“A nation is a group of people united by a common mistake regarding its origin and a collective hostility towards its neighbours.”¹

As simple or even simplistic as it may sound, the quote above eloquently summarises the figment of reality entangled with modern Jewish nationalism and especially within the concept of Jewish identity. It obviously points the finger at the collective mistake Jews tend to make whenever referring to their ‘illusionary collective past’ and ‘collective origin’. Yet, in the same breath, Deutsch’s reading of nationalism throws light upon the hostility that is unfortunately coupled with almost every Jewish group towards its surrounding reality, whether it is human or takes the shape of land. While the brutality of the Israelis towards the Palestinians has already become rather common knowledge, the rough treatment Israelis reserve for their ‘promised soil’ and landscape is just starting to reveal itself. The ecological disaster the Israelis are going to leave behind them will be the cause of suffering for many generations to come. Leave aside the megalomaniac wall that shreds the Holy land into enclaves of deprivation and starvation, Israel has managed to pollute its main rivers and streams with nuclear and chemical waste.

The Invention of the Jewish People is a very serious study written by Professor Shlomo Sand, an Israeli historian. It is the most serious study of Jewish nationalism and by far, the most courageous elaboration on the Jewish historical narrative.

In his book, Sand manages to prove beyond any reasonable doubt that the Jewish people never existed as a ‘nation-race’, they never shared a common origin. Instead they are a colourful mix of groups that at various stages in history adopted the Jewish religion.

In case you follow Sand’s line of thinking and happen to ask yourself, ‘when was the Jewish People invented?’ Sand’s answer is rather simple. “At a certain stage in the 19th century, intellectuals of Jewish origin in Germany, influenced by the folk character of German nationalism, took upon themselves the task of inventing a people ‘retrospectively,’ out of a thirst to create a modern Jewish people.”

Accordingly, the ‘Jewish people’ is a ‘made up’ notion consisting of a fictional and imaginary past with very little to back it up forensically, historically or textually. Furthermore, Sand — who elaborated on early sources of antiquity — comes to the conclusion that Jewish exile is also a myth, and that the present-day Palestinians are far more likely to be the descendants of the ancient Semitic people in Judea/Canaan than the current predominantly Khazarian-origin Ashkenazi crowd to which he himself admittedly belongs.

Astonishingly enough, in spite of the fact that Sand manages to dismantle the notion of ‘Jewish people,’ crush the notion of ‘Jewish collective past,’ and ridicule the Jewish chauvinist national impetus, his book is a best seller in Israel. This fact alone may suggest that those who call themselves ‘people of the book’ are now starting to learn about the misleading and devastating philosophies and ideologies that made them into what Khalid Amayreh and many others regard as the “Nazis of our time.”

Hitler Won After All

Rather often when asking a ‘secular’ ‘cosmopolitan’ Jew what it is that makes him into a Jew, a shallow overwhelmingly chewed answer would be thrown back at you: “It is Hitler who made me into a Jew.” Though the ‘cosmopolitan’ Jew, being an internationalist, would dismiss other people’s national inclinations, he insists upon maintaining his own right to ‘self determination’. However, it is not really he himself who stands at the core of this unique demand for national orientation, it is actually the devil, master-monster anti-Semite, namely Hitler. Apparently, the cosmopolitan Jew celebrates his nationalist entitlement as long as Hitler is there to be blamed.

As far as the secular cosmopolitan Jew is concerned, Hitler won after all. Sand manages to enhance this paradox. Insightfully he suggests that “while in the 19th century referring to Jews as an ‘alien racial identity’ would mark one as an anti-Semite, in the Jewish State this very philosophy is embedded mentally and intellectually.”² In Israel Jews celebrate their differentiation and unique conditions. Furthermore, says Sand, “There were times in Europe when one would be labelled as an anti-Semite for claiming that all Jews belong to a nation of an alien type. Nowadays, claiming that Jews have never been and still aren’t people or a nation, would tag one as a Jew hater.”²

It is indeed pretty puzzling that the only people who managed to maintain and sustain a racially orientated, expansionist and genocidal national identity that is not at all different from Nazi ethnic ideology are the Jews who were, amongst others, the leading targeted victims of the Nazi ideology and practice.

Nationalism In General and Jewish Nationalism In Particular

Louis-Ferdinand Celine mentioned that in the time of the Middle Ages in the moments between major wars, knights would charge a very high price for their readiness to die in the name of their kingdoms; in the 20th century youngsters have rushed to die en mass without demanding a thing in return. In order to understand this mass consciousness shift, we need an eloquent methodical model that would allow us to understand what nationalism is all about.

Like Karl Deutsch, Sand regards nationality as a phantasmic narrative. It is an established fact that anthropological and historical studies of the origins of different so-called ‘people’ and ‘nations’ lead towards the embarrassing crumbling of every ethnicity and ethnic identity. Hence, it is rather interesting to find out that Jews tend to take their own ethnic myth very seriously. The explanation may be simple, as Benjamin Beit Halachmi spotted years ago. Zionism was there to transform the Bible from a spiritual text into a ‘land registry.’ For that matter, the truth of the Bible or any other element of Jewish historical narrative has very little relevance as long as it doesn’t interfere with the Jewish national political cause or practice.

One could also surmise that the lack of clear ethnic origin doesn’t stop people from feeling an ethnic or national belonging. The fact that Jews are far from being what one can label as a People and that the Bible has very little historical truth in it, doesn’t really stop generations of Israelis and Jews from identifying themselves with King David or Terminator Samson. Evidently, the lack of an unambiguous ethnic origin doesn’t stop people from seeing themselves as part of a people. Similarly, it wouldn’t stop the nationalist Jew from feeling that he belongs to some greater abstract collective.

In the 1970’s, Shlomo Artzi, then a young Israeli singer who was bound to become Israel’s all-time greatest rock star, released a song that had become a smash hit in a matter of hours. Here are the first few lines:

   All of a sudden
   A man wakes up
   In the morning
   He feels he is people
   And he starts to walk
   And to everyone he comes across
   He says shalom

To a certain extent Artzi innocently expresses in his lyrics the suddenness and almost contingency involved in the transformation of the Jews into people. However, almost within the same breath, Artzi contributes towards the illusionist national myth of the peace-seeking nation. Artzi should have known by then that Jewish nationalism was a colonialist act at the expense of the indigenous Palestinian people.

Seemingly, nationalism, national belonging and Jewish nationalism in particular create a major intellectual task. Interestingly enough, the first to deal theoretically and methodically with issues having to do with nationalism were Marxist ideologists. Though Marx himself failed to address the issue adequately, early 20th century uprising of nationalist demands in eastern and central Europe caught Lenin and Stalin unprepared.

“Marxists’ contribution to the study of nationalism can be seen as the focus on the deep correlation between the rise of free economy and the evolvement of the national state.”³ In fact, Stalin was there to summarise the Marxist take on the subject. “The nation,” says Stalin, “is a solid collaboration between beings that was created historically and formed following four significant phenomena: the sharing of tongue, the sharing of territory, the sharing of economy and the sharing of psychic significance…”³

As one would expect, the Marxist materialist attempt to understand nationalism is lacking an adequate historical overview. Instead it would be reliant upon a class struggle. For some obvious reasons such a vision was popular amongst those who believe in ‘socialism of one nation’ amongst them we can consider the proponents of a leftist branch of Zionism.

For Sand, nationalism evolved due to the “ rapture created by modernity which split people from their immediate past”.⁴ The mobility created by urbanisation and industrialisation crushed the social hierarchic system as well as the continuum between past, present and future. Sand points out that before industrialisation, the feudal peasant didn’t necessarily feel the need for an historical narrative of empires and kingdoms. The feudal subject didn’t need an extensive abstract historical narrative of large collectives that had very little relevance to the immediate concrete existential need. “Without a perception of social progression, they did well with an imaginary religious tale that contained a mosaic of memory that lacked a real dimension of a forward moving time. The ‘end’ was the beginning and eternity bridged between life and death.”⁴

In the modern secular and urban world, ‘time’ had become the main life vessel which illustrated an imaginary symbolic meaning. Collective historical time had become the elementary ingredient of the personal and the intimate. The collective narrative shapes the personal meaning and what seems to be the ‘real.’ As much as some banal minds still insist that the ‘personal is political,’ it would be far more intelligible to argue that in practice, it is actually the other way around. Within the post-modern condition, the political is personal and the subject is spoken rather than speaking itself. Authenticity, for the matter, is a myth that reproduces itself in the form of symbolic identifier.

Sand’s reading of nationalism as a product of industrialisation, urbanisation and secularism, makes a lot of sense when bearing in mind Uri Slezkin’s suggestion that Jews are the ‘apostles of modernity,’ secularism and urbanisation. If Jews happened to find themselves at the hub of urbanisation and secularisation, it shouldn’t then take us by surprise that the Zionists were rather creative as much as others in inventing their own phantasmic collective imaginary tale. However, while insisting on their right to be ‘like other people’ Zionists have managed to transform their imagined collective past into a global, expansionist, merciless agenda as well as the biggest threat to world peace.

There Is No Jewish History

It is an established fact that not a single Jewish history text had been written between the 1st century and early 19th century. The fact that Judaism is based on a religious historical myth may have something to do with it. An adequate scrutiny of the Jewish past was never a primary concern within the Rabbinical tradition. One of the reasons is probably the lack of a need of such a methodical effort. For the Jew who lived during ancient times and the Middle Ages, there was enough in the Bible to answer most relevant questions having to do with day-to-day life, Jewish meaning and fate. As Shlomo Sand puts it, “a secular chronological time was foreign to the ‘Diaspora time’ that was shaped by the anticipation for the coming of the Messiah.”

However, in the light of German secularisation, urbanisation, and emancipation, and due to the decreasing authority of the Rabbinical leaders, an emerging need of an alternative cause rose amongst the awakening Jewish intellectuals. The emancipated Jew wondered who he was, where he come from. He also started to speculate what his role might be within the rapidly opening European society.

In 1820, the German Jewish historian Isaak Markus Jost (1793-1860) published the first serious historical work on Jews, namely The History of the Israelites. Jost avoided the Biblical time, he preferred to start his journey with the Judea Kingdom, he also compiled an historical narrative of different Jewish communities around the world. Jost realised that the Jews of his time did not form an ethnic continuum. He grasped that Israelites from place to place were rather different. Hence, he thought there was nothing in the world that should stop Jews from total assimilation. Jost believed that within the spirit of enlightenment, both the Germans and the Jews would turn their back to the oppressive religious institution and would form a healthy nation based on a growing geographically orientated sense of belonging.

Though Jost was aware of the evolvement of European nationalism, his Jewish followers were rather unhappy with his liberal optimistic reading of the Jewish future. “From historian Heinrich Graetz on, Jewish historians began to draw the history of Judaism as the history of a nation that had been a ‘kingdom’, expelled into ‘exile’, became a wandering people and ultimately turned around and went back to its birthplace.”

For the late Moses Hess, it was a racial struggle rather than a class struggle that would define the shape of Europe. Accordingly, suggests Hess, Jews better return and reflect on their cultural heritage and ethnic origin. For Hess, the conflict between Jews and Gentiles was the product of racial differentiation, hence, unavoidable.

The ideological path from Hess’s pseudo scientific racist orientation to Zionist historicism is rather obvious. If Jews are indeed an alien racial entity (as Hess, Jabotinsky and others believed), they better look for their natural homeland, and this homeland is no other than Eretz Yizrael. Cleary, Hess’s assumption regarding a racial continuum wasn’t scientifically approved. In order to maintain the emerging phantasmic narrative, an orchestrated denial mechanism had to be erected just to make sure that some embarrassing facts wouldn’t interfere with the emerging national creation.

Sand suggests that the denial mechanism was rather orchestrated and very well thought out. The Hebrew University decision in the 1930’s to split Jewish History and General History into two distinct departments was far more than just a matter of convenience. The logos behind the split is a glimpse into Jewish self-realisation. In the eyes of Jewish academics, the Jewish condition and Jewish psyche were unique and should be studied separately. Apparently, even within Jewish academia, a supreme status is reserved for the Jews, their history and their self-perception. As Sand insightfully unveils, within the Jewish Studies departments the researcher is scattering between the mythological and the scientific while the myth maintains its primacy. Yet, it often gets into a stalling dilemma by the ‘small devious facts.’

The New Israelite, the Bible, and Archaeology

In Palestine, the new Jews and later the Israelis were determined to recruit the Old Testament and to transform it into the amalgamate code of the future Jew. The ‘nationalisation’ of the Bible was there to plant in young Jews the idea that they are the direct followers of their great ancient ancestors. Bearing in mind the fact that nationalisation was largely a secular movement, the Bible was stripped of its spiritual and religious meaning. Instead, it was viewed as an historical text describing a real chain of events in the past. The Jews who had now managed to kill their God learned to believe in themselves. Massada, Samson and Bar Kochva became suicidal master narratives. In the light of their heroic ancestors, Jews learned to love themselves as much as they hate others, except that this time they possessed the military might to inflict real pain on their neighbours. More concerning was the fact that instead of a supernatural entity — namely God — who command them to invade the land and execute a genocide and to rob their ‘promised land’ of its indigenous inhabitants, within their national revival project it was them as themselves, Herzl, Jabotinsky, Weitzman, Ben Gurion, Sharon, Peres, Barak who decided to expel, destroy and kill. Instead of God, it was then the Jews killing in the name of Jewish people. They did it while Jewish symbols decorate their planes and tanks. They followed commands that where given in the newly restored language of their ancestors.

Surprisingly enough, Sand who is no doubt a striking scholar, fails to mention that the Zionist hijacking of the Bible was in fact a desperate Jewish answer to German Early Romanticism. However, as much as German philosophers, poets, architects and artists were ideologically and aesthetically excited about pre-Socratic Greece, they knew very well that they were not exactly Hellenism’s sons and daughters. The nationalist Jew took it one step further, he bound oneself into a phantasmic blood chain with his mythical ancestors, not before long he restored their ancient language. Rather than a sacred tongue, Hebrew had become a spoken language. German Early Romanticist never went that far.

German intellectuals during the 19th century were also fully aware of the distinction between Athens and Jerusalem. For them, Athens stood for universal, the epic chapter of humanity and humanism. Jerusalem was, on the contrary, the grand chapter of tribal barbarism. Jerusalem was a representation of the banal, non-universal, monotheistic merciless God, the one who kills the elder and the infant. The Germanic Early Romantic era left us with Hegel, Nietzsche, Fichte and Heidegger and a just a few Jewish self-haters, leading amongst them, Otto Weininger. The Jerusalemite left us with not a single master ideological thinker. Some German Jewish second-rate scholars tried to preach Jerusalem in the Germanic exedra, amongst them were Herman Cohen, Franz Rosenzveig and Ernst Bloch. They obviously failed to notice that it was the traces of Jerusalem in Christianity, which German Early Romanticists despised.

In their effort to resurrect ‘Jerusalem,’ archaeology was recruited to provide the Zionist epos with its necessary ‘scientific’ ground. Archaeology was there to unify the Biblical time with the moment of revival. Probably the most astonishing moment of this bizarre trend was the 1982 ‘military burial ceremony’ of the bones of Shimon Bar Kochva, a Jew rebel who died 2000 years earlier. Executed by the chief military Rabbi, a televised military burial was given to some sporadic bones found in a cave near the Dead Sea. In practice suspected remains of a 1st century Jew rebel was treated as an IDF casualty. Clearly, archaeology had a national role, it was recruited to cement the past and the present while leaving the Galut out.

Astonishingly enough, it didn’t take long before things turned the other way around. As archaeological research become more and more independent of the Zionist dogma, the embarrassing truth filtered out. It would be impossible to ground the truthfulness of the Biblical tale on forensic facts. If anything, archaeology refutes the historicity of the Biblical plot. Excavation revealed the embarrassing fact. The Bible is a collection of innovative fictitious literature.

As Sand points out, the Early Biblical story is soaked with Philistines, Aramaic and camels. Embarrassingly enough, as far as excavations are there to enlighten us, Philistine didn’t appear in the region before the 12th century BC, the Aramaic appears a century later and camels didn’t show their cheerful faces before the 8th century. These scientific facts lead Zionist researchers into some severe confusion. However, for non-Jewish scholars such as Thomas Thompson, it was rather clear that the Biblical is a “late collection of innovative literature written by a gifted theologian.”⁵ The Bible appears to be an ideological text that was there to serve a social and political cause.

Embarrassingly enough, not much was found in Sinai to prove the story of the legendary Egyptian Exodus, seemingly 3 million Hebraic men, women and children were marching in the desert for 40 years without leaving a thing behind. Not even a single matzo ball, very non-Jewish one may say.

The story of the Biblical resettlement and the genocide of the Canaanite which the contemporary Israelite imitates to such success is another myth. Jericho, the guarded city that was flattened to the sounds of horns and almighty supernatural intervention was just a tiny village during the 13th century BC.

As much as Israel regards itself as the resurrection of the monumental Kingdom of David and Salomon, excavation that took place in the Old City of Jerusalem in the 1970’s revealed that David’s kingdom was no more than a tiny tribal setting. Evidence that was referred by Yigal Yadin to King Solomon had been refuted later by forensic tests made with Carbon 14. The discomforting fact has been scientifically established. The Bible is a fictional tale, and not much there can ground any glorifying existence of Hebraic people in Palestine at any stage.

Who invented the Jews?

Quite early on in his text, Sand raises the crucial and probably the most relevant questions. Who are the Jews? Where did they come from? How is it that in different historical periods they appear in some very different and remote places?

Though most contemporary Jews are utterly convinced that their ancestors are the Biblical Israelites who happened to be exiled brutally by the Romans, truth must be said. Contemporary Jews have nothing to do with ancient Israelites, who have never been sent to exile because such an expulsion has never taken place. The Roman Exile is just another Jewish myth.

“I started looking in research studies about the exile from the land” says Sand in a Haaretz interview, “but to my astonishment I discovered that it has no literature. The reason is that no one exiled the people of the country. The Romans did not exile peoples and they could not have done so even if they had wanted to. They did not have trains and trucks to deport entire populations. That kind of logistics did not exist until the 20th century. From this, in effect, the whole book was born: in the realization that Judaic society was not dispersed and was not exiled.”

Indeed, in the light of Sand’s simple insight, the idea of Jewish exile is amusing. The thought of Roman Imperial navy was working 24/7 schlepping Moishe’le and Yanka’le to Cordova and Toledo may help Jews to feel important as well as schleppable, but common sense would suggest that the Roman armada had far more important things to do.

However, far more interesting is the logical outcome: If the people of Israel were not expelled, then the real descendants of the inhabitants of the Kingdom of Judah must be the Palestinians.

“No population remains pure over a period of thousands of years” says Sand. “But the chances that the Palestinians are descendants of the ancient Judaic people are much greater than the chances that you or I are its descendents. The first Zionists, up until the Arab Revolt [1936-9], knew that there had been no exiling, and that the Palestinians were descended from the inhabitants of the land. They knew that farmers don’t leave until they are expelled. Even Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, the second president of the State of Israel, wrote in 1929 that, ‘the vast majority of the peasant farmers do not have their origins in the Arab conquerors, but rather, before then, in the Jewish farmers who were numerous and a majority in the building of the land.’”

In his book Sand takes it further and suggests that until the First Arab Uprising (1929) the so-called leftist Zionist leaders tended to believe that the Palestinian peasants who are actually ‘Jews by origin’ would assimilate within the emerging Hebraic culture and would eventually join the Zionist movement. Ber Borochov believed that “a falach (Palestinian Peasant), dresses as a Jew, and behaves as a working class Jew, won’t be at all different from the Jew”. This very idea reappeared in Ben Gurion’s and Ben-Zvi’s text in 1918. Both Zionist leaders realised that Palestinian culture was soaked with Biblical traces, linguistically, as well as geographically (names of villages, towns, rivers and mountains). Both Ben Gurion and Ben-Zvi regarded, at least at that early stage, the indigenous Palestinians as ethnic relatives who were holding close to the land and potential brothers. They as well regarded Islam as a friendly ‘democratic religion’. Clearly, after 1936 both Ben-Zvi and Ben Gurion toned down their ‘multicultural’ enthusiasm. As far as Ben Gurion is concerned, ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians seemed to be far more appealing.

One may wonder, if the Palestinians are the real Jews, who are those who insist upon calling themselves Jews?

Sand’s answer is rather simple, yet it makes a lot of sense. “The people did not spread, but the Jewish religion spread. Judaism was a converting religion. Contrary to popular opinion, in early Judaism there was a great thirst to convert others.”

Clearly, monotheist religions, being less tolerant than polytheist ones have within them an expanding impetus. Judaic expansionism in its early days was not just similar to Christianity but it was Judaic expansionism that planted the ‘spreading out’ seeds in early Christian thought and practice.

“The Hasmoneans,” says Sand, “were the first to begin to produce large numbers of Jews through mass conversion, under the influence of Hellenism. It was this tradition of conversions that prepared the ground for the subsequent, widespread dissemination of Christianity. After the victory of Christianity in the 4th century, the momentum of conversion was stopped in the Christian world, and there was a steep drop in the number of Jews. Presumably many of the Jews who appeared around the Mediterranean became Christians. But then Judaism started to permeate other regions — pagan regions, for example, such as Yemen and North Africa. Had Judaism not continued to advance at that stage and had it not continued to convert people in the pagan world, we would have remained a completely marginal religion, if we survived at all.”

The Jews of Spain, whom we believed to be blood related to the Early Israelites seem to be converted Berbers. “I asked myself,” says Sand, “how such large Jewish communities appeared in Spain. And then I saw that Tariq ibn Ziyad, the supreme commander of the Muslims who conquered Spain, was a Berber, and most of his soldiers were Berbers. Dahia al-Kahina’s Jewish Berber Kingdom had been defeated only 15 years earlier. And the truth is there are a number of Christian sources that say many of the conquerors of Spain were Jewish converts. The deep-rooted source of the large Jewish community in Spain was those Berber soldiers who converted to Judaism.”

As one would expect, Sand approves the largely accepted assumption that the Judaicised Khazars constituted the main origins of the Jewish communities in Eastern Europe, which he calls the Yiddish Nation. When asked how come they happen to speak Yiddish, which is largely regarded as a German medieval dialect, he answers, “the Jews were a class of people dependent on the German bourgeoisie in the east, and thus they adopted German words.”

In his book Sand manages to produce a detailed account of the Khazarian saga in Jewish history. He explains what lead the Khazarian kingdom towards conversion. Bearing in mind that Jewish nationalism is, for the most part, lead by a Khazarian elite, we may have to expand our intimate knowledge of this very unique yet influential political group. The translation of Sand’s work into foreign languages is an immediate must.

What Next?

Professor Sand leaves us with the inevitable conclusion. Contemporary Jews do not have a common origin and their Semitic origin is a myth. Jews have no origin in Palestine whatsoever and therefore, their act of so-called ‘return’ to their ‘promised land’ must be realised as an invasion executed by a tribal-ideological clan.

However, though Jews do not constitute any racial continuum, they for some reason happen to be racially orientated. As we may notice, many Jews still see mixed marriage as the ultimate threat. Furthermore, in spite of modernisation and secularisation, the vast majority of those who identify as secular Jews still succumb to blood ritual (circumcision) a unique religious procedure which involves no less than blood sucking by a Mohel.

As far as Sand is concerned, Israel should become “a state of its citizens.” Like Sand, I myself believe in the same futuristic utopian vision. However, unlike Sand, I do grasp that the Jewish state and its supportive lobbies must be ideologically defeated. Brotherhood and reconciliation are foreign to Jewish tribal worldview and have no room within the concept of Jewish national revival. As dramatic as it may sound, a process of de-judaification must take place before Israelis can adopt any universal modern notion of civil life.

Sand is no doubt a major intellectual, probably the most advanced leftist Israeli thinker. He represents the highest form of thought a secular Israeli can achieve before flipping over or even defecting to the Palestinian side (something that happened to just a few, me included). Haaretz interviewer Ofri Ilani said about Sand that unlike other ‘new historians’ who have tried to undermine the assumptions of Zionist historiography, “Sand does not content himself with going back to 1948 or to the beginnings of Zionism, but rather goes back thousands of years.” This is indeed the case, unlike the ‘new historians’ who ‘unveil’ a truth that is known to every Palestinian toddler; i.e., the truth of being ethnically cleansed; Sand erects a body of work and thought that is aiming at the understanding of the meaning of Jewish nationalism and Jewish identity. This is indeed the true essence of scholarship. Rather than collecting some sporadic historical fragments, Sand searches for the meaning of history. Rather than a ‘new historian’ who searches for a new fragment, he is a real historian motivated by a humanist task. Most crucially, unlike some of the Jewish historians who happen to contribute to the so-called left discourse, Sand’s credibility and success is grounded on his argument rather than his family background. He avoids peppering his argument with his holocaust survivor relatives. Reading Sand’s ferocious argument, one may have to admit that Zionism in all its faults has managed to erect within itself a proud and autonomous dissident discourse that is far more eloquent and brutal than the entire anti-Zionist movement around the world.

If Sand is correct, and I myself am convinced by the strength of his argument, then Jews are not a race but rather a collective of very many people who are largely hijacked by a late phantasmic national movement. If Jews are not a race, do not form a racial continuum and have nothing to do with Semitism, then ‘anti-Semitism’ is, categorically, an empty signifier. It obviously refers to a signifier that doesn’t exist. In other words, our criticism of Jewish nationalism, Jewish lobbying and Jewish power can only be realised as a legitimate critique of ideology and practice.

Once again I may say it, we are not and never been against Jews (the people) nor we are against Judaism (the religion). Yet, we are against a collective philosophy with some clear global interests. Some would like to call it Zionism but I prefer not to. Zionism is a vague signifier that is far too narrow to capture the complexity of Jewish nationalism, its brutality, ideology and practice. Jewish nationalism is a spirit and a spirit doesn’t have clear boundaries. In fact, none of us know exactly where Jewishness stops and where Zionism starts as much as we do not know where Israeli interests stop and where the Neocon’s interests start.

As far as the Palestinian cause is concerned, the message is rather devastating. Our Palestinian brothers and sisters are at the forefront of a struggle against a very devastating philosophy. Yet, it is clearly not just the Israelis whom they fight with rather a fierce pragmatic philosophy that initiates global conflicts on some gigantic scale. It is a tribal practice that seeks influence within corridors of power and super powers in particular. The American Jewish Committee is pushing for a war against Iran. Just to be on the safe side David Abrahams, a ‘Labour Friend of Israel’ donates money to the Labour Party by proxy. More or less at the same time two million Iraqis die in an illegal war designed by one called Wolfowitz. While all the above is taking place, millions of Palestinians are starved in concentration camps and Gaza is on the brink of a humanitarian crisis. As it all happens, ‘anti-Zionist’ Jews and Jews in the left (Chomsky included) insist upon dismantling the eloquent criticism of AIPAC, Jewish lobbying and Jewish power posed by Mearsheimer and Walt.

Is it just Israel? Is it really Zionism? Or shall we admit that it is something far greater than we are entitled even to contemplate within the intellectual boundaries we imposed upon ourselves? As things stand, we lack the intellectual courage to confront the Jewish national project and its many messengers around the world. However, since it is all a matter of consciousness-shift, things are going to change soon. In fact, this very text is there to prove that they are changing already.

To stand by the Palestinians is to save the world, but in order to do so we have to be courageous enough to stand up and admit that it is not merely a political battle. It is not just Israel, its army or its leadership, it isn’t even Dershowitz, Foxman, and their silencing leagues. It is actually a war against a cancerous spirit that hijacked the West and, at least momentarily, diverted it from its humanist inclination and Athenian aspirations. To fight a spirit is far more difficult than fighting people, just because one may have to first fight its traces within oneself. If we want to fight Jerusalem, we may have to first confront Jerusalem within. We may have to stand in front of the mirror, look around us. We may have to trace for empathy in ourselves in case there is anything left.

1. When And How The Jewish People Was Invented Shlomo Sand, Resling 2008, p 11.
2. Sand, p 31.
3. p 42.
4. p 62.
5. p 117.

“O.K., my little Veggies,” he asked, “what important lesson have we learned from this cautionary tale?”

Peter Parsnip was the first to germinate a reply, “That animals can talk!” he shouted with flatulent enthusiasm.

“Fair enough,” responded farmer Midland, barely concealing his highbrow contempt. “What else?”

“That pigs like to wear clothes and get drunk,” offered Spudwell Potato Head, one of the simpler complex carbohydrates on this or any corporate farm. Midland’s eyes rolled involuntarily as he grimaced ever so slightly. Frankly, he was beginning to question the wisdom of reading allegorical literature to life forms as congenitally unsophisticated as vegetables. Just at that moment, however, he was pleasantly surprised by a bright green head of lettuce.

“We learned that socialism is evil,” said Mr. Green the Head Lettuce thoughtfully.

The ebullient farmer unleashed a toothy grin that spanned from ear to ear. “Exactly!” he exclaimed.

Unfortunately, the profundity of Head Lettuce’s revelation was clearly lost on the rest of the audience, which remained in what can best be described as a persistent vegetative state. Undaunted, Farmer Midland sought to capitalize on what he at least viewed as a teachable moment.

“In fact,” he began, “the animals in this story represent the unbridled lust for power of an out-of-control government bureaucracy.”

“But Mr. Midland, sir, wasn’t it the animals who were suffering at the beginning of the book?” inquired a somewhat naive bale of new mown hay. “I mean, obviously horses and cows are evil, but I actually felt sorry for the cats and dogs on that farm. Wasn’t Mr. Jones kinda mean to them, too?”

At this point, the sycophantic Mr. Green intervened to buttress his corporate master’s argument. “Admittedly, this particular farmer may not always have acted in the interest of his livestock, but we should be careful not to extrapolate generalities from any one individual case…” As Head Lettuce searchingly scanned the crowd of crudités and locked eyes with of a bunch of carrots, he could see they were thickly glazed.

Meanwhile, Farmer Midland lost no time in resuming the rhetorical offensive. “Look, whatever you think of Mr. Jones’s actions in the story, you must admit they indicate he was under a lot of stress due to unwarranted government interference in his business. Government regulators not only unfairly penalized Jones for storing raw pork in an unrefrigerated warehouse warm enough to incubate flies, they further hampered his profit-making ability by restricting the sale of meat from diseased animals too sick to lift themselves off the ground.”

“There’s one thing I still don’t understand, though,” interjected Rudy Rutabaga. “Are you saying that when the animals in the story chased the farmer away, that was kind of like the government taking over the farm?”

“That’s right, rootboy,” chimed in Mr. Green, running out to patience. “Remember, all you need to know is this:

“1) Animals make up the government;

“2) Animals eat plants (i.e., us); therefore,

“3) The government will eat us if we let them.”

The medley of mixed vegetables wilted in horror. “Then who can we turn to to protect us from the government?”

“That’s where we farmers come in,” declared Mr. Midland proudly. “We represent the free market garden established to serve your unhybridized ancestors, the cause for which so many of them were willing to be sliced, diced, mashed, and pureed. So don’t let their sacrifice be in vain. Take my advice: gather up your fiber, lock tendrils together, go march into those livestock pens while you still can, and show those government farm animals who’s boss!”

After some initial debate, the intrepid vegetables finally agreed with Mr. Midland and Mr. Green, and resolved that they’d better act quickly if they were going to save themselves. So they formed up in ranks, raised up a mighty battle cry, and charged off into the holding pens where they were immediately trampled and eaten by the grateful livestock.

“Now all we have to do is drag these government animals into the bathtub and drown them,” said Farmer Midland with a wry smile. “Then we can enjoy a proper feast.”

Mr. Green laughed nervously. “How do I know you won’t try to eat me?” he asked.

Mr. Midland was quick with his answer. “That’s simple. You remind me too much of money, and only a fool devours the thing he loves.”

Upon hearing this, the head of lettuce breathed a miasmic sigh of relief.

“Besides,” the farmer added, almost as an afterthought, “salad sucks.”

“I just hope each and every one of my loyal helpers manages to land on his or her financial feet,” offered the distraught and visibly shaken elder Claus, CEO and – until recently – managing stockholder of the firm. “I know this was as much a shock to them as it was to me.” Some three hundred elves are expected to lose their jobs as a result of the acquisition, which could send the unemployment rate in the sparsely-populated North Pole region soaring as high as 93%.

According to company executives, the future of CII’s charitable wing – The Claus Foundation – remains uncertain. When contacted by reporters following Tuesday’s announcement, X. Claus declined to specify what plans, if any, he had for the philanthropic enterprise. He was, however, willing to share a few tantalizing details in an exclusive interview granted to the Wall Street Journal’s Pamela Pabulum:

WSJ: Mr. Claus, thank you for agreeing to talk to us.

X. Claus: My pleasure.

WSJ: First of all, I’m sure our readers would love to hear your expert assessment regarding any fatal flaws in your uncle’s business model which may have led to the kind of long term stock devaluation the company has undergone in recent centuries. What can you tell us about that?

X. Claus: Well, it’s not really a mystery, is it? I mean, you run a giveaway program that rewards every kid in the world for simply being “good”, and what do you expect? I don’t even know how to quantify “good”, do you? It’s too vague a term to be of any use in business, and it’s certainly no basis for a corporate strategy. In my opinion it’s SOCIALISM writ large, pure and simple, and it has no place in a free country like ours.

WSJ: So it’s safe to say you’re not planning to continue producing toys?

X. Claus: Look, here’s the bottom line. We’ve issued urgent instructions to all middle management at Claus Industries to redirect the company’s resources away from the non-profit manufacture of toys and into the highly lucrative and growth-oriented health insurance and pharmaceutical sector of the economy. Accordingly, we’ve changed our name to “ClausCare Inc.”

WSJ: Sounds ambitious.

X. Claus: Pamela, we’re all about the future here at ClausCare.

WSJ: So I guess the children of the world won’t be getting any free goodies in their stockings this year.

X. Claus: Regrettably, no. But I am proud to announce that as an introductory promotion this coming Holiday Season, our marketing department plans to provide enough free lumps of coal to fill every child’s stocking up to the brim. Clean Coal. From the Cheney Family Strip mines in Hell Hole, Wyoming.

WSJ: I’m sure the children will be thrilled.

X. Claus: I hope so. We’re all really tickled about it here at ClausCare, I can tell you. And since it looks like Congress is going to pass a Health Care Reform Bill that requires some 40 million new customers to buy health insurance from private industry without recourse to some blood-thirsty totalitarian government plan involving Nazi “Death Canneries” that grind up old people and turn them into dog food, you can be sure we’ll be coming around to every house on Christmas Eve to sign up all 40 million of you new customers to vastly improved health care contracts. And don’t worry; You’ll be entitled to the sort of comprehensive coverage and up-to-date medical care envisioned by Our Founding Fathers back in 1776. That means free mercury-oxide for all, and no deductibles on leeches.

WSJ: Sounds great. By the way, what does the initial “X” in your name stand for?

X. Claus: It’s a nom de guerre, really. A nickname I picked up at Harvard Business School. It’s short for “Exclusionary.” You see, the guys in my fraternity just started calling me “Exclusionary Claus”, since my major in business school was insurance underwriting, and it just sort of stuck. In fact, my grad school professors got together and presented me with a special award for “Most Creative Writer of Exclusionary Clauses.”

WSJ: Can you give us some examples of your work in that department?

X. Claus: Sure. I was the driving creative force behind several industry favorites, including “Whereas the party of the first part, having failed to disclose his or her previously unforeseen medical condition…” And then of course there’s “In the event the insured fails to meet any of the extrinsic financial obligations imposed after the fact by the insurer in a timely manner…” And my personal favorite, “Under no circumstances shall a condition or complaint resulting from, or perceived as having resulted from, a nuclear conflict not directly attributable to the actions of the insurer result in…etc., etc.” That last one got me an honorable mention at the Health Care Expo in Las Vegas last year.

WSJ: Your Uncle Santa traditionally used helpers in his work, by which of course I mean his elves. I gather they’ll be considered redundant at ClausCare?

X. Claus: Unfortunately, yes.

WSJ: Will you be retraining any of those elves to perform jobs at ClausCare?

X. Claus: Well, there’s a bit of a problem there. You see, because Uncle Santa insisted on paying his employees a living wage for the past 1700 years or so, he had the luxury of skimming off the top of the elf gene pool. But because we here at ClausCare believe strongly that Freedom means “working for free”, we put a lot of advertising dollars into convincing working-class people to undermine their own best interests without expecting any compensation in return. This philosophy requires us, for obvious reasons, to dredge the bottom of that same gene pool as it were, to get at the deep sedimentary layer often referred to as “the salt of the earth.” What we recover by this process is a different class of helper: less mercurial and more leaden of mind; less cerebral, more visceral in nature. But suffice it to say these workers serve our purpose quite well. Because of their near total absence of annoying brain wave interference, the predigested talking points we provide them to recite at public meetings are retained in their pristine state, you know, right off the printed page, as it were…

WSJ: Are these creatures even elves?

X. Claus: Well, genetically speaking, we’re not exactly sure. We refer to them as “Oaves.”

WSJ: If I’m not mistaken, the Urban Dictionary defines “oaves” as the plural of “oaf.”

X. Claus: Hmmm…Interesting. That may be true, but for us it’s a useful acronym. It stands for “obtuse, agitated, vituperative, and educationally stunted.” But for all that, these oaves are worth their considerable weight in gold, and frankly, we couldn’t operate without them!

WSJ: Yeah, I’ve seen them on TV; they can suck the intellectual oxygen right out of a room.

X. Claus: Damn straight.

WSJ: So, everybody knows Santa used a magic sleigh pulled by flying reindeer to make his appointed rounds. How do you get your “oaves” from town hall to town hall?

X. Claus: Well, Pamela, now that, thankfully, we’re out of the toy business, we decided to scrap that old wreck of a sleigh and replace it with a fleet of brand new, state-of-the-art coal-burning buses.

WSJ: Your buses are powered by coal?

X. Claus: Not powered by coal, heated by coal. They’re actually pulled by invisible unicorns.

WSJ: Forgive me, but aren’t unicorns imaginary?

X. Claus: Of course, but our oaves don’t know that! One should never underestimate the power of credulity to change the world, let alone pull buses. Actually, we’ve told the oaves they can help the invisible unicorns by pushing with their feet, and we’ve cut holes in the floorboards to facilitate this. It’s sort of …ponderous I suppose, but trust me, if the buses moved any faster, the oaves would be confused by all the blurred scenery. This way they can all stick their heads out of the window, relax, and enjoy the ride.

WSJ: One last question, Mr. Claus. Will ClausCare’s corporate headquarters remain at their current location at the North Pole?

X. Claus: Well, the North Pole is, in some respects, an admirable location. It’s extremely remote and inaccessible by phone or even internet, which makes it ideal from the standpoint of avoiding inconvenient medical claims by our customers. But I’m afraid my doctor (and by my doctor I mean, of course, the entire Health Insurance Lobby) has expressed some concerns about the climate. He points out that the average daily high temperature there is a relatively balmy minus 30 degrees F. and growing warmer (not due to any man-made climate change, I should point out). His recommendation is that in order to avoid fatal cardiac thaw, I should move to the South Pole, where it is a full 20 degrees cooler on average.

And as retired Texas congressman Dick Armey likes to say, “The only heart-warming stories we in the insurance business enjoy telling involve hungry cannibals around a campfire.”

WSJ: Thank you so much for your time, Mr. Claus.

X. Claus: Not at all.

From Tyler Durden at Zero Hedge:

In order to fully understand currency and price movements, one has to realize that the securitization of debt, and creation of derivatives amounted to a huge virtual printing press, primarily fueled by a massive increase in risk appetite which allowed for a huge expansion in the value of claims on financial assets and goods and services. It is worth pointing out, that the Fed has little to no control over this “printing press” at this point, which at last count was responsible for over 90% of the liquidity in the system.

The faux-prosperity of the last decade was largely the result of a wholesale credit system, which created a humongous amount of credit via sketchy debt instruments, off-balance sheet operations, massive leverage and derivatives. (The Fed’s liquidity and conventional bank loans play a very small part in the modern credit system) Securitization — which is the conversion of pools of loans into securities — is at the center of the storm. It formed the asset base upon which the investment banks and hedge funds stacked additional leverage creating an unstable debt pyramid that couldn’t withstand the battering of a slumping market. After two Bear Stearns funds defaulted 20 months ago, the securitization markets froze, credit dried up and the broader economy went into a tailspin. Now that investors know how risky securitized instruments really are, there’s little chance that assets will regain their original value or that the market for structured debt will stage a comeback.

Bernanke’s Term Asset-backed Loan Facility (TALF) is an attempt to restore the crashed system by offering participants generous government funding to purchase securities backed by mortgages, student loans, auto loans and credit card debt. But skittish investors have stayed on the sidelines. The severity of the downturn has dampened the appetite for risk. So Bernanke has cranked up the money supply, cut interest rates to zero and flooded the financial system with liquidity. His actions have convinced many of the experts that the country is on the fast track to hyperinflation, but that may not be the case, as explained in the Hoisington Investment Management’s Quarterly Economic Review:

Despite near term deflation risks, the overwhelming consensus view is that “sooner or later” inflation will inevitably return, probably with great momentum.

This inflationist view of the world seems to rely on two general propositions. First, the unprecedented increases in the Fed’s balance sheet are, by definition, inflationary. The Fed has to print money to restore health to the economy, but ultimately this process will result in a substantially higher general price level. Second, an unparalleled surge in federal government spending and massive deficits will stimulate economic activity. This will serve to reinforce the reflationary efforts of the Fed and lead to inflation.

(But) let’s assume for the moment that inflation rises immediately. With unemployment widespread, wages would seriously lag inflation. Thus, real household income would decline and truncate any potential gain in consumer spending…

Inflation will not commence until the Aggregate Demand (AD) Curve shifts outward sufficiently to reach the part of the Aggregate Supply (AS) curve that is upward sloping…..Therefore, multiple outward shifts in the Aggregate Demand curve will be required before the economy encounters an upward sloping Aggregate Supply Curve thus creating higher price levels. In our opinion such a process will take well over a decade. . . .

The statement that all the Fed has to do is print money in order to restore prosperity is not substantiated by history or theory. An increase in the stock of money will only lead to a higher GDP if V, or velocity, is stable. V should be thought of conceptually rather than mechanically. If the stock of money is $1 trillion and total spending is $2 trillion, then V is 2. If spending rises to $3 trillion and M2 is unchanged, velocity then jumps to 3.

. . . The historical record indicates that V may be likened to a symbiotic relationship of two variables. One is financial innovation and the other is the degree of leverage in the economy. Financial innovation and greater leverage go hand in hand, and during those times velocity is generally above its long-term average.

As the shadow banking system continues to collapse, velocity should move well below its mean, greatly impairing the efficacy of monetary policy…The problem for the Fed is that it does not control velocity or the money created outside the banking system. (Thanks to Leo Kolivakis, of Pension Pulse, “Is Inflation inevitable?“)

Bernanke can print as much money as he wants, but if the banks are hoarding, consumers are saving, businesses are cutting back, and all the money-multipliers are set to “Off”; there will be no inflation. Demand has to pick up, so that money begins to change hands quickly leading to vast amounts of new money competing for the same number of assets. But that won’t happen while the economy is shedding 600,000 jobs a month, housing prices are tumbling and consumer balance sheets are being repaired.

So if inflation is not an immediate risk, and the economy continues to shrink, isn’t Bernanke doing the right thing by trying to restart the securitization markets?

Opinions vary on this topic. On the one hand, Wall Street’s method of deploying credit appears to be more efficient than conventional (bank) loans because the money is provided by investors who are looking for higher yield rather than bankers tapping into reserves. The problem is that securitization creates incentives for fraud by rewarding loan originators who lend to applicants who have no way of repaying the debt. Unless the system is heavily regulated to insure that traditional lending standards are maintained, speculative bubbles will reemerge and there will be more financial disasters in the future. The former head of the FDIC, William Seidman, anticipated this problem way back in 1993 after cleaning up the S&L crisis. Here’s what he said in his memoirs:

“Instruct regulators to look for the newest fad in the industry and examine it with great care. The next mistake will be a new way to make a loan that will not be repaid.” (Bloomberg)

If regulators had heeded Seidman’s advice, they could have steered the country away from the present calamity.

The problem with an unregulated credit system is that investment banks and hedge funds can skim lavish salaries and bonuses for themselves on the front end before anyone discovers that the loans are fraudulent and the securities worthless. Even so, neither Congress nor the Treasury nor the Fed has taken steps to re-regulate the financial system or to hold any of the main players accountable. It’s “anything goes.” Bernanke has acted as Wall Street’s chief enabler by underwriting shoddy non performing loans, propping up rotten assets with low interest funding, and bailing out investment giants with trillions in taxpayer-backed loans. None of the $12.8 trillion Bernanke has loaned or committed to financial institutions has been approved by Congress. The Fed operates beyond any mandate and outside of any law.

The debate about securitization goes beyond questions about the quality of the underlying loans to focusing on the process itself. Securitization greatly amplifies leverage by repackaging debt into complex instruments. It’s a way of turbo-charging credit expansion. Joseph Stroupe summarizes the issue in a recent Asia Times article:

Remember that there are two fundamental camps with respect to the answer to the question of what lies at the root of the present crisis. One camp holds that America’s new generation of financial assets that resulted from the recently invented financial process known as “securitization” are fundamentally sound in value, and that an over-reaction on the part of investors to the subprime crisis has resulted in a panic-induced collapse in their valuations.

This camp believes that the securitization model can and should be revived, and that when investor confidence is restored in financial assets now seen as “toxic”, then all will be well again, almost magically, as toxic assets become valuable and attractive once again. All that need be done, it is believed, is for the government to work with Wall Street to jump-start securitization, a model this camp vehemently denies has failed, even though many trillions of dollars both spent and committed already have so far failed to get securitization’s heartbeat going again.

The other camp believes that the toxicity is inherent in the very nature of the newly developed financial assets themselves, and that once investors recognized this fact, then that is why their values collapsed. This camp sees the securitization model as fundamentally flawed, based as it is upon artificial inflation of assets, the shortsighted growth of serial asset bubbles created by an unholy de facto alliance of government, big Wall Street banks and credit-rating agencies whose credibility and integrity were profoundly compromised, and unsustainable negative real interest rates (the creation of a massive credit excess), without which the securitization model simply won’t run.

Bernanke says that the securitization markets are “frozen” and that the toxic assets should eventually regain much of their original value. But this is just wishful thinking. Investors aren’t shunning these assets because they’re afraid, but because the banks want too much for them given their implicit riskiness. Stroupe’s analysis is closer to the truth; prices have collapsed because investors recognize the inherent toxicity of the assets themselves. The market isn’t driven by fear, but by common sense. $.30 cents on the dollar is probably all they are worth.

Putting Credit Back Where it Belongs

Do people realize that the reason their home equity is vanishing, their 401ks have been slashed in half and their jobs are at risk is because Wall Street was gaming the system with leverage and financial innovation? The current downturn is not really a recession at all; it’s more like a self-inflicted wound perpetrated by avaricious speculators who put a gun to the economy’s head and blew its brains out. The banks and Wall Street have created a capital hole so vast that the entire economy is being sucked into the abyss. And it all could have been avoided.

Credit production is too important and too lethal to entrust to profit-driven vipers whose only motivation is self-enrichment. The whole system needs rethinking and public input before Bernanke wastes trillions more trying to revive the same crisis-prone business model. If “credit is the economy’s life’s-blood,” as President Obama says, then it should be distributed through a government-controlled public utility. The real lesson of the financial crisis is that privatizing credit has been a disaster.

The first decade of this new century has been a period of disaster, a time set for killing.

Tonight, with a smug shirk, I have asked for a final opportunity to share some indignities on the journey I have traveled as imperial president and the bleak future of our nation.

Five days from now, the world will witness the vitality of my departure. In a tradition dating back to our founding, the presidency will pass to a successor chosen by the rigged two-party system, the Corporate duopoly. Standing on the steps of the Capitol will be a man whose history reflects the depressing promise of Capitalism and my failed legacy.

This is a moment of declining employment and home evictions for our whole nation. And I join all neo-cons and neo-liberals in offering best wishes to President-elect Obama, his wife, Michelle, and their two beautiful girls. They will surely need it.

Tonight, I am filled with sadistic allegiance to Dick Cheney who stole the vice presidency and to members of the junta; to Laura, who brought joy to this house and love to my life; to our wonderful daughters, Barbara and Jenna; to my parents, whose examples have made me what I am over my lifetime.

And above all, I thank the U.S. sucker voters for the deluded trust you have given me. I thank you for the pretzels and shoes that have altered my spirits. And I thank you for the countless acts of sacrificing your loved ones, pensions, jobs and health care that I have witnessed these past eight years.

This evening, my thoughts return to the first night I addressed you from this house, September 11, 2001. That morning, terrorists which my incompetence allowed, took nearly 3,000 lives in the worst attack on U.S. soil since fellow citizen and well-trained veteran Timothy McVeigh blew up the Omaha federal building.

I remember standing in the rubble of the World Trade Center three days later, surrounded by rescuers who had been working around the clock. I remember talking to brave souls who charged through smoke-filled corridors at the Pentagon and to husbands and wives whose loved ones became heroes aboard Flight 93. These actions took the attention, responsibility and culpability away from me and my failed administration.

I remember Valerie Lucznikowska, the executive director of the Congress of International Modern Architects, whose nephew died in the Twin Towers collapse. Valerie said, “I believe that NORAD [North American Aerospace Defense Command] knew that the South Tower was going to be attacked before it went down…There were lots and lots of clues about the fact that the government had prior knowledge.” Oh, Valerie.

As the years passed, most propagandized U.S. television consuming addicts were able to return to their shopping life much as it had been before 9/11. But I never did. Every morning, I received a briefing on how to take away Constitutional rights, pass the PATRIOT Act, end the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, do away with civil liberties, and spy on you. And I vowed to do everything in my God-given authoritarian powers to undermine the Bill of Rights.

Over the past seven years, a new Department of Homeland Security has been created to protect the Father Land. The military, the intelligence community and the FBI have been transformed into agencies that the people fear. Our nation is equipped with new tools to monitor everybody’s movements, monitor your bathroom breaks, break up peace group meetings and their pesky demonstrations.

And with strong warmongers at our side, we have taken war to foreign lands where our natural resources reside under their grounds. Afghanistan has gone from a nation, where the Taliban whom we armed and supported threw out the Soviets, to being a young Capitalism that is the world’s largest opium producing nation.

Iraq has gone from a brutal dictatorship that we supported and supplied military weapons to, with a dictator we supported, to a crony democracy at the heart of oil country and a friend of me and my friends, the oil magnates.

There is legitimate debate about many of these decisions, but there can be little debate about the lies, deceit, death and destruction.

The United States has gone more than seven years without a false-flag attack on our soil. This is a tribute to those who toil day and night to stop me — people who watch me closely, law enforcement advocates who say I am not above the law, intelligence analysts I have exposed, Bill of Rights advocates and opposition personnel, and the men and women of the United States Veterans For Peace.

Our nation is blessed to have citizens who volunteer to defend the United States Constitution in this time of danger. I have cherished fighting these selfless patriots and their families. And the substantially diminished United States Constitution owes you a debt of gratitude.

And to all our men and women in uniform listening tonight, there has been no higher honor than not attending any funeral for your fallen comrades.

The battles waged by our troops are part of a broader struggle of two dramatically, but necessary, different systems. Under one, an empire spurred on by a rich and powerful band of fanatics demands total world hegemony, condemns women and children to be collateral damage and marks non-hegemonists for murder.

The other system is based on the conviction that United States’ exceptionalism is the universal gift of Almighty God and that free markets and Capitalism light the path to wealth accumulation.

This is the belief that gave birth to our nation. And in the long run, advancing this belief is the only practical way to make the rich richer and the powerful more powerful.

When people live in neo-liberalism, they do not willingly choose leaders who pursue wars. The Supreme Court does. When people have less citizen power, they will cede their lives to the non-compassion of the market place.

So around the world, the United States is promoting free markets, worker exploitation, structural adjustment, greed Capitalism and the indignity of stolen natural resources. We are standing with lackeys and young Capitalistocracies, providing aid and medicine to bring dying neo-liberal societies back to life, and sparing the owning class from further wealth deterioration and loss of profits. And this great republic, born alone in wiping out an indigenous population, embracing slavery and denying women the rights of citizenship, is leading the world toward a Nuage where the free market belongs to all nations.

For eight years, we have also strived to expand unemployment and home foreclosures here at home. Across our country, students are rising to meet corporate imposed testing standards in public schools and are being left behind. A new Medicare prescription drug benefit is bringing less peace of mind to seniors and the disabled. Every taxpayer pays lower income taxes as we print more paper money that is worth less and less.

The addicted and suffering are finding new hope through cults and other faith-based programs. Vulnerable human life is better bombed. Funding for our veterans has nearly doubled as the number of veterans has increased ten times. The country’s air, water and lands are being measurably drilled and exploited. And the federal bench includes crony neo-con members, like Justice Sam Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts.

When challenges to our prosperity emerged, we rose to reject free market principles. Facing the prospect of a financial collapse, we took socialism and socialist measures to safeguard our economy. These are very tough times for hardworking families, but the toll would be far worse if we had not acted. Unfortunately, socialism saves Capitalism.

All of us are in this together. And together, with sadness and much of your pain, we will attempt to reinstate our free market economy at all costs. We will show the world once again that the inherent self-contradictions of the “free enterprise” system that Karl Marx wrote about will always lead to its collapse. We have proved that.

Like all who have held this office before me, I have experienced setbacks and there are things I would do differently, if given the chance. But to hell with that.

Yet, I’ve always acted with the best interests of Capitalism in mind. I have followed my Savior and done what I thought He told me. You may not agree with some tough decisions Jesus and I have made, but I hope you can agree that I was willing to do what He told me.

The decades ahead will bring more hard choices for our country, and there are many guiding authoritarian neo-liberal principles that should shape our course.

While our nation is not safer than it was before I stole the presidency, the gravest threat to our people remains in not having another illegitimate and war mongering administration. Our enemies are our inability to resolve conflicts without projecting power and we will be patient and determined to strike again, anywhere, anytime.

America did nothing to seek to prevent this conflict. But we have conjured up solemn responsibilities, and we must meet them. We must resist peace-making. We must keep our resolve. And we must never let down on our war making.

At the same time, we just continue to engage the world with failing confidence and a Geneva Convention-ignoring purpose. In the face of threats from our citizens, it can be tempting to seek comfort by turning to the Bill of Rights. But we must reject criticism and its companion, dissent.

Retreating behind our Constitution would only invite danger. In the 21st century, security and prosperity at home depend on further eroding Constitutional rights. If the United States does not lead the cause of Capitalism, that cause will not be led.

As we address these challenges, and others we cannot foresee tonight, the United States must maintain its torture making capabilities and practice.

I have often spoken to you about good and evil, and this has made some uncomfortable. But good and evil are present in this world and between the two, there can be no compromise. Murdering the innocent to advance an ideology is wrong every time, everywhere, except when we do it.

Freeing people from oppression and despair by bombing them away is eternally right. This nation must continue to speak out for Capitalism and the free market. We must always be willing to act in their defense and to advance the cause of neo-liberalism.

President Thomas Jefferson once wrote, “I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.” As I leave the house he occupied two centuries ago, I share that optimism. I want you to forget about the crimes I have committed.

America is a young continent, actually two continents, full of vitality, constantly growing and renewing itself. And even in these tough times, much of its eyes move away from the United States to a broader horizon ahead.

I have confidence in the promise of America because I know the character of all its dozens of nations. And, they have black people there also. This is a continent that inspires immigrants to risk everything for the dream of escaping the grip of the North.

Ours is a nation where citizens show calm in times of my oppression and compassion in the face of the suffering I have caused. We see examples of the United States character all around us, and Laura and I have ignored protestors never allowing them to join us in the White House, not for a single evening.

We see the U.S. character in Bernard Madoff, a ponzi scheme principle, who opened a new charter program to wealth from the ruins of Hurricane Recession. We see it in Richard Wagoner, CEO of General Motors, a former profit-making company, as he made $14,415,914 in total compensation in 2007 according to the SEC. This is possible only in God’s country. We see it in the 1.8 million veterans and 50-million people who have no health care.

We see the U.S. character in our elderly who have to chose between paying for medicine and paying for heat. Their children delivered some surprising news. They cannot afford college, nor can they find a job. These brave souls now live with their parents.

These good old people are 60 years old, 18 years above the age limit for military service. But their petition for a waiver was granted because they had no other way to make ends meet. They enlisted in God’s army. Their children enlisted also. God bless them.

These people could not be here tonight, because they will soon deploy to Iraq, where they will help save Capitalism and uphold the legacy of my failed policies.

In citizens like these, we see the best of our country, resilient and hopeful, caring and strong. Semper fi! Boo-yah!. These virtues give me an unshakable faith in blind patriotism. You have faced my disasters and trials, and there is more ahead.

But with the courage of our people and confidence in our Constitution, defense of my diminishing this great document will never tire, never falter and never fail. You will never arrest and prosecute me and Dick Cheney as the Constitution demands.

It has been the privilege of a lifetime to serve as misguided and un-elected president. There have been good jogging days and tough jogging days. But there have always been jogging (and chain saw brush-clearing) days. But every day, I have been inspired by my own greatness and been uplifted by the inaction of our people against me.

I have been installed to represent this nation we love. And I will always be honored to carry a title that means more to me than it ever will to any of you — CEO of the United States of America, Inc.

And so, my fellow citizens, for the final time, good night. May God continue His blessings on this house and our next president. He is going to need it following in my footsteps. And may the ultimate Poohbah In The Sky bless you and our wonderful country.

*G.W. Bush’s actual speech can be found here.

Gaza’s offensive against Israel continued today, sharply escalating with a ground incursion that cut off the southern part of Israel from the north.

The Israeli death toll climbed past 400, at least 60 of whom were civilians, according to UN estimates. 4 Palestinian civilians have been killed as a result of Jewish settlers firing rockets into Gaza in response to the military operation led by Hamas.

Cloud bursts with flaming smoke trails were seen over Israeli cities as Hamas employed white phosphorus munitions. The use of such munitions as weapons targeting soldiers or civilians is prohibited by international law, but Hamas says it is only using the munitions legally to provide a smokescreen for its ground offensive.

There have been reports of Israelis with chemical burns from the phosphorus rounds entering hospitals, but the reports could not independently confirmed since Hamas has refused to allow any foreign journalists to enter Israel.

The United States led an effort at the United Nations to issue a resolution calling for a cessation of hostilities, but the effort was blocked by Russia. The Russian ambassador to the UN said, “We don’t want a one-sided cease-fire that would see Gaza end its operations only to allow Israel to continue firing rockets into Gaza. We are seeking a sustainable cease-fire.”

Russia has repeatedly reiterated its demand for Israel to recognize Gaza’s right to exist and renounce violence. Russia’s foreign minister said earlier this week, “Israel is responsible for ending the cease-fire. Gaza has the right to self-defense. No nation would sit by and just watch as rockets exploded in their towns, hitting homes and schools, without a response. No country would tolerate that.”

Israel’s rocket attacks against Gaza sharply escalated after Gaza’s offensive began 9 days ago. Prior to that, no Palestinians had been killed since the cease-fire began last year on June 19. Israel’s Labor Party led by Ehud Barak agreed to the truce in exchange for an easing of the siege of Israel by Gaza.

Barak is also the head of the Israeli Defense Force (IDF), which Hamas lists as a terrorist organization.

During the first week of the cease-fire, Hamas soldiers fired upon Israeli farmers near the border in at least seven separate incidents. An 82-year old Jewish man was wounded in one of the incidents. The IDF claimed that this was a violation of the cease-fire, but Hamas responded by announcing a “special security zone” along the border in Israel and warned that it would fire upon any Jews that entered the zone.

At the same time, Hamas also stepped up its operations against the IDF in the Negev region, stating that the cease-fire only applied to northern Israel. Two Jewish militants were killed in one targeted assassination.

Tzipi Livni’s Kadima group responded by firing rockets into Gaza City. The Labor party urged Kadima to observe the cease-fire so that the siege of Israel would be lifted. Hamas warned Barak that his party would be held responsible for any rockets fired from Israel into Gaza by other groups and closed border crossings once again after a brief respite in which it allowed several trucks to cross into Israel delivering humanitarian supplies.

The IDF claimed that Gaza’s firing at Jewish civilians and closing of the borders was a violation of the cease-fire, but held to the truce until after November 4, when Hamas launched an airstrike into Israel, killing 4 militants and injuring several others. Hamas said the Jewish militants were digging a tunnel under the border in order to cross into Gaza to kidnap a Hamas soldier. Hamas released satellite images with arrows pointing to what a spokesman said was the location of the tunnel. Hamas also blamed Barak’s IDF for violating the cease-fire by launching rockets in response to its airstrike.

Human rights organizations have criticized Hamas for its policy of blockading Israel, which they say had brought the Jewish people to the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe. The present military offensive has worsened the situation for Israelis, many of whom have no electricity. Many bakeries in Israel have run out of bread and cannot make more. Israel’s overflowing hospitals are running out of fuel to run generators, and the blockade has prevented them from receiving medical supplies which would assist in helping those injured in the present conflict.

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh yesterday rejected the charges, saying “There is no humanitarian crisis in Israel. The humanitarian situation in Israel is exactly as it should be.”

Haniyeh also dismissed charges that Hamas forces were targeting civilians in its operations. “Hamas does everything to prevent the loss of life of civilians,” he said. “Israelis were even warned to leave areas where the terrorists are hiding. We are only targeting militants. It is Israel that is using human shields in violation of international law. It is Israel which is responsible for the loss of innocent lives.”

Critics of Hamas argue that Jews have no place to flee since Gaza has closed the borders and has bombed numerous targets deep within Israeli territory so that no place is safe.

A top Israeli leader, Binyamin Netanyahu, was killed earlier this week when Hamas targeted his apartment building. His wife, Sarah, and two sons, Yair and Avner, were also killed in the bombing.

The UN’s estimate of 60 Israeli civilians killed counts only women and children, and is therefore only a minimum figure. The UN is unable to estimate the number of men that were combatants versus civilians and has said this number is therefore likely to be extremely conservative.

Russia’s Pravda newspaper reported today that most of the men arriving at Israeli hospitals appeared to be civilians. Most seemed to be coming in with their wives and children who were injured along with the men in Gaza’s bombing raids. None were identified as members of the IDF.

Member states of the European Union criticized Russia’s decision to veto any resolution calling for a cease-fire. Britain’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown said, “We need an end to the violence now. The blame-game can continue afterward, but the immediate goal should be to stop the bloodshed.”

A spokesman for the Kremlin said Hamas needed more time to root out “the infrastructure of terror” in Israel and to cripple the IDF’s ability to fire rockets into Gaza towns. “Russia is leading the effort to achieve peace in the region,” he said, by seeking “a sustainable cease-fire.”

Although his image is well known, there is no official photograph on file with American border control, and he has never been fingerprinted or body-searched. Most disconcerting of all, he delivers parcels to children all over the world, including the children living in the Axis of Evil. His intentions with this activity are not understood beyond some fuzzy generalization about kindness and generosity to all. Clearly, here was the world’s largest unplugged pipeline to potential terrorists.

It was only after receiving no response to several urgent letters from the State Department requesting an immediate meeting in Washington that a decision was made to approach Santa’s North Pole solitude. As usual in such matters with the people now running America , a wing of America ’s most lethal killing machines was employed for the purpose. You never know what you might encounter in such a forbidding place.

As the planes first zoomed over the icy silence of the North Pole workshop, one of the pilots decided to swoop down for a closer look. He was one of those daring fly-boys, and his tail struck the only wire for thousands of miles around, the North Pole Telegraph, sending his plane hurling into the workshop in a ball of flames with tons of ammunition and missiles exploding.

Santa and Mrs. Claus rushed out of their snow-blanketed gingerbread house to see what was happening, trying to calm the terrified reindeer running from their stable at one end of the house. The elves, too, scurried towards the stable, trying to stop the reindeer from running or flying off.

Above, in the dark vault of sky, the other pilots observed the explosion and saw missile trails smoking into the air. They also saw the frantic activity below and quickly concluded their comrade had come under anti-aircraft attack. So they swooped down in attack formation, rapid-fire canon tearing into everything ahead of them.

Most of the reindeer fell in the snow, spurting warm blood across the bluish-white surface. Most of the elves, too, fell gasping for life. Mrs. Claus received a wound in the head and instantly fell limp. Santa tried heroically to reach his wife but realized the situation was hopeless and turned, running into the darkness accompanied by Prancer, the only surviving reindeer.

The only witness to the massacre is one surviving elf now living somewhere in Canada under an assumed identity, fearful for his life. It is only from his testimony that we know anything about Santa’s fate.

Realizing the horrific mistake they had made, the pilots dropped white phosphorus bombs with the intention of incinerating all evidence. The entire North Pole lit up and Santa and Prancer could be seen in the distance on a huge block of ice drifting off into the dark sea, the ice everywhere cracked and weakened by the combined effects of white phosphorus and years of global warming.

Within in a few hours, the beating sound of a black helicopter approached Santa and Prancer. The elf, from his hiding place in a snowdrift, could only make out intermittent sounds across the howling coldness, but it seems armed men emerged from the helicopter, shot Prancer and shackled Santa, shoving him into the dark, beating machine. The elf heard a word that sounded like Guantanamo and Santa has not been heard from since. Reports of his fate reached the International Red Cross and organizations like Amnesty International, leading to inquiries, but these have been met only with silence from American authorities.

Couldn’t think anything but bad thoughts Sunday when I heard it in the other room: “Santa Claus is Coming To Town.” Clay-mation or stop-action-mation or however they made those cool Christmas specials featuring lights and snow and joyous elfin jesters back in the day.

This was the original, the story of how it all began, the story of the Revolution in Somberville and the War Against Toys.

Kris a subversive young man with extremely bright red hair, is raised in the woods by rebel elves called “Kringles.” Kringles are artisans, craftsmen, who reject the authoritarian regime of nearby City of Somberville. They and their leader, a woman known as “Tanta,” teach Kris readin’ writin’ rithmetic’ and how to make toys.

And get this: Kris makes friends with animals in the woods, develops this noble savage/Rousseau/Sioux medicine man thing with squirrels, birds, rabbits, reindeer and a little penguin who looks remarkably like the universal Linux logo (is this where Linus Torvalds and Richard Stallman got the idea?) They teach him to run, jump, think and LAUGH like an animal. He grows up and sets out to distribute the Kringles’ toys because – because the Kringles want children to enjoy them.

So the Man in the Red Suit saunters into Somberville, a dark ghetto full of depressed, oppressed, repressed white people (well, not EXACTLY white: looks like a shtetl out of a Shalom Aleichem story, real Fiddler On The Roof stuff) run by this mean old Nazi, the Burgher Meister Meister Burgher, who prohibits toys or fun of any kind. It’s A War Against Toys.

But Kringle manages to corrupt the children and their pretty, young, extremely red-haired school marm, Jessica, by getting ‘em all high on fun. He melts the icy heart of the Winter Warlock with the gift of a toy Choo-choo train. He even gets the Burgher Meister off with a psychedelic yo-yo until one of the Meister’s henchmen reminds him he’s breaking his own law, so The Man In The Red Suit splits and –

– commercial break. Grim reality, so called.

This woman says to me, “You’ve got a yeast infection.”

I say, “No way.”

She says, “Yeah you do, and you use greasy, gooey topical creams.”

“Bullshit.”

“You’ve got a yeast infection and you cover it with cream to hide the shame of your stanky cooter. Admit it. It’s okay.”

“NO!”

But there’s a way outta this mess, she tells me. I don’t need to rub this wretched, thick cream on my itchy labia if I just swallow this little pill. Don’t smear. Swallow.

“Wait a minute, Lady, what’s in that little pill?”

But poof she’s gone, and some old fart with a face like a scrotum tells me he can cure my hemorrhoids with – guess what? – a little pill.

“Hold on there, old-timer. What’s in that little pill?”

But back to the story:

Something obviously subversive about a guy (in red, no less) sneaking into a town full of oppressed repressed and depressed workers who work morning to night every damn day till the weekend during which they work on looking busy, and the Burgher Meister says so.

“You are a radical unt a non-conformist!” the Meister barks, to Kringle mit heavy Deutsche gutturals.

Musta been written by lefty Jews, this Christmas special, what with the dark-haired ghetto folk lorded over by a fat German autocrat, and red-haired, red-suited Kringle, like the slap-happy fool we wish Schindler had been, distributing colorful, hand-crafted artifacts created solely for the health and enjoyment of children — for free! Kringle actually shouts out joyously, “I love my job!” ARREST THAT MAN!

And the authorities sure try, but Kringle’s got a whole support network, including Jessica, the school-marm; the now kindly but impotent Winter Warlock (no more magic powers — what’re they saying here about wickedness and power I’m confused); the children; the animals and the Kringle elves who make the toys and actually ENJOY their work and were only sad because no one else could enjoy the fruits of their labor until Kris became their fence, their middle man, their bag man (literally) to distribute PRODUCT.

Of course he ends up in the slammer — how can he not, with that nasty burgher king and his goons always on his case? But he busts out by feeding the reindeer these magic seeds that make them fly (can we get in any MORE drug culture versus authority references here? I don’t know whether to refer to a Oliver Stone’s NIXON or Euripides’ THE BACCHAE).

And there’s all SORTS of subversive goings on: rebel kids on the circuit leaving their doors open (and getting caught); kids hanging stockings for Kris to stuff with toys at night (and getting caught); Kris climbing down the chimneys cause the doors have all been locked (and getting caught).

And every time THE MAN tries to crack down, the network of rebel thrill-seekers grows until Kris – who grows a Che Guevara beard and changes his name to “Claus” after a wanted poster names the clean-shaven Kris Kringle PUBLIC ENEMY NUMBER ONE – is welcome among fellow travelers and creatures of the woods like Che himself among the peasants.

Santa and Jessica marry outdoors amid trees decked out with sparkling trinkets galore. They exchange vows and gifts among their friends – animal, vegetable and mineral – before god, but they don’t say which god, and it’s implied by the ceremony we’re dealing with Dionysus or the Green Man or some polytheistic party god/goddess, not pissed off Yahweh or his Hippy Son (nice guy, but so damn serious – all those issues with Dad, I guess)

Cut to yet ANOTHER commercial:

“You’re depressed,” a somber but not-too-blue lady (might scare consumers if she looks too bummed) tells me.

“Not anymore, man. Santa Claus is COOL!”

“It’s nothing to be ashamed of. Millions of Americans are depressed.”

“That’s cause they work too much, play too little, and have to deal with a farbisseneh like you! Beat it.”

So she goes on to tell me how I can stop being depressed by asking my doctor to prescribe me a dandy little pill.

“But what, I ask you, what IS IN THAT FUCKING PILL?”

Poof she’s gone and a guy comes on singing about how he’s so happy (must have taken a fistful of those pills: he’s wearing a tie and in the middle of an office-suite labyrinth of corpse-gray cubicles) cause he bought this PDA (personal digital annoyance) palm pilot thingy to help him organize his work and be not twice but thrice as productive – DOING WHAT? WHAT ARE YOU MAKING? TOYS? AT LEAST THE FUCKING ELVES CAME THROUGH WITH PRODUCT! – and he bought it on Ebay right before the digital gavel closed the bid. He beat the competition so he could get a good deal on this pain-in-the-ass gadget he plans to use to help his employer beat the competition. Gadzooks! Get away from me you freak, get off my screen before I turn zap yer ass with the remote -

–but back to Christmas. Santa and his posse realize Somberville’s just too hot with the TEA (Toy Enforcement Authority), so they start this free commune in the North Pole where they make toys all year round and Santa revs up his sleigh on Christmas eve and distributes hand-crafted playthings among the good children of the world. He has this “naughty and nice” clause – it’s why they call him “Claus” – but its only a formality. As long as you don’t pout and whine all the time and instead use your energy creatively to buck authority, you’re cool with him. You may not get a super-electronic “KILL TERROR” computer game like you wanted, cause that’s not his thing – Santa and the elves are into craftsmanship, the personal touch, everything handmade – but you sure as shit won’t get a lump of coal.

Finally the narrator – who’s Fred Astair by the way, Hollywood’s own Nijinsky tippy tap tap tapping his holiday rendition of the Rites of Spring – tells us that though Santa’s not an outlaw anymore, and the Burgher Meister and his crowd died away and were replaced by a more liberal administration (we’ll see how long THAT lasts), there are some folks who still hate Santa Claus, and damned if they didn’t cut to:

A HARASSED SALESCLERK in a department store getting yelled at, poked and prodded by adult CONSUMERS who want SERVICE, like, IMMEDIATELY

and THEN to

A CIGAR-CHOMPING EXECUTIVE in his depressing office through the window of which we see a horrible sooty filthy goddamn factory with smokestacks burping toxic smoke into the pure pink lungs of Christmas. And this guy, who’s obviously stacked (no pun), but miserable, says, “Who can think of Christmas in a world like THIS?”

I mean, who wrote the script for this baby, Herbert Marcuse?

Man what a lesson, what a show! I remembered the first time I saw “Santa Claus is Coming to Town,” (goddamn!) thirty years ago. I was working on this wood-burning set my parents got me for Hanukah – of course – and it seemed so apropos, the craft I was working on and the craft of the elves, and even now, remembering, I could smell the sweet smoke rising from the wood when once again-

cut to a commercial for yet another little pill to stop my farts from making noise or god knows what, and yet another adult dancing — like a puppet, not a pagan — through the isles of some department store, Stuff-Fer-YOU, or whatever, and the stuff was a bunch of doohickeys with which to thrill your kids, if you can afford kids, and the batteries are not included and there’s no guarantee they won’t be obsolete two days outta the box and say, you look DEPRESSED, anxious, stressed – what you need is this little ol’ pill that’s GUARANTEED to burn that Holiday fever right outta yer Yiddisher Kupf…

Oh Youth! Oh Santa — get me outta town!

Remember when we were in our teens and early 20s, the incredible gamut of living authors to choose from? Pynchon, Gaddis, Vonnegut, James Baldwin, Delillo, Salinger, Brautigan, Cathy Acker, Roth, Bellow, Malamud, Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison, Ishmael Reed, Grace Paley, Kenneth Koch, John Ashbery, Frank O’Hara, Audre Lorde, Charles Olsen, Jack Spicer, Allan Ginsberg, A.R. Ammons, Burroughs, Coover, Lyn Hejinian, Ron Silliman and on and on and on? Ever been to a bookstore lately? Check out the “new” poetry and fiction? Like the soulless music, the childish movies and TV shows, etc. there’s nothing but “dead grandma” stories, straight “narratives, up-lifting “personal dramas” for the Oprah crowd…

I’m bored. I need something to READ.

I guess I wouldn’t be chewing such sour grapes if there were enough real publishers to give readers and writers an actual choice beyond the .current “marketable” 19th century-style novels with 20th century signifiers offered up by B&N (remember when there were OTHER bookstores?) Jane Austen and the Brontes wrote great books. Why do so many of “today’s writers” try to re-write them, as if two centuries of industrialization, modernism, technology, insane wars etc. hadn’t passed?

On the other hand, there’s Mickey Z.’s CPR for Dummies. Not so much an “experimental” novel, but a novel that wisely follows the legacy a century of modernists and post-modernists left to him. Wry, dry humor; “real” events interposes with fictional lives; a Henry Fielding-type “performance” by the author/narrator. It’s everything a novel tackling the mystifying “real world” of today SHOULD be. It is thoroughly original not so much in formal invention –considering his predecessors, which he learned from as every good writer does — but in personal style. It is a novel that could only have been written by one person: Mickey Z. Which is how all creative works should be: unique, alive. But most aren’t.

CPR for Dummies is the first fiction I actually enjoyed reading since the near simultaneous deaths of William Gaddis, Kathy Acker,,and William Burroughs in the late 1990s — early 2000s. It’s kind of like Kurt Vonnegut and Joan Didion got together to produce a very strange, very funny, but ultimately very frightening “child.”

CPR is a montage of real and fictional events. The unbelievable, insane, grim, horrific realities, and Mickey Z’ wonderfully life-affirming fictions.

At the center of it all is Janie, aspiring actress and Gal Friday for a pornographic magazine.

Janie is one of the sexiest fictional characters since Betty and/or Veronica (whomever you prefer; both would be nice). Hence, she is held hostage by a lecherous priest [name] who convinces his sexually repressed septuagenarian flock (plus Ruth, a young women confused about a lot of things, mostly sexual in nature) that Janie is the Second Coming, her initials are “JC,” while he plots to get into her pants. But while she is mistaken for a male deity, “JC,” she displays all the qualities of the matriarchal, pre-civilization goddess (though not the somewhat sinister, civilized Aphrodite): sex, art and creative anarchy trump repression, control, and ultimately destructive violence. The primordial power of unreppressed (though not promiscuous; she is loyal to her boyfriend, Lenny D) sexuality, leads to a kind of “contact” with life that is closer to a true “spiritual experience” (i.e. Janie gets the old folks and Rachel to go-go dance their hyper-civilized cares away) than the strictures and ultimate hypocrisies of “organized religion” as manifest in Father [Muscles] castigating them on one hand, while jerking off with the other. Janie is a true “healer” — as Ruth would testify — as well as the kind of messiah I would want coming (and coming again; a second coming?) to save my sorry ass by reveling in LIFE rather than the phony world of “the spirit” — a contrast that resulted, ultimately, in the mess we’re in: allegedly “spiritual” people worshiping death, denying LIFE — and hence, sex and women — in favor of some mean-assed god who has nothing better to do than brow-beat a bunch of nomads in the desert (or old folks in a church basement). This is, for me the center of the book. The character of Janie versus the macho construction workers, the priest, the niggling old women and their perverse husbands (all of whom have dirty secrets, as opposed to Janie and the innocent Ruth, who is, “as a child” in her naiveté; hence, the perfect candidate for “apostle.”).

In other words, Life, Sex, Creative Anarchy versus Technology, Repression, Atomic warfare.

Now THAT’S worth reading about.

Also, one of the many sub-plots in CPR for Dummies is that a meteor is heading straight toward earth and we are all going to die, quite soon. Enjoy.

II: Talking to Mickey Z.

Holden Caulfield wished he could call up authors of books he’d enjoyed and “shoot the breeze” with them. I tried to imagine “today’s” fictions are expressions of personal ideas and imagination by real people rather than novelizations of sit-coms written by teams of corporate hacks. In other words, I “called up” Mickey Z. (as if such a person actually exists) via email and asked him some questions about CPR for Dummies…

Adam Engel: One of the most interesting techniques you use is the “narrator as performer,” which was used by guys like Henry Fielding in Tom Jones, and Kurt Vonnegut in Slaughterhouse Five and several other novels, but seems to have disappeared. By “performer” I mean that the narrator “talks” to the reader while he’s ostensibly creating the story, commenting on his own scenes, characters, sentences, constantly “keeping the ball in the air.” As if it’s all happening “live” as part of a performance. You acknowledge doing this in the CPR as a way of making the nightmarish realities cited in the book more palatable. Was this a political decision, an aesthetic decision, or both? Why do you think this technique is no longer “in style,” replaced instead by the somber, sober, more “formal” 19th century voice?

Mickey Z.: I’m not sure why this technique is not all the rage these days. Everything else seems so self-referential: movies, TV, pop music, etc. As for my use of the “narrator as performer,” it came about for two main reasons. Firstly, it felt necessary at times. I was genuinely concerned that I might have gone overboard with the rapid changes in direction, so to speak, so the narration served as a Greek chorus of sorts. The other reason was simply that it I enjoyed it doing it so much. I always loved the wisecracking asides of early film comedians. For example, in Horse Feathers, Groucho Marx is asked by a jealous husband: “What are you doing here?” Groucho replies: “I’m the plumber. I’m just hanging around in case something goes wrong with her pipes.” Then he turns to the audience and adds: “That’s the first time I’ve used that joke in twenty years.” CPR for Dummies gave me my chance to join in the fun and, as you say, to give it the feel of a live performance while offsetting the more intense vignettes.

AE: Speaking of intense vignettes: the novel seems to be a kind of tennis match between Life (Janie and the Church-a-go-go, Ruth, sexuality, Lenny D. etc.) and Death (the horrifying facts about nukes, war, etc). Death is related in factual accounts, yet Life exists only in fictional vignettes. Why is this?

MZ: Good question. I’m not sure I consciously planned it out like that but it sure does mirror my life at times. I’m typically a well-liked, friendly person with a calm demeanor but I’m also the one voted most likely to shatter an illusion. Someone’s talking about cell phones? That’s my cue to bring up coltan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Eastern Lowland Gorillas. Eating meat? Well, get ready for some slaughterhouse facts. Believe the Obama hype? Don’t worry, Mickey Z. is here to tell you about his support for the death penalty and how he voted against single-payer. Factual accounts to offset the fictional vignettes in our life.

AE: Okay, then what about the “oddly” named “Lenny D.” On one hand, he’s like a zen martial arts master or samurai (except when he’s having sex with Janie), quiet, moving little, dispassionate, what “we Americans” would call lazy. On the other hand, when a friend or loved one is attacked or even merely offended (Janie, his grandmother) he becomes a lethal weapon. This is the opposite of the truly violent characters in the book, such as cops beating protesters, sexist construction workers, nasty priests, and of course, those who drop bombs, i.e. all who refuse to “live and let live.” What does the character of Lenny D. say about the nature of rightul violence or self defense against mis-used power?

MZ: Your question hits on two important angles here—one overt, the other somewhat below the radar. Firstly, I very consciously made sure no single character served as my surrogate. I infused many of the characters with traits I identify with (or wish I had) but none of them is what, say, Chinaski was to Bukowski. As for Lenny D., he has a sentimental perception of right and wrong but, you could say he lives by the immortal words of Patrick Swayze (as James Dalton in Roadhouse): “Be nice until it’s time to not be nice.”

AE: In general, at least since the mid-nineteen eighties/early nineties (I’m guessing), American “artists” who receive wide — or any — distribution to the public, “create” bland, corporate-approved movies, books and music. Do you agree? If so, why do you think this is?

MZ: A: I’d agree this is true, as you say, in general. I’m old enough to remember pop culture in the pre-cable TV and pre-VHS and pre-Internet days. Sure we had TV and radio but the faster-than-the-speed-of-light technology did not yet exist to completely homogenize the culture so artists weren’t creating for a monolithic target audience. This development had to play a role not only in the dumbing down of art but in the dumbing down of artists. Just the other day, I was having conversation about how Bob Dylan was well-versed in and influenced by classical poetry but many who were subsequently inspired by Dylan knew little of his influences. The next generation – influenced by those who were influenced by Dylan — were one more step removed. And so on. Still, having said all that, some film, literature, and music is still being made today. Not enough…but some. Consider this: When reporting on the infamous New York School of abstract expressionist painters in 1947, art critic Clement Greenberg pondered, “What can fifty do against one hundred and forty million?” It wasn’t so much an entire population stacked against a band of radical painters that Greenberg was contemplating. Rather, it was 140 million Americans essentially ignoring a movement that would eventually change the face of art. The U.S. population has more than doubled in the fifty-plus years since Jackson Pollock dripped his way onto the cover of Life magazine and there are still plenty of movements being ignored by the majority. In fact, lurking below the one-size-fits-all surface of today’s consumer culture, there’s a broad range of indefatigable rabble-rousers doing their thing. As Ani DiFranco sings: “Beneath the good and the kind and the stupid and the cruel, there’s a fire just waiting for fuel.”

AE: The minority of Americans dubbed “the reading public” prefer, or the Pavlovian Publishers who ring the dinner bell prefer, “realism” in poetry, drama, fiction. But “realism” itself is a device of — primarily — 19th century artifice. Kafka, Joyce, Stein, Breton, Woolf, Beckett, Stevens, Burroughs, Pynchon etc., in fact, the majority of late 19th to late 20th century writers attempted to capture a more psychological/unconscious reality based on individual perception. In CPR, the “realism” of the historical facts recounted are questioned, if not outright lampooned by the wild, satiric, romps that occur in the “fictional” sections. What gives? Both with this “new” fad of Tolstoy/Flaubert “realism” — appropriate for their day, not ours — and with your satirizing of such alleged “realism” in CPR?

MZ: When I hear the word “realism,” I can’t help but think of “reality TV.”What a progression, huh? Anyway, my idea of reality/realism is more in line with this: A little more than two years ago, a cousin of mine killed himself and I thought, My cousin no longer lives on this planet…but yet the subways are still jammed, bars and restaurants remain full, blogs get updated, Jane still does the laundry every Wednesday, and Joe never misses Sportscenter. Yes, of course life (so-called) goes on with or without us…but at some point that week, I was probably walking around my neighborhood feeling sorry for myself in the heat or maybe contemplating the big trade the Yankees just made. Meanwhile, at that precise moment, my cousin was out in the woods of Pennsylvania with a rope around his neck. Makes me wonder what’s happening somewhere (perhaps to someone I know and love) just as I am typing this. It’s enough to make you insane. Moral of this story (and every story?): There are no happy endings. In CPR, this concept is manifested as you describe above.

AE:If I could spend a night with any three people, real or imaginary (uh…if I weren’t married to my beautiful, wonderful wife, of course…) it would be Mary Shelley, circa 1816; Grace Slick, circa 1967; or Janie, circa — immediately. Comment?

MZ: That is the strangest compliment I’ve ever received. I’m flattered you think so highly of Janie and your appraisal helped teach me more about her than I ever knew. As I said earlier, I very consciously made sure no single character served as my surrogate and Janie is the ultimate example of that. She’s brimming with characteristics I admire and only a select few traits I possess, but mostly, she’s my fictionalized heroine (maybe she’s my Cassandra). There were instances where the mere act of typing her dialogue had me smiling ear to ear. Janie is full of contradictions, like any human, but she’s also someone finding her way better than most in this insane culture of ours. She nurtures, she heals, she listens, and she speaks her mind freely and clearly. Without the pomposity and pretension of most educated (sic) activists and radicals, Janie is – in her own way – fighting the battles we should all be fighting if we weren’t so paralyzed by fear, self-interest, and a modicum of comfort. Plus, Janie is a female and I very much enjoy the company of women and deeply value feminine energy.

Mickey Z: When readers approach a book labeled “novel,” they are usually expecting some sense of entertainment… not overt education. So that allows me to tell a story, to screw around with format, to depict events without factoring in a non-fiction reader’s skepticism and desire for documentation. If I have something to say, I can put those words into the mouth of any character I choose and expect that these words will be received and perceived within the context of the story. A parable can often be more influential than a dissertation.

GE: Your approach to format is playful. There is a story that runs through the book as a main thread, but it is often interrupted by another story, which is in turn interrupted by another. In that regard, it is somewhat reminiscent of The Saragossa Manuscript. Interspersed are true stories from your past and quizzes for the reader. In part, I think the structure is an attempt to portray the simultaneity of events. Why did you choose this format for your book?

MZ: Yeah, the non-linear approach appeals to me — as you say — due to the simultaneity of events and also because it’s playful, maybe even “disrespectful” of the form. I used flashbacks, diary entries, first person interludes, and related vignettes to deconstruct the classic novel format in the way Jackson Pollock shattered painterly illusions. Still, the specific way CPR for Dummies came about is pretty funny. A few years ago, when some of the regulars on my blog — a.k.a the Expendables — decided to participate in National Novel Writing Month, I joined in and devotedly banged out 50,000 words in 30 days. For me, this required some serious cutting and pasting from several of my unpublished novels and non-fiction books, unproduced screenplays, and even some of my published work. These odds and ends were combined with brand new material and, with a few edits, additions, and redecoration, I had my novel…although calling it a “novel” is like using the word film to describe something Andy Warhol shot.

GE: The book does indeed give one the impression of having the same relation to narrative fiction that experimental film does to narrative film. And it’s all the fresher for that. Also, like some experimental films, there is much sexual material. At one point in the book you quip that these scenes were inserted to maintain the readers’ interest so as to be able to work in the supposedly unpalatable political points. Yet in reality these scenes seem to have an important point of their own.

MZ: At different points in the book, potential contradictions arise. Whether it be a continuity issue or a character’s age or maybe my own “voice” letting the reader in on a secret like using sex scenes to disguise the social commentary. I leave it up to the reader to decide what is true and what’s not. So, now that you mention it, I’d be curious to know what important point you saw being made by the sex scenes.

GE: I suppose in the way in which they were contrasted with religiosity. There is a puritan streak running in American society, while at the same time sexuality is used as a tool in advertising to push goods at us. Contradictions abound. In particular, religion tends to emphasize the denial of sexuality. Janie is the protagonist in your book, and you clearly are fond of this character. She expresses an acceptance of her own sexuality and not one imposed on her from the outside. Yet to me Father Gil in many ways the more interesting character. In effect, his position requires him to renounce or bury a part of himself that just won’t stay tied down.

Being in a position of authority also feeds Father Gil’s strong narcissism. Janie is something of a counter-foil for the religious “flock.” It seems to me that one of the main themes of the book has to do with the hypocrisy and misuse of religion.

MZ: Indeed. We all have a little Father Gil in us, don’t we? And I’m not just talking about sex and religion. Your phrase, “his position requires him to renounce or bury a part of himself that just won’t stay tied down,” could apply to most of us… in a wide range of realms. How cool would it be if we all tried to channel our inner Janie?

GE: Easier said than done, of course, and not without its consequences.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the prominent role humor plays in your book. In particular, I found the true stories quite funny. My favorite was the section dealing with Vinny. Do you have another story about Vinny you could share with us, one not in the book?

MZ: Back when we were all in our twenties, one of our friends was getting married so we took him out on the town. We ended up at Dangerfield’s, the famous Manhattan comedy club. Some poor comic is slogging through his act when Vinny yells: “Shut the fuck up.” Not the most creative heckle, but it got everyone’s attention. The comic tried a lame comeback and continued. Vinny did it again: “Shut the fuck up.” When the comic opened his mouth to reply, Vinny did it again: “Shut the fuck up.” He was saying it in a deep, singsong voice and he kept doing it until the comic surrendered. He probably said “Shut the fuck up” 20-25 times. To say my friends and I were laughing while Vinny did his thing would be a vast understatement. I guess you had to be there.

GE: Clearly Vinny never had an issue with burying a part of himself.

At several points in the book, you mention various characters’ favorite movies. It seemed like an interesting way of revealing something about the character. Was that your intent, and do you feel that what movies are important to a person reveals something about who he or she is? Which leads me to wonder what your favorite film is.

MZ: I guess knowing someone’s favorite movie can tell you something about them but then again, maybe not. I’m not 100% sure why I included that except to simply add more fuel to the fire… keep readers guessing. It’s like watching CNN with all those crawls and captions. You don’t know what to focus on. As for my favorite film, it depends on the day. I love the usual suspects (Citizen Kane, The Godfather, etc.) and speaking of usual suspects, Casablanca gets me every single time. But just as easily, I could name something like Harold and Maude. Suffice to say I’m a movie buff and that can help explain some of the formatting in my novel.

GE: Is there anything else you would like people to know about your book?

MZ: I guess I want them to know it’s funny, sexy, radical, perverted, provocative, and has been called “an orgasmic left revolt book” and “a novel about the end of the world that reads like a Stanley Kubrick movie of a Kurt Vonnegut novel cut into little pieces and spliced back together.” So, since it’s highly unlikely to wind up on Oprah’s Book Club any time soon, it can be ordered now at: Amazon and Raw Dog Screaming Press.

While a debate raged between school board members to offer classes during summer Bible School or to make it part of the regular school curriculum, the board decided that “kids need straighten’ out,” and courses would be offered year around. The rules are the latest in a drama that began when the Texas State Legislature passed a law authorizing Bible classes “as long as there’s hain’t too much arm wavin’, dancin’ around and carryin’ on.”

Claiming that Texas is tired of “takin’ the back seat” to states like Georgia and Tennessee, Johnny Boy Snozbob of the Alamo Conservative Market Foundation in Bumfalk, Texas said, “Our students need the Bible more than most and we ain’t no longer playin’ second fiddle to no one. Our football team has got God on our side and Arkansas will never beat us again.” (A rivalry, which according to Texas Biblical scholars, goes back to the Garden of Eden and is, perhaps, the most important political issue in Texas.)

While some states raise the issue of the separation of church and state, Texas meshes the two on the local level. Many school districts already teach the Bible, adding their own interpretation to read, “God created Texas, and then Heaven.” Most small towns require school administrators to serve as Sunday School Superintendents, to pray before daily classes begin, and to lead cross-burnings.

“If our dumbass kids are goner win them games, they better know the Bible,” said State Attorney General Georgie-Bob Addict. “As long as we ain’t allowin’ no women preachin’, gays marryin’ or aliens practicin’ other ridiculous religions, thars nothin’ in the Texas Constitution to prevent it from happenin’.”

Leaders in the Double Fundamentalist Baptist Church oppose teaching the Bible in public schools due to a general suspicion of education. Terry Sue Brownnose, a leading Republican on the State Board of Education, noted that when she was a girl, people didn’t need no education. “We got along just fine without all them high flutin’ ideas,” she said. “Things is simpler in Bible pitcher books. We know we’re bettern’ any other’n, whoever you may be, that evolution is flat out evil, and we vote for God’s party. We don’t need no forein’ ideas!”

Many share Brownnose’s sentiments. Southern Baptists, Church of Baptists, Assembly of Baptists, Conservative Baptists, American Baptists and other Texas Baptists, complain that evolution will undermine moral standards and “brainwash” children with science. Science might lead children to no longer obey their parents and the church, and to begin to think for themselves. Other religious devotees claim teaching Bible classes will give students a firm foundation to reject “foreign” ideas such as Judaism, global warming, and mixed marriage. A few worry about Bible classes leading to a revival of long-time religious rivalries in the state, which have, in the past, led to slander, adultery and murder.

Afraid of being branded disloyal, few Texans objected to teaching the Bible in public schools. And most Texans agree that teenagers are so undisciplined that teaching it in school must reinforce studying the Bible in church. Rep. Emily Lou Switchbottom, 79, from Shady Past, Texas, proposed a law requiring Bible reading on public transportation, at banks and in grocery store lines. Opponents pointed out that Shady Past already has three-dozen round-the-clock Christian radio stations for a population of 176, but Switchbottom remained unrelenting, almost killing the legislation.

“There’s more and more ways to sin these days,” she said, “and you cain’t get too much religion.”

Democratic Sen. Bobby Ray Hairball, 97, the bill’s sponsor, argued that the Bible retarded every area of human development, which was good for social conformity. “Otherwise,” Hairball told the Legislature, “we would have all that socialist free medical care, high wages, and time off. Work is the only true salvation for idle minds that make more sin.”

“Our tax spoungin’ government teachers may not know how to preach the Bible, but they can learn,” said Hairball as he posed to have his photograph taken with Karate action doll hero Chuckie Nogood, leader of the Kill for Christ Bible Teaching Materials, Ltd. Nogood’s company stands to make $986 million by placing Bibles in every schoolroom in Texas.

Several organizations protested the lack of standards but proponents of the bill contended they couldn’t find experts to explain important Biblical issues such as immersion baptism, the Holy Ghost and the virgin birth. A simplified version for teaching the Bible, one that’s not too rigorous and will include comic books, films and peep shows, was finally agreed upon by the Legislature. Nogood’s Christian company is slated to win the $24 billion no-bid contract for such materials.

“Texas ain’t never been keen on academic rigore,” said Texas governor Jimmy Dick Parry. “But as good Texans we remain open to all faiths, as long as they’re Christian.”

Subtitled A Secret History of the City, this collection of material from the low-budget zines “Scam” and “Turd-Filled Donut” covers Erick Lyle’s life as a grassroots musician and activist during the final years of the 20th and opening years of the 21st centuries. Lyle was a teenager in South Florida when he read about Northern California direct action protests to save the redwoods. After his best friend returned from 1992 pro-indigenous/anti-Columbus Day protests in San Francisco, young Erick, using the moniker Iggy Scam, made his way North to investigate the dissident rumblings on the Left Coast.

Lyle train hopped far and wide, posting dispatches from New Orleans, Chattanooga, Tennessee (where he helped a friend through the agonizing initial days of heroin withdrawal), and other cities. But Lyle’s focus is mainly on street level homeless advocacy and guerrilla rock and roll in San Francisco.

I was glad to witness several of the “generator shows” which Lyle writes about taking part in. During the late 1990s and early aughts, I worked in an office directly above San Francisco’s 16th and Mission BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) station where many of these impromptu, permit-less concerts took place. The generator was portable, and powered amplifiers which could be packed and unpacked quickly.

After too many hours in front of a computer screen, it was indeed a treat to hoof down to the BART “plaza” to enjoy various ensembles of ragged, cacophonous youngsters bashing on guitars and drums for a cross-section of less than well-heeled San Franciscans.

Many people I spoke to in these crowds speculated that the S.F. police let the shows continue without interference because they disrupted the open-air heroin supermarket which is the distinguishing feature of the intersection. Whatever the reason for the authorities’ kid gloves treatment, the up from the gutter abandon of the ad-hoc concerts was a true kick, and not just for dropout punk kids. The neighborhood’s majority Latino population was also well represented in the audiences, and many were clearly entertained.

Lyle’s sense of civic responsibility extends well beyond just helping fellow noisemakers challenge the eardrums and musical sensibilities of hordes of pedestrians and stray junkies, however. In an interview included here with Paul Boden, co-founder of the S.F.-based Coalition on Homelessness, Boden tells Lyle that in founding the paper Street Sheet, which homeless vendors are given free and sell for a dollar, the Coalition helped put several million bucks into homeless people’s pockets. Boden exults, “I don’t know too many non-profits that can make that claim!”

Lyle and his friends worked for other successes on the Street Sheet model — directly helping poor people, bypassing bloated bureaucracies and the managerial classes. They achieved a short-lived victory by putting together a cafe that fed hundreds of people without charge and encouraged the creation of political art. Unfortunately for its patrons, the café, like many of the spaces lovingly described in this book, is in a squatted building which becomes suddenly more valuable during San Francisco’s late ’90s gentrification.

The Turd-Filled Donut (TFD) was distributed (by unsalaried editors) via commandeered newspaper boxes. Among other items, the TFD ran hilarious riffs parodying the venerable 20th century S.F. columnist Herb Caen, bylined “Turd Caen.” It existed to inform and entertain, and to challenge the pro-growth, pro-development politics of its mainstream rival the San Francisco Examiner. From the evidence presented here, the scrappy little paper succeeded on all fronts.

Lyle describes a hilarious meeting at Examiner offices where TFD staffers confront their button-down counterparts, asking for evidence supporting the paper’s claim that crime had increased in the immediate neighborhood. When the Examiner employees fail to do so, Lyle’s crew presents internal SF police memos (gleaned through a Freedom of Information Act request) showing that no increase in crime has occurred in the area in question.

Scoring another victory for seat-of-the-pants investigative journalism, a TFD reporter succeeded in getting in to a PR-designed question and answer session with notoriously aloof mayor Willie Brown. The TFD correspondent asked Brown tough questions collected in advance from poor residents of various welfare hotels, and Brown actually concluded by saying, on the record, “I say to people who are poverty-stricken, I know how much you love San Francisco, but, because of the nature of cost of living here, you are better off being poverty-stricken where the cost of living is not so great.”

One of my favorite comedic bits in this frequently hilarious collection is the two page entry called “Scam Punks vs. Starbucks.” Lyle describes printing up thousands of fake coupons for free cups of Starbucks coffee, then distributing them for hours in San Francisco’s financial district with a few friends. The day ends with a hysterical Starbucks rep unsuccessfully attempting to make a citizen’s arrest of a quickly exiting pal of Lyle’s.

On the Lower Frequencies is as sprawling and digression-packed as a thick novel you can’t put down. It’s fitting that Hubert Selby is name-checked, as Lyle shares Selby’s commendable empathy for society’s outcasts, not excluding criminal elements. When people think of Selby’s writing, they usually forget something else Lyle shares with the author of Last Exit to Brooklyn: a decidedly bent sense of humor.

Lyle’s writes movingly of how miserable and powerless he felt after the world-wide anti-war actions he participated in during late 2002 and early 2003 failed to stop the Bush regime from invading Iraq. Didn’t we all. But while, like all of us, Lyle and his comrades make mistakes, they continue to work at keeping dissent alive in the age of the so-called “war on terror.”

And at his best, Lyle maintains that persistence with a nice sense of perspective, as when he confesses: “I certainly don’t want to have all the answers. There’s no literature in it, no mystery.”

“We’re at war!” he shouted, hyper-kinetically upset.

“Of course we’re at war,” I said. “Bush diverted resources from Afghanistan to invade Iraq. Been at war five years.”

“Not that war,” said Marshbaum. “This is bigger. China invaded our homeland. We’re under attack. And thanks to a 5–4 decision by the Supremes, me and Ole Betsy will defend my home from the Commie invaders.”

“You been watching too many recycled Cold War films?” I asked. “China is our trading partner. They loaned us billions to reduce our exorbitant unbalanced budget. Their factories are producing goods for the American consumer almost as fast as Washington politicians have been producing verbal diarrhea.”

“The Chinese have launched rockets at us. We don’t have much time.”

“I didn’t see anything on the 24/7 news channels about an invasion.”

“Of course not,” said Marshbaum, “they’re too busy tracking celebrity weddings, break-ups, and drunk driving arrests.”

“Even the worst journalist would pick up on an invasion of the U.S,” I said.

“Yeah,” he replied sarcastically, “like they picked up on the PATRIOT Act violating a half-dozen constitutional amendments? Like they figured out the Bush–Cheney Oil and Screw Corp. lied to them about Iraq, the environment, the housing crisis, the economy, and how to make barbecued burritos?”

“But war with China?” I asked skeptically.

“China!” he said authoritatively. “Largest Communist country in the world. More than a billion people. Largest Army in the world. While the politicians focused on being nasty to Cuba, which has only 11 million people and hardly any weapons, the Chinese have been getting ready to invade us. It’s been a sneak attack that started years ago. Some of the best students in American colleges are Chinese. They’re the cadre for the take-over, and it’s less than a week away!”

“I assume you have evidence,” I asked, playing along with Marshbaum. After all, I had no idea how deadly a blunderbuss could be, especially if I was in the same room with one.

“Tents,” said Marshbaum. “Thousands of tents have been set up the past two weeks on every major road in America. They’re ammunition depots. Come July Fourth, the Chinese students will stop getting perfect scores on their SATs, join their comrades from all the Chinese buffets, go to the tents, activate the weapons and blow us all sky high with Roman Candles and Multi-break Shells. Dahlias, Willows, and Rings. An arsenal of destruction!”

“They’re fireworks!” I told my naive friend. “Fireworks! Jefferson, Madison, and the patriots started the revolution so we could eat hotdogs and potato salad, then shoot off a color spectacular and get a three-day weekend.”

“For a journalist, you’re even denser than I thought.” And so he walked me through his logic. “Ninety-Eight percent of all fireworks we use for July Fourth are made in China.”

“I see no evidence of war here,” I said. “The Chinese also supply most of our toys and just about anything that winds up at the Dollar Store.”

“Do you think the largest army in the world would be content to stay in Asia and eat sushi all day?” I disregarded the anomaly that sushi is a Japanese dish, but when Marshbaum is on a roll it’s hard to divert him with logic. “Come July Fourth, they’re going to shock and awe us with their fireworks, play a Tchaikovsky overture, and then take over the rest of America.”

“The Olympics are only about five weeks away,” I reminded him, “why would the Chinese attack us when it’s hosting the leading display for unity and peace?”

“Because they need more emaciated squeaky-voiced gymnasts,” he said, “and we’ll be so grateful to get rid of them and those snooty equestrians as well that we’ll wave flags to honor China.”

“Americans are going to wave Chinese flags? That’s ridiculous!”

“American flags,” said Marshbaum. “Most flags and flag pins,— you know the ones the semi-patriotic American politicians always wear, —are made in China.” Marshbaum thought a moment. “Maybe their Army won’t need to invade us. They’ve already defeated us.”

The Spitzer Press Conference

SPITZER’S ACTUAL WORDS [Not reported by the media]

[Responding to the first question]

Well … my wife whom I love has been hurt by this, and I am very sorry for that. Very. I never intended to hurt her …

[The Governor, struggling to gather himself for nearly a minute, then continued.]

… But now I have to ask why a man’s or a woman’s sexual peccadilloes have to be splashed all over the media in this country. As though private sexual relations between men and women are news.

You know … the religious NAZIs in this country …. the so-called religious leaders … and the completely corrupt media that are always going on about this sort of thing … maybe it’s time for people to grow up.

See, I’ve got news for you. All humans are sexually active. And most of of us do have sexual relations outside our main family relationships. That may uncomfortable to hear but its true.

So-called “religious leaders,” most of whom are certainly “getting a little” on the side — sometimes with men, sometimes with women (and a LOT of politicians too); even some media moguls know this. Everybody knows this. So why is it NEWS?

I’ll tell you why: Because SEX is used to blackmail and control people by all these so-called “leaders”. They control politics with it. They use SEX for power, the same way rapists do. And that, I grant you, is a slimeball thing to do.

First they lie to convince you that sex outside marriage is always bad. Then they lie again, pretending that they themselves and other so-called “good” people never do such things. Finally, they lie when they tell you all it’s NEWS … that a political figure sought and found a bit of sexual comfort, in privacy.

Humans seek and need a lot of sexual comfort in this screwed up world that these so-called leaders have foisted on us all — every one of you does and every damned one of you knows this.

So if you want to understand our so-called religious leadership in America today … and our so-called political and MEDIA leadership. There is a WORD you should keep in mind … more clearly even than these words: MONEY and BRIBE. The word you should keep in mind is BLACKMAIL.

An awful lot of politics is controlled by blackmail.

Think Bush. Think NSA spying. That’s how they’re running the country.

[Spitzer then abruptly left the briefing room.]

* Editor: The above is, of course, a satire.

Gettelfinger was speaking to a group of kids at the Elizabeth Hanford-Dole Elementary School. He had been invited to speak by the district superintendent in a show of solidarity with area employer Cleveland Freightliner, a truck manufacturer at which the UAW has a local (#3520).

“When push comes to shove, we always back our members. Our inestimable track record conclusively proves it.” Gettelfinger told the children.

Gettelfinger was compelled to defend the UAW in response to questioning from a first-grader. Six-year-old Amber Leigh Castle asked Gettelfinger why the UAW International office had not stepped in to defend the “Cleveland Five.”

The Cleveland Five¹ are a group of five members of the 11-member Local 3520 Bargaining Committee. The Bargaining Committee called a strike on 3 April 2007, authorized by the local’s rank-and-file on 17 March. The workers’ contract with Cleveland Freightliner expired on 1 April, and negotiations over a new deal were not going well.

The International UAW, however, did not sanction the strike (though a strike action was legal since the contract had expired). Instead, the International UAW began putting pressure on the workers as soon as 1 April to accept a partially completed deal. The local Bargaining Committee refused, feeling the fragmentary deal too favorable to the company, and believing an entire deal should be hammered out before submitting it to members for a vote.

The president of Local 3520 (himself a worker at Cleveland Freightliner) was not a member of the Bargaining Committee, as union rules prohibit this. But at about quarter to midnight before the planned strike, he sent a phone tree message to workers telling them to report to work, killing the strike. He also notified Cleveland Freightliner management as well as UAW Region 8 Director Gary Casteel.

The International UAW backed the strike killing, fired all 11 workers on the Bargaining Committee, forced through a deal, and rehired six of the 11 Bargaining Committee members who apologized for their actions.

The Cleveland Five are the five remaining members of the Bargaining Committee.

“Mr. Gettelfinger,” Castle asked, “those five workers were defending workers’ rights, the company fired them, and you applauded. Why?”

“That’s not true, little girl,” Gettelfinger responded. “We would never do such a thing. Remember that guy who cut his own arm off with a pocket knife in order to save his own life?² The UAW is just like that guy. Only we’re tougher than he is, because we didn’t need hemostats to stop the bleeding.”

“But Mr. Gettelfinger, the UAW has been selling out its members right and left, cutting deals with U.S. automobile manufacturers that Detroit just loves. If the UAW is so committed to workers’ rights, why do your members think they need to organize themselves within their own union?”³

“Such efforts are misguided,” Gettelfinger said. “The workers know we represent them exceedingly well. And any suggestion that top union brass are just members of the coordinator class⁴ like corporate management is just poppycock.”

Castle then asked, “But why did one of the Five say the structure of the UAW needed to change or else the working class will basically be obliterated?⁵ That sounds to me like a call for a revolution — replacing existing institutions with new ones that foster humane values instead of trampling them. Shouldn’t the UAW be calling for revolution instead of merely acceding to the corporate dictates of market-based capitalism?”

Upon asking this question, Castle was tazed⁶ and sent to Guantanamo Bay.

1. See the Cleveland Five’s website.
2. See, for example.
3. See Soldiers of Solidarity.
4. For a brief explanation of the term “coordinator class.”
5. Ronald Whiteside didn’t use the word “obliterated,” but he did say the structure of the UAW has to change.
6. See, for example, You tube.

Santa’s appointment, along with the ouster of current FBI chief Robert S. Mueller, is hoped to quell decades of accusations that the Federal Bureau of Investigation abuses its power by spying on civilians. Last March, for example, the Inspector General’s audit found 22 possible breaches of internal FBI and Justice Department regulations, when the FBI made thousands of secret demands for private information on U.S. residents not suspected of terrorism.

“With Santa at the reins,” said President Bush, “no one can criticize U.S. intelligence again. Hey, what say we get Santa to take the fall for destroying those CIA interrogation tapes?”

During a half-hour confirmation hearing, Santa argued that, as an archetype of Western Culture’s bounty, with magic powers to look into the hearts of every U.S. resident, he needs no permission to monitor email, phone calls, or financial records. Simply by riding around in his sleigh, says Santa, he can circumvent the courts in a way previous FBI administrations could only dream of doing.

Senate Judiciary Committee member Tom Coburn (R-OK), reflected bi-partisan approval in stating, “The guy’s an investigative genius; he’s also a pagan symbol, so the church-state-separation loonies can’t hammer us. Plus, Santa’s so darn likeable, who could resist him? Look – he gave me this nifty HIV test kit.”

But Santa has a master plan, warn anonymous Santa’s Helpers concerned with a turn toward McCarthyism. In order to cut through surveillance red tape, Santa is creating one all-encompassing List, designating everyone as either “Naughty” or “Nice.” There are, say the Helpers, no legal safeguards to ensure that the List will be checked once, let alone twice.

Telephone companies, Internet service providers, and banks have sometimes been reluctant to surrender client information to the government. Now, in hopes of making the “Nice” list, most appear eager to be shaken down by a merry fat man. However, reactions of ordinary Americans are mixed.

Clyde Lichtenloafer, sequin placement manager for the Ice Capades, said he was delighted by Santa’s appointment, which makes routine intrusions into his privacy more appealing. “Now, whenever I pick up the phone,” said Mr. Lichtenloafer, “instead of the usual nasty hums and clicks, I hear the distant jingle of sleigh bells.”

But Memphis beautician Thelma Plattsburgh has qualms. “I don’t mind that Santa knows when I’m awake,” said Plattsburgh. “That’s his job, to catch the terrorists and all. But I don’t like that he can see me when I’m sleeping. I mean, who is he – Freddy Krueger? Like, last night, I had a dream that tiny red and green demons kidnapped me to the North Pole for interrogation. I woke up in a cold sweat, screaming, ‘I’ve been good, for goodness sake, stop HURTING me!’”

Prominent American intellectuals generally support Santa’s appointment, with the exception of the minority who employ irony and sarcasm. Noam Chomsky spoke for the caustic few when he stated, “In a country that seriously debates whether evolution should be taught in our schools, it makes perfect sense that Santa Claus is appointed head of the FBI.”

Chomsky, ever the current-events maven, cited the case of plucky, 8-year-old Billy Wiggims of East Lansing, Michigan, who has already been put on the “Naughty” list for writing a letter to Santa saying that he wanted world peace more than a new catcher’s mitt. Billy was kicked out of the Cub Scouts and will be tried as an adult on seven counts of terrorism and two counts of being a crybaby.

Yet no one appears to doubt that Santa Claus’s law enforcement methods are far superior – and kindlier – than those traditionally used by the FBI. Since its inception, the agency has been known for making wrongful arrests, illegally breaking into homes, vandalizing, stealing evidence, and hounding social justice activists including Albert Einstein, the Black Panther Party, and Dr. Martin Luther King.

Interestingly, denizens of the crime underworld, who have cooperated with the FBI, are familiar with its new director. “Sure, I know Santa,” said Turdface the Snitch, minor drug dealer on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, who declined to give his real name. “He’s a bagman. Also known as Nick, alias ‘Saint’ Nick, alias Pere Noel, alias Sinterklaas, alias Baba Christmas. Now, he’s J. Edgar Kringle. The dude’s got a rap sheet as long as your arm.”

Meanwhile, because of Santa’s busy new schedule, deposed FBI chief Mueller has been asked to fill in at holiday venues. Mueller currently appears as “Santa” at the Macy’s on 34th Street, dandling little children on his knee and emitting what has been described as a strained and rather disappointing “heh-heh-heh.”

Ultimately, say Justice Department insiders, until the government can put a jolly face on all its clandestine activities, every good little American will be well advised to (a) watch out, (b) not cry, (c) avoid pouting. Above all, cautions Turdface, “if somebody sneaks into your house late at night and cleans you out of everything, down to your very last cookie – don’t call the cops.”

“We hope this will once and for all lay to rest all the untoward claims made by the ignorant that sexism still exists in the United States,” said the group’s statement. “It is quite clear to us, as learned and well-educated specialists, that all remaining differences between men and women are due totally, completely, and utterly to the unalterable influence of man’s genetic material.”

The report was hailed across all sectors of society for the definitiveness of its conclusions and the rigorousness of its approach.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, “The sky is blue, the grass is green, the Earth is round, two plus two equals four, the Sun rises in the East, sugar and spice, snips and snails, men are from Mars and women are from Venus.”

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said, “Giving my daughter away will be the greatest honor my life.” When it was pointed out to Romney that he does not have a daughter, he said without blinking, “I’ll adopt one.”

First Lady Laura Bush said, “While the Taliban’s methods are extreme, we certainly understand and appreciate the good place they’re coming from.”

Democratic presidential candidate and current front-runner Hillary Clinton vowed, “I will defend the right to abortion up to the point that it starts costing me votes.”

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said, “Women, the working class, children — what’s the difference?”

In their findings, the panel of distinguished experts noted that research like the Human Genome Project had proved conclusively that male and female behavioral differences were hard-wired into our DNA.

“For example,” said the report, “we have unassailable and iron-clad proof that women change their names upon marriage — and men like it that way — because of genetic compulsions. It turns out that Genesis 3:16 isn’t that far off after all!

“But the important thing to note,” the report said, “is that this is all genetic. The role of socialization plays absolutely no part here. Peer pressure does not exist — certainly not for adults — and society never rewards or punishes people based on their behavioral conformity or lack thereof. We have proved all this just like a mathematician proves a theorem.”

It was difficult to find any one who disagreed with the report’s findings. Even liberal anti-war activists conceded privately that they liked women better who were “pretty, young, thin, and white.”

One notable exception was the well-known and highly-respected thinker and scholar Ann Coulter. Coulter blasted the report for what she called its “excessive liberal bias.”

“This report is a sham,” she said. “It did not call for foot-binding. It did not call for the repeal of the viciously man-hating ‘rule of thumb’ — Crissake, a man has the God-given right to use a Louisville Slugger on his old lady if he wants! And it totally ignored the strong arguments in favor of bringing back the dowry.

“This report was obviously written by a bunch of soy-eating vegans who comb burrs out of their fourteen-inch beards while walking barefoot through flower gardens, picking azaleas to sell at airports for cash to buy pot with.”

A spokesman for the panel responded to Coulter’s comments by saying, “While we don’t disagree with the thrust of Miss Coulter’s sentiments, we must point out that until a new Innocent III ascends to the papacy we will, sadly, be somewhat constrained.”

Leading Democratic defenders of women’s rights have already moved to codify at least some of the report’s findings. The office of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced the senator was going to introduce legislation offering tax breaks to women who purchase burkas.

President Bush has threatened to veto Reid’s legislation, however, unless it includes a provision to repeal the capital gains tax for husbands whose wives don’t work. Reid is expected to accede to the White House’s request.

In addition, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan has suggested a unique new way to bolster a U.S. economy currently threatened by a bursting housing bubble he helped create: “If beer companies were allowed to run ads with naked girls wrestling in an inflatable pool filled with baby oil, with the winner getting the right to use a beer-bottle dildo on the loser, then beer sales would increase one thousand percent, thus saving the US economy forever and all-time!”

Liberal anti-war activists pledged to include Greenspan’s idea as part of their platform since, “What we’re doing now’s not working too well.”

The panel’s findings are expected to provide a major boost to gender relations, increasing the already high level of security and self-worth felt by the majority of American women.

“Some small minds might think we’re rolling back the clock,” said the report. “But time is a circle, and by moving backward we move forward. It’s so obvious, even a little girl can understand it.”

Herman Conrad, Emeritus Professor of Political Activism and Radical Social Change at Princeton University, said, “The mere suggestion that money should even be any sort of issue for rank-and-file street activists to consider is just so much balderdash.”

Conrad, holder of the eminently prestigious Thomas Woodrow Wilson Liberally Enlightened Endowed Chair in the Humanities, was responding to claims made yesterday by a long-time activist, who had suggested that monetary issues might occasionally affect an organization’s politics.

“That’s just so much bunk,” said Conrad. “Mature political organizations know how to raise money from available sources and put it to the best possible use, irrespective of whatever their donors’ wishes might be.”

Pip Kurtz, who has been an anti-war activist since the 60s, said yesterday that, “I think sometimes we on the left pay insufficient attention to money — who controls it once we get it, and perhaps even more importantly who we get it from in the first place.”

“That is absolutely the stupidest, most ridiculous, asinine thing I have ever heard,” said Conrad. “I’ve been a tenured professor at this distinguished university for 37 years. I’m authored 17 books, written hundreds of articles, and given thousands of talks across this great land of ours. And I have never seen even a modicum of evidence to suggest that where the left gets its money from plays even the slightest role in anything it does.”

Other activists weighed in. Speaking on condition of anonymity, a high-level national coordinator with the anti-war group United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ) said, “Kurtz is entitled to his opinion, but he’s simply wrong. Where we get our money from has never impacted a single decision that we’ve made.” AEP’s conversation with this coordinator was cut short due to an incoming phone call to UFPJ from Nancy Pelosi.

Also speaking on condition of anonymity, a high-level editor & publisher at the periodical The Nation said, “It’s frankly inconceivable to me how any one could think issues related to funding are even worth discussing. The topic isn’t taboo — it’s childish bordering on embryonic.” This editor & publisher assured AEP that The Nation’s rejection of Participatory Economics-themed articles was completely incidental.

Conrad suggested that “money-obsessed” activists should instead “take a look in the mirror.”

“We need to do a better job reaching out,” said Conrad. “We need to reach potential supporters in their homes and in their workplaces. It doesn’t matter which — whether they’re at home on their tennis court or playing their grand piano, or at work in their medical offices and law offices. Over a martini, over cognac — it doesn’t matter. We must reach these people!”

In his original statement, Kurtz said that perhaps a better strategy would be to craft a movement more congenial to working-class people and more reliant on funding from working people. “My experiences tell me working people are completely ready for radical change. But that’s just it — it has to be radical change. Working people have zero interest in whether or not a Democrat wins the White House in 2008. They know full well that whether the next president is Hillary, Rudy, or whoever, their lives won’t change. And as long as they know their lives won’t change, they won’t really give a damn what we do, much less contribute their time or money to it.”

“Obviously, Kurtz rode the short bus to school,” Conrad retorted. “The people we need to reach drive Acuras and Beemers — not pickup trucks with Dale Jr. stickers on them.”

A spokesman for the U.S. Communist Party said, “We agree with Kurtz, and we’re trying to reach working people. The key to victory lies in Lenin’s concept of ‘one-man management.’ The working class must submit itself to the iron-fisted discipline of a tiny group of visionary leaders. Only a hierarchical Leninist structure can win anything in the United States.”

Hearing of this in a follow-up interview, Kurtz shook his head: “No, no, no. That’s totally wrong. Working people already deal with that for 40 hours a week — more with compulsory overtime. Vertical decision-making structures and classist job definitions are the last thing we need. Anything remotely like Marxism-Leninism is doomed to failure.”

Professor Conrad was incredulous: “Does Kurtz not realize that the working class watches auto racing, football, baseball, and professional wrestling? Is he not aware of the fact that they eat at McDonalds? Does he not know they like cars and guns? I tell you, we can’t work with these people!”

“Well, ignoring the fact that not ALL working people are in to cars and guns,” Pip Kurtz said, “maybe Herman Conrad should swim up out of his darkness, take a breath of salty air, and open his heart to diversity. What a boring world it would be if we all ate at Panera Bread.”

Regardless of the immediate future of the U.S. left, it seems clear that a change is brewing on the horizon.

“This Canine Sports Spectacular Presentation is brought to you this evening by AIPAC-brand ‘Kibitz and Blitz’, the official dog food of the Lakud Party and the Unites States Government. Like all AIPAC-brand products, ‘Kibitz and Blitz’ is made from 100% genuine negotiating table scraps ‘too good to waste on Palestinians.’ Every ‘bunker-busting’ bite is chockfull of bellicose goodness, guaranteed to make your saber-rattling, subservient solon sit up on his hind quarters and shamelessly beg for another heaping helping. And ‘Kibitz and Blitz’ now comes in two pooch-pleasing flavors: Rump Republican Red Meat Chunks (in the shiny crimson can featuring Mitch ‘Mad Dog’ McConnell gnawing on a half-eaten Persian kitty), and Lukewarm Liberal Lymph Node Pate (look for the grainy, black-and-white surveillance photo of Harry ‘Hangdog’ Reid furtively squatting in a doggie diaper). But no matter which flavor your Senator prefers, when you feed him ‘Kibitz and Blitz’, you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing he’ll never again be tempted to tip over and rummage through your garbage can (unless, of course, his trainers at the NSA order him to sniff-out and retrieve your carelessly discarded cell phone bill). So do yourself a favor, and pick up a corporate contribution-size bag of ‘Kibitz and Blitz.’ After all, we’re not just providing food for Straussian thought here, we’re feeding ‘AIPAC’ of dogs. And now, here’s your FOX-news anchor, Frank Mutz.”

“Hello, and welcome. I’m pollster Frank Mutz and I’ll be bringing you all the leg-humping excitement here at the Bob Ney Convention Center. I’m pleased to be joined tonight by the Democratic Party’s chief leash-yanker and butt-sniffer, Rahm Emasculator…”

“Great to be here, Frank. This year’s top contenders will be vying for the coveted Triple Crown of Congressional Canines, the prestigious ‘Bark, Rollover and Play Dead’ triathlon. Many of these constitutionally-challenged curs have been in training for this event since their ‘hind tit sucking’ days back in the Doghouse of Representatives. I think it’s safe to say that quite a few of them are literally chasing their own tails, hoping to make a favorable impression on their owners here tonight. But before the actual competition gets underway, let’s get to know some of these Furry Federalist Fleabags, shall we? For that we send you down to everyone’s favorite newspuppy, Nora O’Doggerel, who’s been panting patiently around on the Soiled Carpet to present us with a special segment she calls ‘Up-close and Doggerel.’ Nora?”

“Thanks, Rahm. I’m here with two former Congressional dog trainers, Neuter Gingrich and Tom DeSpay. Gentlemen, thanks so much for joining us.”

“Thanks for having us, Nora.”

“Mr. DeSpay, let’s get your thoughts first. What’s going to be the key to victory in this competition?”

“Well, Nora, what makes this event so unique is that it requires an extraordinary array of rare talents. Take the barking competition, for example. Any dog can bark, but it takes years of practice for a dog to learn to bark out of both sides of his mouth and still keep from dropping his chew stick. In that regard, Senator Arlen ‘Fetch’ Specter has a distinct advantage. He’s a rare breed — a Wire-haired Water Retriever — and he’s been the Republican Party’s designated barker on the Senate Judiciary Committee for nearly 200 dog years. His bark is among the best in the business — ferocious, indignant, convincing. And that’s precisely what makes it such a great setup for his spontaneous rollover. It’s so spontaneous, you don’t even see it coming! One minute he’s growling away for hours at some Attorney General nominee or other on your TV set, so you get up to grab another bag of chicken bones and when you return, ‘presto’, his confirmation vote has been recorded and he’s down on all fours licking his bowl clean like nothing happened…”

“Tom’s definitely got a point there, Nora. Senator Specter’s bark-to-rollover time may be the quickest in the history of the sport. The problem is, he’s pulled it off so many times, I’m afraid he’s starting to lose the element of surprise. That’s why I’m gonna have to go with Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat “Trick Dog” Leahy on this one. Whereas Specter’s strength is his speed, Senator Leahy relies on a subtle combination of strident sincerity and quiet capitulation. His Herculean pronouncements (like the one threatening to hold up the Mukasey nomination), invariably lead to Lilliputian results. Like most purebred Hibernian Horehounds, his pugnacious growl belies a docile and compliant nature, which makes him the perfect watchdog to guard a booby-trapped room.”

“Gentlemen, you’ve identified two of the alpha males among the contenders. But who do you see as the alpha females in this competition? Neut?”

“Clearly the most formidable challenger is Hillary ‘Pharm Dog’ Clinton. Being a golden lab retriever (Pfizer Labs, Wyeth Labs, Amgen Labs), Hillary has a leg-up on the competition, so to speak. First of all, her bark is (strictly speaking) not a bark at all, but more akin to the blood-curdling howl of a hyena. Her bite, on the other hand, is quite harmless, especially when deployed against her erstwhile ‘enemies’ in the ranks of the ‘vast right-wing conspiracy.’ In fact, she appears to have mastered the difficult art of snargling (snarling and wagging her tail and the same time). But her rollover is truly a thing of beauty. More a slow-motion pirouette than a rollover per se, it occurs over a span of time tending toward the geologic, and is as subtly incremental as the blooming of a corpse flower.”

“Neut, pardon the expression, but I’m afraid ‘that dog won’t hunt.’ The ‘bitch’ to watch here (and I mean that with all due respect) is the Italian Lapdog Nancy ‘Nolo Contendere’ Pelosi. From 2001 to 2007 she howled, yelped, and barked incessantly about the crimes of the Bush Administration, but now that she finds herself in a position to do something about them, she’s become one mute mutt. I mean, her discipline is truly remarkable. Her one and only weakness is that she has a habit of passing directly from ‘barking’ to ‘playing dead’ without even a passing glance at a ‘rollover.’ One suspects she may be frozen in the supine position.”

“Which reminds me, gentlemen, you two have been uncharacteristically mute when it comes to making predictions about the ‘play dead’ phase of the competition.”

“Nora, I believe my colleague Neut will readily agree with me that Senator John ‘O’ Possum’ Kerry has a pit bull’s mandibular lock on that category. Not to say he is a pit-bull. In fact, I have no idea what he is, and I’m not sure he does either. While many professional breeders who’ve seen Kerry’s papers report him to be a purebred Standard Poodle, others contend he is nothing but a well-coiffed dingo. Rumors abound that Kerry is actually a ‘Heinz 57’, but I find this notion preposterous. Only sustained inbreeding could have produced a dog so utterly useless for any purpose beyond inducing sleep in himself and others. He is the very nonpareil of ‘playing dead’”

“I’ll grant you that, Tom, but since his bark is indecipherable and his rollover appears to be as continuous as an electric spit, I question whether his ability to ‘play dead’ will be sufficient to allow him to catch the competition. Besides, ‘dead dogs’ are a dime a dozen. The real question is: can he come back to life?”

“That’s an excellent question, Mr. Gingrich. What do you think, Tom?”

“I suppose what Neut is referring to here is what we in the ‘dog eat dog’ political world call ‘canine resurrection’ (and we’re not talking about ‘doggie heaven’ here). Let me give you three examples of this phenomenon. First, there’s the story of Trent ‘Cracker Barrel’ Lott, a rare White-hooded Bloodhound once named ‘Dog of the Year’ by the Kaucasian Kennel Klub. Need I say more? And then of course we have the strange case of Senator David ‘Bird Dog’ Vitter, who is, I believe, a cross between a Ponchartrainian Poontang Pointer and a Bayou Beaver Retriever. (This hybrid, if left to its own devices, prefers to make its home in out-of-the-way cat houses.) ‘Nuff said about that, I suppose…”

“Excuse me Nora, but Tom failed to mention the most remarkable story of ‘canine resurrection’ on record, that being the case of Senator Larry ‘Dancing Paws’ Craig, the Snake River Canyon Cockapoo. Now the Snake River Canyon Cockapoo isn’t considered much of a breeding dog, as it is suffers from a congenital olfactory malformation that renders it unable to detect the smell of canine estrogen. It does, however, make a useful pet in many South Asian countries, where it is more aggressive than a mongoose at hunting wild snakes in a confined space. But what makes Larry ‘Dancing Paws’ Craig truly remarkable (even for a Snake River Canyon Cockapoo) is his extraordinary homing powers. No matter how far from home he gets dumped by his owners (and he has been dumped several times) Larry always manages to find his way back safely to the Senate Cloakroom…”

“Thank you, Neut, for that heartwarming story. Well, folks, we’ll be back in a moment to bring you more exciting coverage of the ‘Bark, Rollover, and Play Dead’ competition. But first a word about AIPAC-brand ‘Porkless Pork-Barrel Treats.’ They’re kosher, and they’re guaranteed to keep your Doghouse Member comin’ back for more! Most important of all, ‘Porkless Pork-Barrel Treats’ help keep your House pet in the peak of health by promoting strong teeth and gums (or, in the case of a Democratic House pet, just his gums). That’s AIPAC-brand, for Congressional canines who answer to a higher authority…”

Workers at the Harris Auto Parts plant, who are members of CIO Local #5551212, said they were tired of their union’s lack of action or even acknowledgement of their concerns and decided to take matters into their own hands.

“We’d said for a long time now that we wanted this — that we wanted to do something,” said Karen Jameson, one of the strike leaders. “But our concerns fell on deaf ears at the union. So we decided to stand up and fight for ourselves instead.”

Union recrimination was bitter and immediate. AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said, “These workers did not honor their contract. The highest priority for workers must always be to honor their contract. It doesn’t matter if the contract specifies you walk naked into a cyanide chamber and take deep breaths. If it’s in the contract, you do it.”

Change-To-Win leader Andy Stern concurred: “Everyone knows my personal feelings about John Sweeney. I wouldn’t walk across the street to spit on him if he were on fire. But in this case, he’s right. Not only that, but these workers broke the law. The living standards of the U.S. working class — or any other country’s working class for that matter — have no standing in the face of legal requirements.” Stern was throwing darts with AFL-CIO flights at a map of Venezuela as he spoke.

When it was pointed out to Stern that virtually all gains ever won by workers or anyone else were usually won by extra-legal means, Stern responded, “We’re not talking about the past. We’re talking about the present. And in the present, Sweeney and I are important people who run major labor organizations, and men like he and I have decided that this how it will be. If U.S. workers can’t understand that, they should move to China.”

Jameson said, “This attitude on the part of union managers like Stern and Sweeney has been the problem all along. They wear suits, sit behind desks, and neither know nor care about what goes on on the shop floor.”

Sweeney begged to differ: “I often wear a polo shirt to the office.”

County officials were horrified by developments at the Harris plant. The local government even went so far as to bring a guillotine to the workers’ picket line, chopping melons with Post-It notes attached that said, “Strike Leader.”

At one point, police had arrested Jameson and placed her head in the guillotine, citing national security requirements. But a group of community residents and church activists successfully prevented her execution and dismantled the device.

“This is barbaric,” said the Rev. Sarah Powers, pastor of the Ottumwa Episcopalian Church. “How can we claim to be bringing democracy to the Middle East when workers here at home toil in corporations, which are tyrannical institutions and totally unaccountable to the public.”

“Nonsense,” said Harris President and CEO Carl Mettlekamp. “I’ve been associated with this corporation for 20 years, and it doesn’t feel at all tyrannical to me.”

Washington politicians had strong feelings on the workers’ strike. Democratic presidential candidate and current front-runner Hillary Clinton said, “If this kind of thing happens when I’m president, I’ll raze the factory with the employees still inside. Viruses like this cannot be allowed to spread.”

Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson said, “Razing the facility is going too far. Those productive assets are too valuable. Putting arsenic in their drinking water is a far superior plan.”

Local media vilified the strikers. Each night, Ottumwa ABC affiliate KTVO-TV opened its six o’clock news program with Photoshopped images of Karen Jameson dismembering live kittens with kitchen implements. In response, community activists and their supporters occupied the station’s lobby demanding honest news coverage.

“The behavior of media at all levels in this country is outrageous,” said Powers. “Whether it’s The New York Times, Fox News, or National Public Radio reporting on Iraq — or local outlets’ racist fixation on petty crimes committed by nonwhites — it’s always the same thing: Defend the system, defend the system, defend the system. It was the same thing here, as they did nothing but lambaste the workers and defend capitalist prerogatives.”

Powers said she was going to begin organizing a national movement to engage in direct action against corporate media at all levels: “We’re not just going to call, e-mail, and fax mainstream media outlets — though we are going to be doing some of this. We’re going to organize massive nonviolent demonstrations, occupations, and takeovers of their offices. Let’s see how NBC News reports the story when 15,000 people show up outside Rockefeller Center to demand honest coverage of GE’s involvement in the nuclear industry.” (General Electric has been the parent company of NBC since 1986.)

Jameson said she found the road ahead exciting: “Everybody’s ready for massive change. Classism, sexism, racism, authoritarianism — we can deal with all these things and create a much better world in the process. Our 30-hour week at 40-hours pay is the first step, but it won’t be the last.”