For The Byron Echo, November, 2005

Iran, an unruly state, is wrong to seek nuclear weapons and Israel, an unruly state, is right to have hoarded them unlawfully and secretly for thirty years; discuss. Syria is wrong to assassinate a former Prime Minister of Lebanon and Israel right to assassinate, each month, such Arab leaders it chooses to target including, by poison, Yasr Arafat, a Nobel Peach Prize winner; discuss. Iran is wrong to promise to 'wipe Israel off the map' because it is a tyranny and the USA right to bring 'regime change' to Iraq because it is a tyranny; discuss. Soviet Russia was wrong to imprison and torture people who might, or might not, in the future be a danger to the State and Australia is right to lock up and torture who might, or might not, in the future be a danger to the State; discuss.

Or rather don't discuss -- lest you go to gaol for 'encouraging terrorism' under our new laws. If you discuss it, any of it, you might come to see how Eurocentric, how Christofascist, how (yes) Judofascist these thoughts are. As the grandson of Jewess and the son of a fundamentalist deaconess and the great-great-grandson of Scottish, English, Welsh, French, Irish and Polish forebears I should be able to say with moral safety -- though of course I cannot -- how wrong it is to call a Muslim nation unworthy of vast and powerful weaponry and a Jewish nation, and other Christian nations, worthy of it; including one Christian nation, the United States, that actually used atomic weaponry to kill two hundred thousand people in only three days in 1945. Not an 'unruly' nation at all.

I also cannot any longer say, lest I 'encourage terrorists', how silly it is to suppose Iran will ever atomic bomb, or hydrogen bomb, anybody since they know full well that Israel would atomic bomb them back. And how wrong it is to call insane, or insane in this way, anyone whose religion is different, insane enough to thus commit national suicide with nuclear weaponry. Nobody does that; discuss.

The USA, not Iran, has atomic bombed people before. The USA, not Iran, has invaded sovereign nations in the Middle East before, against UN wishes, and so has Israel. The USA, not Iran, projects onto other nations its own tendencies in this classic Freudian way. Does anyone imagine that any Muslim person of any education does not know this? And if we do not know they knew this, how stupid are we? But I may not say these things lest I encourage terrorists. And you had better not read them lest you say something about them in a pub and thus encourage terrorists. For terrorists are not to be encouraged. They are against freedom of speech. Discuss.

'Scooter' Libby

'Scooter' Libby, it seems, is likely to go to the hoosegow for thirty years and Karl Rove, it seems, is plea-bargaining. If he offers evidence, and he well might, that George Bush, too, is complicit in the naming of Plame -- let's call it the Plame Game from now on -- then a President might soon go up the river for treason, that is, disloyalty to his Commander-in-Chief, i.e. himself.

Only the Bush administration could get into this fix. They treated 9/11 as a triumphant religious occasion when it was in fact like Pearl Harbor a culpable security stuff-up. They invaded Iraq to take Saddam Hussein's atomic bombs off him, trusting he would not hurl them (at forty-five minutes' notice) at their advancing armies but meekly hide them in a hole in the ground. They imagined two hundred thousand Christians could conquer, subdue and police twenty-six million Muslims. They imagined they could wage two big wars against sovereign nations while lowering taxes. They imagined a Supreme Court judge with no previous days on any bench, and a net debt of thirty-four trillion dollars to Red China were good ideas. Surely it is time for the men in white coats to come in the door and take them away in straitjackets; discuss.

While they are at it, incarcerating authorities should knock on the door of George H.W. Bush, the President's father. Apparently he watched the Twin Towers come down with Osama bin Laden's brother and then arranged for twenty-three bin Ladens to get out of the USA very quickly. By thus helping material witnesses to escape American justice and useful interrogation in wartime he too is guilty of treason, it seems, i.e. disloyalty to his son, and could, under law, be executed for it. What a pack of whackers. What a country. Hush my mouth. I'm encouraging terrorists.

You are too if you're a bookseller and you still have an Osama bin Laden biography on you shelves. Or if you own a film projector and with it show to twenty people Michael Collins or Paradise Now or those fierce Mel Gibson acclamations of terrorism The Patriot and Braveheart. Or Spartacus. Or Exodus. Or Rob Roy. Or The Battle of Algiers. Discuss. Or if you're a librarian and lend out Mein Kampf. Or the Old Testament. This urges us to 'smite the Midianites, sparing not their women and children'. William Tyndale was burnt at the stake for translating this genocidal rant into English. Had John Howard not Thomas More been Chancellor of England then, he'd never have dared.