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After this, Camp X-ray seems 5-star
Journal of a Futurist - 30 May 2002
High Tea with the Black Dwarf
It must have looked odd to God, the two seasoned ratbags taking afternoon tea in the cane chaired atrium of Sydney’s Intercontinental Hotel. “People still ask what I did with the lyrics of 'Street Fighting Man'”, sighs Tariq Ali, as I chide the waiter over the weak Darjeeling, “after Mick Jagger sent his scrawl to our office”. In the dimness of last century’s London, Tariq published a fiery newspaper, The Black Dwarf. He was in Sydney to launch his new book, The Clash of Fundamentalism, a bracing antidote to the jingoistic claptrap served up in our mainstream media. Later that evening Tariq appeared on ABC’s Lateline, daringly opining that war between India and Pakistan was unlikely. So what did he do with Jagger’s scribble? “Put it on the front page, then tossed it in the bin”. Yup, in those days everything was tossed out, and with it our retirement nest-egg.
Tariq mentioned that Salman Rushdie had recently posed for the cover a French magazine draped in an American flag. “I wonder if this conversion will last as long as his conversion to Islam”, Tariq mused. You can understand Salman’s enthusiasm for his new homeland, considering his long stint as a fugitive from injustice, but the teary flag waving of Christopher Hitchens is more mysterious. The Tatler’s show pony is gifted, witty, worldly, and he has long been a champion of underdogs. When I last met him in Sydney, years ago, he hauled himself onto a suburban train to visit a little known political agitator, Ramos Horta, then living with his mum in a unit; Horta is now Foreign Minister of East Timor. Perhaps the celebrity fetishism of Vanity Fair has eaten away at Christopher’s soul, not that he would admit to possessing one, or is he just another hostage to fame & fortune? Today Hitchens is so enthused about the war on terror, that he refers to it as “our war …” , but maybe that’s just the affectation of a newly minted Washingtonian. Does he buy into the axis of evil? You bet. “I happen to be a friend of the man who coined the phrase”, he recently told Tariq, puffing his chest. Wait a minute. I thought Christopher was an atheist.
Strange organs, tetchy archbishops
Religious beliefs are by no means irrelevant to people’s views of this tragic war, now shaking the Indian sub-continent. Some critics have objected to my stance on the US bombing of Afghani innocents, on the grounds that the Koran contains some nasty quotes, eg “Believers, make war on the infidels who dwell around you”. So what? The Bible is also full of specious & sadistic rubbish. The desire of established religions to own God, Hinduism and Buddhism excepted, is enough to rob the churches of any spiritual credibility. And yet, one of my correspondents has sent me a copy of a church newspaper that is far more provocative than our secular organs of comment.
The front page of the March issue of Market-Place, “a newspaper for Australian Anglicans”, features photos of child refugees still held in custody six months after being locked up by our sinister Immigration Minister, Philip Ruddock . These were the same children our Prime Minister (zzzzzzz) claimed had been chucked overboard by heartless queue jumpers, a fantasy backed by his “misinterpreted” photos . As Archbishop Ian George noted: “We’ve had all this discussion about these photos and nobody seems the slightest bit concerned about … the children”. Anyway, that’s tame, compared to the lengthy review of the book, Gideon’s Spies: The Secret History of the Mossad by Gordon Thomas. The newspaper makes clear that the “ruthless and bloody” activities of the Palestinians, “simply compete with the identical activities of highly trained Mossad death squad operators”. Such assassinations are “totally at odds with UN human rights protocols”.
Mossad makes mincemeat of media
This tabloid organ of Anglican affairs also reminds its readers that it was Mossad who intercepted the juicy phone calls between President Clinton and former White House (sex) aide, Monica Lewinsky, as she trembled in her Watergate apartment. These recordings were couriered via diplomatic bag to Tel Aviv, for potential blackmail purposes. Those who wonder why President Bush is unable to subdue the psychotic urges of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, may wish to consider the contents of other courier bags piling up in Tel Aviv.
Gideon’s Spies, available at amazon.com, though not in Australia, also elaborates on the abduction and subsequent torture of Israeli peacenik, Mordecai Vanunu, the former weapons technician who backpacked to Sydney in the 80’s and converted to Anglicanism. It was his Aussie mates who persuaded Mordecai to develop a role of film he’d carried from Israel – shots of his former workplace, a nuclear installation. Unable to arouse any interest from sleepy news editors in Australia, Mordecai travelled to Britain and sold the shots to the London Times, but not before making a fatal mistake.
He had first offered his proof of Israeli nuclear capability to the Daily Mirror , who kept stringing him along. Why? Because according to Gideon's Spies, the paper’s new owner, Robert Maxwell, was “a key and highly influential Mossad agent”, who later died in mysterious circumstances. It was Mossad who provided Maxwell with the funds to purchase the Mirror Newspaper group. The book reviewer, a veteran independent journo, Charles Moses, quotes the revelation of a former Mossad case officer (Victor Ostrovsky) that his agency was financing many of its European operations from money siphoned from the Mirror group’s pension fun after Maxwell came aboard. Are you following this? Is it truth or slander?
The honey trap
The Times was hiding Mordecai in a safe house, while checking the story. However, Maxwell was able to locate this hide-away and alert Mossad. The rest is history. A comely Mossad man-killer, Cheryl Ben-Tov, lured the young Israeli out of Britain and into a steamy embrace at a hotel in Rome, where he was drugged, kidnapped and flown to Tel Aviv. Mordecai remains today in solitary confinement.
Oh, and Maxwell? His operations in Britain under scrutiny, his demeanour volatile, Maxwell came to be regarded as a loose cannon, so Mossad “had him assassinated on his yacht off the Canary islands and his body dumped overboard into the Atlantic. No-one has denied Ostrovsky’s claims”. Phew. While suicide bombers may end up in hell, despite the propaganda of mullahs, it may well be a kind of heaven, compared to the dark celestial fate that awaits the agents of Mossad. As far as I can tell, no other newspaper in Australia has reviewed Gideon’s Spies.
Ends
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