Hawks

The gray and brown skies above Interstate 5 gave way to smooth, high wispy clouds and dangerous winds at the 580 split. Shawn “Son of Trucker” Nourse fearless held the Yukon steady as the 60 mile-an-hour gusts tossed our tall SUV about. San Francisco forces this difficult passage on travelers who wish to reach its cold and foggy streets. This airlock, this threshold, this unseen portal, protects the peninsular city from the flighty demons and weightless fairies that hover like insects over tortured San Joaquin souls, buzzing in their ears and driving them mad. O sunharshed Valley.

Of course, San Francisco is full of its own devils and witches, more than enough to bedlam its inhabitants. We Hawks have several family members who live by the shark-filled, dangerous bay waters who are driven periodically mad by these dark spirits. Alcatraz was not built on that jagged rock for nothing. When the one thousand cell doors slam simultaneously shut, it is terror itself that is released into the atmosphere, like a bell tolling the long dead escapee souls scraping along the bottom of this sad and salty sea. Tookie, tookie, tookie, b’gaw, b’gahw, b’ghawww.Yes, the Bay Area and surroundings are dark at the core. L.A. has its Ellroy, but who of the north will exorcise in print the regional horrors corked by edifices of Silicon Wealth, shouted down by new age manipulaspeak and habitual radicalrant? We volunteer.

Shall we speak of the high powered Palo Alto lawyer who drove her interior decorator to a nervous breakdown? Shall we speak of the Mount Tam two grand mountain bikers seeking death by cliffplummet, Peets tripleshot tightening their chest as bravado yields the floor to horror? Shall we ponder a haighthaunted populace, haight haunted by the Dead, its Dead departed and its Living Dead, a legacy of giants eternally unrivaled? Rome has its Caesars, SF its Jerry and Janis. Oh, horror. Oh fog. Oh dotcom.*Nevertheless, a small spark sparks deep in the heart of this Mill Valley relic in relic strewn Mill Valley, downtown, peetsfulsome and chicorganic. We roll down Throckmorton towards a sun swallowed by forested ridge and pull up in front of the club, greet family and old friends at the entrance while Porsche Cayennes and Mercedes convertibles fight for the limited parking spots beneath the wise and weary redwoods.

Every Hawks journey has a patron saint, and our nominee for this one is Mars Arizona, who have set up this show and handed the Hawks the headliner slot. Inside Sweetwater they are soundchecking, and it’s sounding good. A good sounding room, sounding with songgood.** The family lovefest continues as siblings, in-laws, godfathers, Mom Lacques and Papa Olguin show up, and many eventually wind up on stage. Mars Arizona harmonize a sweet acoustic set, with their badass guitar player adding the sting. We Hawks had a betterthandustingoffthecobwebs set, pushed by our northern steel brother Dave Zirbel. Satisfaction.

Nearly Beloved, with BrothersLax and Eric Banjo and rocksteady DrumRubin and aforementioned Zirbel and aforeaforementioned Papa Olguin, Olguin of Santa Monica, SM when pure and neglected, soggy and soulful, BritInfused and snoringbeachfogside, Young Papa Olguine bass virtuoso on the L.A.1980neowwave scene, thrift store suit and Beefheart noizdevotion, Cathay de Grande and Rae’s on Pico, kids trying to be adults not adults trying to be kids. Our current state of the nation. Never mind. Papa’s unbowed and wiser.Nearly Beloved broke out a nice new MattLax original “My P-role Officer”, from Matt’s days trying to graft a Future onto the twisted limbs of 14 year old gansta killers in the steel grip of Special Ed. Everyone in the band is a fine soloist, and the night concluded with a jam on “Whipping Post,” yes, that very whipping post, and in 2007 Greg Allman is tied to Harrahs Reno, see him tonight, or see the Hawks 50 miles to the west in Camino, in the brown foothill prelude to the high heights.

Next day some hiked Mt. Tam, some wandered Tiburon, but all boarded the Yukon in mellow late afternoon, across the Tookie Memorial Bridge once more for what some would call Oakland, others might deem Emeryville. A nondescript brick and glass façade patrolled by tall hotpantstreetwalkers, and real hippies, graying hair and bluing eyes twinkling, greet us and escort us into a magic room, more magic in contrast to mean street outside, San Pablo, that’s all we’re going to tell you. *One of these scribes is on a jamesjoycebinge, halfwaythru and driven mad by Ulysses, so please understand and indulge any retroavantgardean prose you might have to thicketweave through. On a happier note, the Hawks are launching a web based service: ReJoyce. We will convert your prose to 1904 Hibernian in Exile near impenetrable neospeak.

**This is tough to shake.

Strangely familiar, but it’s been a while. The Hawks are rolling north on the 5, passing the big Tejon Ranch sign. Soon we’ll be gazing down on outer Lebec from windows of our Yukon. Paul L wonders if his cousins still live there.

We set a fictitious start time of 9:30 a.m., but of course things happen. Shawn had to go back home for his snare stand. Much standing around and chatting. Coffee and toast at Paul M’s Tujunga lair. But we’re moving now. We’re listening to Charlie Louvin’s new release, and we’re feeling better. Pretty damn nice. We’re at the big 99/5 split, where oddly you veer right in order to wind up left of the 99. One of these days we’re going to return by way of the 99. It’s such a cool and forlorn drive, a land no longer beloved. Belovedness is scarce these days, outside of your immediate tribe. Nearly Beloved?

It’s been a quietly fruitful last few months for the Hawks, laying a bit low, a few gigs here and there in L.A. We’ve cut twelve basic tracks for our new CD, and they’re sounding quite good, Shawn Nourse cutting manful and solid live tracks in his cool Highland Park home studio. If we pull off a summer surge we might have the CD out in the fall.Since we’re kicking off the first tour since last summer, let’s get a sample message from the band.

Rob: May God bless I See Hawks In L.A. with prosperity and peace.Paul M: Don’t use autotune unless you really need to, and then, use it liberally.

Paul L: Life is lightness and darkness. So light, so dark.Shawn: May the gas gods give us hope.

We will return via 99. Oh 99, 99, take me to the city where the lights all shine.It’s anything but unloved. I love it as I drive to the spanking new UC Merced to visit my PJ. 99 is just flying under the radar now. Once the major North/South California highway, the straight straight boring straight eye 5 has supplanted it in prominence and traffic, allowing US99 to become the great bucolic highway that it once was. Anyone for a Basque dinner?

Where are the prophets as humans race to conflagration?
Below are excerpts from Dr. Martin Luther King’s “Beyond Vietnam,” a 1967 speech made exactly one year before his assassination.
The entire speech can be read at:
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/058.html

“In 1957 a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. During the past ten years we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression which now has justified the presence of U.S. military “advisors” in Venezuela. This need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counter-revolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Colombia and why American napalm and green beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru. It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, ‘Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.'”Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken — the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investment.

“I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a “thing-oriented” society to a “person-oriented” society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. n the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on life’s roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: “This is not just.” It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: “This is not just.” The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: “This way of settling differences is not just.” This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

“America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.”This kind of positive revolution of values is our best defense against communism. War is not the answer. Communism will never be defeated by the use of atomic bombs or nuclear weapons. Let us not join those who shout war and through their misguided passions urge the United States to relinquish its participation in the United Nations. These are days which demand wise restraint and calm reasonableness. We must not call everyone a Communist or an appeaser who advocates the seating of Red China in the United Nations and who recognizes that hate and hysteria are not the final answers to the problem of these turbulent days. We must not engage in a negative anti-communism, but rather in a positive thrust for democracy, realizing that our greatest defense against communism is to take offensive action in behalf of justice. We must with positive action seek to remove thosse conditions of poverty, insecurity and injustice which are the fertile soil in which the seed of communism grows and develops.

“These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression and out of the wombs of a frail world new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. “The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light.” We in the West must support these revolutions. It is a sad fact that, because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch anti-revolutionaries. This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has the revolutionary spirit. Therefore, communism is a judgement against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions we initiated. Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores and thereby speed the day when “every valley shall be exalted, and every moutain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight and the rough places plain.””A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies.

“This call for a world-wide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one’s tribe, race, class and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all men. This oft misunderstood and misinterpreted concept — so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force — has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man. When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu-Moslem-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John:”Let us love one another; for love is God and everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. If we love one another God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us.

“Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day. We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. As Arnold Toynbee says : ‘Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word.'”We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked and dejected with a lost opportunity. The “tide in the affairs of men” does not remain at the flood; it ebbs. We may cry out deperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is deaf to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residue of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: ‘Too late.’ There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. ‘The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on…’ We still have a choice today; nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation.

“We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world — a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act we shall surely be dragged down the long dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.”Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter — but beautiful — struggle for a new world. This is the callling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? Will our message be that the forces of American life militate against their arrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets? Or will there be another message, of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise we must choose in this crucial moment of human history.

“As that noble bard of yesterday, James Russell Lowell, eloquently stated: Once to every man and nation
Comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of truth and falsehood,
For the good or evil side;
Some great cause, God’s new Messiah,
Off’ring each the bloom or blight,
And the choice goes by forever
Twixt that darkness and that light.
Though the cause of evil prosper,
Yet ’tis truth alone is strong;
Though her portion be the scaffold,
And upon the throne be wrong:
Yet that scaffold sways the future,
And behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow
Keeping watch above his own.

Check out this project funded by your taxpayer dollars:

A billion dollar embassy in Bagdhad, the size of Vatican City.
Could it be the Bush administration is planning on a permanent
occupation of Iraq? Would the seven massive military bases under construction also suggest this? Check out this Associated Press article for more on this fascinating tale.

We arguably arrogant Hawks like to take the long, historical point of view towards such things as the embassy and occupation, keeping in mind that humans are merely a strange and perhaps unfortunate incident in the geological march of time. And we ask: what will happen to all this junk after the American Empire collapses? Can Iraqis turn this beast of an embassy into low cost housing? Can the giant concrete slabs of the outlying U.S. airbases find some humane purpose? If a tree falls in the forest and everyone is watching Youtube or March Madness, will Tony Soprano get snuffed.

The Hawks are working on a new recording. This requires a delicate ballet of scheduling around day gigs and night gigs. Paul and Rob meet every Wednesday to work on songs, book shows, gossip, and complain about the low angle of the Hawks career trajectory. On Fridays the band meets at Shawn’s Highland Park home studio and knocks out a couple of songs. So far so good. We’ve got six or seven bass/drum/guitar keepers. Our vow this time is to keep overdubs to a minimum, but Paul L seems unable to resist the total freedom of the digital domain. More guitars, please. Just one more. How about some jawharp?

But this weekend we blew off recording, and for a righteous and good cause: our co-bill at the Getty Museum with the Chapin Sisters.THE GETTY

There are low chakra gigs and high chakra gigs. The Buccaneer in Sierra Madre is a low chakra gig, despite its mountainous location–a real bar, with real and tough locals whose drinking rituals you are providing background music for. A challenge to your band masculinity.The Getty is a high chakra gig: also at elevated altitude in the Santa Monica mountains, gazing dispassionately down at 405 traffic crawling north and south in the pass far below, gleaming white travertine draped building blocks in an architectural plan that’s overthought to the point of controlling, but it works. It works beautifully. You feel godlike and intelligent walking the stone plateaus, contemplating your sophisticated leisure choices–cafe? Exhibits? It doesn’t matter. You are godlike and intelligent up here.

Paul L got in a hassle with the zealous and shaved-spheroidal-head security guard at the bottom of the Getty grounds. Paul’s life is a continuous dialectic with authority figures, no doubt stemming from his Marine Corps dad’s capricious attempts to discipline his nine children while working 70 hours a week. As Paul L pulled away from the guard booth to drive up the hill, the Getty guard yelled, just a bit too loud and harshly for Paul’s delicately tuned sense of civility, for Paul to pull over for a car search.It’s been almost six terror free years since 9/11, and Paul L is willing to abandon Homeland Security. As long as none of his friends or relations take a hit, he is willing to trade a second calamity on American soil in trade for the disempowering of people with badges and headsets.

The guard ordered Paul to open his guitar case, glanced at the battered D-18 inside. “You can go.” What? Aren’t you going to inspect my dobro case? What about these suspicious black bags? The guard walked away. Onward, Paul. Let it go. Up the secret driveway that civilians never see, into the above ground underground parking lot, up an elevator, down a hall, onto the grounds, and the gracious and kind Getty coordinator Sarah McCarthy greeted Paul and deftly deflected his police state rant. The bad vibes drifted skyward towards a sinking sun over the Santa Monica Bay. The Getty concert hall rakes steeply downward from its light filled and airy foyer, walls and ceiling lined with a complex pattern of acoustic tiles. The room sounds as good as a room can sound. This is the future. Computer enhanced sonic reality.

The Chapin Sisters, Jessica, Abigail, and Lily, are a high chakra presence, angelic in appearance but with formidable and biting wit and intellect. They also sing like angels, rich and precise three part harmonies floating over guitar and banjo.

The Hawks and the Sisters sound check, then re-rehearse two songs together, a collaboration that Liz Garo, enlightened club and concert booker, has gently strongarmed the two reticent groups into trying out. Paul L and Rob had the temerity to write a moody ballad called “Never Alive” for the Chapin Sisters, which they learned in about five minutes, including shimmering harmonies; and the Chapin Sisters showed the Hawks a 70’s vintage Crystal Gayle country rocker. Well all right. We’re all ready to go in the green room, rehearsed, long discussion on Iraq, (most of the) Hawks happy to find the Sisters are deeply informed and way to the left. The Getty has provided gourmet food and a detailed plan for the evening. Our spouses arrive for some further green room hanging, and it’s showtime.

Sarah introduces the Hawks, and the time flies. A half hour set for a rapt audience in a finely tuned chamber–we don’t want to leave. The Chapin Sisters amuse, charm, and devastate the audience, and then we come back out for the two song two group extravaganza, which the audience is thrilled to learn about.The two songs go better than we’d all hoped, both with six voice choruses that billow off the tiles. We are elevated and godlike, for the moment.

THE DESERTThe high desert fires on all chakras. It will kill you if you are foolish, and it will make you shudder ecstatically with dry spirit winds passing through your skin over Intelligently shaped rock piles and valleys that draw your city trained eyesight to distant horizons.

The Saturday afternoon traffic on the 210 and 10 East was only moderately annoying. There is almost no open space left as the Inland Empire bottlenecks approaching San Bernardino. Beige pastel suburbia is approaching saturation. Just drive. This will pass. But what inglorious ruins for the new Goths to occupy!Eastward, beyond Banning/Beaumont. Windmills. Freedom. Even more freedom on 62 north and up into Joshua trees and rocks, the big swooping curve into Yucca Valley (hurry, Peak Oil, before we kill the whole state with stucco and Starbucks), even more freedom on Pioneertown Road north–wow, look at the scorched earth.

It’s amazing that Pappy & Harriet’s is still standing, surrounded by blackened Joshua Trees and the smell of smoke from last summer’s massive fire. There must have been some firefighter heroics involved here.The sandy road alongside the bar is already filled with cars, and the sand feels good underfoot. The sun drops over the blackened ridge. Enter through big old gnarled wood doors.

The adobe brick, beam, and darkened concrete rooms are packed, with a great local old time country music combo, the Shadow Mountain Band, laying down the real deal, and the Hawks are happy. Free band menu, tacos and burgers and Bass Ale, modern Minnie Pearl waitress complete with price tag on the hat and don’t cross her, the band ends with “I’ll Fly Away,” and all is very, very good.Beer. Beans. Burger. Must fight. Must stand, set up amps. The Queen of P&H and surrounding environs Robyn does a sound check. Tug on Gray Label bottle, this week filled with Presidente Brandy, according to current custodian Rob W. And we’re off.

Jon Bertini sounded so good on mandolin with the Shadow Mountain Band that we asked him to sit in with us, and he didn’t disappoint. A civilized and focused first set. Dancers fill the floor. The rest is a journey into whiskey and late night honky tonk shenanigans, where we all must go. After the first set RW spotted the familiar dome of old buddy and college dorm mate Jamie “Buck” Schall. What’s he doing here? A desert hallucination? No, the highway called him and his wife Liz and they left their home and dogs in Las Cruces for whiskey and road food. What a great surprise! It adds even more light and energy to our already fiercely vibrating chakras.

We were told it sounded just dandy, and we believed it. We certainly enjoyed ourselves. Shawn Nourse did an extended drum solo on Wonder Valley Fight Song, using merely a snare and an occasional aside on a tiny tom. Onward, Shawnee Play Drum! Paul M played heroic psychedelic bass, as the band did witness that spirit overtake him. THE 70’S

If you come careening down Pioneertown Road a bit too fast, barrel into Highway 62 and swerve left, you will plow into the Hat Rack Motel, and you will have done mankind a small but vital service. It’s a dive, folks. If the high desert motel world is booked for the weekend, you’re better off pitching a tent. Paul and Victoria endured the night here, hoping to get in a quick hike on Sunday morn. An uneasy night of crusty sheets and late night motorcycle and truck serenades a few feet away from Room 2. At 10 a.m. Paul and Victoria snuck off (not wanting to confront the aggressive maitre d’ motel, as Rob had dropped the key to the unused second Hawks room somewhere in the sands of Pioneertown).

Paul and Victoria had a fine breakfast at the Crossroads Cafe in Joshua Tree, and a finer soy cappuccino at the nearby Ricochet, then a quick but absorbing wandering into a wash off the roadside just inside the Park. Victoria found a power spot and flapped her wings.

Paul M, Shawn and Rob had powered home the night before. We all met up at the Sierra Madre cabin of Bliss, gentle guardian of the roots music ethos of Southern California (the third high altitude show of the weekend!). Bliss was hosting a reading by Barney Hoskyns, a British rock critic who’s written a book on the Laurel Canyon 1960’s and 1970’s music scene–a fascinating read with many surprising facts and rumors, and bits of interview with David Jackson, original Hawks bassist and member of Hearts and Flowers, Dillard and Clark, John Denver’s band. Jackson was there at the Genesis.Bliss’s ziti was on the table and Belgian ale was making the rounds of the guests: Dani from Walkie Talkie, soon to be Austin bound, Heather Waters, Christina Ortega, Claire Holley, Bryson, Greg DaPonte, Cary Darling, Rick and Suzie Shea . . . hmm, this sounds like name dropping. Well, it was great fun.

The Hawks did an acoustic set, with Mr. Shea sitting in, then Stonehoney laid down their four part harmony tunes, and then the modest Barney Hoskyns read excerpts from his book Hotel California. The sun set through dense trees. We Hawks drifted away. To lower elevation, except for Paul M, who may have gained a few feet at his Tujunga abode.

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Suspicions raised over the broad nature of 9/11 and other atrocity confessions by I See Hawks In L.A.’s lead singer Rob Waller has led to an independent investigation.

Waller not only confessed to being the 9/11 mastermind, but also claimed to have shot George Wallace in 1972–when Waller was an infant. Waller also insists he set off the 1994 Northridge earthquake. “Read Tesla,” Waller stated in his official confession. “It’s all there. I can trigger an 8.5 any time I feel like it.”A leaked memo reveals the disturbing torture methods used by U.S. interrogators at Guantanamo: repeated high volume exposure to Jason Bentley’s “Metropolis” radio program and round the clock forced listening to the live KCRW fund drive.

“It’s no surprise that Waller cracked. Beyond the telltale overbroad confession that often results from extreme abuse, I’m guessing that some form of dementia has taken place in Waller’s mental state,” says Tony Gilkyson, from UCLA’s Neuropsychiatric Institute. Waller is back home in Los Angeles, taking long recuperative walks, therapy sessions, and working on a new CD.

By Paul Craig Roberts

03/17/07 “ICH” — The first confession released by the Bush regime’s Military Tribunals–that of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed–has discredited the entire process. Writing in Jurist, Northwestern University law professor Anthony D’Amato likens Mohammed’s confession to those that emerged in Stalin’s show trials of Bolshevik leaders in the 1930s.That was my own immediate thought. I remember speaking years ago with Soviet dissident Valdimir Bukovsky about the behavior of Soviet dissidents under torture. He replied that people pressed for names under torture would try to remember the names of war dead and people who had passed away. Those who retained enough of their wits under torture would confess to an unbelievable array of crimes in an effort to alert the public to the falsity of the entire process.

That is what Mohammed did. We know he was tortured, because his response to the obligatory question about his treatment during his years of detention is redacted. We also know that he was tortured, because otherwise there is no point for the US Justice (sic) Dept. memos giving the green light to torture or for the Military Commissions Act, which permits torture and death sentence based on confession extracted by torture.Mohammed’s confession of crimes and plots is so vast that Katherine Shrader of the Associated Press reports that the Americans who extracted Mohammed’s confession do not believe it either. It is exaggerated, say Mohammed’s tormentors, and must be taken with a grain of salt.

In other words, the US torture crew, reveling in their success, played into Mohammed’s hands. Pride goes before a fall, as the saying goes.Mohammed’s confession admits to 31 planned and actual attacks all over the world, including blowing up the Panama Canal and assassinating presidents Carter and Clinton and the Pope. Having taken responsibility for the whole ball of wax along with everything else that he could imagine, he was the
entire show. No other terrorists needed.

Reading responses of BBC listeners to Mohammed’s confession reveals that the rest of the world is either laughing at the US government for being so stupid as to think that anyone anywhere would believe the confession or damning the Bush regime for being like the Gestapo and KGB.Humorists are having a field day with the confession: “‘I’m a very dangerous mastermind,’ said Mohammed, who confessed to the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby, the Brink’s robbery, St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, and the Lincoln and McKinley assassinations. Mohammed also accepted responsibility for spreading hay fever and cold sores around the world and for rained out picnics.”

If there was anything remaining of the Bush regime not already discredited, Mohammed’s confession removed any reputation left.The most important part of the Mohammed story is yet to make the headlines. Despite having held and tortured hundreds of detainees for years in Gitmo, and we don’t know how many more in secret prisons around the world, the US government has come up with only 14 “high value detainees.”

In other words, the government has nothing on 99 percent of the detainees who allegedly are so dangerous and wicked that they must be kept in detention without charges, access to attorneys and contact with families.And little wonder. The vast majority of detainees, alleged “enemy combatants,” are not terrorists captured by the CIA and brave US troops. They are hapless persons who happened to be outside their tribal or home territories and were kidnapped by criminal gangs or war lords who profited
greatly at the expense of the naive Americans who offered bounties for “terrorists.”
The US government does not care that innocent people have been ensnared, because the US government desperately needs both to prove that there are vast numbers of terrorists and to demonstrate its proficiency in protecting Americans by capturing terrorists. Moreover, the US government needs “dangerous suspects” that it can use to keep Americans in a state of supine
fearfulness and as a front behind which to undermine constitutional protections and the Bill of Rights.

The Bush-Cheney Regime succeeded in its evil plot, only to throw it all away by releasing the ridiculous confession by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.Will Bush’s totalitarian Military Tribunal now execute Mohammed on the basis of his confession extracted by torture, or would this be seen everywhere on earth as nothing but an act of murder?

If Bush can’t have Mohammed murdered, the US government will have to shut Mohammed away where he cannot talk and tell his tale. The US government will have to replicate Orwell’s memory hole by destroying Mohammed’s mind with mind-altering drugs and abuse.It is to such depths that George Bush and Dick Cheney have lowered America.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.reposted from informationclearinghouse.info

9/11 mastermind confesses in Guantanamo
By LOLITA C. BALDOR, Associated Press Writer
23 minutes ago

Robert Rex Waller Jr., lead singer of country rock band I See Hawks in L.A. and the suspected mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, confessed to that attack and a chilling string of other terror plots during a military hearing at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, according to a transcript released Wednesday by the Pentagon.”I was responsible for the 9/11 operation from A to Z to THC,” Waller said in a statement read during the session, which was held last Saturday.

The transcripts also refer to a claim by Waller that he was tortured by the CIA, although he said he was not under duress at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo when he confessed to his role in the attacks. He’s used to being tortured.

In a section of the statement that was blacked out, he confessed to the beheading of L.A. scenster and musician/artist Dan Janisch, The Associated Press has learned. Janisch was abducted in January 2007 in Culver City while performing a set at the westside nightspot, The Cinema Bar. Waller has long been a suspect in the killing.Waller’s hearing was conducted in his absence. Military officials
expected some of the 14 suspects not to participate.

King Kukulele, a Seton Hall University law professor who represents two Tunisians held at Guantanamo, said that based on the transcripts, Waller might be the only detainee who would qualify as an enemy combatant.”The government has finally brought someone into Gitmo who apparently admits to being someone who could be called an enemy combatant,” Kukulele, a critic of most of the detentions, said in a telephone interview from London. “None of the others rise to this level. The government has now got one.”

Christina Ortega, executive director of Human Rights Watch, questioned the legality of the closed-door session and confession and whether the confession was the result of torture.”We won’t know that unless there is an independent hearing,” she said. “We need to know if this purported confession would be enough to convict him at a fair trial or would it have to be suppressed as the fruit of torture?”
The military held 558 combatant status review tribunals between July
2004 and March 2005 and the panels concluded that all but 38
detainees were enemy combatants who should be held. Those 38 were
eventually released from Guantanamo.