MOSCOW, July 24, 2005 -- Many conspiracy theorists, including me (I used to sneer at them, but the Bushmaster has made a believer out of me) are making much of the “coincidences” in the Twin Tower and London underground “terrorist” acts.
One of the most disturbing is that, in each case, both the NYC airplane rammings and the London bombing attacks occurred while government-sponsored “practice” exercises replicating almost the exact same “terrorist attacks” were taking place, making it easier for the “terrorists” to carry off their missions undetected and undeterred.
So it doesn’t leave you with a whole lot of sanguinity to read that in early August a military “exercise” is scheduled off the coast of South Carolina in which a simulated “nuclear terror attack” will be launched on American soil.
Those of us who are getting a tad edgy over the Bush and Blair coincidences can’t help wondering if this will turn out to be another one where, “Golly gee, we didn’t do anything to stop it because we thought it was just a government exercise! What a coincidence!”
According to the press release for the “exercise to focus on nuclear terror scenario,” here’s the plan:
Joint Task Force Civil Support (JTF-CS) here is planning its next exercise on the premise that this crisis is indeed plausible.
Sudden Response 05 will take place this August on Fort Monroe and will be carried out as an internal command post exercise. The exercise is intended to train the JTF-CS staff to plan and execute Consequence Management operations in support of Federal Emergency Management Agency Region IV's response to a nuclear detonation.
….Some external participants may work with JTF-CS during the exercise….
"Each time we do one of these internal exercises, we try to make it more robust and try to add in fidelity…That's what we're trying to do: create a good scenario and be able to replicate the effects as best we can. That way we can give the command a really good…exercise.
Nuclear detonation? External participants?
I’m just glad I’m going to be in danger-ridden Moscow next month and not the Bush-protected shores of America the Beautiful. A “terrorist” nuclear bomb would make martial law – which has been Bush’s goal for some time now – a shoe-in for the bleating sheep of my homeland.
And if not this time, I’m certain a government-sponsored nuclear terror act will occur sooner or later. Rumors are already flying that the Israeli Mossad, or secret service, with the help of British security agents, is planting A-bombs in Chicago and New York to be blamed on Muslims “terrorists.”
Are these real threats, wild-eyed conspiracy theories, or phony plants by the Neocons to keep everybody scared and compliant? Whatever they are, they’re America in the 6th year of the Bush Administration. It’s no longer my America, the America I left 7-1/2 years ago.
A leave-taking for which I’m increasingly grateful to whatever forces that propelled me!
Because in these 7-1/2 years, Bush has taken something sacred, the hope of hopeless people everywhere, and twisted it into the scourge of those same people, into something feared and hated, transforming as he did so its population into a seething mass of fear, revenge, and paranoia. The deftness with which he has manipulated his frightened, mindless hordes makes Hitler and Stalin look like bumbling pikers.
There is nothing left for me to do but grieve for my country. It’s too late for salvage or redemption.
Zhorik – and apparently the 3000 bucksi – will be here in a couple of days. That’s the good news. The bad news is that Sergei will too. That doesn’t mean I don’t still love Sergei. I do. Very much. But Zhorik doesn’t really like Sergei. They don’t get along; and trying to balance their rivalries and demands is not going to be easy.
Besides, I have been looking forward the whole summer to spending some meaningful time alone with Zhorik. He and I have lots to talk about and lots of plans to make. And I’m afraid Sergei is just going to be static in the program.
On the upside, it looks like I’m not going to be left holding the bag. And there will no doubt be new opportunities for further rehearsing my “Seduction Serenade.”
In the meantime, I have managed to pile up my pennies over the last couple of weeks to 800 bucksi, and I’ll take in another 0 today and tomorrow. So I’ll have almost ,000 in my pocket, plus another thousand in my pension account and a little more in my Raiffeisen account -- which I was pulling together in case the twins didn’t come through.
I still need to pay Bill Skyrme his ,000, but that leaves me ,000-plus, and come the 10th of August there’ll be another 0 in my pension account plus several hundred more from my regular teaching. So maybe I can take a vacation somewhere – either with Basil or with Zhorik.
And if the twins should pay back the full ,000 instead of just the ,000 for EE, I’ll be sitting pretty.
I still haven’t managed dinner with Rod Jennings, and was planning to make another stab for Saturday night when I got an e-mail from Basil.
He had asked me the meaning of “Better Off Dead,” the title of an old Elton John song. I explained, adding: “I hope your life never reaches the point where you'd be better off dead :-))).”
”I hope so,” he replied. “But yesterday I was talking with psycologist and discovered how I'm guilty of Katya's life.”
Basil is one of the most sensitive, conscientious, considerate, talented, and spiritually pure and beautiful people I know. I used to have sexual fantasies about him, and when he announced that he and Katya were getting married, I forced myself to pretend to be happy for him because I was afraid my distrust and dislike of her was just my green eyes talking out loud.
He has since told me that he didn’t want to get married. He thought they ought to live together in a “trial marriage” and see how they got along before tying a permanent knot. But she refused, shaming him for his lack of commitment (“if you really loved me, we wouldn’t need a “trial”).
So he let her drag him to the Russian equivalent of the altar – the civil wedding hall. Now their marriage is a shambles. They have never been compatible. She has never understood the depth of his soul and his need for artistic expression as a writer and poet. Of course, if I were being objective, I’d ask, “and what is it about her that he has never understood?”
But I am not objective. I hold him in too high regard to be objective.
They have both been playing roles – he of the dutiful husband; she, of the dutiful wife – going through the motions without any real love for or understanding of each other.
His life with her had devolved into sheer misery. In an attempt to salvage something enroute to the divorce court, they started going to a psychologist – a woman psychologist.
A Russian woman psychologist.
Who is heaping guilt on him.
It’s all his fault.
He has ruined Katya’s life.
And he’s already feeling guilty enough – about his contribution to the failure of the marriage and his budding romance with a former co-worker – that he’s in danger of swallowing it hook, line, and sinker.
I went through the ceiling!
Ask her what her credentials are: What are her degrees? Where did she get them? How long ago? What are her qualifications to give other people advice? How old is she?
Is she a psychologist or a psychiatrist?
Calling yourself a psychologist doesn't make you smart or insightful. It just gives you the power to ruin people's lives because they believe you. Any dolt with a psychology degree from any university can hang up a sign saying "Psychologist."
That doesn't make her qualified to practice psychology! Psychologists are born, not made! Remember that!
If there is blame to be laid, it is at Katya’s feet -- at least as much as, and maybe more than, at Basil’s. She’s the one who, because of her vanity and pride, dragged him into a marriage that never should have gotten any further than the back seat of a car – if they’d had one.
His only sin is that he let himself be dragged.
Of course, I’m exaggerating. Nothing is ever that one-sided. But I know him so well and love and respect him so much that I don’t want some Russian psychologist with questionable credentials dragging his conscience, integrity, and peace of mind into a pit of self-blame and guilt!
Anyway, he wants us to meet Saturday to talk about it. So maybe I won’t have dinner with Rod after all.
The first riots and police killings over the price of oil have taken place in Yemen, according to AP and the BBC. Both rioters and police were killed – 12 in all, including a 12-year-old kid. Marchers reportedly attacked government buildings and threw rocks at the cops in the capital city of Sanaa and several other towns.
They were protesting the increase – in some cases doubling – of the price of petroleum and the ubiquitous government corruption. Unfortunately, history and geology give them little probability of lowering the level of either.
Maybe we’re getting a peek into our own post-peak future!
Is Putin’s “power vertical,” his term for the re-imposition of Kremlin dictatorship, really a mask for repressed sexuality?
That was a question raised in a “Business and Sexuality” round table for Russian businessmen in Moscow earlier this week in which Mikhail Chernysh, chief researcher at RAN Institute of Sociology, pointed to research linking repressed sexuality to authoritarian governments, and made the inevitable connection to Russia’s intensifying dictatorship and its vertically powered president.
“As a rule,” he said, “verticals are a certain form of the realization of suppressed sexual drives in life.”
However, the “honorary president” of the mobile phone giant VimpelCom, put him in his place:
“Don’t forget who you’re talking about!”
Does that mean that the powers of tsars, commissars, and presidents of Russia don’t get vertical? Or that we shouldn’t talk about the fact that they don’t? Or that that’s all they do – they can’t get it down! Was it Henry Kissinger or Alan Greenspan who said, “Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac”? So maybe Putin’s just using the “power vertical” as a symbol for fucking the whole country!
