Room 117 Kabul Hotel

Children Warriors

Dear Mr. Herbert,

Re: August 18, 2005 Blood Runs Red, Not Blue  New York Times op-ed.

It was when you said, " if the war in Iraq is worth fighting - if it's a noble venture, as the hawks insist it is - then it's worth fighting with the children of the privileged classes." I had to respond. It should be re-titled, Children's Blood Runs Red , Not Blue. The emphasis is on "children," whether male or female, rich or poor, it's time to question the idea that "children" should be asked to fight in wars created by adults who have failed to even provide a genuine explanation of their flawed decision making. Even more disturbing is that so few adults are held accountable in any public way for sending our children to die for their mistakes.

Increasing numbers of American parents are recognizing the inherent unfairness of using our children to fight wars at all.  Even in a just war, War inherently is the failure of negotiation. There could not be a more "unjust war" than the war in Iraq. Negotiation was never viewed as an honorable option. In fact it's safe to say, the Bush administration views the use of negotiation as a failure! Let's have the Congress and Senate and anyone who thinks war is a reasonable and honorable option instead of working harder to resolve differences through negotiation sign up first instead of taking our children, male and  female, rich and poor. Except for the vested interests, how fast would the war option disappear?  How fast would the troops be headed home.

Let's honor the warrior who puts down his gun to end the war forever. Let's create a new role for the warrior. Turn the warrior power into negotiator power. Let's get the negotiator on the "A" list for a change!

Please Mr. Herbert, let's stop sacrificing all of Abraham's children forever.

Sincerely,

Elizabeth Gould

mother of Devon, 20 and Alissa, 23

New York Times August 18, 2005 Blood Runs Red, Not Blue By BOB HERBERT

You have to wonder whether reality ever comes knocking on George W. Bush's door. If it did, would the president with the unsettling demeanor of a boy king even bother to answer? Mr. Bush is the commander in chief who launched a savage war in Iraq and now spends his days happily riding his bicycle in Texas. This is eerie. Scary. Surreal. The war is going badly and lives have been lost by the thousands, but there is no real sense, either at the highest levels of government or in the nation at large, that anything momentous is at stake. The announcement on Sunday that five more American soldiers had been blown to eternity by roadside bombs was treated by the press as a yawner. It got very little attention. You can turn on the television any evening and tune in to the bizarre extended coverage of the search for Natalee Holloway, the Alabama teenager who disappeared in Aruba in May. But we hear very little about the men and women who have given up their lives in Iraq, or are living with horrific injuries suffered in that conflict. If only the war were more entertaining. Less of a downer. Perhaps then we could meet the people who are suffering and dying in it. For all the talk of supporting the troops, they are a low priority for most Americans. If the nation really cared, the president would not be frolicking at his ranch for the entire month of August. He'd be back in Washington burning the midnight oil, trying to figure out how to get the troops out of the terrible fix he put them in. Instead, Mr. Bush is bicycling as soldiers and marines are dying. Dozens have been killed since he went off on his vacation. As for the rest of the nation, it's not doing much for the troops, either. There was a time, long ago, when war required sacrifices that were shared by most of the population. That's over. I was in Jacksonville, Fla., a few days ago and watched in amusement as a young woman emerged from a restaurant into 95-degree heat and gleefully exclaimed, "All right, let's go shopping!" The war was the furthest thing from her mind. For the most part, the only people sacrificing for this war are the troops and their families, and very few of them are coming from the privileged economic classes. That's why it's so easy to keep the troops out of sight and out of mind. And it's why, in the third year of a war started by the richest nation on earth, we still get stories like the one in Sunday's Times that began: "For the second time since the Iraq war began, the Pentagon is struggling to replace body armor that is failing to protect American troops from the most lethal attacks by insurgents." Scandalous incompetence? Appalling indifference? Try both. Who cares? This is a war fought mostly by other people's children. The loudest of the hawks are the least likely to send their sons or daughters off to Iraq. The president has never been clear about why we're in Iraq. There's no plan, no strategy. In one of the many tragic echoes of Vietnam, U.S. troops have been fighting hellacious battles to seize areas controlled by insurgents, only to retreat and allow the insurgents to return. If Mr. Bush were willing to do something he has refused to do so far - speak plainly and honestly to the American people about this war - he might be able to explain why U.S. troops should continue with an effort that is, in large part at least, benefiting Iraqi factions that are murderous, corrupt and terminally hostile to women. If by some chance he could make that case, the next appropriate step would be to ask all Americans to do their part for the war effort. College kids in the U.S. are playing video games and looking forward to frat parties while their less fortunate peers are rattling around like moving targets in Baghdad and Mosul, trying to dodge improvised explosive devices and rocket-propelled grenades. There is something very, very wrong with this picture. If the war in Iraq is worth fighting - if it's a noble venture, as the hawks insist it is - then it's worth fighting with the children of the privileged classes. They should be added to the combat mix. If it's not worth their blood, then we should bring the other troops home. If Mr. Bush's war in Iraq is worth dying for, then the children of the privileged should be doing some of the dying.

Bill Moyers and the Holy War

On May 15, 2005  Bill Moyers gave a rousing speech at the National Conference of Media to an SRO crowd of at least 2000 supporters.  Moyers was passionate about the need for the public to reclaim PBS and the media for the future of our democracy.  Moyers introduces himself with an ironic metaphor, one that links Moyers the Media man to Moyers, the Holy man.

"First, let me assure you that I take in stride attacks by the radical right wingers who have not given up demonizing me although I retired over six months ago. They’ve been after me for years now, and I suspect they will be stomping on my grave to make sure I don’t come back from the dead. I should point out to them that one of our boys pulled it off some two thousand years ago after the Pharisees, the Sadducees and Caesar surrogates thought they had shut him up for good. I won’t be expecting that kind of miracle, but I should put my detractors on notice, they might just compel me out of the rocking chair and back into the anchor chair."

It's about time powerhouses like Bill Moyers finally got it right. This is Holy War, the only game left to play in Washington. Make no mistake these boys are Holy Warriors. How can you tell? They take no prisoners! We found out about the DC franchise of Holy Warriors when we covered the Afghan crisis for CBS News following the expulsion of the western media in 1980. And yes Bill, the majority of main stream media blindly joined the DC Holy Warrior franchise against the Evil Empire. Back then the first movie of the Star Wars series had recently opened. It's amazing to realize how that movie mythically presented the actual events that were taking place in DC. Guess who got to play the role of the hero rebels, our DC Franchise Holy Warriors, of course! Life imitating art? At that time Paul Warnke, the chief SALT II negotiator, described to us what he came up against while dealing with Congress after the Soviet invasion. Even though Warnke was a pro and very well known, he came up against something new and unmovable in the political process. What Warnke came up against was new to him, suddenly after 35 years of back and forth on various treaties with the Soviets, negotiation was OVER.  It was much, much more than the usual political opposition. Warnke called it ethnic foreign policy, but It was really HOLY WAR for Warnke's nemesis, Zbigniew Brzezinski  the National Security Advisor to President Carter from 1977 to 1981.  Holy Warrior Brzezinski was known for his hawkish foreign policy, but he was especially known to be anti-Soviet. When Brzezinski's confrontation approach to foreign policy had won the day by luring the Soviets into what Brzezinski called the "Afghan trap," the rest, as they say is history.

Now Bill Moyers has been added to the list of Heretics that Paul Warnke joined unexpectedly in 1979. Hip hip hooray, the more the merrier!

Mike Nichols and Metaphor

On the 5/9 opening day of Huffington's blog Mike Nichols raised a significant point about the crisis in understanding metaphor:

"I think that metaphor is in trouble. To take the bible literally, as fundamentalists do, is an attack on the greatest collection of metaphors we have. We need metaphor as we need stories. We need stories that mean more than just the events that transpire in them. Anyone who has read to children knows that the development of their entire personalities requires stories beyond the literal. They are the only way to understand and develop ideas. If we have, as de Tocqueville predicted, become pure market forces then we need to do CPR on metaphor pretty fast. Dr. King knew that an improved reality begins with a dream. In dreams begin responsibilities."

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According to wikidedia metaphor is:  ... " a rhetorical trope where a comparison is made between two seemingly unrelated subjects. Typically, a first object is described as being a second object. In this way, the first object can be economically described because implicit and explicit attributes from the second object can be used to fill in the description of the first. Some (particularly in cognitive linguistics) see metaphor as a basic cognitive function, while others prefer the term analogy for this concept. However, metaphor is not always used for practical description and understanding; sometimes it is used for purely aesthetic reasons."

The revelation that many of our own family members did not understand metaphor saved us from many a battle in thought. Similar to being color blind without knowing it, at first you don't realize it's your system that' s not working. You think the world is conspiring against you. When it comes to color blindness, once you realize it's you it's easy to accept, not so with the metaphor function.

How do you get through to someone who thinks you're playing tricks with their mind when you use metaphor? How do you get through that it is their inability to process the information that is the problem? How do you get through that their translator for metaphor in thought is turned off? Communication between those of us who are fluent in metaphor and literalists will deteriorate even further if we approach this as a turf war over the meaning of language.  We know that there has to be respect for different approaches. We all have a right to our viewpoint. The best way to influence someone is to try to be helpful and open-minded. Maybe if we approached literalists with more generosity and acceptance the literalist would respond in kind.

Based on the tone of this 3/13/05 article discussing the loss of analogies from SAT's the problem of the missing metaphor Nichols bemoans will become even more widespread.

"An SAT Without Analogies is Like: (A) A Confused Citizenry... Adam Cohen addresses how the situation for Analogies is as in trouble: "We are living in the age of the false, and often shameless, analogy. A slick advertising campaign compares the politicians working to dismantle Social Security to Franklin D. Roosevelt. In a new documentary, "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room," Kenneth Lay compares attacks on his company to the terrorist attacks on the United States. Intentionally misleading comparisons are becoming the dominant mode of public discourse. The ability to tell true analogies from false ones has never been more important. But to make room for the new essay portion of the SAT that was rolled out this weekend with much fanfare, the College Board has unceremoniously dropped the test's analogy questions, saying blandly that analogical reasoning will still be assessed "in the short and long reading passages." Replacing logic questions with writing is perfectly in keeping with these instant-messaging, 500-cable-channel times, when the emphasis is on communicating for the sake of communicating rather than on having something meaningful to say. Obviously, every American should be able to write, and write well. But if forced to choose between a citizenry that can produce a good 25-minute writing sample or spot a bad analogy, we would be better off with a nation of analogists."

left brain (evolutionists) vs right brain (creationists)

In  Evolutionary War, philosopher of science Michael Ruse grapples with the ongoing battle in thought between Evolutionists and Creationists. This battle is best described as the left brain right brain clash. Known as the "the mother of invention and father of abstract thought" the neocortex is divided into the famous left and right brain. The left half controls the right side of the body and the right side of the brain the left side of the body. Also, the right brain is more spatial, abstract, musical and artistic, while the left brain more linear, rational, and verbal. For many it is only through dreams the artistic right brain gets to take control from the more logical, linguistic left brain heavily used during the day especially by rationalists. Through dreams we get to experience everything from it's polar opposite. Many inventors such as Einstein found answers to their scientific quest in dreams.

The right and  left brain polarities exist within each of us and most of us are not in a war with our "other" so to speak.  We can shift back and forth at will and appreciate and balance each perspective. In fact we need both. People sometimes get stuck in one realm, one worldview while reacting to their "other" as an enemy. Once we get both brains talking to each other and accepting that each has a unique perspective that does not deny the other, the war is over: light and dark, good and evil, male and female, mother and father.

The article noted that Evolutionists can be their own worst enemies when they claim atheism is the only path to truth. These atheists need an education in their "religion."  Over the last 1000 years science was dominated by religious clerics. The Jesuits of all the orders had an amazing talent for science. Even the concept of scientific collaboration was credited to the Society of Jesus. The scientific community  was from the beginning a celibate world whose core purpose was for men to discover the creation process through science. It was a brotherhood whose purpose was to prove the existence of (Male) God as the ultimate Creator over the material world.

Today when a scientific "high priest" claims he's an "atheist" he is practicing a religion. The original Christians practiced a belief that reviled the material world called gnosticism. Even according to Plato the human body was viewed as a tomb. The purpose of life was escape to a state of pure spirit in a heavenly realm. The scientific atheist of today is a devote of the material world and abhors any knowledge that comes from the spiritual experience. This is the polar opposite of the original Christians and very much the belief of many evolutionists today. How different  a belief is this really?

There is even a god named Ahriman for "atheists materialists."

Rudolph Steiner divides the devil into Lucifer and Ahriman. The Ahrimanic force denies spirit while relying too much on materialism resulting in a material denseness of the human experience. On the opposite side is the Luciferic force that tries to prevent humans from incarnating on the Earth by creating secondary worlds that are so attractive that people don't want to invest their belief in the earth experience. Steiner saw the value of both a spiritual base (Right Brain)and and an abstract base (Left Brain). The point is to maintain the balance between the Luciferic and Ahrimanic tendencies in our lives. The creationists sees the evil in everything material and longs for  the return to heaven while the scientists recognizes only the existence of the external sensory world while denying spirit because it cannot be quantitied materially. We cannot escape Ahriman and Lucifer by avoiding the "other" part of our own nature. Only by experiencing the external senses of the materialistic worldview and at the same time experiencing the deeper aspects of our spirit based worldview can we become full human beings. This is the only way to transcend the tendency towards either Lucifer or Ahriman limits. The real power in the human experience use ofr free will to create an open mind fullness that accepts how each contributes. We must learn to balance these polarities in our individual and societal lives.

Paul Nitze and Afghanistan

In 1979, the Soviet Union "invaded" Afghanistan with the intention of propping up a pro-Soviet regime on its vulnerable southern border.  As we now know all to well, the Soviet's effort was unsuccessful, leaving in its wake a ravaged country with more than 2 million dead and millions more injured and displaced.

Had this been merely an act of aggression by the Kremlin, it would have succeeded in being one of the most heinous acts of commission in a century of heinous acts. However, the Soviet invasion did not occur in a vacuum of its own making, (an outgrowth of Evil Empirism) but was the product of a carefully crafted British/American plot to induce the Soviets into their own Vietnam. This plot, part of an ongoing effort hatched in 1948 by George Kennan, but carried forward by Paul Nitze was designed to wear down the Soviet Union via whatever means possible.

Now that plot has come full circle with America's war in Afghanistan and Iraq. But the larger implications of what is now occurring in South Central Asia cannot be understood without a mythological translation of the current process the United States finds itself in and that can only be obtained through a right brain -  as well as left brain - analysis.

In terms of American foreign policy the Nitze/Kennen split beautifully embodies the dichotomy involved in human brain functions, where the action and the thought that inspires it remain in opposition. But when the opposition results in a switch of polarity, confusion and fear take the field and we achieve through knowledge and awareness of "the other" that (Jim Morrison so eloquently sang of)  "Awkward instant when the first animal is jettisoned."   

Thanks to Paul Nitze and his protege Zbigniew Brzezinski - the U.S. is now living out in Iraq the Soviet experience in Afghanistan of 20 odd years before. A "limited contingent" of troops intended to prop up a weak socialist regime imposed from the top down with no popular support. Substitute socialist regime with democracy and the idea is the same. 

How did we in the United States get to be the Soviet Union? How did we come to portray to the world the same rigid centralized authoritarian strain of behavior that so defined the hated union of soviet socialist republics?

The answer is both geopolitical and mythological - both left brained and right brained and we must begin to see it with both in order to understand the world we are rapidly leaving and the new one we are emerging into.

The fear and panic represented by the United States disposal of Constitutional guarantees, the scrapping of a thousand years of legal precedents and jurisprudence, signals the end of the United States as a mold for what all nations might become. In a larger sense it also represents that the founding fathers have failed to produce a viable model of society if this is the outcome. This is not something that may even be understood by the likes of George Bush and his Neoconservative brain trust. Their policies do however represent the rejection of all things modern and thus the alternative now becomes a question of what architecture will replace it.   

As a structure of any kind, the United States is the product of architecture, an architecture of the mind that frames thoughts into usable ideas and builds upon them.

Spiritually this experience is known as the the tension between the Monad of form and the Monad of spirit and forms the basis of Monasticism. The underlying Monastic process is the reason why religion remains a constant metaphor within our society - an underlying code that determines the course of our higher thoughts and constructs the building of forms in conformance with it.  We are living in a thought world constructed by monastics whose ideas built the framework of our present consciousness over the last 5000 years.

That process however is now at the end of its usefulness. The evidence for this is clear in almost every event connected to our existence and is most clearly exhibited in the so called war on terror - which was hatched through the myth structure of room 117 at the Kabul Hotel - and brought into life by the sacrifice of Ambassador Adolph Dubs. 

In 1994 Paul Nitze agreed to be interviewed by us. Upon learning that our interest was Afghanistan which was then about to be consumed by the Taliban - he recanted. Aside from out personal disappointment at his unwillingness to discuss his role in the pivotal event of the Cold War, in the end it was his loss of an opportunity to present himself and the cause of his actions before his creation spread out of control.

Holy Warriors are out of the Closet

When our Left Brain went Right to find the answer.

We thought we were dreaming as we opened the Drudge Report  to the words Holy War .  It turned out to be an article about Senate Majority leader Frist declaring Holy War on Democrats. The Republicans want to end the right to filibuster in the Senate. Frist was invoking God's Law.  We had been introduced to the idea of Holy War back in 1981. Few would know what we had discovered as the first American journalists to enter Kabul behind Soviet lines in 1981. The Holy war was in Washington all along, against the Soviet Union, the evil empire!  That Holy War led to the rise of theTaliban and that led to 9/11. It also led to  the sacrifice of Afghanistan to win the Cold War.  What else but Holy War could justify the sacrifice of 2 million Afghans? It wasn't until our investigation grew to include an esoteric connection going back to the Crusades between the CIA and the Afghan holy warriors that it all began to make sense. We have seen behind the veil of secrecy and discovered a "truth" behind the movement of history that explodes all illusions of what we were and what we have become.

It seemed the perfect time to revisit  A Man for all Seasons

Henry VIII wants to divorce his wife with the approval of a most respected man, Sir Thomas More. If More stands up for his principles, he risks  execution for treason. This is one of the most thoughtful dialogs in all of literature.

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William Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!

Sir Thomas More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?

William Roper:Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!

Sir Thomas More:Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!

Holy Roman Empire, Islam, Maoism and Room 117

As the new  Pope Benedict XVI is introduced to the world it seemed the time to look back at the origin of the Holy Roman Empire and how it's connected to Room 117.

By the 4th century AD the Roman Empire had reached its furthest Eastern expansion and was faced with crisis. Any semblance of a true Republic had long since collapsed. Rotting from within, pressured from without, the Empire had lost its purpose. Something new was needed and with the help of Emperor Constantine and a militant ancient Persian philosophy known as Mithraism, Rome transcended its corrupted material form and found victory. Turning the militarist, pagan Rome into an empire of the spirit was no simple process. But having been carried by its disciplined legions from the borders of Central Asia to the far reaches of Britain, Mithraism, the soldier's religion - laid the groundwork for the Christian holy war that remains as true to its original mission as it did when it began 2 millennia ago.

The process of conversion from secular to spiritual is no longer the monopoly of Rome. As Islamic states wrap themselves in what St. Paul called "the armor of light," the US military presence in Iraq becomes a rallying cry for the complete radicalization of Islam. If successful this conversion could prove to be the equal to Constantine as the greatest act of unifying statecraft in the history of global politics. It will do for Islam what Christianity did for Rome. The same Mithraism holy warrior god of light that inspired Constantine to "conquer in his sign," is now activated for Islam.

As with the British before them, the U.S. involvement in the Great Game for Central Asia has been filled with holy warriors and sacred places without whose understanding the nature of the game involved cannot be anticipated. Sitting as it does between Asia, Europe and the Middle East, the countries of Central Asia form a buffer between diverse cultures and beliefs and as such define the limits of conventional Western thought.

Although the game was coined by the British in the 19th century, the Great Game actually began millennia ago as a struggle over lucrative trade routes through Central Asia. Alternately, these routes served scores of invaders and as the Soviet's proved in December of 1979, the idea of a direct passage from northern Europe to the Arabian Sea is as desirable today as it was when 9th century Viking raiders plied the Volga to Itil on the Caspian.The U.S. was a latecomer to the Great Game of Central Asia, inheriting the responsibilities of failed 19th century British attempts to secure the region. For awhile what the U.S. lacked in diplomacy was made up for with huge amounts of money and advanced military technology and through client states like Iran attempted to remold the politics of Central Asia to fit a Manichean U.S. anti-Soviet philosophy.

The first official sign that the US had entered the web of intrigues for Central Asia came in 1973 when a little noticed palace coup in Afghanistan prompted US Ambassador Robert Neuman to signal that a "limited Great Game" was back on. And when in 1978 a group of Marxists assumed power in a bloody coup, the limited game Neuman had spoken of only five years before, became the only game in town.

The US responded by sending a seasoned diplomat, Adolph "Spike" Dubs to wean the Marxists away from Moscow and return them to a neutral buffer state. But Washington's signals were split between detente minded Cyrus Vance and virulent anti-communist Zbigniew Brzezinski and as tensions rose between Russia, China and Iran, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, Dubs stood defenseless. Kidnapped by a splinter group of Afghan Maoists, the US Ambassador was killed in the rescue attempt in room 117 of the Kabul Hotel and within days the policy that now sees the US playing the Great Game for control of Central Asia was born. Given a license by the death of Dubs, Zbigniew Brzezinski was as free as a Roman governor to throw open the floodgates of support for rival Islamic factions fighting the Marxists and their Soviet advisors. Within months the chaos had drawn the Soviets in and decades later the war still rages. But lost in the shuffle were the Afghan Maoists that triggered the event that led the ascetic Taliban warriors to emerge from the ruins of what was Afghanistan.

To understand the Taliban's role is necessary to grasp what may be the next crucial phase of the Great Game. In what is viewed by some Islamic Scholars as the most important ideological trend in the Islamic world, the Afghan Maoists known collectively as the Sholah Jawed (Eternal Flame) have merged with Islam to form a hybrid, grass roots revolutionary movement that could change the face of the world. Known as the party of Islamic Unity, the Sholah have been known to spread their hybridized political philosophy for unifying the nations of Islam. 2000 years ago, nothing was more unlikely than the marriage of pagan Rome and the Jewish cult of Christianity. But a Roman governor named Pontius Pilate sealed the fate of the next two millennium and an American national security advisor acting like a Roman governor, may have sealed the fate of the next. Zbigniew Brzezinski's policies fostered the de-stabilization of Central Asia that cost the Soviet Union its Empire, but at the same time it empowered radical elements in Islam to fight the Soviet Union and now the world must face Brzezinski's creation. The answer to this next and final phase of the Great Game may lie in the word "Taliban" itself which in the Arabic means seeker and as the Prophet Mohammed was said to have urged his followers, knowledge must be pursued even if it means traveling to China.

Foreign Intervention in Afghanistan

It’s a war on terror.

A unilateral intervention to correct a threat to civilization motivated by a powerful clique of mercantile interests. The state’s religious and academic institutions fall silent as the press beats the drum for war. Dissent becomes unpatriotic. Ethics give way to cries of self-defense. It looks like a cakewalk. The best and the brightest, the most advanced nation on earth can muster against a nation of Islamic infidels. The “Company” gets everything it wants and more - a virtual monopoly on government contracts and exclusive rights to all the resources the Company can extract. But the plan is one step shy of delusional. Events don’t go as planned. A shortage of troops face a hostile population. The puppet regime leader who’d spent years in pampered exile has no popular support. A series of executive mis-decisions puts poorly prepared soldiers in harm’s way leading to a total military collapse and political disaster. The government lies, then tries to cover up. In the end the government is disgraced, the battle lost and the “enemy” emboldened by such a grand failure. Iraq? Afghanistan? Yes. Afghanistan. But not the Afghanistan that changed everything on 9/11.

This is the Afghanistan that changed everything for the British 160 years ago.

Today the pattern, the execution, the assumptions and the mistakes of American military interventions in the Mideast and South Asia are frighteningly similar to those of Britain one hundred sixty years ago. What has been learned? Are the goals the same as well? Is it oil, treasure or geography? Western intervention in South Asia is as old if not older than Alexander the Great. What then are we looking for? And if we find it, how will we even know? As controversy continues to worsen around the legitimacy and unforseen consequences of U.S. military interventions in Iraq, it’s important to recall the current domestic and international political crisis posed by America’s “war on terror” began in Afghanistan. In fact, the entire scenario framed by media pundits around the idea that 9/11 “changed everything” must be weighed against a long series of plotted geopolitical designs in Afghanistan by America’s Cold War architects in the 1970's - intended to “change” the world on America’s terms. In that sense the events of 9/11 were the payoff to policies put into motion at least decades before by the very same people and institutions that are again at the center of the current U.S. policy of intervention.

Room 117 Murder most mystical & JFK

The article from Wired Magazine, Revenge of the Right Brain Logical and precise, left-brain thinking gave us the Information Age. Now comes the Conceptual Age - ruled by artistry, empathy, and emotion forecasts  the future will be for those who can switch from Left Brain to Right Brain and back again seamlessly. 

As the first American journalists to enter Afghanistan behind Soviet lines in 1981 we came to see the darkest side of global politics. It all hinged on the murder of Amb Dubs in Room 117of the Kabul Hotel Feb 14, 1979,  a murder that changed the world as much as the assassination of JFK. To figure out what it all meant we left the world of logical and precise for the world of artistry, empathy and emotion. Inspired by Joseph Campbell's Power of Myth we plunged into the past through myth and history. Our search revealed deeper motives for events that modern journalism only touches on.

117 New World Order & DaVinci Code

The story of the 1979 murder of Ambassador Dubs in room 117 at the Kabul Hotel has numerous esoteric correspondences which underlie the 'New World Order'agenda. At the time of the Dub's murder Iran's Savak was involved with Israeli and Chinese (Maoist) intelligence people. Although a pro-Chinese Maoist group known as the Setam i Melli was originally said to have been the kidnappers who brought Ambassador Dubs to room 117, it has been misreported from the beginning that the kidnappers were 'Muslim radicals.' The Setam are mentioned in State Dept. cables following the kidnapping which warn that State department people should avoid public mention of Setam for fear of exposing American Embassy ties to them. On our last trip to Kabul in 2002 we were told the group that did the kidnapping was a Maoist sub-group of Setam known as SAMA. These Maoist groups are still active in Afghanistan, Tibet and Nepal where the revolution is a dream in the minds of the eternally oppressed and where the esoteric aspects get deeper. The 117 number is a major factor in a key strain of 'heretical' esoteric groups that hide behind the world's intelligence agencies. It's code for goddess worshipping. There's a whole bunch of numerical correspondences where the sum of the integers of 1 and 17 add up to 153 which is the number of the 'vesica piscus' the divine oval which is the womb of creation. This number is represented in the pyramids and the megalithic structures of Britain and Europe as sacred geometry. On top of that, the Setam were a sub group of the Maoist Sholah Jaweed whose name translates as "Eternal Flame." They were connected in the 1960's by Chinese intelligence to the 'Sendero Luminoso Shining Path' in Peru. The Shining 'bit' in the name is the light of Venus as the morning star. Very Masonic, very Solomon's Temple. They both are tied to Maoist intelligence units and both have a name which relates to a secret strain belief's connected to the Enochian sub culture. The 'Book of Hiram' which details the origins of this ancient secret brotherhood that goes back before the Old Testament. An article in the Pacific New Service pre 9/11 posited that the Taliban might be the fruit of a Maoist union between Islam and communism which was arising at the time. Many of the Sholah groups were dropping their communist banners and adopting radical Islam instead. Pakistan and China had a covert agreement to wage the war on Afghanistan for the U.S. thus triggering the destabilization that caused the Soviet invasion. They were secretly trained in the Muslim region of China and recruited from the Sholah. Here's a payload. The number 117 is connected to the church, St. Sulpice in Paris that is at the core of the DaVinci code mystery. January 17 is the feast day of three saints central to the Da Vinci code mystery. But beneath the mystery is the enigma that St. Silpice rests on an ancient meridien line, a geomantic node that connects all of the sacred spots around the world via ley lines. The desecendents of the ancient secret societies are the intelligence services of today - vying for control of geographic points on the planet at a major juncture of human evolution. There's more on our website www.grailwerk.com