why I choose to speak. I do it for the few who might choose to listen. I also do it so that those few might come back to me with writings and words of their own that will also help me to grow as a person and become better.

In this place, I will most likely cover a large variety of topics. In this place, nothing is off topic, nothing is out of line, and I will probably step on a few people's toes in the process. I am never sure who's toes I am stepping on, but, rest assured, it is nothing personal. I often step on my own toes as well. I am more concerned with understanding, than with etiquette. I am more concerned with experience, than with dogma. I will say things that will make people angry, but, to those who get angry, I have only one things to say: Perhaps you should do an introspection and find out why simple words would have such an effect on you, and perhaps you should come to terms with the fact that not everyone views reality as you do, and every reality is only an opinion.

When one proceeds on this basis, things become amazingly clear. One should not be angry simply because one says that one does not believe in God, or that one chooses to be orgiastic, or homosexual, or that one prefers to solve things with violence, or any other statement that would cause a violent and forceful reaction in some persons who would take great offence to these statements. It is rather like eating an apple. Some may like the taste, and some may not. So it is with religion, lifestyle, sexuality, social interaction, and what have you. Simply because one does not agree with your point of view does not make that person wrong, and it certainly does not justify an attack in any form upon that person.

Day by day I watch the people, and a great many of those who I have observed seem to be unaware of this position, or unable to adopt this position. I maintain that adaptation of this position will save one a great deal of aggravation and stress, and it would make perfect sense to simply accept the tastes of others, and attempt to understand and assimilate them, rather than attacking them or disposing them simply because their tastes are differed. One would not attack someone who didn't like to eat apples would they? If one does not like the taste of apples, one does not have to eat them. If somoene see's someone eating an apple, one should accept the fact that this person likes apples, and that they themselves are not the one who is eating it. This understanding extends to all things.

I will continue at a later time with other topics as I see fit to write about them, and I hope that you will continue to come and look at the malarkey which will continue to assemble in this place.

The views expressed on this blog are not necessarily the views expressed on this blog.