Selective Outrage

 

The luring to a trap, vicious murder and suspected dismemberment of journalist Jamal Khashoggi has dominated the news cycles for over a week. Meanwhile, an American who holds an Israeli Identification Card and is a Palestinian Arab real estate agent acting on behalf of a local clan who sold land to Jews in eastern Jerusalem, has been taken by Palestinian Authority (PA) officials and has remained detained at Ramallah in an interrogation facility. What is interesting about this second case is that despite Israeli officials detaining of Palestinian Authority Jerusalem District Governor Adnan Ghaith, along with Jihad Al-Faqeeh, regional director of the PA’s intelligence agency, the name of the kidnapped American has still not been released. We suspect that gag order on his name is the result of the State Department, as you really do not have much of a story if there is no name you can attach. Thankfully, as noted above, we now have two names, Adnan Ghaith and Jihad Al-Faqeeh, the Palestinian Officials pulled in, kidnapped if you believe the PA high level of screaming about the illegal questioning and were held overnight. This did get a loud and vehement response from the PA officialdom claiming that Israel had kidnapped their officials. Note that the PA kidnapped an American Israel of Palestinian Arab descent and it is a nonevent which cannot even have the individual’s name attached to the story but the two main PA officers who were in charge of the operation are arrested and taken for polite questioning, no thumb screws or other devices from the Spanish Inquisition and that is kidnapping. The selected references and innuendo are baffling but the main thing is the only reference thus far to a kidnapped American citizen by the PA has been in reference to the Israeli questioning of the PA officials suspected of involvement.

 

For simplicity, we will for the remainder of this article refer to the American who holds an Israeli Identification Card and is a Palestinian Arab real estate agent acting on behalf of a local clan who sold land to Jews in eastern Jerusalem as BOB in all caps, partly to draw attention to what has occurred, and because we do not desire having to refer to the victim as the victim or write a two line sentence just to refer to BOB. The Ramallah detention facility, on the other hand, often does have some resemblance to the Spanish Inquisition, or so it has been intimated on numerous occasions. Now, the sale of land by an Arab to a Jew within the PA carries a death sentence. That is automatic. The preferred alternative has become life in prison at hard labor, and they do mean hard labor which is designed to shorten life. Should the death sentence be imposed, it then requires Mahmoud Abbas to give his approval for it to be carried out. This is so it can be applied at a later point when nobody will be the wiser and all have already accepted that the person selling to a Jew will never be seen again. Often, the hard labor takes care of such specifics of the situation. We assume that the State Department knows what they are doing by not identifying BOB, as they likely figure that they can work far more efficiently behind the scenes as long as nobody, relatives in particular, especially those in the United States, do not know their loved one has been abducted and will likely never be seen again. Anyway, the State Department is loathe to ever accuse the PA of anything untoward or underhanded as they would not have butter melt in their mouths, the little darlings. But they sure have made a huge deal about Jamal Khashoggi and those horrible Saudis in the Turkish Consulate. There have been demands all over the news for the United States, President Donald Trump in particular, break all relations with the Saudi regime, cancel every arms deal already brokered, and everything just short of invade Saudi Arabia and question Mohammad bin Salman, the ruler of Saudi Arabia but not a peep about BOB hit the news until Israel started investigating the kidnapping of one of their citizens.

 

What has been interesting is that we have to call the abducted and likely already tortured for two weeks victim BOB but Israel is now being reported to have abducted or kidnapped two PA officials as that apparently is what police taking two people in for questioning has become called in PA official channels. The two have claimed complete ignorance, which is expected and that will remain their story, as they know Israel will be handcuffed in their investigation. What is the real problem is that the PA has absolutely no authority in Jerusalem, west or east, and thus their Security Forces even entering the city other than those assigned to guard officials is against the law. All of Jerusalem is outside any areas, either Area A or Area B, where they have security jurisdiction, thus any taking of an individual from Jerusalem is a kidnapping. But that is not even the most ridiculous response to this fiasco. This has reached the highest of PA levels as the PA cabinet on Wednesday condemned what it called settlers’ takeover of property in the area of the Al-Aqsa Mosque assisted by protection of Israeli military officials. PA officials have called on UNESCO and other international organizations to intervene to “prevent the occupation from taking over the original Arab cultural heritage in occupied Arab Jerusalem.” This is a residence and has not been declared as a cultural heritage by UNESCO. Well, that is unless you recognize that UNESCO recognized almost half of Jerusalem as not belonging to Israel and their ruling has been utilized to threaten to make the Western Wall forbidden for Jews to pray or assemble, as it is part of the UNESCO decision to grant all of the Old City as a PA heritage site. That would be similar to UNESCO declaring that the Mall in Washington D.C. as a Native American, in particular Iroquois, national heritage site and then the Iroquois demanding that no ‘pale faces’ be permitted to enter that zone including Congress, the President, most of the central United States government agencies and the Smithsonian Institute and many of their museums including the Aero-Space Museum. We know, do not give the United Nations crazies any further ideas.

 

We would like to see BOB in the light of day and freed and also sanity returned to the situation. Where is the condemnation of the PA for making the sale of any property to a Jew sentenceable by death? Further, if you really wish to get down on the Saudis for their antiquated, Middle Ages centrist laws such as making it illegal for any but believers of the faith, Muslims, and preferably Sunni, to visit much of their land and forget owning a piece of vacation property in Riyadh, or better, in Mecca or Medina. It is interesting that Saudi Arabia can basically ban Jews and Christians and the PA areas will automatically carry out a death sentence on any Jew entering their sacred turf, and that is what this is in Israel, a turf war, and the United States is fine with that but should Israel install a couple of additional checkpoints in order to curb an uptick in terrorism, that becomes something which the United Nations condemns and the State Department demands that they be taken down immediately. This was exactly what occurred after Israel simply put up metal detectors to prevent further stabbings, shootings and other violence on the Temple Mount after two Israeli Security Police were shot and killed. The reasons given were varied and all mostly false. Already there were metal detectors at one entrance to the Temple Mount where non-Muslims were permitted entry. Jews went through a further check to assure that they carried no religiously offensive material which might contaminate this Islamic area and were always escorted by Islamic WAQF Security and should they even whisper, they would be arrested for praying and contaminating all Islam. So, apparently only non-Muslims are a risk for bringing weapons to such an Islamic holy area except that was not the case, was it. Muslims often brought steel rods, gathered rocks and pelted Israeli Security in attacks always coinciding with Israeli holidays such that the Temple Mount would be closed to Jews, then they would settle down. Where is the outrage that Jews can be so visibly humiliated by repeated degradations at the hands of the PA terror enforcement division, also known as riot at any reason when directed. The truth has been long known that the PA, and Hamas and the rest, all direct these riots, terror attacks, and reward those who commit them and provide incentives and training on the best means of assaulting and murdering Israelis and how to identify an Israeli as a Jew. The PA terrorists who committed the Jaffa terror attack where the victim was US Army vet, Vanderbilt student Taylor Force, age 29, and an American tourist but he was seen as a religious Jew despite not being a Jew at all. He had a beard, dark curls or waves of hair and for intents and purposes, to a PA terrorist that means Jew (his picture is below). His death was a tragedy, same as all the other terror deaths at the hands of mostly PA, Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists in Israel.

 

US Army Veteran West Point 2009 Graduate Taylor Force

 

At least Taylor Force’s loss finally woke America and Congress to take steps with the Taylor Force Act. We hope it will be enforced by Presidents and the State Department under all administrations regardless of party. The State Department has already shown their colors making every argument why aid must continue despite ‘Pay to Slay’ continuing because otherwise the most richly subsidized areas on earth might not have enough baby formula or whatever excuse they wish to use (see graph below). As is obvious, it is not even a close comparison and in second is Lebanon from which Hezballah is heavily financed by Iran. Haiti experienced a devastating earthquake where in response the Israelis were the first to have a fully functioning field hospital and the last to depart. Still, the Palestinian territorial regions are the most exorbitantly financed region in the world and has made billionaires out of most of those who have had positions of power or influence and the remainder are well into at least the tens of millions stashed away. Who claims that terrorism does not pay.

 

Graph of Aid Money to Palestinian Territories and other needful locations

 

So, in the meantime the United States has a problem with Saudi Arabia for their murder and dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi at their Turkish Consulate while BOB remains completely unidentified and left in the Ramallah PA Detention Center and torture chamber without anybody showing the slightest of attention. The Saudi’s have been a steady ally through thick and thin but must be thrown to the wolves over the death of a Washington Post stringer reporter Jamal Khashoggi who is not an United States citizen but does have three American citizen children resulting from his long-term residence in the United States out of curtesy to a major American newspaper while BOB is left to rot in a PA horror chamber unidentified and with nobody demanding that the United States break off all relations with the PA terror masters whose main use for the United States is to pressure Israel and send more money. OK, take a breath and we apologize for the overly-long sentence. Let’s continue. We would prefer that both people would have at the very least similar attention in the media and from Washington officialdom. That is what would occur in a world where things make sense and people are treated as equals. The problem is Jamal Khashoggi being in the employ of the Washington Post has automatic high publicity and is going to be the darling cause of the left-leaning media. BOB is being held by the darlings of the left-leaning media, the PA, and as such must be kept quiet and out of the spotlight so as not to upset the American public and have the people force and demand action. BOB can be sacrificed all in the cause of the PA, those wonderful people who make life and existence difficult for Israel. The initial hush job is being performed by the State Department, a formidable silencer of bad news when it comes to the PA and an amplifier of any bad news for President Trump. Thusly, Jamal Khashoggi is the most important person to have ever been silenced by the Saudis while BOB is of no consequence. There actually is a thread which connects these two cases, they are both victims of Islamic hegemony and their belief that they write the rules and the world is their apple and must jump when they tell them to do so. The PA hierarchy and the Saudi hierarchy both believe that they cannot be held responsible for their actions as long as they are committing acts which they believe are correct. They both believe that as Muslims they are superior and stand at the top of civilized behavior. The world must bend to both the PA and the Saudis as they are the rulers of the world in the future and this is guaranteed by Allah and is written in the Quran, a perfect and holy book, the only real holy book which contains all the truths and information required. They both believe they are superior to all others and that the world is their oyster and they are the perfect pearl within. They believe that they are at the leading edge of the final conquest of the world by Islam and as such, they do not need to respond to or answer for any actions, especially the death of a minor individual of little importance and a threat to the crown. While Jamal Khashoggi was a threat to the Saudi rulers, BOB was a threat to Islam as he gave away precious and holy lands to a Jew, the absolute worst possible act according to the Islamic concept of the world. These similarities and their belief that they are completely guiltless and are righteous in everything they desire to do, choose to act, elect to believe and demand of others. They believe in their superiority in all things and that the United States and the non-Muslim world are all to be subservient, subjected to their every whim. But we wish BOB would receive at least some attention instead of being just one more person sacrificed to the PA hierarchy and their insistence that they are completely innocent of all wrongs.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Philosophical Meanderings on Death

 

Many philosophers and deep thinkers, including those from the medical fields who work most closely with death, have written great volumes on the subject of death from numerous and diverse directions. They use technical jargon, some Latin, words with more syllables than appear necessary and even try discerning from experiments exactly what death is. Theologians talk of death as a passage but once they try and explain passage the, what or where they get all confusing and they go into their diffusion through use of sublimely defined terminology and references to writings by other theologians who were equally vague or tripping on some strong hallucinogenic drugs. This will be none of these as this is just as much my recounting of experiences and putting feelings as well as descriptions as best as I am able of three separate, though two are related and the other describes the differences from the others, times I have had a brush with death. This will not be as much a definition than a description of events as best I can recall, and these are, if I may borrow a description from soon to be ex-Secretary of State Kerry from his descriptions of his battles which resulted in his three Purple Hearts from Viet Nam, “etched firmly into the crevasses (he likely was saying ‘crevices’ but with his overly-pronounced Bostonian accent it sounded more like crevasses) of my mind,” or something equally and grandly pathetic. Anyway, let’s proceed on to the actual subject.

 

My first brush with death was the one I almost forgot, and had my life never come close again I would have completely forgotten, tucking all away deep in the back of my mind, which is that part of your mind that gives nightmares and is only freed up by future traumas. It was Christmas vacation, that means long enough back in time that Christmas was a word used in people’s lives and had yet to be replaced by ‘Winter’ when describing school vacations, public events and the reason there is a big pine tree in the town circle but is no longer adorned with festive lights after Thanksgiving and on into the new year, now it sits there blankly and blandly staring as if to ask, “Now what am I to do?” My family had gone to warmer climes for the holiday and I had just finished swimming in the pool but had not made it to the edge. I sank, threw a hand up out of the water waving it frantically, or so it felt. This was the deep end of the pool and I was not able to stand or reach the bottom so I waved, then slower, then I began to feel warm and then I jerked upright sitting on a stretcher throwing off a sheet from my face. I heard a thump and turned to see the attendant at the rear of the stretcher fall back to the ground, he apparently had bounced after feinting. I was in the hotel lobby, not the pool, but I was also confused enough not to question this. They checked me out after I finished spitting out water from seemingly everywhere within including coughing it from lungs and spewing it from wherever. That was what I remembered for years about my drowning experience. That was approximately fifty or so years back from this writing. Not much insight except the mind really prefers to tuck these remembrances away, far, far away where you will hopefully never find them. You all know the place; it is that place you put things to be safe and then can never find them again, that kind of put somewhere safe. Safe from even yourself.

 

Moving along around twenty years and we are parking the car and going into the Auxiliary Administrative and Out Patient Building of a major hospital in the City of Brotherly Love. It is a late Friday afternoon before a three day Memorial Day weekend and I was to be the last patient. We were fifteen minutes early but apparently some patients had cancelled and likely headed to the beach rather than that doctor’s office. The staff was in a hurry to get my brain scan done and probably head to the beach and join the rest of Philadelphia’s population. These were those primitive, pre CAT scan days of medicine where they pumped copious amounts of radioactive iodine into your bloodstream and then took passive radiation X-rays where there is no beam of electrons, it just reads the isotopes shooting out their particles within your circulatory system, and thus lighting up everything. Well, they were really in a hurry so they hooked up the IV, increased the flow rate asking all the while, “Are you feeling dizzy?” I was not so I told them so and they had the stopcock almost all the way open position and they went off to prepare the exam room. I did start to feel dizzy and inhaled to say something but never made it that far. I felt warm and odd, a very weird but not uncomfortable odd which is indescribable. Then I realized that what I was looking at was me sitting there with my wife sitting next to me likely daydreaming as she had nothing she was supposed to be doing except driving when we left. I looked down and floated around doing a 360o turn thinking that this was rather strange. Just as I thought that I transitioned to a new place and all new scene and realized that I had not had a body during this entire series of events. It was dark with a faint thin line of light and I was moving towards it but there was no real sense of motion like wind rushing by, simply I was approaching the line of light and as I got closer I started to hear voices and then joined conversations. The closer I came the more conversations we were sharing all at once, each separate, different but all equally understood at the time. The voices then slowed and became one very piercing, loud, booming, deep voice which stated with urgency for me to, “Step forward and stay or turn now.” For reasons I cannot explain now and could not then, I turned and woke in my body just as the defibrillator screeched to full charge. I gave a yelp type sound like a scared puppy. They internally discharged the paddles into the unit. They had stopped the IV and they returned to the room leaving a nurse to watch me, probably should have done that originally.

 

My Argument with Death

 

While I waited the three or four minutes for their preparations to be completed I looked at the strip they had printed out likely for the required report when you kill a patient. After later working in a hospital I now know that allowing or having a patient die are two different actions that a hospital defines. While allowing patients to die can depend on such little items such as end of life family decisions leading to a ‘Do Not Resuscitate’ (DNR) notation on the door, to homeless people whose Medicare has run out, these people are allowed the ‘dignity’ of death. On the other hand, having a patient die is something to be avoided at all costs and everything possible is done to revive patients who forgot to keep breathing. This is because the legal department does not like working, especially responding to wrongful death suits as these cost hospitals million and even tens of millions of dollars. Back to looking at my strip which contained heart wave (EKG) and four channels of Electroencephalogram (EEG) and realized I had done something impressive. There was no heart-rate with close to almost five minutes and just under three minutes of no brainwaves.

 

That evening after having something to eat I sat back in my recliner rehashing through my memories of that day’s events. Everything was still quite clear to me and the something that did not fit entered my thoughts. The events were not exactly the same but that loud voice was the same. My drowning returned to be relived in memory. I had gone quickly from thrashing to warm to somewhere else where I was moving forward to a distant point of light which grew ever so slightly wider when something blocked my continuing and that voice ordered me, “GO BACK!” There was no debate, no choice, just this overwhelming and undeniable movement of turning and going back, but back where? Then I sat up and realized where. The rest is above with the poor attendant getting the shock for the week in a job which probably sees it share of the unusual. The similarities of these two events struck me and have stayed with me. The confusion was that the second time I was granted to choose. The drowning was not meant to be and that was rectified, I was not permitted passage beyond, period. This second time was what was intriguing more so than troubling. The concept that one can choose whether or not to die makes for interesting debate, even if the debate was all in my head. This choosing whether or not you pass that point of no return, and that point in apparently somewhere during the transition where you are already accommodating and acclimating oneself for the next phase of our continuing existence.

 

This inner debate may have been critical in my last episode, my last brush with death thusfar. This time there was no out of body experience though I did not realize that I was actually having my fight in the hospital, I thought it was more metaphysical, thoughts of actions rather than actual actions. I was to find out differently. This story does require some back information, my friends, please put up with one last telling or jump to the next paragraph. This starts off on one evening living in Green Country, Oklahoma where there are no tumbleweeds, no cacti, no barren rocks and sand but rather trees, bushes, grass and real cattle country. I was about to turn in while wiffy was still playing away on the computer. I lied down and just felt wrong, so I took an accounting of what I was feeling. I had no chest pain but tingling in the insides of both arms, legs felt heavy, vision was clouded at the periphery, a general sense of weakness and ill of ease. As I listed these and more I realized that I had just listed every secondary symptom of a heart attack. I interrupted wiffy and told her we needed to go to the hospital. She informed our son that Dad was having a heart attack and she was taking me to the hospital to which he showed minimal interest, with some side-eyed disbelief, as I recall. Despite there being an Emergency Squad stationed less than a full block away at the Firehouse, we chose to drive to the hospital. Advice, if you think you are having a heart attack, get an ambulance otherwise they tend not to believe you. Wiffy (who shall remain nameless) let me off at the entrance, as you really do not want to make your spouse who may be having a heart attack walk too far, and I walked ten feet to the desk. The lady receptionist asked if she could assist me and I told her I was having a heart attack plainly, calmly, as if telling her she was raising nice looking tulips. She asked if I had chest pain and I responded that I was not. She then questioned why I thought I was having a heart attack. I told her I was exhibiting nearly every secondary symptom and listed five or six. She inquired why I thought these were signs of a heart attack so I told her I was a bio med-tech and had worked for a dozen years in a thousand bed heart centered hospital in Washington D.C. and was familiar with many diagnoses including heart attack. She had me sign a form and asked me to fill it out when Wiffy arrived and I handed her the form and my insurance card. The receptionist had an orderly politely show me to the back area in a corner to a bench filled with more people all of whom looked rather less than joyful. Arlo Guthrie described this in Alice’s Restaurant as the ‘Group W Bench’ which is where they send people they do not quite believe are having a problem and are likely trying to obtain drugs for a night’s entertainment, self-entertainment that is. Fortunately for all involved, they did take blood and sent it off to the lab, possibly but not necessarily with a STAT order. Anyone who has been in a five hundred bed or better hospital with a major Emergency Department knows that blood work sent to the lab takes from thirty minutes to forever to be returned. Mine came back in under ten minutes and all of a sudden there are eight nurses making me as comfortable as I desire in my own room and three doctors examining me and a tech hooking me up to an EKG monitor. I assumed they had found a particular protein in my blood sample.

 

I was given a room fairly soon thereafter in a ward where I was the only patient who was conscious. Their treatment while hooking me up to this, that and the other was not particularly taking my comfort into account treating me more like a cadaver in Nurse College than a conscious, feeling patient. This soon upset me as one particular insertion was attempted with minimal if any lubricant and I went off! We finally struck a compromise where I would inform them of any need to take that measurement and we would go from there. Wiffy left later that night as I apparently was resting peaceably so she missed the fun. Sometime after midnight, my recollection is around 2:30ish in the morning I felt a familiar presence. My old friend had come for me once more and was insistent that this time was the time. We proceeded to argue and a fight broke out with my insisting that I was not leaving this mortal plane and my old friend insisting somebody was leaving with her and my name was at the top of her list, or some other silly insistence.

 

From what I was informed by overhearing nurses talking as if everybody was in a coma, they really were not used to conscious patients in this ward, there had been a death soon after our scuffle had ended. Apparently I was fighting anybody who came anywhere near me and had caused a commotion resulting in people trying to contain me. The number of people was consistently around ten to twelve people who had formed a ring around me to contain me. That seemed correct as that was the number there when I apparently returned consciously to this world from fighting apparently still in my body physically but my mind operating in a netherworld between places. I must have been aware of my surroundings to some extent because when I realized where I was I found myself on the floor in the middle of the ward open area surrounded by nurses and four or five large either male nurses or orderlies. They inquired why I had ceased trying to get up and I told them the truth. I stated, “The bald guy keeps throwing me on the ground, so why get up?” This appeared to baffle and please them and they assisted me back to my room, hooked me again to the monitors and intravenous pump leaving the bald guy to watch me, probably as intimidation. Apparently, during my argument I was also talking in the real world and, as I did serve some time as a United States Army infantryman, had chosen some colorful declarative terminology during our scuffle. The doctor the next morning was not upset about the physical altercation as he was about my choice language as this was a Catholic Hospital and I would be refused care if such continued. I assured him that there would be no more problems.

 

That was me near-death and apparently in-body experience and as I was told by my cardiologist, the hospital had initially written me off not expecting me to survive the night. I had under 10% heart function and was told I would definitely require having an internal defibrillator as part of my treatment once I was strong enough. They had been able, after a week of treatment, to place two stents (Israeli stents) into arteries on my heart and cleared apparent blockages. Much if not most of my left ventricle was black in color, not deep red, black. The cardiologist who performed my catheterization and follow-up has given us a detailed description when giving us the good news of my one year heart function tests. I had cleared 50% heart function tests (a measure of heart efficiency and output where over 50% is low end norms for a man in his 60’s and sufficient to not require any internal medical equipment, no defibrillator, no pacemaker, no nothing. My cardiologist all but danced a jig whenever we met as he had doubted I could clear 33%, let alone match what had been a boast of clearing 50%, I actually hit 51%, which was remarkable and to have only a small scar on the heart muscle which was one-third black is my personal miracle, Baruch Hashem. But our subject is not completely about survival but the challenge called death.

 

What I have come to find is that death comes in more than one form. The most pleasant is the form where you are permitted, with limitations, to neaten up and do whatever last items you might need such as saying good-bye to everyone, apologizing to an old friend for some stupid act, whatever it is and then when you are ready you agree you go quietly and peaceably to the next part of our journey. This might even include after you have been struck by a bus and are in two pieces ten feet apart and death will ask if you are ready implying you should use great haste if there is anything left to do. If one were to refuse to go quietly, allowing them to see their present state would be sufficient for them to agree to leave. Medical science cannot treat such injuries. Then there is the more insistent messenger of death, angel of death if you prefer, who comes bearing an order with your name on it, not at the top of a list of candidates, just one name and you are it. No choices, no moment to say good-bye, just that split instant where your face turns blank and then you are gone off to the next stop. We all go to the same next place and we make our way there as best we can. That was the gist of what I was told that one time I was graced with conversing.

 

There is no want in the next realm as we have no bodies to feed or care about upkeep, we are simply thoughts bundled in a sheath of energy. We can talk but in concepts and a kind of enveloping understanding. The interesting part is you can take time; apparently, to be alone with your own thoughts or you can have one-on-one or small group discussions or have as many separate conversations with groups, individuals or any combination thereof. Your identity remains whole and intact and you have the same feelings you had when on the Earthly plane but without the actual body. Whether that wanes over time or what happens after you have spent time in the next realm, that I do not yet know and likely one cannot know that and return here to your former physical self. Can one return, I honestly do not know but from my one experience my question is why would anyone wish to return? Is the next realm our final place or is there something beyond that where we would later transgress into? I cannot answer that any more than a zygote can fathom the life ahead of them and eventual death. The closest I ever found myself was as a potential seed about to be planted to grow in the next realm. By planted I do not in any way imply anchored as tour spirit, your next self, is free to do as it pleases within whatever physical realities exist in a place where energy is the means of communication and existence. There is nothing but a small ball of energy which is the essence of all you ever were, a crystallized energy with no absolute form or restriction of location as you can obviously exist in near endless and innumerable conversations and interaction simultaneously, so there is really little if any restriction known as location to our physical selves. Imagine conversing with every person who ever lived and all having knowledge base which becomes a sense of singularity of all but one still remains with a knowledge of self. Everything is mixed into a larger entity with every part interacting with the others and still you can feel like you move about though the mode of travel is thought energy, you move as per your thoughts much as the physicists describe quantum theory. Perhaps the best of descriptions of the interactions in the next realm, it would be described as similar to quantum entanglement except one can entangle with multiple others and the spin is up to you or as Einstein put it, “spooky action at a distance.”

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Prosecutor’s Fate Mirrors Western Culture

 

Yesterday’s article about the reported suicide death of Alberto Nisman, the Argentine prosecutor investigating the terrorist strike on the 1994 bombing of the Argentine-Israeli Mutual Association (AMIA), did our best to convey our suspicions that suicide was the least likely manner in which he lost his life. First thing with the sun rising over the Rocky Mountains came the first inklings that perhaps Alberto Nisman had not taken his own life. There were his friends who related that he was a positive and upbeat individual who loved life and lived it well. This added to the fact that his death came mere hours before he was scheduled to appear before the Congress of the Argentine Nation to give witness on the progress and particulars of his probe into the greatest singular crime of the last century. Adding to the evidence against his committing suicide his appearances in an interview where he appeared to be really looking forward to this appearance where he had stated that his investigation against Kirchner was “likely to kill me,” horribly prophetic. Well, the initial reaction in Argentina was anything but passive as friends, coworkers and the general public were all up in arms demanding a more thorough investigation be made into the suspicious death of this prosecutorial investigator. Slowly the day passed and the evidence slowly put to lie the suicide theory as the cause of death of Prosecutor Alberto Nisman. The first evidence beyond the fact that Alberto Nisman was an unlikely candidate to have committed suicide was the admission that there was no suicide note left, a sure sign against suicide as the note is much more than a simple Hollywood convention. The final knife in the heart was the fact that the firearm found in the room did not belong to Alberto Nisman and everybody knows that one would find it rather difficult to borrow a friend’s handgun with which to commit suicide. By the end of the day yesterday the Argentine government had turned from blaming the death of Prosecutor Alberto Nisman on a suicide into making it the next urgent investigation for the Argentine Prosecutors Office.

 

The problems with the investigation by Alberto Nisman are that it was making some powerful people uncomfortable. The fact that those people included the present and a past President of Argentina, former President Carlos Menem and current President Cristina Kirchne, made it a very poor move if personal longevity is one of your desired aims. Alberto Nisman was a man of fate, truth and integrity who went where the facts led him and damn the implications and potential to make people of power feel threatened and thus very uncomfortable by his findings. The fact that his investigation had also led to include Iran, Hezballah and the clandestine relations between certain political entities and Faustian deals over oil and influence and he boldly went where no man had before chasing only the truth. He knew the costs could be high and that the information he had gathered and their implications might even lead to his being murdered but he kept with his faith that such was not possible because Argentine society was not that of some tin pot dictatorship or third rate banana republic but a modern democracy under the rule of law. Unfortunately for Alberto Nisman somebody somewhere whose toes he had trod upon did not hold such a high view of the nation and the supremacy of the rule of law as he ended up dead on the floor of his room by a strange firearm mere hours before making witness to some truths before the national Congress where those secrets he had uncovered were about to be revealed and placed under the light of day and made clear for the eyes of the nation and the world. Now he had been silenced which only adds one more crime to the list of crimes Alberto Nisman had investigated, and also made a strong statement which those who will be tasked with investigating his death and those who will be assigned to complete his investigations will keep foremost in their minds as they carefully tread around implying any people of influence as they will never know for sure if that person is the same who already bought silence with the death of a human being. Nobody will desire these posts and whoever is so tasked may consider finding a new line of work rather than take such a risky tasking. Hopefully there will be another person of courage and dedication which is at least of a similar bravery that Alberto Nisman displayed and an immutable nerve to chase truth and do that which is required to complete the task with honesty, integrity and a thoroughness and toughness which casts all other concerns aside following down every lead to its final arrow which flies truly to home in on those guilty of crimes against the state and the AMIA bombings. Where such a person can be found is a hard task to answer as people such as Alberto Nisman are a rare and precious breed.

 

The fact that a man of such integrity and honesty was laid waste in a moment of selfish thuggery is a sad commentary of our world. That there was someone of high rank and influence would sink to murder a countryman even if they called upon a person of lesser morals, though which would have been the person of lesser morals is questionable, and take the life of a modern day knight who only sought to complete his assignment to its conclusion and follow the truths where they would take him is a sad testimony, period. Western society used to have leaders who would have simply taken the accusation and at the least made a deal to tell all and resign quietly melting into obscurity with their reputation ruined and reaping the scorn of their countrymen. Apparently holding on to the trappings has become more important to some in whom the people have chosen to place their trust and such a person betraying the people’s trust by the taking of the life of a public servant who was doing what the people through their government had tasked him to perform is one of the saddest accusations against those who are offered up as a valid choice to lead one of the democratic nations in our modern world. Murder to silence an accusation was something expected in monarchies, dictatorships and other lesser forms of governments and certainly not of a democratically elected governance, yet that is what we have witnessed yesterday in Argentina. The fact the there were likely also terrorist entities involved and that some of those very terrorist entities may now be placed in high and honorable positions within the government of Iran does introduce another angle which must be considered. There is little doubt that there was probably involvement in the AMIA bombing of Hezballah and Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) which train and occupy a town in the tri-border (Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay intersecting region) area in South America and the central area for terrorist activities in the Western Hemisphere and that these also may have had some part in the assassination of Alberto Nisman. The IRGC and especially the al-Quds force, which is the special forces units of the IRGC, are also a training and testing grounds for promotion into high level government positions within the Iranian theocracy such as Mohsen Rabbani who was the cultural attaché of the Iranian embassy in Buenos Aires and has since been promoted to head the Oriental Thought Cultural Institute in Qom, Iran after having started in the IRGC. Even had the assassination of Alberto Nisman been carried out by Hezballah, a probability which cannot be ignored, there was still likely somebody within the Argentine government or well connected to the current government who would have arranged the infiltration of the Hezballah terrorist who performed the strike and then facilitated the exit before the dawn revealed the results of the deed. Any way that this horrific crime was carried out it reflects on the barbarity which still remains in the halls of power even in the democratic institutions of the modern world. Such a commentary on our modern world places into question exactly how modern that world really is. Obviously we have yet to grow beyond the self-preservation which often reveals the worst side of any of us but when it involves somebody in high office in whom a great amount of trust has been placed by the people all the more difficult it is to swallow that bitter pill.

 

Let us pray that the murderer of Alberto Nisman is brought to justice and all involved in what is very likely a web of intrigue, criminality and depravity involving who knows how many people of immoral criminals. May another prosecutor who takes their pursuit of truth and deep faith in the law have the desire to find the hidden truth and then bring those involved in the massacre of 85 people and the injuring of 300 others in the horrific crime to be finally brought to trial and to justice and forced to pay for their heinous crimes. We should also hope that the murderer of Alberto Nisman and any accomplices both before and after the act be rounded up and face the cold judgment of the court and be made to pay for the crime of murder for the sake of denying justice and depriving the people of Argentina of a hero of heroes in the offices of the prosecutors which was exemplified by Alberto Nisman like few have done before and likely few will accomplish going forward though such is in short supply and never more needed than in the unraveling of the tangled web woven from murder and deceit. There is a hole in the fabric that is Argentina and that hole will be difficult to mend as it is the hole made by the loss of a truly complete and honest servant of the people and of law and the order it produces for their society, a hole which takes time and others of equal or greater firmness in tackling the challenges of toeing the straight line of following the truth wherever it may lead, sometimes truth is the most difficult of things to hold oneself to following. Good luck Argentina as you now have the unenviable task of setting to not only finding the murderer of an honest public servant but also the finding of a straight and honest man who is willing to follow leads wherever they should lead, and able to discern truth from obfuscations, but also having the intelligence to find the minutia and the obscured and from then piece together the whole cloth from which they were severed and torn in an attempt to keep any investigator chasing their tail in circles made of smoke, mirrors and the fog of concealment mixed with the confusion intended to dizzy even the straightest of men such that no one could conceivably make sense and rooting the truth whence it was buried. One need be intelligent and stalwart with a singularity of purpose to complete the task for which Alberto Nisman was murdered. Unfortunately, the powers that be are more likely to seek the Argentine version of Chief Inspector Jacques Clouseau than they are Sherlock Holmes or better yet, another Alberto Nisman, the best choice of all.

 

Beyond the Cusp