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March 30, 2002 -- BARBUA (asticles.com/APJP)
Q: "How will we know the current all-out war is won and terrorism as-we-today-know-it is truly over?"
Frank: When the woman or man nominated to be Vice President of the United States declares a gainfully-earned yearly income of zero and 25 Saudi Arabian hijackers on expired student visas demand (excluding box cutters and flying lessons) $36,000,000 each, tax-free, deposited in Baruba, Liechtenstein or the Caymans in unmarked small bills before ploughing planeloads of innocent passengers and themselves into tall buildings. And not the other way round as things presently stand at this point in time.
Q: That's all?
Frank: Well it'd also help if the present Energy Secretary pot-holder admits to uttering a grave misdemeaning untruth by saying he met with 36 key people on all sides of the plectrum to discuss wide-ranging new consumer-friendly energy statutes when he actually met with 109 well-vested-interest representatives of energy industry companies mainly Enron and not one single environmentalist.
Q: You're not saying there's a connection between however-blatant-and-rare minor misrepresentations like this and terrorist activities?
Frank: Try this one. Thomas E. White, a former Enron executive who is now Army secretary, defended the timing of his sale of millions of dollars in Enron stock late last year, saying that numerous conversations he had with Enron executives at that time did not guide his decisions. 'There was never, ever anything that could be construed as insider information, non-public information,' Mr. White, clutching a well-worn bible, guaranteed reporters in an hour-long discussion at the Pentagon. 'I never sold any stock based on what anyone told me at Enron. So come, let us now all fly together in a C-140 Shirtlifter to a golf tournament somewhere where it's warm.'
Q: Pure piffle. Isolated incidents. No significant pattern or common thread between them.
Frank: Oh really? Selfless Arthur Andersen boss Joseph F. Berardino said selflessly Thursday, 'There remains only one selfless sacrifice I can make (apart from gutting myself) to join the efforts by innocent and much-maligned Andersen employees who have been leading protests against the indictment of the firm to prove to the government how much Andersen is willing to change. I'll graciously quit the firm I've selflessly dedicated my life to and have been leading without blemish or concern for my own welfare for just 15 months." When what he really meant to say was, "I've been unceremoniously and unfairly canned, fired, sacked, shoved, dumped and am being made the scapegoat for doing what international off-shore accountancy companies get paid handsomely to do and have been doing magnificently for years. But don't worry about selfless me, my yacht is anchored on a pristine fragile coral reef off Baruba."
Q: Point well taken. So that's it then? Eradicate deviousness and scams by senior crack officials in high places and we'd soon have no more terrorists?
Frank: 'Fraid not. But it'd speed things up too if the billions presently being shipped in even vaster quantities than before September 11 to keep non-elected heads of otherwise hostile regimes docile, sweet and cuddly also treacled-down to the masses.
Q: But surely it can't only be about money and greed. There are deeply historic secular questions? And the four-leafed-cluft between us well-educated inhabitants of the highly-developed West and those forced to live in misery in dictator-led tyrannical countries still oppressing women, stoning children and lopping-off body parts (and probably selling them) for what Hollywood would consider trifling adultery. And other primitive forms of punishment. (Both overseas and in Hollywood.)
Frank: Be most cautious here including 'highly-developed West', "well-educated" and/or, 'stoned children' in the same sentence. Otherwise I'll have to issue a rebuttal about the traditionally condoned and accepted centuries-old child sexual abuse practised by certain "Name of the Rose" clerics that everyone knows about but never dared speak its name. Or NYPD squads violating innocent Haitian immigrants or LAPD swat teams whacking Rodney King. And do the name Jimmy Swaggart and Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker and Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell and John Ashcroft strike a familiar note?
And of all the wars ever fought, ever, the war on drugs has been the least successful and the most expensive. Even the Prime Minister of France said last week risking the wrath of his wine-sodden Nouveaux-Beaujolais voters, "Smoking a spliff is far less dangerous than driving a car under the influence of alcohol. Whine or not."
Q: Very well, smart ass, but you can't dispute we're better educated than 'they' are?
Frank: Depends who 'they' are and are we really? Swallow this news made public only yesterday from the economic crotch of what euphemistically used to be called the free world. "The city and state are bleeding the school system of the funds it desperately needs to provide even the most basic of services. They are bleeding the system to death. The latest series of budget cuts imposed on New York city schools is approaching the billion-dollar mark, and it's important to keep in mind that the cuts began before the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center. Reading programs for struggling students are being shut down. Parents are reaching into their own pockets to pay for school librarians. Music teachers, guidance counselors and speech therapists are being sent packing."
Q: Aren't you being a trifle picky? Can't you at least acknowledge we have smarter bombs, smarter leaders, smarter cards, smart chips and the advanced sophisticated technological capability to see everything with night-vision goggles from deep space without losing a single fighting person in direct combat. And as the greatest punishment of all we can always withold permission to download Internet Explorer 6.0 and Netscape 6.1 in countries we disagree with?
Frank: Take Egypt, "and I wish someone would," as the late lamented Milton Berle often said. All the smartest cards in the world can't teach you what every Egyptian knows intuitively at birth. That the Bush's and Cheneys and Blairs and Powells and Kissingers and Sadats and Sharons and Arafats and Pinochets and Allendes come and go. (Does anyone really remember Cyrus Vance, or worse, Gerald Ford?) But the Nile flows sluggishly past the 4,000-years-old Pyramids as it will be doing in another 4,000 years. They can wait. They have patience. They're still trying to blame someone for putting the Ram in Ramses-lama-ding-dong.
Q: OK then, answer me this. With all the billions being pumped into ravaged Afghanistan aren't the children there finally being taught the decency and honesty without which their country is doomed to hundreds of more years of chaos and strife?
Frank: Censored film taken recently in a hermetically-sealed-off square mile of downtown Kabul seems to show the lucky people there are living far better than before September 11. Especially the women and children. And for that we should all be truly thankful.
In fact, early last Monday morning as the Oscars® show dragged-on on ABC, central Kabul women were already queuing and clamouring outside their only drug store after hearing Julia Roberts and Gwynneth Paltrow suffered hours of physical and mental anguish having Botox® injected up their armpits to prevent ugly sweat stains ruining their borrowed $25,000 frocks and our enjoyment of a perfectly delightful evening.
As Yogi Berra said, or was it W.C. Fields, "You gets' what you pays for?"
Next week: A crack ex-Enron ex-petty-cash ex-controller strikes a deal with the I.R.S. and admits that ex-Enron directors in far greater numbers than it had once been thought are evading taxes by secretly depositing money in tax havens like Baruba, Youtoo and the Cayman Islands and withdrawing it using American Express, MasterCard and Visa cards. A masked, hooded and voice-distorted high I.R.S. agent confirms the deal. We have video.
David Marsden syndicates himself frequently and voluntarily to newspapers worldwide from self-imposed-exile on the beautiful pink-sandy-beached, casino-rich, lottery-ridden, off-shore-bank-and-international-accountancy-conglomerate-infested Eastern Caribbean island paradise of Baruba and answers intelligently… if not diligently…all non-abusive emails sent to Head-riter@asticles.com
Copyright © 2002, Bryan Zepp Jamieson.