|
March 23, 2002
Saeed Vaseghi
The US and Iran's Quest
for Democracy
Brian
J. Foley
Does
Pedophilia Scandal Spell an Opportunity for Catholics?
Sheperd Bliss
American Soul and Empire
James
Packard Winkler
Occupation
and Terror:
Politics from a Gun Barrel
M. Shahid Alam
A New International Division
of Labor
T.W. Croft
Enron's
Attack on Our
Economic Security
March 22, 2002
Robert Jensen
Corporate Power is a
Threat to Democracy
Tommy
Ates
The
Future of Black Academia
Rep. Ron Paul
Why are We in Ukraine?
March 21, 2002
McQuinn,
Munson, & Wheeler
Stars
and Stripes:
Killing for the Flag?
John Chuckman
How Change is Wrought
David
Vest
Hail
to the Chaff
March 20, 2002
Kay Lee
Censorship at Angelfire
Robert
Jensen
The
Politics of Pain
and Pleasure
Sheperd Bliss
Notes from Hawai'i:
Trouble in Paradise
Rick Giambetti
Prozac
and Suicide:
an Interview with
Dr. David Healy
Philip Farruggio
Bullies
Lori Allen
Live
from Ramallah:
The Madness of Occupation
March
19, 2002
Tariq
Ali
Nuke
Iraq?
Phyllis
Pollack
Roger
Daltrey's LA Surprise
Amir Ahmadi
War-Mongering
Academics:
The New Tartuffe
Ben White
Bomber
Blair
Fran Shor
Child-Murderers
and Madmen
March
18, 2002
Tom Turnipseed
Crazy
is Cool
Dave Marsh
DeskScan:
What's Playing At My House
Armen
Khanbabyan
The
Pentagon in the Caucasus:
Georgia Is Only the Beginning
Gabriel
Ash
Abdullah
v. Osama
Bernard
Weiner
Middle
East for Dummies
Alexander
Cockburn
Tipping
in America
March
17, 2002
David
Vest
The
Politics of Packaging
Tariq
Ali
The
Left's New Empire Loyalists
March
16, 2002
Chris
Floyd
Ashcroft's
Secret Snatches
March 15, 2002
Doron Rosenblum
Israel's Settler Warlords
Alex Lynch
Rhetorical
Attacks On Iraq
Norman Madarasz
Neo-Con Propaganda
and the National Review
Paul-Marie
de La Gorce
Making
Enemies
March
14, 2002
Dr. Susan
Block
RIP
Danny Pearl
Francis
Boyle
Bush
Nuke Plan Violates International Law, Again
Wayne
Saunders
Memo
to Paul McCartney:
There Are Two Kinds
of Freedom, Sir
H.P. Albarelli
Anthrax
Cover-up?
March
13, 2002
Amira
Hass
Are
the Occupied Protecting the Occupier?
CounterPunch
Wire
National
Review Editors Suggest Nuking Mecca
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Personal
Responsibility
for Corporate Elites?
Robert
Fisk
Arabs
Don't Want US
to Strike Iraq
Alexander
Cockburn
When
Billy Graham Wanted
to Kill One Million People
March
12, 2002
Kay Lee
Dangerous
Changes in
California's Prisons
John Patrick
Leary
The
Return of Otto Reich
Wole Akande
US
is Being Discredited
in the Eyes of Africa
March
11, 2002
Hani Shukrallah
This
is the Way the World Ends
Tommy
Ates
Bush's
New Nuke Policy:
Target Allies and Enemies
Lidia Andrusenko
The Great
Chicken War:
Bush v. Putin
Dave Marsh
10
CDs Playing On My Desk
John Chuckman
Footprints
in the Dust
Norman
Madarasz
Max
Steel in a Time of Chaos
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
Complete
Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
(Click Here to Order from CounterPunch
Online at 20% Off Amazon.com's price!)
INSIDE
EXCLUSIVE
TO
COUNTERPUNCH
SUBSCRIBERS
Published Oct. 15, 2001
8-Page Special Issue
War Diary
CIA's Assassination Plan a History of
Torture in US Prisons
bin Laden and Bush
Business Connections
Aisha Ikramuddin on the Hidden Hype
of US Food Bombs
Peter Linebaugh on
Pakistan
Christopher Hitchens' Love for Mrs. Thatcher
Jiang Zemin Tells Bush:
Nuke 'Em
Search
CounterPunch
Read Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The New Crusade:
America's War on Terrorism
By Rahul Mahajan
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
and St. Clair
Buy
This Explosive
New Book at an
Amazing Discount!
Reviews of Gore:
a User's Manual
|
March 24/March
30, 2002
THE HORROR OF IT ALL
By Claud Cockburn
Continued
from part one...
The German, and indeed most of the Western,
intelligentsia were incredulous when Hitler set out to prove
that Wall Street and the communists, all run by Jews, were in
essence the same people pursuing identical objectives. For a
dangerously long time the intelligentsia simply refused to believe
that so preposterous a notion could deceive anyone but the infantile
or the senile. Much too late, this same intelligentsia were forced
to realize that millions of people could be brought to believe
not only that, but also to believe, as the Nazi Press told them
to during the Second World War, that President Roosevelt was
a Jew whose real name was Rosenfeld, and was acting in collaboration
with communists (whose leader's first name was Joseph) to bring
about the destruction of Western society.
With this fairly recent phenomenon in
mind, we can better understand the credibility of Constantine
Schuabe, and the impact of When It Was Dark. Enter (in London)
villain Number Two, or the Second Murderer. This is Robert Llwellyn,
internationally famous savant in charge of the Palestinian section
of the British Museum. He is described as being 'that almost
inhuman phenomenon, a sensualist with a soul'. In his room at
the Museum he has just received the news that he is about to
be knighted for services rendered to science, archaeology, scriptural
knowledge and so on. But he too has troubles of a kind with which
it might be difficult for, say, an Oxford don of the 1970s to
identify. He is leading a double life.
"The lofty scientific world of which
he was an ornament, had no points of contact with that other
and unspeakable half life. Rumours had been bruited, things said
in secret by envious and less distinguished men, but they had
never harmed him ... What did it matter if smaller people with
forked tongues hissed horrors of his private life? The other
circles - the lost slaves of pleasure - knew him well and were
content."
What then were the horrors so hissed?
They consisted in the fact that, although a married man, he kept
a mistress. And this mistress was a music-hall actress so well
known that her picture appeared on cigarette cards. He kept her
in Bloomsbury Court Mansions. One does not today associate Bloomsbury
with luxurious vice, but that, in 1903, was what it meant. The
room of
"one of London's popular favourites,
Miss Gertrude Hunt, reeked with a well-known perfume, an evil,
sickly smell of ripe lilies and the acrid smoke of Egyptian tobacco
... The room would have struck an ordinary visitor with a sense
of nausea almost like a physical blow. There was something sordidly
shameless about it. The vulgarest and
most material of Circes held sway among all this gaudy and lavish
disorder. The most sober-minded and innocent-minded man, brought
suddenly into such a place, would have known it instantly for
what it was and turned to fly as from a pestilence."
It should be said here that despite a
Jewish look, a vulgarly cockney accent (in which she sings with
enormous success a song called The Coon of Coons') and her sexual
immorality, she turns up trumps in the end, pushed along by Basil
Gortre and the knowledge that she is soon going to die of an
incurable 'internal disease'.
Just before venturing into this den in
Bloomsbury, we are offered a vignette of Prof. Llwellyn's home
life. Here again, the point is that Guy Thorne's public of 1903
obviously found the picture quite credible. So much so, in fact,
that the author does not find it necessary to suggest that there
was anything more than a little unusual about it. In the 1970S
the thing would take a good deal of explaining, and the characters
concerned would have to be represented as fugitives from a sanatorium.
How otherwise account for the fact that Mrs Llwellyn does not
divorce the Professor?
"They had been married for fifteen
years. For fourteen of them he had hardly ever spoken to her
except in anger at some household accident. On her own private
income of six hundred a year she had to do what she could to
keep the house going. Llwellyn never gave her anything of the
thousand a year which was his salary at the Museum, and the greater
sums he earned by his salary outside it. She knew no one. The
Professor went into none but official society, and indeed but
few of his colleagues knew that he was a married man. He treated
the house as an hotel, sleeping there occasionally, breakfasting
and dressing. His private rooms were the only habitable part
of the house. All the rest was old, faded and without comfort.
Mrs Llwellyn spent most of her life with the two servants in
the kitchen. She always swept and tidied her husband's rooms
herself. That after-noon she had built and coaxed the fire with
her own hands. She slept in a small room at the top of the house,
next to the maids, for company. This was her life."
Our sensualist with a soul, on arrival
at Bloomsbury Court
Mansions, is so troubled that, despite having eaten nothing but
a snack of soup, fish and cheese, he is unable to eat the supper
prepared for him by the vulgar and material Circe. The reason
for this trouble is that he is being sexually blackmailed by
Miss Hunt and financially blackmailed by the man Schuabe, now
resident at the Hotel Cecil, next door to the Savoy, overlooking
the Thames, and arranging for getting rid of Christianity and
all that that implies.
Schuabe has written to the Professor
demanding that he pay back loans from Schuabe of which 'the principal
and interest now total the sum of fourteen thousand pounds'.
The man Schuabe writes:
"It would be superfluous to point
out to you what bankruptcy would mean to you in your position.
Ruin would be the only word. And it would be no ordinary bankruptcy.
I have by no means an uncertain idea where these large sums have
gone, and my knowledge can hardly fail to be shared by others
in London Society. [I.e. He will tell London Society about Gertrude
Hunt.]
"I have still a chance to offer
you, however, and perhaps you will find me by no means the tyrant
you think. There are certain services which you can do me, and
which, if you fall in with my views, will not only wipe off the
few thousands of your indebtedness, but will provide you with
a capital sum which will place you above the necessity for any
such financial manoeuvres in the future as your -shall I say
infatuation - has led you to resort to in the past. If you care
to lunch with me in my rooms at the Hotel Cecil at two o'clock
the day after tomorrow - Friday-we may discuss your affairs quietly.
If not then I must refer you to my solicitors entirely. Yours
sincerely, Constantine Schuabe.
So what is our man Schuabe going to get
for his many thousand pieces of gold ? Simply this: on grounds
of alleged ill-health the Professor is to get one year's leave
of absence from the British Museum.
He will proceed to Jerusalem.
With his unparalleled skill and the help
of an enormous bribe from Schuabe to a corruptible Greek called
lonides, a man much esteemed by the Palestine Exploration Society,
he will then forge, in a tomb just outside Jerusalem, a certain
inscription.
The nature of this inscription? It is
nothing less than a message from Joseph of Arimathea, admitting
that he, Joseph, stole the body of Christ and hid it in this
same tomb. So that when the disciples thought that Christ had
risen from the dead, they were victims of a well-meant deception
by Joseph of Arimathea. There had been no Resurrection. The body
had merely been secretly transferred from one tomb to another.
The entire Christian world had been the victim of this hoax.
They did not have radium tests in those
days, capable of deciphering the antiquity or otherwise of such
an inscription or of 'the slight mould on the stone slab which
may or may not be' (as the Daily Wire was to announce later)
'that of a decomposed body'. All the same, it certainly took
fifty thousand pounds' worth of the Professor's skill to fake
the thing so that it was going, a bit later, to fool all the
greatest Palestinian experts in the world, including archaeologist
Hands.
For, obviously enough, it was not going
to be Llwellyn who would make the historic discovery. The thing
that was going to change the history of the world would come
to light as a result of the honest exploratory labours of honest
men like Hands.
And so, in the fullness of time and exactly
in accordance with the malign calculation of Devil-man Schuabe,
it came to pass. It is naturally difficult in a summary to do
any kind of justice to Guy Thorne's capacity for the creation
of suspense. To convey it one must quote at some length the chapter
in which the news of the supposed discovery in Jerusalem reaches
London. Harold Spence, you will remember, is a leader-writer
for the Daily Wire. One of his room-mates, Cyril Hands, is agent
of the Palestine Exploration Society. Hands has recently left
for Palestine on the business of the Society. The reader is of
course already aware of the nature and the successful carrying
out of the tremendous plot concocted by Schuabe and Sir Robert
Llwellyn, but nobody else in the civilized world is aware of
the fearful time-bomb ticking away beneath them. With admirable
skill Thorne delays the final revelation with what might otherwise
be a pedestrian account of a day in the life of Harold Spence.
"One Wednesday - he remembered the
day afterwards - Spence woke about midday. He had been late at
the office the night before and afterwards had gone to a club,
not going to bed till after four, He heard the 'laundress' [charwoman]
moving about the chambers preparing his breakfast. He shouted
to her and in a minute or two she came in with his letters and
a cup of tea. She went to the window and pulled up the blind,
letting a dreary grey-yellow December light into the room .'Nasty
day, Mrs Buscall?' he said, sipping his tea. 'It is so, sir,'
the woman said, a lean kindly-faced London drudge, caught in
Drury Lane. 'Gives me a frog in my throat all the time, this
fog does ... letter from Mr Cyril, I see, sir,' she remarked.
Mrs Buscall loved the archaeologist with more strenuousness than
her other two charges: the unusual and mysterious has a real
fascination for a certain type of uneducated Cockney brain. Hands's
rare sojourns at the chambers, the Eastern dresses and pictures
in his room, his strange and perilous life, as she considered
it, in the veritable Bible land where Satan actually roamed the
desert in the form of a lion seeking whom he might devour, all
these stimulated her crude imagination and brought colour into
the dreary purlieus of Drury Lane. Most of the women around Mrs
Buscall drank gin. The doings of Cyril Hands were sufficient
tonic for her.
"Spence glanced at the bulky package
with the Turkish stamps and peculiar aroma, which the London
fog had not yet killed, of ships and alien sounds. Hands was
a good correspondent. Sometimes he sent general articles on the
work he was doing, not too technical, and Ommaney, the editor
of Spence's paper, used and paid well for them.
"But on this morning Spence did
not feel inclined to open the packet. It could wait. He was not
in the humour for it now. It would be too tantalizing to read
of those deep skies like a hard hollow turquoise, of the flaming
white sun, the white mosque and minarets throwing purple shadows
round the cypresses and olives After breakfast, the lunchtime
of most of the world, he found it impossible to settle down to
anything. He was not due at the office that night and the long
hours without the excitement of his work stretched rather hopelessly
before him. He thought of paying calls in the various parts of
the West End where he had friends whom he had rather neglected
of late. But he dismissed that idea
when it came, for he did not feel as if he could make himself
very agreeable to anyone. He half thought of running down to
Brighton, fighting the cold bracing sea winds on the lawns at
Hove and returning the next day. He was certainly out of sorts
- liverish, no doubt - and the solution to his difficulties presented
itself to him in the project of a Turkish bath. He put his correspondence
into the pocket of his overcoat to be read at leisure and drove
to a Ham-mam in Jermyn Street. The physical warmth, the silence,
the dim lights and oriental decorations induced a supreme sense
of comfort and bien etre. It brought Constantinople back to him
in vague reverie.
"Perhaps, he thought, the Turkish
bath in London is the only easy way to obtain a sudden and absolute
change of environment. Nothing else brings detachment so readily,
so instinct with change and the unusual. In the delightful languor
he passed from one dim chamber to another, lying prone in the
great heat which surrounded him like a cloak. Then the vigorous
kneading and massage, the gradual toning and renovating of each
joint and muscle till he stood drenched in aromatic foam, a new
fresh physical personality ... at four a slippered attendant
brought him a sole and a bottle of yellow wine and after the
light meal he fell once more into a placid restorative sleep.
"And all the while the letter from
Jerusalem was in his overcoat pocket, forgotten, hung in the
entrance hall. The thing which was to alter the lives of thousands
and tens of thousands, that was to bring a cloud over England
more dark and menacing than it had ever known, lay there with
its stupendous message, its relentless influence, while outside
the church bells all over London were tolling for Evensong. At
length, as night was falling, Spence went out into the lighted
streets with their sudden roar of welcome. He was immensely refreshed,
his thoughts moved quickly and well, depression had left him
and the activity of his brain was unceasing. He turned into St
James's Street where his club was, intending to find somebody
who would come to a music-hall with him. There was no one he
knew intimately in the smoking room but soon after he arrived
Lambert, one of the deputy curators from the British Museum,
came in. Spence and Lambert had been at Marlborough together,
Spence asked Lambert, who was in evening dress, to be his companion.
'Sorry, I can't, old man,' he answered, 'I've got to dine with
my uncle. Sir Michael. It's a bore of course but it's policy.
The place will be full of High Church bishops and minor Cabinet
ministers and people of that sort. I only hope old Ripon will
be there, he's my uncle's tame vicar you know, uncle runs an
expensive church like some men run a theatre, for he's always
bright and amusing ... sorry I can't come, awful bore. I've had
a tiring day too and a ballet would be refreshing. The governor's
been in a state of filthy irritation and nerves for the last
fortnight.'
" 'Sir Robert Llwellyn, isn't it?'
"'Yes, he's my chief and a very
good fellow too as a rule. He went away for several months, you
know, travelled abroad for his health. [The reader of course
is aware of the real purpose of Sir Robert's excursion.] When
he first came back three months ago he looked as fit as a fiddle
and seemed awfully pleased with himself all round. But lately
he's been decidedly off colour. He seems worried about something,
does hardly any work and he always seems waiting and looking
out for a coming event. He bothers me out of my life, always
coming into my room and talking about nothing, or speculating
upon the possibility of all sorts of new discoveries which will
upset everyone's theories.'
"'I met him in Dieppe in the Spring.
He seemed all right then, just at the beginning of his leave.'
"'Well, he's certainly not that
now, worse luck, and confound him. He interferes with my work
no end.'
"It was after seven o'clock. Spence
wasn't hungry yet, the light meal in the Hammam had satisfied
him. He resolved to go to the Empire alone, not because the idea
of going seemed very attractive but because he had planned it
and could substitute no other way of spending the evening for
the first determination. So about nine o'clock he strolled into
the huge garish music hall. He went into the Empire and already
his contentment was beginning to die away again. The day seemed
a day of trivialities, a sordid uneventful day of London gloom
which he had vainly tried to disperse with little futile rockets
of amusement. He sat down in a stall and watched a clever juggler
doing wonderful things with billiard balls. After the juggler
a coarsely handsome Spanish girl came upon the stage - he remembered
her at La Scala in Paris. She was said to be one of the beauties
of Europe and a King's favourite.
"After the Spanish woman there were
two men, 'Brothers' someone. One was disguised as a donkey, the
other as a tramp and together they did laughable things.
"With a sigh he went upstairs and
moved slowly through the thronged promenade. The hard faces of
the men and women repelled him. One elderly Jewish-looking person
reminded him of a great grey slug. He turned into the American
Bar at one extremity of the horseshoe. It was early yet and the
big room pleasantly cool was quite empty. A man brought him a
long particoloured drink. He felt the pressure of the packet
in his pocket. It was Cyril Hands's letter he found as he took
it out. He thought of young Lambert at the club, a friend of
Hands and fellow worker in the same field, and languidly opened
the letter.
"Two women came in and sat at a
table not far from him as he began to read. He was the only man
in the place and they regarded him with a tense conscious interest.
They saw him open a bulky envelope with a careless manner. He
would look up soon, they expected.
"But as they watched they saw a
sudden swift contraction of the brows, a momentous convulsion
of every feature. His head bent lower towards the manuscript.
They saw that he became very pale.
"In a minute or two what had at
first seemed a singular paleness became a frightful ashen colour.
That Johnny's going to be ill,' one of the women said to another.
As she spoke they saw the face change. A lurid excitement burst
out upon it like a flame. The eyes glowed, the mouth settled
into swift purpose.
"Spence took up his hat and left
the room with quick decided steps. He threaded his way through
the crowd round the circle, like a bed of orchids surrounded
by heavy poisonous scents, and almost ran into the street. A
cab was waiting. He got into it and inspired by his words and
appearance the man drove furiously down dark Garrick Street and
the blazing Strand towards the offices of the Daily Wire. The
great building of dressed stone which stood in the middle of
Fleet Street was dark. The advertisement hall and business offices
were closed. The journalist turned down a long corridor with
doors on either side ... at the extreme end he opened a door
and passing round a red baize screen flung himself in on Ommaney's
room, the centre of the great web of brains and machinery which
daily gave the Wire to the world. Ommaney's room was very large,
warm and bright - it was also extremely tidy. The writing table
had little on it save the great blotting pad and an inkstand,
the books on chairs and shelves were neatly arranged ... Ommaney
was slim and pale, carefully dressed and of medium height. He
did not look very old. His moustache was golden and carefully
tended, his pale honey-coloured hair waved over a high white
forehead.
"'I shall want an hour,' Spenre
said. 'I've just got what may be the most stupendous news any
newspaper has ever published.'
"The editor looked up quickly. A
flash of interest passed over his pale immobile face and was
gone. He knew that if Spence spoke like this the occasion was
momentous. He looked at his watch. 'Is it news for tonight's
paper?' he said. 'No,' answered Spence, 'I'm the only man in
England I think who has it yet. We shall gain nothing by printing
tonight but we must settle our course of action at once. That
won't wait. You'll understand when I explain ...' Spence took
a chair opposite. He seemed dazed. He was trembling with excitement.
His face was pale with it, yet above and beyond this agitation
there was almost fear in his eyes.
"'It's a discovery in Palestine
- at Jerusalem,' he said in a low vibrating voice, spreading
out the thin crackling sheets of foreign notepaper on his knee
and arranging them in order. 'You know Cyril Hands, the agent
of the Palestine Exploring Fund?' 'Yes, quite well by reputation,'
said Ommaney, 'and I've met him once or twice. Very sound man.'
'These papers are from him. They seem to be of tremendous importance,
of a significance that I can hardly grasp yet.' 'What is the
nature of them?' asked the editor, rising from his chair, powerfully
affected in his turn by Spence's manner. Harold put his hand
up to his throat, pulling at his collar, the apple moved up and
down convulsively.
"'The tomb!' Spence gasped. 'The
Holy Tomb!'
"'What do you mean?' asked Ommaney.
'Another supposed burial place of Christ - like The Times business
when they found the Gordon tomb, and Canon MacColl wrote such
a lot?'
"His face fell a little. This, though
interesting enough and fine news copy, was less than he hoped.
"'No, no,' cried Spence, getting
his voice back at last and speaking like a man in acute physical
pain, "A new tomb has been found, there is an inscription
in Greek, written by Joseph of Arimathea, and there are other
traces.'
"His voice failed him. 'Go on, man,
go on,' said the editor.
"'The inscription - tells that -
Joseph took the body of Jesus -from his own garden tomb - he
hid it in this place - the disciples never knew - it is a confession.'
"Ommaney was as white as Spence
now. 'There are other contributory proofs; Spence continued.
Hands says that it is certain. All the details are here, read
-'
"Ommaney stared fixedly at his lieutenant.
"'Then if this is true; he whispered,
'it means?'
"'THAT CHRIST NEVER ROSE FROM THE
DEAD. THAT CHRISTIANITY IS ALL A LIE.'
"Spence slipped back in his chair
a little and fainted."
After Spence has been partially revived
with brandy the editor soliloquizes aloud on the situation.
"'Of course I and you are hardly
competent to judge of the value of this communication. To me,
speaking as a layman, it seems extremely clear. But we must of
course see a specialist before publishing anything. If this news
is true, and I will give all I am worth if it were not, though
I am no Christian, of course you realize that the future history
of the world is changed. I hold in my hand something that will
come to millions and millions of people as an utter extinction
of hope and light. It's impossible to say what will happen. Moral
law will be abrogated for a time. The whole fabric of society
will fall into ruin at once until it can adjust itself to the
new state of things There will be war all over the world; crime
will cover England like a cloud ...' His voice faltered as the
terrible picture grew in his brain. Both of them felt that mere
words were utterly unable to express the horrors which they saw
dawning."
Click
here for the conclusion of Claud Cockburn's
Horror of It All
|