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POLITICAL DIARY #6: Misguided White Guy
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Joyce Lynn, Editor
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Apr 24, 2002 13:46 PDT
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POLITICAL DIARY
The Inside Source for News
Joyce Lynn, Editor
Politic-@hotmail.com
www.topica.com/lists/politicaldiary Go to Read this List
THE POLITICAL DIARY, based on the truth-telling power of dreams, is
founded on the premise each of us has an Inside Source, which can reveal
the truth that will bring wholeness. Through commentary, news reporting,
tips, and other journalistic tools, THE POLITICAL DIARY informs about
the stories behind the news so the populace can make informed choices.
Issue #6
April, 2002
FROM THE EDITOR’S DESK:
On a Friday night in mid-April, a friend had dinner with a Mongolian
shaman. Assigned dessert for the potluck, she finally decided on apple
cake.
The next morning, she dreamt she was above the Middle East, looking
down. From her perch, she saw the sea glistening—like oil.
My friend, who has long feared another genocide of the Jewish people in
Israel, had a startling insight: the Middle East war is about oil.
From her omni present point of view, she was above the deals for land,
the deals for peace, the name-calling, the mayhem. She could see the
truth.
Why do you think dinner with a Mongolian shaman prompted this dream, I
asked her. "Supposedly there is oil under Gaza, just like there was oil
in Mongolia, which was pristine before drilling happened there," she
answered.
The United States via the Israelis, according to one theory, has a
better chance of controlling the oil in that part of the Middle East
than if the Palestinians control it. For me, the omnipresent point of
view reveals the Palestinian and Israeli people as pawns in a game about
resources, a game where once again the Puppet master is U.S. and
multinational oil interests.
The feature article in this issue, "Misguided White Guy." also contains
a thread about oil. In that way, it is dream-related since a dream last
September informed the POLITICAL DIARY that the "war on terrorism" is
really a war for control of the world’s oil resources.
Dream on,
Joyce Lynn
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MISGUIDED WHITE GUY
by
Joyce Lynn
George H. Bush literally spat out his distaste for John Walker Lindh
calling him something like a misguided "Marin hot tubber."
I saw the denunciation clip on television only once, but the former
president’s snarl was memorable. I have swallowed the other taunts
tainting my home county but this one is too much to bear. Yes, I know
the former president turned his barb into a good- natured joke and
apologized to Marinites for tarring them with the "hot tubber"
expletive. In his apology to the Marin Independent Journal Editor on
national television, Bush explained he received only 12 percent of the
vote in Marin.
Lindh and his family moved to Fairfax, California, one of Marin’s last
outposts, in 1991. Somehow, in his search for Islamic purity, Lindh
hitched up with the Taliban, the bad boys of Afghanistan, and is now
charged with treason against the United States.
Cyra McFadden in her 1977 book, The Serial, tarred Marin County with
peacock feathers, and yes, with self-indulgent, post-hippy hot tubbers.
Let’s set the record straight:
Marin, north of San Francisco, is glitzy with landmarks: Mt.
Tamalpais, which the natives call the Sleeping Maiden and imbue with
magical powers; cathedral-like Muir Woods; the Pacific Ocean; thousands
of varieties of trees; children, SUVs, and people dressed as if life
were an exercise class. Few fast food chains exist in this
take-care-of-your-health milieu.
Vistas opening onto the sea and opening up the mind give birth to
legions of creative and political luminaries who call Marin County home:
George Lucas, Star Wars films’ progenitor; Carlos Santana, music
innovator; Isabel Allende, magical realism author; Warren Weber; organic
farmer; Bill Graham; rock impresario; and Shaki Gawain, visionary.
Marin houses a few political luminaries: California’s two senators
Barbara Boxer and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who has a house at Stinson
Beach, and Rep. Lynn Woolsey, welfare mother turned politician.
Thousands of not so well known people who try to make the world a better
place live in Marin, too.
Marin is the home of Spirit Rock, a 400-acre Buddhist mediation retreat
of mostly western adherents; Jewish Renewal, and the Golden Gate Center
for Spiritual Living, a metaphysical church. If you are seeking an
alternative to traditional religion, Marin County is your habitat.
After Lindh’s story came to the media’s attention in December, 2001, a
Fairfax resident told CNN, "This was a learning experience" for Walker.
A prototypical "Marin" response.
Until media reports about Osama bin Laden and 19 alleged hijackers gave
the "P" word a bad name, my outgoing voice mail message said, "Hi, this
is Joyce, where it’s just another beautiful day in Paradise." I
plagiarized the line from a teenager pumping gas in Central Marin, who
answered my pro forma "how are you" with that enthusiastic rejoinder.
His piece of wisdom capsulated the privilege it is to live in this land
of exquisite beauty.
Of course, even Paradise has its problems. Marin is a mostly white,
mostly rich enclave. The median home price is $625,000. Not so long ago,
the poor were consigned to the housing projects of Marin City. The
county claims the highest rate of breast cancer in the country, with a
staggering 20 percent increase during the past year. San Quentin, a
maximum security federal prison, looms from a rocky point.
But the view driving across the Golden Gate bridge is breathtaking:
looking back a gleaming San Francisco rises from the Bay; the vast ocean
is dotted with barges and the bay studded with sailboats; the bluffs of
the Marin Headlands and houses lining the Sausalito hillsides to the
water conjure a Mediterranean town.
This is the milieu in which the teen-age John Walker Lindh lived—a
place where seeking and imagining and creating are de jure.
Walker Lindh has yet to tell his story, but the U.S. was dancing with
the Taliban for at least five years before Walker Lindh hooked up with
them. At the time Walker Lindh hooked up with the Taliban, likely late
summer of 2001, the U.S. was courting the regime which then controlled
90 percent of Afghanistan.
The U.S. had sponsored the Taliban since 1996 to secure protection for a
$2 billion 1,000-mile long pipeline from the oil rich fields of
Turkmanistan through Afghanistan to the huge markets of Asia and India.
The Caspian Sea region is estimated to hold $3 trillion in oil riches,
which U.S. companies and multinational corporations are vying to
control.
UNOCAL headed the pipeline consortium until it pulled out claiming
regional instability hindered bank financing. UNOCAL wooed Taliban
representatives at the company’s Texas headquarters in 1997. The U.S.
even promised the Taliban $43 million in spring 2001 for decreasing
poppy growing. In August , one month before September 11, U.S. State
Department official Christina Rocca led a U.S. negotiating team that met
with Taliban representatives in Islamabad to persuade the regime to
agree with U.S. demands for administering the oil pipeline.
We are yet to learn Walker Lindh’s story. He was wounded and possibly
on morphine during the "incriminating" CNN interview from the
Mazar-e-Sharif prison. At this point, we only have only Attorney
General’s John Ashcroft’s version of the story of the young man from
Fairfax, California, and the Taliban.
On the other hand, we know a great deal about the one who uttered the
hot tubber remark—the former president of the U.S. and the father of the
current White House occupant.
Bush was vice president during Ronald Reagan’s two terms from 1981 to
1992, the entire U.S. war against the Soviets in Afghanistan. He was
president from 1988-92, masterminding the Gulf War.
Reagan and Bush funneled more than $6 billion through the CIA,
Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence, and Saudi Arabia to arm and
train the mujaheddin to fight the Soviets and prevent a
communist-leaning government in Afghanistan. To achieve their goal,
Reagan and Bush fostered Islamic fundamentalists in Afghanistan, those
the current White House occupant has targeted as terrorists.
After bin Laden and the mujaheddin fought the war incurring thousands
of deaths, the U.S. deserted Afghanistan.
In 1991, as president, Bush launched the Gulf War after deceiving
Saddam Hussein into believing the U.S. would look the other way if the
Iraqi leader invaded Kuwait.
During the Gulf War, the U.S. killed 200,000 men, women, and children
including retreating soldiers waving white flags, and following a U.S.
ordered route. Then, Bush imposed sanctions on Iraq. According to the
United Nations, more than one million Iraqis including 500,000 children
have died from starvation and other causes related to the U.S.
imposed-sanctions.
One diatribe bin Laden lodged against the U.S. in his video released
October 7, the day Bush’s son began bombing Afghanistan, occurred during
Bush’s presidency. Bin Laden derided the "infidels"—5,000 troops
stationed on Saudi soil since the Gulf War.
That war and the current one have turned into a cash cow for Bush and
cronies from his administration.
Bush’s secretary of defense, Richard Cheney, once out of office headed
Halliburton, the energy services firm. He landed billion dollar
contracts to rebuild Kuwait after the Bush Administration’s war
obliterated it. Bush’s former Secretary of State James Baker became a
lobbyist for Enron and also went to Kuwait to round up business.
Frank Carlucci, former U.S. defense secretary under Reagan and a
college friend of Donald Rumsfeld, the current defense secretary, heads
the Carlyle Group. Called the "world’s largest private equity firm," the
Carlyle Group is the 11th largest U.S. defense contractor, making
billions selling weapons.
Bush, the man who branded the 20-year old John Walker Lindh a misguided
Marin hot tubber, is a richly paid Board member of the Carlyle Group.
The Carlyle Group finds creative ways to increase its coffers:
The current Bush Administration’s 2002 budget requests $475 million
for the 42-ton, outmoded Crusader. United Defense Industries, a Carlyle
Group defense company, builds the Crusader
BioPort Corporation is the sole U.S. manufacturer of the controversial
anthrax vaccine, which the FDA has greenlighted in case anthrax is
unleashed on Americans. According to rense.com, the Carlyle Group owns
part of BioPort. William J. Crowe, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
in the Reagan and Bush administrations, has more than a 12 percent share
in BioPort.
In addition, the Carlyle Group does business with the Saudi royal
family. Who does those PowerPoint demonstrations? Yes, the former
president himself. The bin Laden family runs a huge construction company
and was a business partner with the Carlyle Group until media commotion
caused the family to sever its ties.
So what’s wrong with the former President making a few bucks? Consider,
first, the policy arena. Reportedly, one of the current Bush
administration’s first orders was to tell the FBI to back off
intelligence surveillance of the bin Laden family and other Middle East
elements. According to the French book, "Bin Laden: The Forbidden
Truth," Deputy FBI director John O’Neill resigned in protest shortly
before September 11, saying "oil interests" prompted the Bush
administration to hamper the FBI’s investigation.
Saudi Arabia, not Afghanistan, is the home of Osama bin Laden and 17 of
19 of the alleged hijackers had Saudi passports. The U.S. has agreements
with the Saudi royal family to control oil prices to benefit U.S.
consumers.
Therefore, the current Bush administration in unlikely to craft foreign
policy to ruin relations with Saudi Arabia,
The billions of dollars from the Carlyle Group’s business dealings will
eventually benefit George W. Bush’s trust fund; more importantly, they
currently perpetuate the family’s political dynasty and its New World
Order agenda of corporate profits and military dominance.
Bush and Baker, now another Carlyle grouper and mastermind of George
W. Bush’s 2000 election recount effort, raised $150 million for the
election effort, "much of it from Mideast oil sources or their American
go-betweens," according to Gen. Hameed Gul. The general led Pakistan’s
Inter-Services Intelligence during the Soviet-Afghanistan war when Bush
was vice president. He made his comments in an interview with UPI last
September.
Count 1 of the U.S. indictment against John Walker Lindh charges that
"from in or about May 2001 through in or about December 2001, the
defendant did unlawfully or knowingly outside the U.S. engage in
conspiracy."
Who, one wonders, is the misguided one?
What really angers and saddens this Marinite is what Bush the father
and the son and their cadre of New World Order proponents are doing to
Paradise on earth.
I wonder what might happen if we applied a few Marin County hot-tubber’
tools such as apologizing for past mistakes and seeking forgiveness. I
wonder if the U.S. stopped perpetuating Bush family policies and changed
our ways might we create some peace in this tortured world.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
JOYCE LYNN is a journalist including eight years as a political reporter
in Washington, D.C. After she moved to San Francisco, she turned from
writing about the politics of social welfare issues to matters of the
mind.
She initiated the POLITICAL DIARY in the aftermath of the 2000 election
when she recognized dreams predicted with 100% accuracy its outcome and
told the story behind the story. POLITICAL DIARY is archived at
www.topica.com/lists/politicaldiary. Joyce teaches INNER JOURNALISM:
Writing, Dreams, and Telling the Truth through Writers on the Net
(www.writers.com). She can be reached at Politic-@hotmail.com or
politic-@topica.com
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c Joyce Lynn 2002
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