textfiles/magazines/UXU/uxu-574.txt

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                         Underground eXperts United

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         [  Ratt-Tat-Tatt  ]               [  By Vasilis Afxentiou  ]


    ____________________________________________________________________
    ____________________________________________________________________



Ratt-Tat-Tatt

by Vasilis Afxentiou
Athens, Greece                          email: vafx@hol.gr

 
 
   Robert A. Heinlein had hollered in 1940 - in a writing of his
   entitled "IF THIS GOES ON":
 
   When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes
   to say to its subjects, "This you may not read, this you must
   not see, this you are forbidden to know," the end result is
   tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty
   little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been
   hoodwinked; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free
   man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission
   bombs, not anything - you can't conquer a free man; the most
   you can do is kill him.



PREFACE

[From a recent speech by a British writer and citizen of the world:]
 
I am deeply honoured to receive this degree from Aristotle University. I
have always felt a strong attachment to Greece and a great respect for the
Greek people.
   You have asked me to say a few words and I intend to take the term "a few
words" literally.
   The other day I came across a letter I wrote to a theatrical magazine in
1958. It included the following sentences:
 
   There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal,
   nor between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily
   either true or false; it can be both true and false.
 
   I believe that these assertions still make sense and do still apply to
the exploration of reality through art. So as a writer I stand by them but
as a citizen I cannot. As a citizen I must ask: What is true? What is
false? There are certain facts which more or less everyone knows to be true
but which few people actually talk about, although there is, I believe, a
growing surge in the world, an oceanic nausea, if you like, to which more
and more people subscribe.
   What is the relationship of military might to "market forces"?
   The United States has made quite clear - many times - that it will
protect its own economic and strategic interests with the use of military
might at the drop of a hat, without compunction, whenever it feels like it.
And the government of Great Britain follows suit - with an eagerness which
can only merit our disgust.
   I contend that the bombing of Serbia had nothing whatsoever to do with
"humanitarian intervention". It was a blatant assertion of US power.
   [Applause]
   That and the continuing bombing of Iraq are illegal, immoral,
illegitimate acts, against all understood criteria of international law,
holding both international law and the United Nations in contempt. As for
the sanctions upon Iraq and their toll of death, there are really no words
which can properly describe the cynicism, the indifference and - as someone
else has said - the casual sadism which inspires them.
   The United States constantly refers to its belief in "civilised values"
and its concem for "human rights". Its own penal system - two million people
in prison, mental deficients executed, children under eighteen incarcerated
in adult prisons where they are systematically raped and assaulted, the use
of "restraint chairs" where the prisoner is padlocked and his legs secured
in metal shackles and where he is left for extended periods in his own
excrement, the use of the "stun gun" which emits an electrical shock of
roughly 50,000 volts and causes severe pain and instant incapacitation -
torture by remote control - and of course the employment of the death
penalty in thirty-eight states - lethal injection, electrocution, the gas
chamber, hanging - take your pick - are facts which speak for themselves and
render the term "civilised values" laughable.
   President Clinton said at the end of last year, "We Americans have given
freedom to the world". There will undoubtedly be more of the same language
used this year, more "moral outrage", more "humanitarian intervention", more
lies, more bombs, more destruction, more grinding of millions of people into
the dust - that kind of freedom.
   There is also, in my view and in the view of many others, serious danger
of a nuclear catastrophe - stemming not from "rogue states," - as defined by
the United States - but from the United States itself.
   We are confronted by a vast, brutal, malignant machine.
   This machine must be recognised for what it is and resisted.

          - Harold Pinter, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
            degree speech April 18th 2000

 
[Herald Pinter - a writer and an intellectual, as well as Cardinal Basle's]

"The USA is a monster. It is actually USA that needs to be stopped. Every
one knows that war is appalling but what we lose sight of is that it is
being abstracted now and sanitized to such a degree that Mr. Clinton has
killed children and he has not even noticed it because they are actually
abstractions - they are children dying of his sanctions... Despite continued
references to the solidarity of the international community, the United
States in fact held international law in contempt for so long it has
succeeded in rendering the concept meaningless... The USA is now a bovine
monster out of control."
 
          - Herald Pinter, The Independent, Feb. 13, 1998
 
 

AUTHOR'S NOTE

Below are excerpts from a novel of mine...

   <http://www.zeus-publications.com/page5.html>

   ... which I enclosed and referred to in a letter to a unique group of
American acquaintances during the last bombing raids of our next-door-
neighbor Yugoslavia... but decided not to send so as not to hurt these
people's feelings. Then again, it seems that some people - and societies -
cannot do otherwise but live by the sword, in this case live by death-
dealing. This same category of people can substitute quite easily self-
inventing excuses - can institute, as a matter of fact, instant self-acclaim
that extends to practices and norms similar to those that govern mob
hysteria, mob rule even - for feelings of kindness, justice and common
sense.  As you might have guessed, and correctly so, this is the type of
self-seeking that ensnared the aforementioned acquaintances.
   I dare say my acquaintances must have fallen head over heels prey to such
risque Sirens as censorship and suppression of free speech as well. For, one
of them disappointed me rather greatly, but not unexpectedly so. This naive
poor soul wanted me to 'edit specific sections' of the short story
"Ratt-tat-tatt" as he saw fit. Pending on this 'edit' he would or would not
publish the short story in the magazine he was a staffer of. After I
refused, his Americana coup de maitre, cul-de-sac, and piece de resistance,
was a quote from an American politician/mayor named or nicknamed Kingfish.
When asked if America would ever have fascism, Kingfish replied, "Why sure,
but we'll call it anti-fascism".
   As this reply settled - in well and crystalized, certified itself in my
awareness, my up to then ambiguous impression of this-is-an-anything-goes
coumtry and a-free-for-all-grabs-of-the-global-pie society, I sat down and
wrote a similar article which was unprotestingly accepted and published - my
sensitivities now no longer wearied or tormented - in the March 2000 issue
of ELT News (English Language Teachers News), distributed throughout the
English learning institutions and communities in Greece. I gathered by that
time that my acquaintances' defenses, or attitude, could wear more than
adequately the slings and arrows of my keen distress at and acute
disapproval for their nation's policies, and subsequently those of her
follower nations or allies, as expressed in the said letter below.
   Today, in view of the plethora of hoodwinking going on, I for one am
amazed at the international community's inability to see and counteract such
expansionist injustice and Vietnam-war-like blunt and overt regression-
aggression going on in real-time progress. I am left dazed at this form of
sophisticated - but at times quite blunt - propaganda of such accurate
degree and tact, such precise extent and strategy, that it is sucking in
even the most enlightened, the cunningest and most illuminated, of nations
which would otherwise have deplored and abandoned any endeavor of alliance
with such Orwellian-apartheid attitudes and goals as the ones practiced by
this most recently risen, but underdone, Wild West Nationalistic Empire.
   At present I am thoroughly saddened by the international community's
reticent, this self-inhibiting and self-incriminating, silence.
   What is that noble Nobel Foundation doing? Sleeping?
   Why does it guard its own dumbfound silence so deftly when it should be
crying out, shouting in distress - perhaps even be pulling at its hair - at
this most recent and most merciless violation upon us all, upon all of the
tenets of civilization and beliefs in a free and fair humanity?
   The goal of the US this time is not nazi Germany, the USSR, Korea or
Vietnam, Iraq or the Balkans; that much must be clear to everyone.
   But global Americanization.
   Not globalization.
   Pax Americana has nothing to do with worldization, peace or any kind of
global union or harmony, but with attaining and maintaining American
interests throughout the globe. Most Americans - thank God - are severely
against, staunchly criticize, this inclination of American world dominance.
But, the same gene governs American oligarchy today as did during the
American genocide spree of days not long ago. The gene that predisposed them
to go on a never-before binge, predicated such a rampage of genocide the
likes of which the world has never seen before or has yet to recover from:
to purge The New World of Red Men, Black Men and Hispanics. It is a tough
gene to expiate or discipline, to expunge or to expulse this WASP gene. It,
like its ancestor the Arian gene, and before that the Hun and Tartar-Mongol
gene, wants all for iself. War and hostility are its vital signs. This gene
cannot survive in peace. Peace smothers this genome.  The catch-phrase here
- at all and at any cost - is: "America First!" and, "The hell with
ecumenicity, lawful due process and UN interference, intervention and
egalitarianism.  We have the strongest organism," American syllogism goes
on, "since the Roman legions. Stronger even than the Third Reich and the
Axis. We have the NATO machine. It's our one and only chance to be masters
of it all, masters of an entire planet, a whole world. Use it! damn it. Use
this force! The opportunity, the circumstances, the facade is just too
perfect to miss out on. To blazes with all else. To Hades with you and your
legal writ of habeas corpus, buster! Our Manifest Destiny (our American
Dream) comes first. And it's just around the corner!! So what if a few
million go under? So what if a few countries are decimated?" This malison
and miasma, this sarcoma of a sorts, is harming the subject nation, or
federation/confederation whichever the USA wishes to call herself, as much
as the rest of the world. Dominance of one single country, no matter how
strong or well-intentioned, cannot, does not, constitute Democracy. It
strips and flogs Democracy. It's not me that says it, it's the institutions
of Democracy that voice it.
   Today, there is continuing basis for the inferences I make. Again, I
guess this is more of the same not-to-be-tolerated-any-further,
self-righteous indignation of the Yugoslavians (and those that support the
upright and unprotected populace, the majority of Yugoslavians), for one's
own immorally and exemplarily slaughtered kinfolk.
   Perhaps there is indeed ecumenical truth, more than meets the eye here,
to the monologue's account below. It seems, the 'humanitarian' war in
Yugoslavia is not yet over, as the 'anti-communist' Vietnam war is not, as
the 'anti-nationalist' Korean war is not over.
   But continues.
   Covertly and in low tones, even as we speak.
   But continues, nevertheless, clandestinely, confidentially, in the Cold
War fashion - as that of the economic wars against Cuba, against Iraq,
against a Libya not so long ago; the never-ending propaganda against a
united Ireland, a united Cyprus so agreeable to, in step and in-nature with,
the temperament so admirable by the temerity and foolhardiness of both the
rodeo cowboyism and KKK tactics germane to certain Americans, to those that
murdered millions of the indigenous Indians and African blacks and
hispanics, and in line with the WASP dogma of certain Englanders that
murdered and continue today still to 'leagally' exterminate untold thousands
of the indigenous Briton Kelts. The speaker in the story is a dying Vietnam
veteran, Sam Latevic, living stateside, of Yugoslavian descent who had been
blinded by napalm (perhaps even by clofen, so copiously used) in the 'good
ol' gung-ho days'.
   The letter/story begins like this:


   And in the middle of them, with filthy body,
   matted hair, and unwiped nose, Ralph wept for
   end of innocence, the darkness of man's heart,
   and the fall through the air of the true, wise
   friend called Piggy.
 
               - William Golding, 'Lord of the Flies'

24 March 1999: the invasion of the Balkans by NATO. 2,000 killed. 8,000
wounded. In memory to the human beings slaughtered in the seventy-eight-day
holocaust. I, one Hellene among the majority of 97% of the Hellenic
populace, contest and indict this illegal assault. I lodge unreservedly a
formal protest and complaint opposing this unprovoked rash act of
indiscretion, reprisal and thoughtlessness against humanity and against our
friend and neighbor Yugoslavia. This petition is directed to The Tribunal of
Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, The War Crime Court at The Hague, The
Swedish Commission Inquest on The Kosovo War and The Nobel Foundation. This
uncalled for, shameful and savage attack of carnage and butchery, one with
an all-encompassing and especially barbarous and grotesque turn after the
first few days will be the cause, in the author's opinion, for the spawning
of such asymmetrical alliances as the Western world cannot even begin to
imagine or appraise. Praises and compliments for ushering in the new
millennium with this first exemplary Mai-Lai-Massacre step for our children
to follow, one surely deserving the Nobel Prize. Congratulations for setting
up the stage of the onset of what may probably well be the most xenophobic
and hydrophobic century in human history: The Twenty First Century AD. May
God and mortal forgive you, nineteen.

   ... These neoteric 'Tartar-Mongols' did not descend from North-Central
Asia and Central East Asia this time, but swarmed from across the Ocean from
the Far West after killing and raping seventy million of their own
indigenous Red Men, God knows how many hundreds of thousands of African
Americans, and more recently three million Vietnamese. Blood and War
sustains these Turanians. And these newly-sprung Huns, these most modern
Ottoman hordes needed to humiliate Europe, once more. Break Europe's spirit
and confidence, and drag her into another/their image-making war.
   Europe, their Continental gofer.
   Europe, now, their overseas pack-runner; another England, another Japan,
another Korea... another water boy.
   Unite with Europe to conquer the Balkans first, then Europe all over,
with only a starting skirmish-of-a-war, Latevic thought.
   Progressively start more bombings - but go low on the tone. Bomb all! -
low tones, now. Bomb and rule - but always, low on tone. Don't want, the
spat-upon veteran myth to resurface again, become an alibi for why the most
powerful nation on earth lost a war with an underdeveloped Asian nation
called Vietnam.
   Vietnam yesterday. Iraq, Sudan, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia today.
Skopjia, Rumania, Bulgaria, Caucasus...Russia and China tomorrow. The world
the day after.
   'Geeve eet to them, Weelee!'
   The Bold Nova Axis.
   The Neo-Janissaries.
   The Valorous New Roman Legions... or is it Brown/Black Shirts... or is it
tie and white shirt Yuppies nowadays?

   "Snuff out dem Yugo-dudes - on de double, troops. Quick-like, I say! And
beat feet back heah! Got trouble back home, troops. Gotta whole rabble of
gun-blazing rebel-rousers and whimperin'-snipers right at our own
public-schools, troops! Dem Yugos ain't killed a single one God-fearin'
'merican man. But back home, our own piddly toddlers are mowin' us down
Mai-Lai-fashion! Our own kind - would you believe? - gunnin' us down right
in our own fuckin' back-yaads!"
 
   ... The name is Latevic, Sam Latevic, are you with me?
   It's Latevic and my drift carries from what once used to be Yugoslavia,
my birth country and my parent's and my grandparent's native home. What now
is poisoned, no-man's-land, from our State Department's 'human-rights
presents' and our U-238-jacketed bombs from our Department of Offense.
   There's this guy, Alexis. Dunne's his name, that says:
 
  'Thrust ivrybody - but cut th' ca-ards.'
 
   So, who 'thrusts' a crowd that needs to go to war every twenty years or
so in order to balance their books? I want to ask all the bronze-laden
Generals. Hell, Alexis, who can honor a system of government promoted by a
handful of dog-eat-dog troops, 'civil servants', government men and CIA
spooks whose sole motto in life is, 'Your death is my living'; and, whose
work of endeavor or Gross National Product is essentially based and
appropriated from the sales, proliferation and use of arms and armament,
spontaneous and never-ending global skirmishes and war? Sounds to me too
close to a second, but runaway, USSR.
   What manner free-thinking citizen of the world will vouch for or go in
with an establishment that promotes and supports military dictatorships -
enlightened or not - so as to perpetuate on to others a soldiering and
warring way of life, and a cruel enough martial fascism to have gotten even
George Smith Paton disgusted with the military? The West should try onto
itself what it dispenses so easily to others.
   - forgot: New World Order leaders nowadays have two standards and two set
of rules they abide by -
   Who wants to be an enlistee from cradle to grave? The law of war governs
the establishment here, Alexis. There's a spontaneous war waging here 365
days, Alexis. It's a perpetual battle-field. It don't matter any - no
difference if it's Nam or New York, the Persian Gulf or the Gulf of Mexico,
'We Survive through War' or 'Warring Is Our Business' the logo goes. Or
should it be, 'In Arms We Trust' or 'In S0trife and Bullying We Trust'?
Whether you're civilian or troop, straight or crooked, makes no difference.
You have got to learn to dodge bullets in school and kindergarten in this
NovaAmerica of the wily and wild West; in our own streets-of-battlefields,
sooner or later.
   What is the point of all this grim, pondering dirge, I ask, when there
are no longer principles around other than glorying in victory? No code in
sight other than the law of domination. When there is no precept, other than
the doctrine of Hannibal, Attila, Gengis Khan, Caesar: Veni, Vidi, Vici - I
Come, I See, I Conquer.
   War.
   Soldiering.
   War.
   Dominate.
   War.
   Militarize... civilians too.
   Make the country - all countries, into a great boot camp: "Mine is not to
question 'why?', mine is but to do or die!" In memorial to great Roman
Legions, create anew great World Battalions: bastions of the perfect flesh
and blood machina, the Universal Soldier-Citizen. The West will not be
content conquering half of the world. The West wants the whole world. The
entire pie. All of the economy.
 
   "It's only a bunch of backwoods Balkan Slavs and backward 'Wag The Dog'
Albanians. Thousands and thousands of miles - at world's end. A place called
the Balkans. What would any red-blooded, good and white, Anglo-Saxon-
Protestant and clean-cut Yank boy know about a place called Balkans, for
Christ sake? It's not the same as Philly or the Liberty Bell, or Yosemite
National Park, the DOW-JONES AVERAGE or apple pie. What a fuss about a pack
of goddamn Balkan hicks and hillbillies, rednecks out o' the sticks, being
leveled to dust. Big frigging Jack-shit deal."
 
   That's the people over us, Alexis: 'In Gold We Trust' is what the
greenback should read as someone said.
   The people whose boot-sole we're under.
   The same oppression and colonialism the Irish, the Scots, the Welsh - the
Kelts - have been trying to throw off for 700 years, bless them, so as not
to be assimilated into a permanent kind of tyrannical affair. The West's
breed of oppressors is a lineage of people, present throughout history and
throughout the globe, in every race, creed and epoch, that is arrogant,
overbearing, absolute, bloated. One that feeds on anguish, suffering and the
shaming of others.
   Patriots, Alexis, at least the ones I hold in esteem, are not those
people. They are not the Generals or Attilas, the NATOs or Hannibals, not
the CIAs or Stalins. They are the Martin Luther Kings, the Lincolns and
Bravehearts, the Nathan Hales and Leonidases, Patrick Henrys, Gandhis and
Joan d'Arcs. People like the Russians - and overall Soviets - who with
bravery and sensible internal strength realized a mistake, accepted it and
corrected it without bloodshed and with the wholehearted help and
camaraderie aid of old order America and old order Europe.
   These had been peace-loving people, Alexis; who as well cared and had a
special love of life, of their country and of liberty in their hearts. But,
when their freedom was tampered with, trampled upon, they fought the
oppressor. Not embrace him. Kicked him out. Not roll out the red carpet for
him. Had not bowed their heads and bleat like sheep...

   (The letter ends:)

   ... Yes, Jeff and Cary, Jim and Don it's my shame that my little country
has no choice other than to be in NATO; and it's your shame that your great
country - awarely and with its leaders' blessings - did so zealously with
such fervent dedication and devotion the greatest damage to the greatest
number of defenseless/innocent civilians: Think of it, 2,000 dead, 8,000
wounded, uninvolved and simple folk as those of Mai Lai. Cart this, too, on
your conscience... and we all do have one. The Russians in Chechnya have
ample 'good and proper' example to follow and go by. Thanks to the US, NATO,
the UN and to the 'Vietnam-days-displayed wisdom' of its leaders.
 
                                                 Sincerely,
                                                 Vasilis Afxentiou
 
 

RATT-TAT-TATT
by Vasilis Afxentiou

 
Time seemed to stand still. For eternity Marcus stood motionless and silent,
not daring to chance another breath lest he discover all this to be a dream.
His breath finally came, labored in anticipation.
   "Make computer components out of people?"
   Hauge sipped the last drops of his tea. "Not out of them, dear man. For
them. Like a heart valve, a skin graft from artificially cultured cells,
plastic arteries, and the like. Things that enhance and save lives such as
pacemakers or artificial kidneys."  All is ready, Hauge thought. Like a
locomotive freeing surplus pressure. The swan's song is at its most sublime
at the swan's very last peak of agony.
   "Go on." Staring hard now, Reginald Marcus, President of International
Medical Supply and Software Development, bit his lip. He felt light-headed.
Forty-three different directors of the board waited for the word to go ahead
on this. Never had he been offered anything to compare with what this young
man was offering. In his mind flashed a menagerie of cyberpunk images and
endless queues of eager, nail-biting clientele. Meanwhile, dim
circumspection tainted him with doubt. Visions of shrapnel-hacked, flak-
gouged, patched-up heads and war-defiled torsos paraded in front of him.
   He frowned.
   But in the end Marcus nudged aside the stink of fear and reveled at the
euphoria his released capital fantasies induced. Looking out his penthouse
window he gazed upon the azaleas flooding the terrace, the pointed and cubed
tops of looming skyscrapers with their mirrored black windows, the steel and
glass blocks of his empire where the thousands of men and women worked for
him like anxious ants. And this man, this obscure Scottish scientist, would
he be his newest and perhaps most lucrative triumph?
   Yes.
   "To put it simply," Hauge continued, "a sample of the subject's DNA is
blown up holographically. The double helix is much easier to deal with that
way..."
   ... Something akin to hunger in that stare? Hauge thought as he lectured
the billionaire. You've never felt the bite of frost through torn shoes in
deep Pristina winter, Marcus. Never had to eat stale bread and a half-
portion of leftover mutton days on end in squalid, pest-infested, bombed
ghettos to save up for coming worse days...
   "...then the work begins. All genes not supportive to the preset
parameters are extracted and replaced by modified ones: genes that heal the
crippled, the blind, can make the deaf hear again; genes for mathematical
acumen, for musical talent, for body stamina, business sagacity - you name
it. The helix is then shrunk back down to its nominal size, superimposed on
the original, and with the help of a broad-band laser beam is imprinted..."
   ...Blood, Marcus? Is that what you and your kind are after?
   Hauge remembered his own skeletal, pinched face crimping in concentration
over voluminous texts. The explosive awakenings in the midst of night,
sometimes by the relentless air-raids, sometimes by the unmerciful dreams in
which the dead children pursued him, threatening to flay him into so many
lean strips for not being able to save them from the pain, the final
anguish.
   And that one child.
   That little girl with the empty hole where her eye once had been.
Expiring in his arms.
   Slowly.
   Lingeringly.
   The blood pool had been empty. Her parents had the money to pay Marcus's
worldwide franchise of blood for the rare vital fluid, but there were the
sanctions. Restrictions on everything, plasma and blood were no different -
what new deal were you striking up at the time, Marcus?
   "... Pardon my limited knowledge of genetics," at last Marcus stretched
in the luxurious easy-chair, his hulking ex-boxer's body coercing a
tormented squeal from its frame, "but won't that just change the original
chromosome's physical shape and not its quality?"
   "Ah, but it will. 'Chromosome' is the name of the strange fellow: body of
color. Very sensitive to color frequency modulations. The modified facsimile
will be color stained - coded with transparent dye where effective changes
are desired, and by a mirror dye where not."
   "Still, that leaves you with just one little, altered chromosome."
   Reginald Marcus stood up and grinned. His silvering hair streamed wildly
in the blowing air from the vent above. His pearly teeth teased with their
perfect dental work. He patted his lips with an index finger.
   "That can, and will, reproduce its exact duplicate," Hauge came back.
"The regenerative mechanism will not have been touched."
   Marcus grinned. "Didn't know such fidelity, especially in the case of
artificial - of forced - encroachment, existed. But the building of a
complete helix from half of one - a split helix - is done, if I'm not
mistaken, with the aid of an enzyme," Marcus said.
   "I didn't either - a decade back. But at the university we managed,
piecemeal, to weed out that protein strain. The amino acids, too. And
anything else that could interfere." Hauge next reached into his pocket. He
produced a slick, black cube. It was the size of a die. A thin pigtail of
tiny electrodes ran down from it.
   Marcus craned forward for a better look. "Well, won't something else
still rectify the mutated helix?"
   "No. Now, the enzyme only reconstructs the mirror image of that which is
in front of it. It does not compare chromosomes in doing so."
   Marcus shook his head. "Hauge, it'll still give you a chromosome
different from the subject's intrinsic physiology. Won't the body's defenses
fight it off?"
   "Does the immune system fight off radioactively mutated chromosomes?
Neoplasma tissue for that matter? If it did, we'd have the cure for AIDS.
For most cancers. The same principle holds true here. Furthermore, this is
controlled and meticulously guided mutation. Not to mention that it comes
from the same contingency as its host's inherent genes..."
   ... Two million years of conditioning, Hauge thought.
   The sun.
   The moon.
   Lightning.
   Fire.
   The piquancy of light and the seductiveness of color. And what they
incite. All packed into an irresistible live blend of rays. Symbols of a
revered, supremacy/servility evolutionary path the West had at some point of
its history misinterpreted. Had taken for Liberty and Democracy. Had
resolvedly conformed to. No questions asked. No checks. No balances.
   Ritualistic molds of castes.
   Adherents to - and leftovers of - a wily and wild West.
   A philosophy of gangsterism and bullyism. Adherents to narco-armed
youths. To mobster and pistol worshipping as surrogates to healthy libidos
and sexual maturity... surrogates to wholesome interaction. Adherents to a
syndicated mob that had the power of attorney to kill Presidents.
Catechumens and disciples of combat-based values and racketeer coterie.
Advocates of implements of war being passed around to little tykes, like
pretzels at Howdy Doody Time:
 
  "H-e-e-e-re come LittleTom - the TommyGun himself - and
  his Ratt-tat-tatt TinyTots."
 
   Another new singing group, Hauge brought to mind. An icy ripple ran down
his spine.
   Another fatal fad. A slick slogan in this good ol' bonhomie West.
   Land of the 'circumspect', the 'free' and the 'brave', but don't rock the
boat. The 'non-fear refuge' and the 'civil-liberties haven', but don't buck
the big boys. The West: the exemplary land of equality, the nation of
immigrants and of equal opportunity, but take nothing at face value. The
brag-and-boast of all that is best in the world for the whole world to
follow, but don't make waves. The land of good ol' 'human-rights' and
'peace-loving', 'upright' and 'upstanding' citizenry, but question nothing.
Hallelujah! brother, but praise be! to the Carbine and the Bombin'!
   How incredible!..
   How extraordinary can sanctimoniousness be?..
   How awesome can hypocrisy and double standards get?..
   How exceptionally arrogant, blind and deaf to global contempt and scorn,
dishonor and indignation can a system of administration be!..
   But hypocrisy and double standards had a limit, Hauge now thought.
   And it had been reached.
   He was nervous, yeah, but confident.
   Pay-back time, he next thought, augmenting momentarily his dramatizing
faculty, his fantasy of mimicking Stallone and Swartzenegger.
   It would not be easy to burn through Marcus's defenses.
   But, all at once was exposed both pretense of virtue and pretense of
propriety.
   All was unguarded, before the raptures of subliminal intensities and
hues, bolting through the optic nerve. The words light had to say. The light
words had to show. Audible, visible phenomena that silently cuffed and
castrated willpower, as the undiscriminating and haphazard Cruises and
Tomahawks had muted, mangled and mutilated the id, the superego - the
brain's very identity, the very community, of his helpless country; violated
all international statutes - but most of all, had dishonored the very
resting grounds of valiant and innocent kin and ancestors. What brand of
civil and sensible, freethinking and brave people, Hauge now considered,
would awarely plan and lodge an attack against the - so many! - innocent and
helpless, the inhumed dead? Would casually show such indiscretion, be
blinded - exalted! - by the thrill of war? Would let fly depleted uranium
munitions. Drop radioactive bombs and missiles, recklessly. All this to
eliminate and displace, mangle and slaughter a vast number of blameless
people so as to get at the three or four - the sparse - scoundrels?
   So objectively consummated. So impersonally executed. Work an SS
Commandant would have lauded and envied! Been proud of.
   YES! Hauge cried inside, feeling sour within himself, punish the guilty!
   But why kill and disfigure, maim and cripple ten thousand to get at that
one guilty man? Does such End justify so much Blood! Does any end call for
so much wasted, squandered life! What dialect in the rostrum of propriety,
the spectrum of decency, where in any man's Holy Book or dictionary,
encyclopedia or war regulations manual is there found the unique locution,
that singularly rare and odd wording, that particular idiom of sanity, or
insanity - not to say as much as of human common sense and decency - that
says and justifies that the buried dead must be exhumed, must die a second
time!! And the dominator - the honcho of honchos - of these brigands, this
marauders' pack, has the gumption to speak of 'global human rights and
humanity'? Preach of 'a global peaceful union'? ...
 
   "NATO, NATO ueber alles!! NATO, NATO, Novus Ordo Seclorum!!
   Il Novus Duce, Grandiosi Mafiosi de Pax Americana (et Picolo
   Mafiosi de UN) - "
 
   - he wanted to expell, but instead said, "As a matter of fact its
encapsulation is entirely too exaggerated. The active device inside is much,
much smaller. It will be designed to interface directly with synapses. But
the filament connections make it presently impossible to reduce any further.
Working on it."
   "And its quota?"
   "Varied solely by the subject's needs and by the subject alone." Hauge
pinched two of the exposed fine wires on the end of the die's pigtail.
Marcus saw the inside of the cube begin to whirl and soon turn to murky
gray, dull cream, and, finally, to diamond brilliance.
   Marcus, moseyed up and came close to look at the sparkling jewel the
other held between his fingers. Coruscating sprays of rainbows caught,
filled and dominated his eye. Its pristine radiance bathed his retinas
making him blink. His eyes watered in the multi-chromatic glow.
   "It's sin, itself!" he drooled. He knelt before the Scot to have a better
look. "Where is the agent?"
   "A tiny shimmer - the star, if you look hard, in its geometric center.
Cloned from yours truly," Hauge pinched more wires. The liquid swirled,
sparkling, spewing needles of magic, rainbow light throughout Marcus's posh
office and into the amazed president's eyes.
   Show time's over.
   Now Marcus, and his empire, belonged to him.
   He needn't think about it much.
   For Marcus's was an insulated empire that would not last more than
fifteen, maybe twenty years at the most.  Then burn itself out.
   A great new and unprecedented world order, within a frightened world. The
supremacy of greed and bullying that fed on its own hide when all else
failed. Of violence-venting. Of barbarous subjugation. Harboring inborn
Visigoth- and Viking-like, Hannibal- and Attila-vintage ambitions and
instincts.
   But isolated, nevertheless.
   Only, his country and nation did not succumb to division. Dissension was
a stillborn word to his, to Hague's people. For they held up. Almost
limitless in patience. Their cause growing stronger with each bomb dropped,
with each enemy troop trespassing their borders. And it was this the West
could not understand. Missed entirely, due to ignorance of Balkan
psychology. But, most important, it was this that strayed by the Western
attitude of thought: his people no further avoided to lure the enemy onto
their own native land and soil. Their own turf. Modern Yanks were
butterballs when it came to guerrilla warfare and close quarters combat on
foreign soil. Maybe even, their very own frustration would kill a lot of
them. Like Vietnam.
   Yugoslavs were no Tom Clancy fairy tale. Slavs were no four-foot-Oriental
pushovers. Or five-foot-Latin American short work. Slavs had Empires for
breakfast. The Ottoman, Napoleon, the Aryan...bones and all. "This morning's
menu...? Ah, yes, the Yank & Co Empire."
   No, he was not being smart or witty, here.
   He knew it was chic to be smooth and casual nowadays.
   He knew it was bright and keen to think the world was not being brought
to its knees, could be indeed losing its free will due to the bulimia of
this one nation. He was aware that to be fashionable was to be positive and
to vindicate everyone, including the naughty nineteen, including this
businessman's way of life and government. A run-away - dilettante -
government whose public couldn't care less about, a sub-existence in a
violence-ridden manner of a life with an infrastructure that was already
crumbling day-by-day by uncontrolable use of firearms and brutality. In a
nutshell: a way of day-to-day fear-saturated survival, in fear-saturated
schools, of terrified teachers and students, fear-saturated communities and
neighborhoods, public buildings and malls, by shoot-outs at kindergartens
and in offices and institutions of secondary learning.
   He was cognizant, too, that to be in vogue was to be quick and sharp, and
hush-hush the use of DU-238, the residue of dioxin and other polytoxin and
radiotoxin environmental carcinogenic poisons the bombings left behind so as
to permanently contaminate his, Hauge's, ancient homeland. Hauge's once
undefiled, native breathing air, soil and water. Another Three Mile Island.
Another Chernobyl. But this time intentional.
   His land's enemies, this New Yank-led Reich, wanted to lame and
destabilize this most recent and new threat to the West: a country and
people that had dared - like the Vietnamese - had the gonads, to put their
foot down and say "NO", and spit at the eye of any bird of pray that
violated the sanctity of their native earth.
   No, it was not this great experiment of theirs, of the Marcuses of the
world, and their revival of lebensraum-blend institutions. Of 'fresh' new
Hiroshimas and 'crackling crisp', ' of late refreshing' Nagasakis. It was
not this most recent rabid panic that assaulted NATO and muted the UN, and
thus drove NATO to kill unstoppably as mechanically and as officiously as
the Auschwitz and Dachau showers. It was not this Korea and Vietnam,
Ireland, Scotland, Wales and Cyprus kind of national partitioning and
apportioning, dividing and conquering, bulldozing sovereign countries and
peoples out of existence so as to make the West's presence felt, realize
their 'manifest destiny'... and then step in. Step in and ransack, rampage,
bomb away any part of the world they choose and so desire, like Sudan and
Afghanistan, regardless of legality or illegality. No, it wasn't the West's
newest and most subtle experiment on radiation effects upon living human
flesh and blood. On the ambiance, so as to further study their own secluded
catastrophe, their own eighty thousand suffering from Gulf War Syndrome.
   No, the obvious is for the gullible folk, the chum, the pushover, the
sucker to swallow. The pigeon or paid 'pigeon' whose response would sound
something like, "We're obviously doing something right in this great
experimentation of ours; or the bombings we most recently implemented would
never have occurred, but stopped right-away".
   Sure thing, partner, Hauge thought.
   Obviously you were doing something right in that great experiment of
yours back there in Asia. So as to save face back then, too. And the
ubiquitous Vietnam napalm bombings and 'agent orange' - regardless upon whom
they fell whether it had been friend or foe, child or elder - had obviously
'never' occurred. Obviously had been 'stopped right-away.'
   No, it was none of these things.
   It was the naivete.
   The naivete of false pride, false moral courage and false honor.
   The naivete of world-audience and of authority-ratings. The naivete of
compromising ecumenical, time-tested classic ethics and time-harnessed world
morality, for the convenience of the net worth of influence and supremacy
upon a global audience on a global scale. And this, by means of use of raw
force and intensity of injury. A lesson in 'the bomb is mightier than the
pen'. Without a hint of horse sense. Without a speck of remorse owing to
basic human justice or compassion. Poor, pitiful and stupid people, Hauge
now thought. Hate to be in your shoes when you wake up one fine morning and
the realization of what you have done slams on your face.
   No, it was not the obvious.
   It was the naivete of accommodating a public show at the expense of an
independent and legitimate nation that had never provoked, but was often
provoked. A show. A paradigm of a production. Put on with spokesmen some
obscure-till-then aimcriers/puppetmasters. A showcase of conquistador
temerity. Reckless rodeo and showdown, Billy-the-kid cowboyism.
   Yes. Put on for a juvenile, 200-year-old neonatal, fledgling of a country
of bored, mostly of puerile and manic-depressive, unlettered and restless
people whose sole means of entertainment, release and satisfaction for an
emotion or impulse or sexual outlet is getting imbibed, or rather,
pissed-drunk on weekends and by blowing holes through people. A modern,
country-size, a huge, Roman arena. A show for, perhaps, a worldful of
wearied and poor, daunted and thirsty and hungry and downtrodden peoples.
   Or for an eclectic forum of nations. Of the elite modern Romans, who in
place of lions and panthers watch missiles and smart bombs rip, not only
Christians this time, but Moslems, Gypsies, Albanians, Chinese and other
ethnic groups - rip people open. Of another CNN macabre-spectacle that
brought in millions. Of one more runaway media morbid-hit after the Iraq
grand slam that hauled in bucks by the shovelsful. A Pulitzer Prize
accommodation. Perhaps even a Nobel for a modish pedigree, a smart new
hybrid, hi-tech, definition of 'peace'. A spectacle pageant, not of Miss
America or Miss World, but of killing ilk in its most popular and colorful,
diverse and a la mode ceremony.
   Ponder on it, Marcus: "NO" is the word for us. "NO" is an honest word.
"Yes" is for lackeys. "Yes" is for hostlers. It's for Coca-Cola and
hamburger alliances."
   At any other time - Hauge ruminated as he watched the man before him
regress and shrink further-and-further into himself - in human history,
these bombings might have been acceptable. Even a little sleazy work, a dab
and dabble here and there, by that 'great country's' sanctified CIA,
permissible.
   As recently as 30 years ago it was legal and encouraged, indeed. Yes
legal, to meddle in, interfere with and intrude upon its southern neighbors,
Europe and Asia. By establishing and supporting dictatorships throughout the
world. Yet, 30 years later, it is still snooping and prying, unchecked and
off-the-record, illegally and covertly - with overt and obvious intent to
destabilize - in everything all over the world even today in spite of (to
that 'great country's' great shame of 30 years before) young college kids
being shot up, dying disapproving it. Despite that 'great country's' very
own Tiananmen Square: The Kent State Massacre. A bunch of young college
kids - unarmed kids - who had the guts to publicly disapprove any and all
illegal belligerence, any rude intrusion and rule, and any invasion upon
another sovereign country's affairs; invasion of and forced entrance into
another's freedom. And were executed, right there on the spot by the very
same people that today decry and vilify Chinese, and most recently
Yugoslavian, savageness and lack of mercy.
   "KGB is dead! Long live CIA! God bless the bombings! Jobs for everyone
now. Everywhere we bomb!"
   Yet, this land of 'indelible jurisprudence' had learned nothing.
   Learned nothing from its mistakes and deaths.
   Learned nothing from all those deaths of its children.
   And was starting anew.
   Was attempting anew to commence meddling throughout the globe once again.
But, meddle more thoroughly, stubbornly and brutally this time, more loudly,
arrogantly and grimly. It had to have more backing today than it did during
its Vietnam disaster. And it's where Europe and the naughty nineteen came
in.
   Such pesky-petite details, Hauge thought.
   ... "Get off your knees, old fellow," Hauge said finally, offering his
chair. "Take this too."
   Marcus pinched and gawked as the scientist laid the tiny, gleaming
machine in his palm.
   "My name is Hagevic - hear that, mate. I'm not from Scotland. I'm from
what once used to be Yugoslavia. My home. Now... no-man's-land, thanks to
your 'humanitarian intervention' as you had called it, and your State
Department's 'human-rights presents' of DU-238-jacketed armor-piercing
bombs."
   Marcus watched the die in his own hand turn into a green emerald, a blue
sapphire, yellow citrine, fire opal... "Eh, yes. Absorbing sort of...
prettiness...so, pretty!" Marcus's parched voice was weak and reedy.
   "Eh, yes. Absorbing." Hagevic repeated. "Like your Yank dream: Suspended
Disbelief."
   Kosovo-born Hagevic rose, walked to Marcus' communicator, and punched the
red button. "Ms. Chung," Hagevic remembered the little plaque on the slight,
bespectacled secretary's desk, "would you come in," he said, now bending
over the intercom and standing behind Marcus' elegant desk.
   The secretary entered, seeming riddled over the sitting man playing with
his empty hands. "So, so pretty..." Marcus raved on.
   "Is anything wrong, Mr. - "
   "Mr. Marcus will be leaving now. Oh, and, Ms. Chung, would you be kind
enough to bring your pad when you come back. We have changes to make."
   For a moment, Hagevic thought amused, she must have taken me for someone
else. "Yes, sir," she said, lingering her dispersed, fishbowl stare a while.
   The Yugoslavian observed the other's fascination as she watched intently
the die in his hand turn cornelian pink, hyacinth red, amethyst violet,
lazurite blue, peridot green...
   "Have one," he said, reaching again into an empty pocket, knowing it
would be the most important thing on her mind from here on. "Anything else,
Ms. Chung?"
   "No, oh not a thing, sir. So pretty!" she chirped and gawked at her empty
hand, sighed deeply and escorted her charge out.
   "Ah, one more thing. Change Mr. Marcus's flight for Marakesh instead, and
accompany him personally till he boards." The climate should be more akin to
Texas's, he considered, and put the real die back in his coat pocket.
   He always wanted to see how it felt to be a megatherium of business,
unfettered to make and supply freely as much blood as needed for poor, needy
people and little girls like his late sister, Mara. But he wasn't sure if he
had what it took. Clearly, though, all one needed was a dab of cheek and a
spot of hypnotic magic at his touch. Everything else then just couldn't help
coming your way.
   The board members will be the true challenge, Hagevic thought, after Ms.
Chung had left.
   "Into the maelstrom!" he hollered, and quailed at his own sound.
   It was noon, the sun out of view, and the polarized showcase window
clear. Marcus's empire was spread before Hagevic's  eyes. He'd have to call
upon more compelling reserves than the single die for the Board.
   There was a knock at the door.
   A meek Ms. Chung peeked in. She bowed, then lowered her bone-rimmed
glasses with their thick, round silver lenses. The secretary's rare irises
gave forth a brilliant show of light to rival that of the hypnotic cube.
   Hagevic quickly looked away...
   But not quick enough.
   Ms. Chung was careful not to look directly into the bar's inlaid looking
glass on her left as she refitted the eyeglasses. At times like these, she
thought, a mirror could prove to be a woman's worse enemy.
   "The saddest part of all this business, Mr. Hagevic," Ms. Chung said,
leading the catatonic man slowly out from behind Marcus's massive desk, "is
not recognizing your competition. Not inquiring why one needs to wear thick,
silvered glasses inside this glare-free building. The die, Mr. Hagevic, can
often be perfect, but not miraculous or quicker than the naked eye, as
Confucius might have put it."
 
                                                        En

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 uXu #574              Underground eXperts United 2000              uXu #574
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