Golem: A Short Story

The cave was dark and damp just like every other cave the Fedayeen had hidden in lately.
It looked like every other cave they had hidden in as well, the same bare light bulbs hanging from the ceiling, the same aging weapons leaning against the same bare walls, the same young soldiers in fatigues with scrawny beards sitting around playing video games or listening to the latest in Cairo Trash tunes on their IPOD 2036s. The same browning pictures of Osama Bin Ladin taped to the walls. The same Wal-Mart prayer rugs laying on the cave floor and the same Wal-Mart brand Korans laying around the cave.
Osman looked around as he drank vitamin enriched water from his canteen and realized that he had been in this cave a thousand times before. The faces on the men had been different but the place had been the same, the same sense of fear, fanaticism and desperation. The same dedicated men ready to die for the Faith and the Prophet, and the same sense of failure.
After twenty years of Holy War, Osman Salaam, Osman son of Salaam was the veteran here. The veteran of nearly twenty years of Holy War against the Jews, the Crusaders and the Chinese and Hindu pagans and here he was hiding in a cave and living like an animal.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way, Osman thought when he had started out on the Great Jihad to destroy Israel and defeat the West twenty years earlier victory was at hand. The mighty warriors of the Prophet would roll over the Jews and pound the decadent West to dust. The Americans had left Iraq, the Russians were in retreat from Chechnya, Israel was faltering, victory was at hand the Jews would be driven into the sea and the Westerners sent in retreat back to their homelands.
Yet here they were twenty years later hiding in caves in the hills of Syria and praying to Allah for a miracle that would turn the tide against the enemies of the Faith. Osman looked around at the men again, at Yosef, Saddam, Udi, Khalid, Mohammed and the others. They were good men but they were wasting their time here and they knew it but they still had to try for the cause.
“So where’s this Suleiman character and his miracle weapon,” asked Khalid as he sipped Coke from a plastic packet? Khalid was a good man, a former law student from Cairo who had turned down a good job at IKEA to volunteer for the fight. He was also becoming something of a cynic like many of the men in the hills.
“He should be here any minute now,” Osman said. As he realized that at 38 he was the old man here, not because he was a tough warrior, but because he was better at running away and hiding than the others.
“Do you think it’ll work,” Yosef, a skinny kid from Saudi Arabia asked?
“How should I know,” Osman responded. Osman shrugged and didn’t say what he really thought. Osman had seen dozens of miracle weapons over the years, some of them real, some of them frauds. There were plenty of con men working the bazaars of the Mid East hawking super weapons that would bring the Soldiers of Allah victory. There were also plenty of Mossad, CIA, Chinese, British and Arab Republic Security Agents angling for promotion by using supposed miracle weapons to lure Holy Warriors into traps. None of the miracle weapons had worked or worked as advertised even if they worked the Mujahadeen had never had enough of the miracle weapons.
Still the miracle weapon was a tenant of faith out there somewhere was some sort of technological fix that would destroy the dread Israeli secret weapon the Golem like the Stinger missile had blasted the Red Army’s helicopters from the skies of Afghanistan a generation before Osman was born. At least that was the fairy tale, the one the Mujihadden told each other around their portable microwaves as they cooked their TV dinners and planned the next campaign.
It was a fairy tale too, nobody would arm the Fedayeen for their war on Israel, not now anyway. The Americans had only given the Afghans the Stinger because they used it to kill Communists, no major power would give Moslems weapons to kill their own soldiers.
The Holy Warriors looked up as Fissel crawled into the cave, Fissel was a short and very skinny man. He was also one tough warrior who was Osman’s second in command and right hand man. Fissel, who had been born in England, had been in the fight almost as long as Osman and was the only other man in the platoon who could remember the glory days of the Great Jihad or the Terror War as the Infidels called it.
“So is the demonstration ready,” asked Osman?
“I suppose so,” Fissel answered. “He’s set up and he says it’s coming.”
The Fedayeen got up and reluctantly left the comfort of their air conditioned cave and emerged into the sweltering furnace that was a Syrian summer day. Thank Allah, Wal-Mart sold cheap portable air conditioning systems and fuel cells to power them, without that technology life in the caves would be unbearable.
The soldiers of Allah crept down from the cave over the stone covered ground that had seen a lot of history. Hittites, Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Crusaders, Mongols, Turks, British, French, Australians and Israelis had all fought and died here in these hills. In his time in the hills, Osman had found Roman coins, Assyrian pots, an Australian bayonet from World War I and a French grenade from World War II among other relics.
As they descended the hill into the ravine where the test was to take place, Osman wondered who would be fighting here in a hundred years. He wondered if those soldiers would be digging up relics of his men and their desperate struggle?
The ravine was filled with giant boulders, the perfect place for an ambush the veteran guerrilla commander noted. Three dozen men could hide here and hold off a brigade, okay a brigade armed with last century’s weapons but theoretically it was possible.
In the bottom of the ravine, Suleiman was waiting, he was a tall man from France and he was wearing a sort of Lawrence of Arabia get up. The kind of thing, new recruits to the Jihad from Europe bought and wore until they realized it made them a target and you could trip over the long robes. Most holy warriors quickly traded the Bedouin robes for practical fatigues.
The man who called Suleiman had arrived a few hours earlier he had been sent by what remained of the Jihad’s high command. The high command being a few Mullahs sitting around in some coffee shop in Marseilles trying to organize arms shipments for money.
Suleiman a huge man, was standing behind a boulder and the secret weapon was laying on the boulder. The weapon didn’t look very impressive, it was a plastic tube about a meter long something like the LAW rockets that Osman had used in the early days of the war.
“So that’s it,” Osman asked?
“Yes,” Suleiman answered. He had a look of pride on his face like a father with his first born son. “It’s a rocket launcher it fires a missile that uses a powerful new acid to eat through the Golem’s armor. The rocket contains a nanochip sensor that is programmed to home in on the Golem’s weak ponts.”
So that was the secret weapon, a tube that fired a rocket, a bazooka something the American Army had deployed in World War II a century before, Osman thought to himself. No wonder we’re loosing the war we can’t even come up with any new weapons.
“Golems don’t have any weak points,” Fissel said.
“According to my intelligence they have several and their location is programmed into the rocket,” Suleiman said.
Bullshit, Osman thought to himself, your intelligence was probably written up by some Israeli agent to encourage us to attack the Golems. Still he didn’t say it, no use destroying the men’s morale until it was too late. Let the French asshole show that his piece of junk was worthless.
Suleiman handed Osman one of the rockets, an object about the size and shape of a beer bottle. It was made of one of the new ceramics and was light weight, no heavier than a beer bottle.
“How many of these things do you have,” Osman asked?
“A few hundred now but we have a factory in France we’ll be able to mass produce them and give one to every one of the faithful who wishes to take the fight to the Jews we’ll overwhelm the Jews and Crusaders,” Suleiman answered. Oddly enough France was the center of Radical Islam in the mid 21st Century since the collapse of the Republic and the European Union large areas of France had fallen under the control of various radical Islamic factions who were at constant war with the Catholics and the Communists. Of course, France was also occupied by the British Army and His Majesty’s Forces wouldn’t sit by and let some idiot manufacture weapons to attack Israel with. The Jewish state was just too damned rich and powerful to allow that. So Osman thought, Brother Suleiman you are full of shit.
“Yeah, yeah, let’s see the demonstration,” Osman said. He had heard such talk before, too many times. Next year the faithful would win the final victory, they’d overwhelm the Jews, sure and I have some nice beach front property in Afghanistan to sell you. That job selling used cars for Uncle Rashid in Algiers was sounding better and better to Osman as he listened to Suleiman’s shtick. The guy was bad, Osman had been sold weapons by pros.
“Here it comes,” said Khalid who was using a pair of binoculars to scan the ravine.
The soldiers of Islam tensed up as they heard the dreaded and familiar sound that gave them nightmares. The sound they associated with certain death, the clomp of a Golem’s feet hitting the ground as it marched along.
Osman and the others crouched behind the boulders as they watched their enemy approach. The enemy wasn’t a man, it was what the Israelis called a Golem and the Americans a terminator, in other words a robot. Osman looked closely this was a Class Six Toyota/General Dynamics infantry robot assembled at GD’s Haifa plant, a reliable, serviceable and very dependable model.
From initial appearance the Golem didn’t look every fearsome it was a clunky thing about nine meters tall covered with white ceramic armor built in the shape of a man. It marched along like a man or more precisely like a mechanical man. To add insult to injury the Israelis had painted a giant blue Star of David on the Golem to remind the Arabs who had built the infernal machine. As it marched the Golem scanned the countryside with thousands of built in sensors that relayed everything he saw back to his operators at the Israeli Defense Ministry in Jerusalem. Actually the Golem operated itself the operators simply monitored its operations, at least that was what Jane’s Fighting Robots website said about this model.
Despite their military insignia Golems weren’t actually owned or operated by the Israeli government. They were owned and operated by Military Robotics LLC, a joint venture of Toyota and General Dynamics that provided military robots to many governments. The Israeli government simply paid MR a flat fee for the robots which GD/Toyota’s technicians built, maintained and operated. A good business many countries bought Golem, cheaper than maintaining an army. MR was a blue chip stock listed on the Shanghai exchange. Hell, Osman owned a few shares of it in the account he maintained for his retirement fund.
In exchange for that, Israel no longer needed to maintain an army or a draft, no Jewish mother’s boy marched off to fight anymore. No the damned Jews were too busy writing software and doing business and making money, so Israel was rich. Rich enough to buy Golems and the friendship of all the major powers. That also meant Israel’s wealth which was based on its people’s brainpower which was constantly increasing while the Arabs’ wealth based on a constantly shrinking oil supply was steadily decreasing. Oil was also worth far less than ever before with all the other energy sources around electricity, solar, fusion, coal, gas, bio fuels from genetic engineering and energy efficiency people burned less oil than ever before.
There were dozens of Golem models, some built like tanks, others like airplanes, some that rolled along on wheels others that crawled across the ground like spiders or scorpions on lots of legs. But the most common models were the infantry, the things like Class Six which marched along like something out of the corny science fiction movies Osman’s father loved to watch back home in Tunis.
Osman looked again and examined his enemy carefully, this Golem carried the standard weapons package. An automatic canon mounted on its right hand, a machine gun mounted on its left hand, a missile launcher mounted the back.
Of course Golems carried lots of weapons packages and many of them had been customized by Israeli and American techs over the years. In his day Osman had seen Golems with swords, chain saws, jackhammers, drills, tazers, flamethrowers, even lasers mounted on their arms. Lasers were pretty useless they burned too much energy, a decent machine gun was better far more firepower for less money. If you wanted to burn an enemy hook up an old fashioned flamethrower ten times the flame for half the dime. Despite all the exotic weapons, most Golems still utilized weapons that would have been recognizable to the soldiers of the twenty first century. The revolutionary thing was what was operating the weapons not the weapons themselves.
The Golem looked like it was on a routine search and destroy mission, in other words stomp through the hills and blow away anything that looked like a Moslem with a gun. Sill, Osman wondered why the Golem was alone, Golems usually operated in pairs, that was scary. Could this be a decoy? That was a standard Golem tactic one Golem would go in alone as a decoy to draw out any guerrillas in the area a squad of the things would follow and move in for the kill once the guerrillas had revealed their positions.
Osman got nervous as the monster approached he hadn’t seen a Golem up this close in years. Not since he had first seen one during the Terror War, back in the 2020s.
He’d remember that terrible day as long as he lived. The faithful had gathered for the final assault on Israel hundreds thousands of Holy Warriors with trucks and tanks and masses of infantry. The Holy Warriors weren’t crack soldiers like the Israelis but they outnumbered the Israelis ten to one and since Congress had voted to end US aid for Israel, Israel stood alone. Once the Jews ran out of replacement parts for their high tech weapons they’d be finished once and for all.
At least that was what the Faithful had thought when they lined up for the TV cameras and marched off to finish Israel once and for all. The biggest land offensive since World War II, the press had called it a massive army paid for by oil money and filled with men from every corner of the globe.
Sure there had been rumors of Israeli secret weapons, death rays, killer robots, drone aircraft, nanotechnology. It was all internet bullshit spread by the Jews to scare the faithful, the Prime Minister of Israel had even gone on Al Jazera and warned the Moslems that the battle would be a slaughter. She told them that they had no chance, Israel’s new military technology would devastate the Islamic Armies. She had even apologized to the Muslim women for the deaths of their sons before the battle, nobody had listened. Crap, propaganda, the Holy Warriors told each other as they passed their joints back and forth and prepared for battle.
The Israeli Prime Minister had been right, the battle had been a slaughter a terrible one as great as the Somme. The Holy Warriors drove on down from the Golan Heights into a frightful ambush.
Thousands of Mark One Golems backed up by tanks and artillery been deployed. They had marched forward and mowed down the Islamic soldiers with the automatic weapons mounted upon their arms, slaughtered them by the thousands. Most of the Islamic weapons had little effect, bullets from automatic rifles and shrapnel from grenades simply bounced off the Golems’ ceramic skin. Only missiles and artillery had any effect but Israeli artillery and aircraft had knocked them out.
The battle had raged for several days and when it was over nearly one hundred thousand men were dead and every Islamic nation on Earth recognized Israel’s right to exist. Jordan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt and Saudi Arabia even joined Israel in a free trade zone that had evolved into the Greater Arab Republic. Only die hard Fedayeen like Osman had hid out in the hills, waiting for the Golems to falter, and twenty years later they were still there still fighting the Golem.
“We should have known Golem was coming, they had walking robots when I was a boy,” Osman thought to himself. “I saw them on TV, the Japanese invented them to use as caretakers for the elderly or something. We should have seen right through that crap. That story was bullshit, Japan, a nation with an aging population that didn’t like to fight but surrounded by hostile powers with growing populations was scared for its future. They were developing Golem back then and the Jews were in on it. “
The Americans deployed drone aircraft in the first Gulf War and robot tanks in Iraq, Osman mused. Golem was the next logical step, an old idea, hell it was in the movies and comic books decades before I was born. The technology to make Golem wasn’t much more complicated than a state of the art refrigerator or car and the cost of a Golem was far cheaper than training an infantryman, especially to a country with a limited population like Israel.
Now once again, Osman was facing a Golem, he was watching as Suleiman picked up the rocket launcher, aimed it and fired. The rocket shot forward and struck home hitting the Golem dead center in the chest, once it did the rocket exploded and the Golem was destroyed.
The Holy Warriors all cheered and yelled like rowdies at a football game. They screamed God is Great and waved their weapons, it was a good moment. They had their magic wand, their silver bullet and with it they would destroy the Golem, the Jews ‘protectors now they would win at long last.
Then Osman heard the screams and turned around to see a horrifying sight. Several Golems were standing on the tops of the banks of the ravine and firing machine pistols equipped with silencers into the ravine. Each Stealth Golem had two pistols they held one in each hand like a gunfighter in an old Western movie. The latest model silenced machine pistols made no sound as they pumped out streams of bullets. The silenced machine gun fire was tearing up the men in the ravine the first to fall had been Suleiman ground to pieces by thousands of bullets.
Now Osman realized the terrible truth, these were the latest model Golems, the Mark 20 stealth machines that could make themselves invisible with cloaking technology and silent with sound dampers. These Golems looked different they were smaller and sleeker and their skin was shiny black and their weapons were hand held rather than built in. These Golems looked more like walking skeletons than the old Mark Six. The Mark Six had been a decoy for the Golem Squad following it and it had done its job it had drawn out the fighters in the ravine.
The Warriors of Allah hadn’t even seen the killing machines coming so it was all over in a minute. One minute they were standing around celebrating, the next Suleiman and every man in the squad except Osman and Khalid were dead. Not one of them had even gotten a chance to fight back.
The two hid for nearly an hour, as the Golems marched down into the ravine and gathered up the bodies and weapons of their enemies and their wrecked comrade and marched down the valley where a jump jet was waiting to take them back to their base. The Israelis now had a nasty habit of shipping the bodies of dead fighters home through UPS/FedEx, a procedure designed to show Moslems the futility and fatality of attacking their homeland. Oh well at least the fallen would get a decent Muslim burial and their souls would be in paradise.
The survival of Osman and Khalid was no accident either, the Israelis had a tactic learned from the greatest of all strategic thinkers the old Chinese Sun Tzu let a few enemies escape. They’d go home and tell their friends and relatives what a deadly and futile gesture Jihad was. The weapons may change but the basic business of war doesn’t, Osman thought.
Osman watched as a Golem picked up the secret weapon and carried it off. The Mossad’s forensics teams were good they’d examine the weapon find out where it came from even it meant examination on a molecular level and trace it back to the manufacturer. In a few days a unit of Stealth Golems would pay a visit to that factory in France and the place would suffer a mysterious fire that would destroy everything there. The factory’s owners would die in mysterious crimes the police would quietly write off as robbery homicides.
Eventually Osman and Khalid made their way back to the cave. The place seemed empty like a tomb without their comrades. As they did they looked at each other and realized it was over, the war was over, the Great Jihad was finished. It was time to bury their guns and go home.
“So what happened here today,” Khalid asked as he drank his energy drink?
“History,” Osman said. “Our arrogance and stupidity. For a century our people listened to every asshole who promised them modern civilization without work or study. The fascists, the nationalists, every variety of Marxist, the self proclaimed Imams, Ayatollahs and Mullah who promised a pure Islam. It was all a lie, you can’t create a better world or a civilization with a gun. While we wasted our time and money with that nonsense, the Jews worked and studied, we sent our young off to Jihad they sent they sent their young to the Great Universities. We prepared for war, they worked hard devoted themselves to commerce, look what happened. The Jews are rich and powerful, we are poor and ignorant. We squandered the great civilization that is our birthright. We could create martyrs who were willing to blow themselves up for the cause, they could and did design and build killer robots.”
“So what now,” Khalid asked?
“We go return to civilian life, get jobs, we work hard, be good citizens, pay our taxes, go to Mosque every Friday, get married and have some kids send those kids to school, kick their butts if they don’t study hard and make them go to college and get advanced degrees,” Osman answered. “Then when they grow up, those kids will design and build a bigger and badder killer robot than the Israelis.”
“Good plan,” Khalid said. “So where will we go?”
“I’ve heard there’s plenty of work on the Moon in the Helium mines,” Osman answered. “If you can get passage there they’ll hire any man. My Cousin Akmed runs a Helium Three processing facility in Zia City. I’m sure he’ll take us on.”
“The Moon now that sounds exciting,” said Khalid.
“Well it’ll be better than hiding in this damned cave,” Osman said. As he turned out the lights. “Hurry if we get up to the main highway before dark we should be able to hitch a ride into town, we can catch the bullet train for Cairo there.”

Mideast Crisis: The Beginning of the End of the Nation State?

What is happening in the Middle East today is simple and very frightening: national governments are no longer in control of the situation in that troubled region.
The governments of the Middle East whether they be military dictatorships, absolute monarchies or democracies have opted for peace and stability. Yet the region is on the verge of all out war because two terrorist organizations, Hezobllah and Hamas, want war and are willing to do whatever it takes to start one.
The situation in the Middle East is a perfect example of Fourth Generational Warfare, that is war waged by entities other than the traditional nation state. Hezbollah and Hamas are not nation states or political parties instead they are religious organizations dedicated to waging war on Israel, something more akin to the Medieval orders of crusading knights than modern political movements. These organizations have limited power but they are able to dominate the political situation in Israel and Lebanon because they have the ability to wage war.
Organizations like Hamas, Hezbollah, the Iraqi insurgents and Al Qaeda are now the dominant political force in the Islamic Middle East because they can do what Arab governments haven’t been able to do. They can wage war upon the Western nations and Israel and often succeed where Arab governments have failed. The Iraqi insurgents for example have killed more American soldiers than Saddam Hussein’s sorry excuse for an army, while Hezbollah fighters have been able to defeat Israeli soldiers on the battlefield.
Modern technology and economics make it easier than ever for non state actors to wage war. Groups like Hezbollah and Hamas can fund their activities through overseas banking and use modern communications to spread propaganda on a level once reserved only for the nation state. Computers give these groups the ability to create effective and sophisticated organizations in a short period of time. Modern weapons technology such as smart bombs and rockets lends itself to the kind of warfare favored by such groups.
The paradox of Fourth Generational Warfare is that it becomes harder and harder for nation states to wage war even as it becomes easier for non state entities to do battle. The United States has discovered this unpleasant reality in Iraq, despite their vast power and sophisticated technology American soldiers find themselves unable to control the country. American troops have to restrain their actions because the international media is watching them, while insurgents can do whatever they want.
Israel has learned this terrible lesson too, although it has the most powerful army in the Middle East, Israeli citizens are still cowering in bomb shelters. Israel finds its course of action in Lebanon limited by international criticism and the sheer clumsiness of its traditional military forces.
The situation in the Middle East casts serious doubt on the future of the traditional nation state. The nation state came into being in the 17th and 18th Centuries because it was the most effective entity for waging war. Nation states had a monopoly upon military force because they were the only entities capable of raising and maintaining effective fighting forces.
Before the nation state war was waged by all manner of groups and individuals, companies of mercenaries, orders of Crusading Knights, city states, nobles, large families, religious cults, corporations and criminal groups to name just a few. That maybe the situation we are going back to with a wide variety of entities waging all manner of warfare.
Already many people in the Middle East have rejected traditional nation states and given their allegiance to groups like Hezbollah. Hezbollah provides a military force, law enforcement, education and social services in South Lebanon in other words it has usurped many of the functions of the state. This undermines the whole system of international law and diplomacy which exists to limit
the power and influence of individual nation states. The idea behind traditional diplomacy and international law is agreements based on a balance of power would make war impossible. Non state groups which are not bound by international law or restrained by diplomacy are free to act in ways which nations are not. Hezbollah can take Israeli soldiers prisoner and Iraqi insurgents can behead their enemies for the television camera while American soldiers are imprisoned for taking pictures of naked prisoners.
This puts the non state players in the driver’s seat they can choose the battlefield and determine the rules of the conflict. All the nation state can do is react by waging traditional warfare that is large scale military offensives and attacks. Traditional military tactics designed to disable an enemy nation’s military capabilities are often ineffective against non state enemies, they can simply run away and regroup.
So what will be the outcome of these developments? My guess is that we are witnessing the opening battle of a war that will change everything in the Middle East and other regions of the globe. When the dust clears, many traditional nations, institutions and communities will no longer exist. My guess is that this conflict will spread into Europe and possibly the United States. The United States has already been dragged in and I imagine that China and India will in the near future.
Nation states will have to adapt to this situation if they are to survive. In particular nation states will have to find new means of waging war and destroying their enemies. This may involve new weapons and tactics and new kinds of fighting forces that may supplant traditional military services. Already the United States is making extensive use of military contractors - in other words mercenaries - in Iraq.
If nation states can’t cope then new entities will arise to take their place, this could mean private corporations which would raise, maintain and deploy military forces for profit. Drone aircraft and military robotics could give entrepreneurs the ability to quickly create and deploy powerful fighting units. Or political or religious organizations dedicated to waging war on some enemy could takeover war fighting roles from the nation state, Hezbollah is a perfect example of such an organization.
No matter what else happens the current bloodshed in the Middle East looks like the beginning of the end for the nation state.

An Important Novel

Every once and a while a really thought provoking book comes along that everybody ought to read. The current example of such a book is Robert Ferrigno's novel "Prayers for the Assassin." A science fiction thriller set in a future world in which the USA has lost the war on terror and much of America is under the control of the Islamic States of America, a fundamentalist Moslem regime. The only free region of the United States in this world is the former Confedracy the Southern Christians being the only Americans willing to fight back against Islami-terror in this world. The novel follows a fairly generic formula of an elite covert operative for the Islamic terrorist regime discovering the sorry tissue of lies that covers up the Moslem regime and his efforts to expose them. Ferrigno is far to sympathetic to the Islamic terrorists for my taste and far too dismive of average Americans commitment ot freedom for my tastes. Still it's a frightening and thought provoking read, in Ferringo's future America Catholics are a persecuted minority and gays are murdered in the street by religious police while Jews have been exterminated. In this world Blue State America is now an Islamic Republic average Americans preferring Islamic law and order to the Secularist Brave New World. Although it is sure to provoke controversy criticisms from the politically correct elite and possibily violence from Moslems (note to Mr. Ferrigno buy a gun, chance your name to Farley and move if you see any Arab looking guys staking out your house)
Although it is exciting and thought provoking "Prayers" is a deeply flawed work, it is set in the year 2040 yet no technological progress seems to have taken place between now and then. People still drive the same cars and use the same weapons as today. The subject of space travel is ignored although space planes allowing average people travel to the Moon are likely to be everyday contrivances in that era. My guess is that there will be considerable progress between now and then and I serioulsy doubt it'll be taking place in the Islamic world. A more likely scenario of the year 2040 is the Islamic fanatics hiding out in some cave from the killer robots of the Israeli Defense Forces and complaining that the bullets from the AK-47s bounce off the robots' skin. Still Ferringo's work is a fascinating read, I hope some better author a Phillip K. Dick or Robert A. Heinlein will take up this theme and write something more fun and thought provoking.

A Suggestion for Middle East Peace

The current crisis in the Middle East seems to be spiraling out of control, Hezballah's insane and barbaric attacks on Isreal have prompted Israel to launch an all out offensive to destroy that organization. This has led to a destructive bombing and artillery campaign against Lebannon that will surely make things worse. The United States and other great powers have to defuse this situation and fast before the governments of Syria and Iran get sucked into the fighting and an all out Middle Eastern War that could lead to World War III (the bogeyman we've been fearing for forty years breaks out). The United States would certainly be forced to take sides in such a war, as might other outside powers like India, Pakistan and China. (The Chinese are already building major construction projects in the Middle East and they have close relations with both Israel and Iran the People's Liberation Army may not be far behind).
So what can the US do to defuse this potentially disastrous situation? Offer Iran a deal to end the crisis. The Iranians want nuclear weapons so agree to let Iran develop nuclear weapons if it does the following things: 1) Recognizes Israel's right to exist and establishes diplomatic relations with Israel 2) Ends all anti-Israeli rheteoric and propaganda and makes a formal apology to Israel and the world Jewish Community for past idiotic statements by Iranian leaders and 3) Ends all support for Hezbollah and other terror groups and turns all information it has about those groups over to the US and Israeli militaries so those forces can hunt down those enemies of humanity.
Such an offer could end the crisis, Iran could get what it wants namely nuclear weapons but to get them it would have to start behaving like a responsible civilized nation. Iran would be given a face saving way out of the trap it has boxed itself into and the US could put an end to this false crisis over Iranian nuclear weapons.
When we make this offer we should make it clear to Iran that if evidence of Iranian involvement in the attacks on Israel comes out the US will take military action against Iran. Such military action doesn't have to involve an invasion, a series of missile or bomb attacks to take out Iran's nuclear weapons testing sites and key airbases would do. A crippling bombing campaign might even bring down the rotten Ahatollayahs and their lunatic president and clear the way for Iranian democracy.
The United States has to consider these two bold steps in order to prevent a disastrous war that will get large numbers of innocent people killed many of them American for no reason.

"That Damn LBJ: A Short Story"

Sometimes fiction is the most effective commentary so here's a short story:

Except for the large screen TV set in the back where the bandstand had once been and the row of video games that had replaced the pinball machines, the Pit hadn’t changed much in thirty-five years.
It was still the same seedy off-campus watering hole for students who wanted something stronger than the soda pop sold at the Student Union. The same watered-down beer and cheap scotch, the same lousy menu of greasy hamburgers, undercooked French Fries and tasteless chili and the same bowls of stale peanuts sitting on the bar. The place even smelled the same for it had the same cloud of cigarette smoke with just a scent of marijuana mixed hanging in the air.
Not even the students had changed much, although the skirts, shirts and shorts on the girls were shorter and tighter and a few of the boys had shaved heads. The students still looked much like the kids who had enjoyed after school drinks here when the five alumni sitting at the corner table had been attending classes across the street at good old State U.
The only thing that had changed were the five at the table, they were older, fatter and grayer. Their leader a fat middle aged white man had gray shoulder length hair, a bald spot on top and thick glasses. He wore a tie died T-shirt and shorts that showed off his pale legs. His name was Quenton Forgill and next to him sat his wife Cynthia, a short middle aged Asian woman with thick glasses and short hair. Next to them sat Rodney Smith, a rather dignified man with a close-cropped beard and short hair who wore a polo shirt and slacks, he had the ease and relaxation of success. Next to Smith, sat Sandy Began, a short and very fat middle aged woman with thick glasses and long hair who wore a knee length skirt and a sweater that made her look dumpier than she actually was. Next to them, sat Andrew Byrd, a tall black man with long hair who wore a suit and tie.
The five were back at State University for the 35th annual reunion of the class of 1968. Like many alumni they had grown bored with the staged events on the campus and went in search of their old haunts, most of which were long gone. The record store having been torn down to make way for a Blockbuster Video and the old café where the hippies hung out having been turned into a Starbucks. Of the many establishments they had frequented in their college years, only the Pit remained and to their delight it had changed little.
“Did you see that asshole Kennedy on TV last night,” Byrd said as he nursed his light beer. “The speech he was giving at the LBJ monument.”
“No I didn’t I was at the game,” Smith said.
“Well, I did,” Sandy said. “It was disgusting he was actually praising Lyndon Banes Johnson calling him a great man. He even said LBJ did the right thing by invading North Vietnam.”
“You must mean John junior he’s a real ass kisser,” said Smith. Smith, a successful attorney who practiced law in Spokane, paid little attention to politics these days.
“No I mean Bobby, fucking Bobby Kennedy was on TV praising LBJ calling him a great man, saying he did the right thing by ordering the troops into North Vietnam,” Byrd said. “I coulda puked when I saw it.”
“You’re kidding,” Cynthia said.
“No he isn’t,” Sandy said. “I saw it on TV. Kennedy praising LBJ for crushing the revolution in Vietnam. Ending the hopes and aspirations of the Vietnamese people for freedom.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” Smith said. “I visited Vietnam on business last year. It’s a nice place even Hanoi, they have democratic elections and they treat Americans real well. They have national health care and their economy’s doing real well.”
“Capitalist pigs sold out their own people,” Cynthia said.
“Yeah, I had an exchange student in my class from Hanoi last year, the kid didn’t even know who Ho Chi Minh or Nugyen Giap were,” Forgill, a professor of history at Cornell, said. “I asked him about the war and he said it was probably a good thing we invaded the North. Can you believe that, he said his family was starving before we occupied the place. He said American soldiers rebuilt the school and let his uncle out of a concentration camp.”
“What did happen to those guys anyway,” Byrd asked?
“Who,” Smith said.
“Ho Chi Minh and Giap, you remember the general who led the Vietnamese war effort, kicked the French’s buts at Dian Bien Phu,” Forgill said. “Ho died in Moscow in 1970, they buried him in the Kremlin Wall until President Gregorian had it dug up and the bodies pitched in 1982 when he declared Communism over, Giap still lives there I think. They gave him an apartment to live in.”
“That was the worst sell out in history,” Byrd said. “The fucking Russians didn’t do a thing to help the people of Vietnam. Not a damned thing, they didn’t even complain to the damned UN, whatever happened to Communist solidarity?”
“How the hell should I know,” Forgill said. “The damned Chinese didn’t help either. I mean Mao didn’t do a damned thing when our tanks drove through Hanoi and knocked over all of Ho’s statues. No wonder, the damned Soviet Union fell.”
“No wonder the corporate fat cats built a monument to LBJ he did their dirty work for them in Nam,” said Byrd.
“I can’t believe it,” said Forgill. “A big monument for that piece of crap right on the mall in Washington. Statue, marble columns everything. And a big ceremony to open it and all the damned Democrats are there Reagan, Clinton, Carter, Wallace even that shit head Bobby K. What did we ever see in that guy anyway?”
“How the hell should I know,” Sandy said. “I mean he backed McCarthy in the fifties for God’s sake. Then he opposed Nam, until LBJ invaded the place. Then he decided he liked the war after all. Even kept our troops there after he was elected President in seventy-two.”
“Well, I hate LBJ,” Forgill said. “Until he invaded the North we were getting through. People were paying attention to our marches, they were showing us on TV. People were listening man. Then LBJ goes and invades Hanoi. They show those pictures of that Hilton place on TV, all those torture implements and those concentration camps and suddenly nobody pays attention to us anymore. I mean people who had been marching with us didn’t want to be seen around us anymore.”
“Yeah and them pictures of all them Vietnamese people tearing up Ho’s statues and his pictures I couldn’t believe that,” Byrd said. “It had to be faked. Walter Cronkite had to be in on it with LBJ.”
“What happened to Uncle Walter anyway,” Cynthia asked? “He was the biggest broadcaster around in 68 and he just disappeared.”
“Way I hear it the CIA killed him,” Forgill said.
“No he’s s still alive teaching journalism at some cow college in Missouri CBS fired him after he said we were losing the war the week before we took Hanoi and that was the only job he could find,” Byrd said.
“Nah it was real,” Smith said. “My brother was over there, he was in the Marines and he saw it all. The people in Hanoi really tore up every symbol of Communism they could lay their hands on after we liberated the place. They smashed every picture of Lenin and burned every copy of the Communist Manifesto they could lay their hands on.”
“Then Westmoreland had to be behind it the troops forced them to do it at gun point,” Forgill said.
“No, it was spontaneous,” Smith said. “My brother said they lynched a lot of Communists too. They put ropes around their necks, set them on fire that sort of thing. A lot more would have died but our troops protected them.”
“But the Communists were helping the people,” Byrd said.
“That’s not what my brother said,” Smith said. “He got a look at their palaces. Those guys were living like kings while the kids were starving. They had limousines and champagne and wet bars right out of country clubs and all sorts of whores running around. At the same time you could see the ribs on the Vietnamese peasants. He said a lot of them came right up to his jeep and begged for C-rations.”
“Then your brother is a fascist pig,” Sandy screamed!
“No, he’s a Democrat,” Smith said. “He’s telling the truth. He wouldn’t lie about something like this.”
“All them veterans are liars,” said Forgill. “What’s happened to you anyway, Randy you sold out and joined the establishment?”
“No, I just grew up,” Smith answered.
“But you marched with us,” said Cynthia.
“I was a stupid young kid, I was wrong,” said Smith.
“You mean we were wrong about Uncle Ho,” said Forgill.
“Yeah I guess so,” Smith said. “Look we were dumb young kids. A lot of long haired professors sold us a line of bull. Let’s admit it was shit and grow up.”
“We marched to stop the war,” Sandy yelled!!
“Okay maybe that part was good, but you’ve got to see Hanoi it’s a real nice place today,” Smith said. “I mean maybe LBJ knew what he was doing when he invaded the North. I mean no American soldiers died after 68 did they? Draft ended in 69 and most of the guys came home. By April 1969 most Americans couldn’t find Vietnam on a map. The war ended didn’t it.”
“So maybe he was, but we were winning,” Forgill said. “I mean at the time of the Tet Offensive people were listening to us. Bobby even came out against the war. Uncle Walter was for us on TV. Then LBJ invades the North and presto, it’s all over. All the marching we did was worthless, the damned Viet Cong folded like a house of cards. LBJ wins the nomination and the Presidential election by a landslide. I mean you didn’t see Chicago in sixty eight, nothing happened there, we had less than a hundred people. The cops didn’t pay attention to us. The TV cameras ignored us, hell the only person who came over was some guy with a hotdog cart.”
“You were lucky you weren’t inside,” Byrd said. “You didn’t see all the speeches congratulating Lyndon on his victory. Especially Bobby, he was at it back then.”
“So he sold us out,” said Sandy. “What’s new they all did.”
“That damned LBJ,” said Forgill. “Why did he have to go and do that? I mean McNamara was against him until we won.”
“Who knows,” said Sandy.
“At least there aren’t any damned veterans here, I hate those guys,” Cynthia said. “It was bad enough that they killed all those babies over there. But the way the public talks about them these days.”
“Yeah, I mean what’s happened to this country, we tried to prevent a war and help the Vietnamese people,” said Forgill, “and who did they build a monument too.”
“That damned LBJ, that’s who,” the aging former leftists said.
“So is anybody up for another protest,” asked Sandy? “We’re going to be picketing against Bush’s war in Iraq next week.”
“Sorry,” Byrd said. “I’ve got a golf game.”
“Yeah me too,” Forgill said.
The five sat there looking at TV footage of the dedication of the Lyndon B. Johnson Memorial in Washington DC and cursed.
As they did a young student, a woman turned to the bartender, a fat middle aged man and asked, “what’s wrong with those old people anyway?”
“Ah anti-war protestors from the sixties, they get pissed every time they see LBJ on TV,” the bartender said.
“Why,” the student asked as he sipped his beer?
“Cause he won the war in Vietnam and kicked the commies out of Southeast Asia,” the bartender answered.
“But that was a good thing wasn’t it,” said the student.
“Yeah, but you miss the point,” the bartender said. “Once LBJ won the war they had nothing to protest anymore.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” said the student.
“Those people never did,” the bartender said. As the five aging radicals got up and left the Pit.

A Message From Glotho

This is Glotho, evil alien warlord, I'm looking for a new planet to conquer and I've heard really good things about this Earth place. In particular I've heard that there's a really stupid class of people on Earth who will welcome me with open arms if I claim to believe in something called Marxism. What is a Marx anyway? These people are called intellectuals and they're apparently in control of the media and entertainment on Earth. All I have to do is convince these intellectuals that I'm a Marxist and they'll welcome my invasion forces with open arms. They'll portray me as humanity's friend in the media. These intellectuals will apparently try to sabotage Earth's defense and betray those who try to fight for freedom when my soldiers start rounding up Earth's people and shipping them off to the galactic slave market. All I need to do is land my armies in places called Harvard and Hollywood and profess belief in Marxism and peace. Hey I believe in peace brother, pacifists are much easier to enslave. They don't fight back and I don't have to waste money on ammo when I take over. So watch the skies Earthies I'm coming.

Philanthropy, Taxes and Hypocrisy

I don’t want to criticize anything as noble as Warren Buffet’s decision to give $40 billion to Bill Gates’ Foundation - which appears to do all sorts of good works- but I must note that there is a strong odor of hypocrisy coming from Buffet and Gates’ actions and statements.
The nation’s two richest men are both strong proponents of the inheritance tax and have publicly defended the death, yet both men are taking aggressive and very public moves to protect their fortunes from the very tax they claim to love. By turning all that money over to a charitable foundation Bill and Warren will avoid paying huge amounts of inheritance taxes. By resorting to philanthropy the two billionaires can ensure that their money is spent on their pet causes rather than taken away by the tax man.
These two staunch advocates of the inheritance tax are working hard to make sure that they don’t have to pay that tax. That is hypocrisy in its purest and most blatant form and the media and commentators are giving Warren and Bill a free ride.
If Warren Buffet and Bill Gates really believed in the inheritance tax they wouldn’t donate a cent to charity. They’d leave all their money to their heirs and make no attempt to give it to charity to ensure that Uncle Sam got his fair share. By donating all that money to charity Warren and Bill prove that they don’t believe in the inheritance tax and want to avoid paying it.
By ignoring Buffet and Gates’ hypocrisy the media is ignoring some pretty serious issues that we need to be discussing here. First, by letting the rich avoid taxes by donating their money to charitable foundations we take huge amounts of money out of the tax base. The government still needs funds to operate and the only way to make up for the taxes donated to charity is to raise taxes on the middle and working classes who can’t afford fancy tax lawyers to set up tax exempt charities. So instead of being equitable, the inheritance tax is actually unfair and slanted towards the rich. The rich get to fund their pet causes in perpetuity while Joe and Jane Sixpack and their descendants get stuck with the bill.
Second, not all of the tax exempt foundations set up by the rich are good, many of them are little more than bank accounts for political extremists, a means of allowing the wealthy to force their values on the rest of us long after they’re dead. The Ford Foundation and John and Catherine McArthur foundations finance left wing extremism, the Independence Institute in Colorado bankrolls much of the right.
Warren Buffet could have gotten the same tax benefits if he had donated $40 billion to the Adolph Hitler Memorial Foundation for Holocaust Denial or the Osama Bin Laden Institute for Higher Religious Studies. Obviously not all charitable giving is good and some charity can be destructive.
It is time for us as a society to take a hard look at both the Inheritance Tax and the idea of tax exempt charity. Both of which appear to be fueling the very inequality their proponents claim to value. Unfortunately today’s media and commentators don’t want to do that, they just want to be the wealthy’s lap dogs and clap and cheer whenever some fat cat avoids paying the income tax by funding his pet causes.

Intelligence Leaks: News or Disinformation

“Leaks” of the details of the secret operations of our intelligence agencies in the war on terror by the news media are almost a daily occurrence these days. These leaks have generated a great deal of chatter among the media and politicians but the most important question of all is not being asked are these revelations for real or are they deliberate disinformation on the part of the intelligence community?
Disinformation; the spreading of false information to fool your enemies, is a time honored tactic practiced by both the military and the intelligence community. During World War II for example, the Allies went to great lengths to fool the Nazis, in one famous example British spies dumped a dead body dressed in an officers’ uniform with a briefcase full of fake invasion plans into the sea in hopes that German agents would find it.
This leads me to wonder if most of the information about our intelligence agencies’ secret war on terrorists is real or simply disinformation? I wouldn’t put it past the spooks to make up lies about their activities and leak them to reporters in hopes they’ll get published and read by terrorists.
Just look at some of the stuff supposedly leaked to the media in recent months such as the details about Uncle Sam’s secret programs to monitor Americans’ phone calls and financial transactions. Politicians and pundits have howled about these revelations because they think these leaks might show terrorists how to avoid detection. That might be just what the government wants, the terrorists believing those stories will take the wrong steps to avoid detection and get caught.
Obviously this is a good strategy for the government to adopt because it fools our enemies into making mistakes. Unfortunately it raises some serious questions about the role of the intelligence community and the reliability of the news media.
We saw how the Bush Administration used the leaking of questionable possibly false intelligence data about “Weapons of Mass Destruction” to the media to sell its case for the Second Iraq War to the American public. We’ve also seen a widely variety of data leaked to the media by critics and opponents of the war for blatantly political reasons.
This is a worrisome development for it transforms and betrays the role of intelligence, instead of gathering objective data, intelligence agencies go out searching for facts to support political agendas. Obviously in such an environment, intelligence agents will only present their political masters or customers in the press with the data that support their foregone conclusions. Only the information that justifies the case the leaker is trying to make is leaked, other data that may point to other conclusions is ignored or suppressed.
Leaks also do tremendous damage to journalism, instead of going out and researching stories for themselves, reporters simply regurgitate whatever is leaked to them by sources in the intelligence community. Since these sources are usually anonymous it is often impossible for other reporters to investigate the leaked information and verify it or to locate additional facts which might challenge the claims made in the leaked data. The result is not journalism but doctored data presented to the public as news in an effort to influence public opinion in other words: propaganda.
So what can be done about leaking? The ongoing efforts of prosecutors inside and outside the Bush Administration to track down officials who leak data for political purposes is a good start. The prosecution of Scooter Libby might be a good start to this effort, but it is only a start.
Journalists must learn how to say no to leaked information no matter how sexy it seems to be. Reporters must forget their romantic delusions of meeting Deep Throat in the parking garage and instead do good old fashion leg work. That is go out and research stories and see if they are true and get the other side of the story. Editors, publishers and producers must learn to reign in reporters who rely on leaks and to say no to anonymous sources and leaked information no matter how compelling it seems.
The public and advertisers must learn how to say no to news outlets that rely on leaks and anonymous sources. They must stop watching and reading news outlets that rely on such methods and advertisers must tell media executives that they’d better reign in the journalists or face lost ad revenue.
Finally, intelligence officials and politicians must learn self discipline they must learn to stop leaking data for political or strategic purposes. Even though such leaks make for good political propaganda and are often a good tactic in the war on terror. Our leaders should ask themselves is the corruption of the intelligence community and the profession of journalism worth the momentary political and strategic gains that can come from “leaked information?”