Al-Muhajiroun was the extremist organisation that recruited or converted young Muslims and British men to their political goal of a worldwide Islamic state, starting with the Emirate of Great Britain. It was never clear whether they would recognise England, Scotland and Wales but the overall objective was clear. A troublesome development was the disbandment of this organisation which appeared to portend greater underground activity on the part of the radicals.
Hannah Strange, UK correspondent for UPI, was attending a women’s conference where Sheikh Omar, the former head of Al-Muhajiroun, was setting out his philosophy: Since Britain had invaded Iraq, the covenant of security that protected these islands from Islam was now broken, and as a consequence, war was declared. No doubt these sentiments weighed heavily on his heart since his patriotism was not in doubt:
Either withdraw your own forces or don’t expect Muslims not to support the Muslims abroad,” said Sheikh Omar, adding that the West supports dictators abroad when they see fit.
If the government met those conditions, Muslims could continue to live peacefully in Britain, he said.
“After that there will be no need to fight anybody, we’ve been living in peace here for years, and we can continue to live in peace,” he said. “We love Britain.”
However, the usual epithets on 9/11, killing all non-Muslims and blaming the Jews outweighed his love of bully beef and the Queen. It was the story that they always tell themselves. They are not to blame. They were invaded. They are merely defending themselves against the hand that is raised against them. Indeed, their pathology is a puzzling outpouring of delusional bombast reinforced by the blood of innocents. Their bloodcurdling enactment of 9/11 demonstrates the distance between our compassion and the hatred of these extremists.
The speakers, all leading members of the group, called for war against the kuffaar (non-Muslims) and lead chants as a projector screen showed images of dead American soldiers in Iraq.
As the infamous images of two planes crashing into the twin towers of the World Trade Center replayed again and again, the rapt watchers thrust their fists in the air and chanted “Allahu Akhbar! (God is great!)”
“Nine-eleven was one example of some people who chose to show us they are men, real Muslim men,” said one speaker
Muslims must also beware of “the enemy within” — moderate Muslims such as those on the Muslim Council of Britain, he said.
They side with “the Jewish conspirators, the Jewish occupiers and the Christian crusaders,” he said, and “will sell out their Muslim brothers.”
“Please raise your hands if you think the Muslim Council of Britain represents you,” a speaker at the conference instructed the crowd.
All stayed silent.
“Put your hands up if Sheikh Osama Bin Laden represents you!” he called.
Every hand shot in the air, even those of three or four year old children and their mothers in the back rows. “Allahu Akhbar!” echoed through the hall.
The MCB, continued the speaker, even condemned the “beautiful” attacks in Madrid last year. The chants grew louder.
Muslims must reject the integrationist calls of such people, said Sheikh Omar.
Instead, an Islamic state must be established here in Britain, he said, an aim that is the duty of every Muslim.
“If people reject the call of mighty Allah,” he continued, “… death will be inevitable.”
To confirm this, images of people dropping dead and burning in flames appeared on the projector screen.
If only this were shown on BBC News at Ten. Then I could start to arrange the nine other impossible things on my list, such as anti-aging, which is far more important.
Good for Hannah Strange! More people need to get in their faces, confront them and reveal their true nature for all to see. All praise to UPI then seeing as large elements of the mainstream media seems too craven to do what might reasonably be expected to be their job in this regard.
Musn’t be a racialist. It’s not nice to discriminate. Come on, be fair, the other man might see things differently than you do.
Ah, screw it. If the subject is Islam, I say it’s time to don the white robe and hood. Islam is demonstrating to the civilised world the practical limits of tolerance and respect for the beliefs of foreigners. Islam is foreign, and will be forever.
Note to the Muslims: the next time you pray, thank the God that made you that our patience, and fundamental willingness to get along, has prevented the rock you worship from being turned into one huge puddle of Trinitite, and half of your sorry co-religionists turned into charcoal thirty minutes after the launch code is verified. Don’t ever forget this, boys–one (1) American or British SSBN could ruin your day, if we were as low as you.
Reading what I wrote above, it seems to me that I myself am guilty of bombastic statements, myself. I hope I might be forgiven for that–by anyone who doesn’t follow the creed of a man who massacred helpless captives, raped their wives, and married a pre-pubescent girl.
I’m feeling bitter and melancholy. If these bozos can’t mind their manners in a place as accomodating and conciliatory as the UK, what choice will civilised folk have, in the end?
Why aren’t these bastards in Belmarsh?
Why isn’t the BBC reporting this sedition?
Answer on the back of a Labour Party membership card to:
Help us win back the Moslem Vote,
10, Downing St
London
SW1
Now, tell me again about the wonders of multi-culturalism…
…and how it is so very wrong for me to wish to preserve my cultural heritage…mild and boring it may be, but at least it is civilised in a manner which I understand, and can feel comfortable with.
Tell me again, just how I can be incarcerated for even suggesting that I do not like ‘third world immigrants’, with their filthy habits, and their intolerant religion… and how I can see little or no virtue in their culture, and certainly nothing that could be considered to be an improvement over what we already have. We have nothing to learn from them, certainly not of a cultural nature.
How I have to show tolerance and understanding of their barbarism and racist rhetoric, but am allowed no opinion or critisism of it.
The fallacy of the libertarian view, that countries should have open borders, where the dregs of the world can come and go as they please, and pay scant regard for the people who have made them welcome, is one of the major flaws in that narrow minded philosphy.
The indigenous population does have a proprietorial interest in ‘the nation’ as an entity. The nation and it’s culture are as much a part of our individual property rights, as any of the material property rights that you are so fond of espousing and seem so concerned about.
It will not matter too much how good a libertarian, anarchist, or archo-minimalist, or whatever fancy name you care to call yourselves, they will all sound the same to the savage that saws your head off. and being a ‘good’ neighbour won’t help you either!
The old saying; ‘When you sup with the Devil, use a long spoon.’ seems rather more appropriate than the other saying about; ‘Hold your friends close, but your enemies even closer.’ Do you really think it wise to have our enemies as neighbours?
What seems to be missed by many, and certainly seems to confuse more than a few, a multi-culturalist society is not the same as a multi-racial society. Many races can share a similar culture, and can live in harmony. To bring such differing and diverse cultures, as we have in Europe, and in particular in the UK, into such direct contact, is to invite a major disaster.
The whole point of differing cultures is that – yes – they are different, what one finds a virtue, another will find vile. one will value and respect human life, the other will regard death as a virtue. Can you see, and if so, can you please explain, how two such divergent and different cultures can be expected to tolerate each other, let alone live together….
Tolerance and patience are not inexhaustible, even in our boring culture…
Just remember, sheikh ol’ buddy, that when you declare war, it isn’t going to be a one-sided slaughter-fest preferred by your ilk. Folks are going to be shooting back at you and yours, most likely hitting their targets an uncomfortably large part of the time.
So don’t come wailing and bellyaching when the death and annihilation you have planned for the kuffaar boomerangs and lands on your doorstep. There are 250 million firearms in America, pal, and if but 1% of them winds up pointed at your gang, it’s all over.
Jeffersonian,
Appreciate your bravado, but the problem is much bigger and more imminent in Europe and the UK…and…..the good guys don’t have guns….tragic isn’t it?
I told you so. . .I told you so. . .I told you so. . .
Schmuck. We think borders should be open because we ALSO think that the state has no business forcing, yes FORCING, multiculturalism on anyone. If society at large will not tolerate people who do not speak the language or who preach alien creeds, then the economic motivation (the ability to get jobs or state handouts) for these jerks to come across that open border disappears. If people want to assimulate, well, welcome one and all… if not, then do not expect a welcome or much in the way of economic interaction. Libertarians are NOT multi-culturalists, they are individualists who exist within an emergent thing called a society.
I think there is more going on than just a disconnect in Britain between the tolerance required of the majority and the intolerance demonstrated by the allegedly vulnerable minority.
This is a confrontation between a 21st century culture and the remnants of a 15th century village culture. The former is relaxed, open, worldwide, tolerant, cosmopolitan, technological, and indifferent to elements of people’s lives that are held to be private in nature.
The latter is closed, tightknit, homogenous, fearful, intolerant, provincial, and sees no distinction between the public and the private lives of its members. It is a culture of totality, as opposed to the 21st century culture of differentiated elements.
We have encountered this mentality before, several times in fact. It is pre-Reformation Christianity in Europe, it is feudal Japan right up to WW2, it is the fascist-marxist-maoist mindset that held, in the words of Strelnikoff in “Dr Zhivago”, “the private life is dead…”, it is, in the final analysis, the ultimate collectivist cultural paradigm: the mentality of the Borg.
This is the reason, by the way, that the collectivist left is so attracted to defending a philosophy which it seems would repel it—the differences are superficial wrinkles on genetically identical clones. Like is attracted to like.
I have said before that the Muslim world needs its own reformation, and it does, desparately so. Only by an internal realization that individuals’ lives belong to that person, not the tribe, can the necessary progress towards the modern world occur.
On our side, only the realization that we are facing another variation of an ancient enemy, whether called Pharaoh the god-king, or divine emperor, or divine right of kings, or dictatorship of the proleteriat, or the caliphate, is immaterial. The object is, and always has been, the complete subjegation of the individual to the collective.
Only a clearly defined manifesto of individual rights, including, as a primary element, the separation of church and state, can resist this ancient urge towards submergence in the tribe.
This is the rock upon which free men and women can stand in defense of individual freedom and dignity, and upon which collectivism of any and all kinds will run aground.
I know! Let’s all go to Cairo, Damascus, Amman and Riyadh, apply for refugee status and welfare payments, pray aloud to Jesus in the streets and have great big outdoor pork barbecues with our dogs. That’ll show ’em! And what could they do about it? I mean if they tried anything nasty we’d sic world opinion on ’em. Right?
some of the commentators above have absolutely no clue. the problem of the opposition of muslims in britain or anywhere else is not down to thier “filthy habits” or anything else like that. (i recomend that ernest young get his own house in order before making comments like that, because i there is a godawful stench coming off his comments). im good friends with a few second and 3rd generation british muslims, and they basically are english when it comes down to it. the origin of an awful lot of the “militancy” that is around is basically teenage boys who see a cause that will shock people by declaring their allegience to it (like many kids who declare themselves to be “communists” etc). the hardcore people like sheik omar seem as crazed and lonely to most muslims as they do to us.
i do agree however that “multiculturalism” has an insidious and entirely negative effect. many if not most young muslims act exactly the same as their british counterparts- drinking, having sex etc. however whereas for instance catholic or jewish children of immigrants 50 years ago or whenever would largely abandon thier religeon when exposed to the brave new world of britain, nowadays, muslims have no choice other than to define themselves as muslims. whereas former immigrants were trapped between their parents demanding they kept up their traditions, and the racist right highlighting their foreignness, they could still go off and forge independent lives. muslims now have the sanctimonious left as well telling them that “youre muslims, but dont worry, thats equally valid”, so it is i think understandable if all youve had all your life is a subconcious chant of “muslim muslim muslim” from all quaters, that is how youre gonna come out. apologies for length and incoherence.
Rob, next to you comment, in order that we might understand what you are saying, use paragraphs and norms of writing please.
rob walsh,
I just knew when I wrote that phrase that some fool would take it out of context, in order to make a point.
It was there to demonstrate the sort of remarks that would be considered as a crime, in our wonderful PC world. Perhaps you feel that even in discussion such matters must never be mentioned.
It is folk like yourself, who are perhaps a mite over-sensitve, who try to suppress discussion of such a topic by casting aspersions on anyone who has the temerity to mention such a thing.
Of course you have friends who are second and third generation muslims, and the fact that you know them, and regard them as such, proves the point that their original culture was probably not too dissimilar to our own, therefore it was much easier for them to assimilate into our society. You are able to live in harmony with them…I don’t think you would be so comfortable being friends with them if their culture was based on cannabalism or thugee.
You seem to have missed the point that I was trying to make, that race, and to a lesser degree, religion do not necessarily make a culture incompatible with our own. Probably the biggest influence on any culture is from the politics of the society from which it derives. When the politics get extreme, then that culture becomes less compatible with others.
A case in point is that of Islamo-fascism, deriving from the politics of a society under duress, – principally that of the Palestinian refugee camps. As many point out, most muslims are not so violent or aggresive as the ones currently making headlines.
Another instance is that of the ongoing tribal warfare in Africa, little to do with race or religion, but mostly about politics. Not the grand national politics of the West, but of the tribal politics of societies that have remained in the dark ages.
If you are looking for some hint of racism or bigotry in my comment, then I suggest that you are looking in the wrong place…that you choose to either deliberately or inadvertenly misconstrue my remarks to be anything other than an attempt to discuss a sensitive matter in a slightly more pragmatic way than usual, says much about your attitudes to freedom of speech, and the restrictions placed thereon by the PC culture which you so obviously feel comfortable with.
As you say, others do not have a clue, only you do. Such certainty! so dogmatic! so bigoted!, or have I misunderstood you?
No doubt Omar Bakri and his ilk will be active in the forthcoming election (if they haven’t already been co-opted by Charlie Kennedy’s happy band of warriors that is – anybody else noticed that Bakri’s demands for a ‘cessation of hostilities‘ wouldn’t look out of place in a Liberal Democrat Election Manifesto?)
The rest of us can take to the streets of Bethnal Green and try to settle the argument verbally (or not, as the mood may take us) as Gorgeous George and his Jihadist/STW cross-fertilisation campaign meet up with Oooooooh, It’s Oonah! and her volunteer squads of pro-War Lefties.
The comments of home-grown east London Muslims will be especially welcome.
Can anyone tell me just how much support Al-Muhajiroun enjoys. How many people were actually at the meeting? I think we have to address the possibility that this is, as Rob Walsh suggests, just a few excitable teenagers pretending that they are tough guys. Certainly when I have seen them on television they have looked as if they were somewhat new to wearing long trousers.
Isn’t there a real possibility that the best thing to do with Al-Muhajiroun is to treat them to a good dose of ridicule?
Bishop: it would not take too many excitable teenagers with bombs strapped to themselves to cause a whole lot of death and destruction in the UK. Ignoring these loons or discounting them would be a very large mistake.
After all every “insurrection” starts as a small group of cranks.
Bishop,
Further down in the article it states that 600 people attended the conference where Bakri spoke.
Draw your own conclusions.
–effect. many if not most young muslims act exactly the same as their british counterparts- drinking, having sex etc.–
You ever been on a BA flight out of Saudi Arabia?
They drank, hijabs came off, etc., etc., but on the way home…..
Until they are tested, you’ll never know. You assume.
Ah! But if this had been Sid Ormskirk of the BNP there would have been a fleet of Police vans outside,the Kommisar of race relations would have denounced this from every screen in the land,whoever is the current Home Secretary would be proposing a mandatory life sentence for members and the Archbishop of Canterbury would have given birth.
Where is the difference? Why is there a difference?
Andrew Ian Dodge
Well, it depends if they mean it, surely. Teenagers can talk a lot of bollocks after all. Now if someone is jumping up and down saying “let’s go to Iraq and kill British soldiers” then yes, keep a VERY close eye on them, but I’m assuming that were they arrested then a jury would want to be convinced that this was not just macho talk.
I’m no lawyer – have they committed a crime here or are they just stretching freedom of speech to the limit? I blog regularly on free speech and I wouldn’t want people put away for merely talking offensive rubbish.
Peter
You are absolutely right. The BNP’s speech is “unacceptable” while the Moslem extremists’ threats are seen as tolerable. But I think the answer is to defend the BNP’s rights not crush someone else’s no matter how odious their views.
There is incredible pressure on everyone in the west to adopt repressive measures against the threat of Moslem extremism (the title of this post is, to say the least, provocative) but it is important to remember that everyone else is likely to suffer too if these measures are in fact adopted. Think ID cards, hate speech laws and so on.
Susan
600 seems a lot. But the conference was not apparently organised by Al-M themselves. Now the author uses the word “ostensibly”, suggesting some doubt over this, but I would want more certain evidence before I drew too many conclusions.
Another point to consider. It is sometimes better that these idiots make these points in public where presumably the likes of M15 and the police can keep tabs on them. If the security services are doing their jobs properly, I would imagine their activities are under fairly close scrutiny.
Of course as with the IRA these people need intelligence and willing hands.
This story seems more than a little suspicious to me, I personally doubt this meeting actually happened, it seems too scripted, too convenient.
I have found in the past that UPI has promolgated stories that turned out to be completely and utterly false, and without better evidence I think this is just one more to add to the list.
Red Ken wants an apology?
I thought I would pass along a bit on Christian Demographics in the Third World. The Pentacostals and the Evangelical sects of Christianity in the Third World have made millions… hundreds of millions of converts in the Developing World. Catholicism was only a veneer in South America and the religious values failed to influence the Spanish model of politics. The culture was inferior because the religious values were a veneer.
Secularism does not allow the religious values to penetrate as deeply as necessary for a lasting sound change of culture. Reason is not a sufficiently strong answer to the human condition. Reason won’t change human nature. Faith in the power of Grace is all that will work on human nature. And I know a lot about depravity so you can take it from me.
I was once a Cistercian monk in an enclosed Contemplative Order. I was kicked out for breaking another monks collar bone and then holding onto the broken arm while I kicked him repeatedly in the face. I did it in front of thirty other monks and they were a bit shaken by it and thought it best that I be expelled. The monk who got the business was an ex-German Tank Officer from the Wermacht who had a disagreement with me of some long standing. Our dislike for one another went back for years. We were out on a logging detail which was hard and thirsty work when he told me I couldn’t have a drink of water. He saw himself as a sort of proctor on water consumption. I drank anyway and when he came over to protest my disobedience I spit a mouth ful of water in his face and down his robe. Well, we do take vows of Poverty, Chatity, and Obedience.
Poverty and Chastity were manageable but Obedience was always a bitch, for me.
He was ex-military and a big man and I figured he and I could fight it out unless he decided he wanted to back down. When I spit the water in his face and grinned he went for me. I broke his collar bone, as I say. I do things like that. Then when he couldn’t use the arm I pushed him down took the broken arm and held onto it to keep him in sufficient pain and proceeded to boot him in the face a few times.
Some people on this board may think I am crazy or whatever, they don’t know the half of it.
There is a very good reason why I live on my own land up here in the mountains, six miles from a road. I don’t have any natural inhibitions about killing people. I’ve lost count how many times I’ve done it. I don’t stop in a fight. I cripple people. I maim them. I do it as easily as you raise your voice. If you watched Hannibal Lector beat that guard to death in Silence of the Lambs with his own billyclub… that’s me. And listen to Vivaldi while I do it.
Christianity is exspanding to the one billion Mark just in the Third World alone. Africa and South America are the regions where it is rising the most. Even South East Asia has been touched. China will go through a religious period this coming Century when their secular Communist values like the Russians before them cave in. The inner hunger for supernatural values will follow the the decay of the Marxist Communist societies. And the conversions will be sincere although the theology will be primitive. Europe is going into decay. Their French style 35 hour work week and their self centered apathy to values not based on self indulgence and smugness will inevitably lead to a low birth rate and an aging and ultimately failing economy. The United States will have to go into the ghetto Europe will become and re-establish their economies by introducing our models and our Corporations. The Moslems will have to be subdued and/or converted to our Western Greko Judeo-Christian civilization…. and our religion. Christianiity has shaped our civilization, it is part of what we are as a people and a culture. Islam and Western civilisation DO NOT mix. You CANNOT have freedom, humanism and Western style democracy existing alongside a Kalifate mixed with Sharia Law.
But that will be possible because the Europeans have no spiritual foundation anymore. They have put it all in museums and gotten old. The Moslem populations have babies and they do not. Soon countries like France and Holland will have their indiginous peoples being challenged by ever expanding home-grown Muslim populalions who will start to challenge their host countries’ political and cultural belief systems.
The Moslems however do not create anything. They will just be a parasitical social drain in Europe. The economies will decline as the birth rate declines and the Moslems will be uncreative non-producers in Europe as they are non-producers everywhere. Moslem values do not raise a people capable of anything except the backward institutions and culture you see in Moslem countries throughout the world.
Creative Moslems will get ahead by becoming Westernized and shit-canning Islam… and possibly converting to primitive Christianity. It will be a trend in the next century. As Fundamentalism in Islam fails and the political foundations of their culture are wrecked by the present historical trends… the fate of Islam will be like the fate of Soviet Russia… it will rot from the insides and cave in like the Russians did under Soviet Communism. A non-creative political system dominated by inefficient and corrupt institutions… Moslem or Communist… both are equally non producer value systems. Non competitive and doomed to failure.
Europe (with the exception of maybe Britain), has no real Armies or military defence capabilities. Most of Europe from a military standpoint is a limp dick blowing in the wind. Islam can’t produce one. Neither has any future politically if only for this one reason. Add to that the value system which is non competitive and non creative and you have an aging and impotent outlook for both Europe and Islam. We will deal with Islam in the core of the Middle East and introduce Democracy and our values will grease right along with that. In another generation Western/American values will be everywhere eating Islam alive every time they turn on a television, radio, read a book, a magazine or buy a product. Fifty years from now there won’t be a single Islamist with a good job or any hopes of getting a girl in a miniskirt to marry him. And Islam will be FULL of miniskirts.
There are going to be more wars. This next century will see more war than the last one. But the United states will never lose its advantage, especially not when it will dominate Space and build stations that will orbit the Earth militarily. We will have bases on the Moon in Fifty years and our economies will be throughout the Solar System by the end of this century. With the economic advantages of Lunar mining and Space technology our production advantage will extend for centuries. No nation is going to be able to compete with the United States. In less than twenty years there won’t be a square inch of the planet we can’t reach in ten minutes from our orbiting bases. We will be building them about that time. We can also build a circle of solar generators in orbit and sell Energy anyplace on earth. We will have pioneered fusion technology in less than twenty years and that will come online as well. Oil as an energy source is going to survive only in organic chemistry industries. The market for Oil as a fuel source will end inside the next generation.
The Middle Eastern Moslems have no hydro-electric ability, their geography doesn’t give them any. They have no industrialization to speak of…they don’t produce anything to sell and they never will. The Arab can’t even build a decent brick let alone a microchip. Moslem countries by and large are non producers and they never will be manufacturers. They will have a very hard time of it when Oil collapses as an energy source and they don’t have anything else to depend on… they simply sit on their butts and depend on Oil. It will vanish as an economic crutch to their failed non productive institutions and culture. What are they going to do then?
Competition with the United States is already a forgone conclusion.
Today’s evangelicals in the Third World have risen up against soulless secular culture, not against worldly evil. President Bush and his neo-conservative counselors believe that the US will engineer democratic regimes throughout the world. On top of this trend , American religion yet may play the decisive role on the world stage.
Professor Philip Jenkins of Pennsylvania State University reports that US Christian denominations are at the forefront of an “historical turning point” in Christianity, “one that is as epochal for the Christian world as the original Reformation”.
In the October 2002 edition of The Atlantic Monthly, he wrote, “In the global South (the areas that we often think of primarily as the Third World) huge and growing Christian populations – currently 480 million in Latin America, 360 million in Africa, and 313 million in Asia, compared with 260 million in North America … It is Pentecostals who stand in the vanguard of the Southern Counter-Reformation. Though Pentecostalism emerged as a movement only at the start of the twentieth century, chiefly in North America, Pentecostals today are at least 400 million strong, and heavily concentrated in the global South. By 2040 or so there could be as many as a billion, at which point Pentecostal Christians alone will far outnumber the world’s Buddhists and will enjoy rough numerical parity with the world’s Hindus.”
“If Mecca is ever razed by an invading army, it will not be Israeli or American or European, but will march up from Africa south of the Sahara.” In Sub-Saharan Africa the Pentecostals are an ever growing number and increasing faster even than Islam.
Now that is food for thought….
Faust, if you don’t have a blog, start one. I’d read it, whether or not you could persuade me on any given issue.
I’m serious.
Now, living in Asia, I can fully support Faust’s assessment of Christianity’s growth, especially in Asia, which in turn will eventually temper any ideological disagreement with the US by governemnts of whatever nation. The influence of American religion cannot, and should not, be underestimated.
As an atheist, I happen to think that’s a good thing.
TWG
A blog by Faust would make for interesting reading. I wonder if his neck-snapping exploits are lifted out of a Bret Easton-Ellis novel, however?
Interesting piece Faust, I agree you need a blog.
Sounds like Faust is the blog name of Rasputin…
I was a seminarian. One who studies to become a priest. And failed. But I tried again. I entered a contermplative Order. And again failed.
The process of taking vows in an Order does not make one a priest either. Ordination is another process from taking vows. You can be a monk and not be ordained. You can study to become what we called a Choir Monk which means a priest but two thirds of the community were Lay Brothers and never would become priests.
I was offered the choice. I began my studies and did astonishingly well. Two Monks, both of us young were seen as having promise as scholars. One was Matthew. Matthew and I were Novices together. You are a Novice for a year or two.. usually two years. You have a robe the same as the professed Monks but your scapular is white and your belt is white. A professed has a black scapular and a leather black belt. Most Novices do a lot of manual labor. I was a big fellow and I got a lot of heavy farm work. My day began at 3:30 in the morning with Matins and Lauds and then a meal of bread and coffee. I was number 68. I had a name but few people used my name. Most of the time we spoke with hand signs and observed Silence. There was a Great silence and a lesser or little Silence. The day had a period where the Greater Silence meant total silence. The lesser silence or the little silence was for work shifts. You spoke as little as possible and used hand signs as much as necessary.
Silence is a very pleasant thing. It creates a definite mind frame. The not forming of mental images clears and cleans the awareness and makes one more observant. You also learn to think without images and forms. The motion of the Mind changes. Contemplation is a step beyond meditation. Meditation has to do with images and concepts…forms, mental constructs. Contemplation is a stillness of the Mind and a comprehension rather than a thinking process. It is not cogitation as it is also not meditation. Contemplation deals in the principles which do not move. Silence is necessary to learn that Mind moves and is also Still. Awareness which does not use images is a grace.
After you have been a Novice for a couple of years you are moved up to Postulant. Postulants are no longer Novices. They are allowed to dress in the Monk’s full Habit and wear the Black leather belt and the black Scapular over the White robe.
You also get your own Cell and no longer have to reside in the Novice dormitory and be under the Novice master. You are assigned to two older Professed Monks who are your Mentors and you are given a place in the monastery which begins your advance in seniority. You do not do things as a Novice did them. You no longer need instruction. You know the Rule and you have learned to live it instictively.
In the Marine Corps where I went after I had been kicked out of the Community of the Order I also had a Rule…. it was the ethos of the Marines and the UCMJ, the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Going by the Book. The Marines like the Order also had a rigid heirarchy… and a clearly defined reality. You lived in a squadbay and had absolute loyalty to the Corps and you trained in weapons and thought weapons. It reminded me of Kendo in Japan when I was a child. I grew up on military bases in the Pacific and learned Kendo from six years in Japan I took Kendo from the time I was eight to the time I was twelve… and then learned Kata which I used to train on my own until I could return to Dojo training when I was older. I use the Dojo at NIH in Washington DC when I am up there.
As a Postulant I began to have a bit more freedom. I didn’t like all the strictures and the control. Obedience was difficult for me. Poverty gave me no challenge. Chastity was understood. But Obedience was nearly impossible.
I used subtle intimidation and I used blackmail and extortion to get what I wanted. Monks are usually very vulnerable if you spot a weakness and can exploit it.
The Mailman and the Sheriff were both allowed into the monastery grounds without supervision. They could come into the enclosure. The Sheriff was a drinker in a dry county. The Mailman had access to magazines and to badly needed cigarettes. I brought liquor, magazines not allowed, and cigarettes into the monastery. Small petty vices but highly prized. Useful. I compromised people and then exploited them. A monastery is like a family in some ways. Everone knows everyone else very well, like brothers in a family. It is also like a military unit in that it is heirarchical. Everyone has a responsibility and a territory that went with it. I enlarged my territory and cut down on my responsibility. I got more time to use. I began breaking the Monastic Rule.
The Rule is everything. The Monastery runs very precisely by the Canonical hours and the Bell marks the movement of the hours from Matins before dawn to Vespers and Compline after dark. The bell is absolutely sovereign. Everything is done by the bell. Screw the bell.
I also got more to eat. I was failing as a Monk and showing more of my tue self. It was apparent and it became obvious to my seniors. But they were afraid of me. And some of them were compromised. The abbot himself had a bottle and I had a still I built and myself and three other monks ran it so the Sheriff got his cut and the Mailman got his and the county had a supply of good quality Moonshine… and it was all hidden on Monastery land. Safe as houses.
A big ex-Nazi German who was the Librarian was not my friend. The monastery was full of old vets, most of them combat hardened bastards. Both sides of the war. Brother Richard, aka Dangerous Dick was Hungarian and spoke six languages. The abbot’s secretary was ex OSS (Office of Strategic Services), Damian had been with Merrill’s Marauders in Burma during the war. The place was laced with some very hard steely-eyed men. Dangerous Dick had the responsibility for keeping down the vermin in the Monastry. Rats, he loved killing rats. He also killed birds, he shot the fingers off a statue of Jesus in the cloister shooting at birds. He knew where the guns were. We had a couple of large caliber rifles, Dangerous Dick had them locked up in a trailer in the woods. We had a pack of wild dogs that killed four of our calves one year. I killed one of the dogs by chance and I used an axe. Thomas and I were working on a dredger widening Honey Creek to extend the farmland by improving the drainage… we also started on building a dam that took nine years to complete. We made three lakes. I killed the dog when he came near the dredger and didn’t know I was there. I got him with a brush axe.
I also started to climb over the barrier at night and get inside the Library which was closed except for those monks who had priveleges. I didn’t have priveleges but I wanted the books. I am a voracious reader. It was a rare specialized library focused on old and rare books of a certain kind. I got caught because the Librarian noticed little things had been moved. He and I had a problem with that. I was inside his territory and he was very territorial.
I also had other Monks who were senior men who had a problem with me. It all came to a head eventually. It was one thing for me to beat up a novice…it was quite another for me to beat up and send a senior monk for a month in the hospital and have thirty other frightened monks see me do it. Next stop civilian clothes and a bus ticket to Pendleton USMC and seven years in Vietnam.
A sordid episode in a wasted life. But nowhere near being a priest. Matthew went on to Rome and was trained in Canon Law at the Gregorian and Monte Cistella and then did advanced theology at Tubingen. He later became the Pope’s Confessor. And I became a sargeant in Alpha 1/7 USMC in Quang Ngai. I went on to do a Masters in Chino-Soviet Politics at George Washington Univ and then further training at the Pentagon and Langley with the CIA. I got to personally know CIA counterintelligence chief James Jesus Angleton, Colby and worked with Victor Marchetti. My work took me to South East Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. Nine years in India and then working for the Sultan in Oman. By their fruits shall ye know them.
Wasted life possibly, an exceedingly interesting one definitely!
Perhaps we should re-constitute the Knights Templar,it wouls have fitted Faust’s talents perfectly.
Hmmm, a “sargeant” who can’t spell his rank and studied “Chino”-Soviet politics. Lively imagination, American schooling or Alzheimer’s?
Apologies for the typing errors Matt O’Halloran. Sino-Soviet… Chinese and Russian relations and politics, and Sergeant, not sargeant. I type fast and I do make mistakes.
A lively imagination eh? So I’m a bit of a Walter Mitty? A fictional character with a touch of Alzheimer’s. Indeed.
OK then. Here is a little more Alzheimer’s for you. An insight into Faust.
In actuality I was raised on military bases virtually all my life. I was born in Pearl Harbour Military Hospital at 4:30 in the morning on the day the Japanese came in to attack. My father was coming back from my being born when he looked up and saw the Japanese peeling off over Kaneohe to hit the airfields. When he got to the runway in his car the place was a chaos of burning aircraft. All of my earliest memories are the barracks we lived in turned into a home and the bombshelter covered with woodroses in the back yard. I was six when the war ended with the defeat of the Japanese.
My earliest memories are of the WAR. I started first grade in a Quonset hut at Barber’s Point on the Island os Oahu. My father was in air combat at Henderson field AND became a Squadren Commander. After the war was won we were transferred all over the Pacific in the years after the war. I was in Japan for the occupation and learned Kendo from the age of eight. It is still my favorite sport and I own three original forged steel swords. I didn’t come back to the States except for short tours of duty and then we were sent back out to the Pacific. I came back to the US during the Civil Rights period and went to a new school that had just been integrated in a small town in the South.
Deceitfulness, as indicated by repeated lying, use of aliases, or conning others for personal profit or pleasure. It is true that deceit has been with me for a very long time. Both my brother and myself were able to get top secret clearances due to my father going into Long Rang Communications with CINCPAC and from that to codes and finally Intelligence work. I went into CIA as did my brother after a degree from the Sino-Soviet Institute at George Washington Univ. in Washington DC. My brother spent 16 years in Communist China and both of us speak Chinese Mandarin. I worked with CIA as liason in EYE Corps for the General who had command of the Marines in Quang Tin, Vietnam. I did not have a happy career. I fell in with some rough people including Victor Marchetti. I was a driver for people who later became rogue bad guys in the Agency eyes. I worked in Laos and that went bad too and I was involved. Cambodia for a time and then out to Burma and from there to BanglaDesh and it was getting very bad. Then India and I had to work for them for a while. Not much choice. Then Kashmir and Afghanistan and finally out to Arabia and a good job in Oman. The Front for the Liberation of the Arab Gulf was active there. There was a little fat Arab guy named el-Quasayer who was planting mines in the roads up to the Awddam Oilfields. There was countersniper work too. I made ends meet. I had a new wife, a local girl. I married an Arab and my own kids are half Arab.
Truth is stranger than fiction Matt O’Halloran.
I survived doing things I knew how to do. Sometimes not happily. I acted like a Moslem and walked away from it when the time came. IF you wanted to work for the Sultan of Oman you had to play it his way. Being Moslem was part of that game. But getting out alive and taking the money with me was my game.
I robbed graves and murdered people. I once got $250,000 from robbing a Parsee Funeral Home. I got multiple MILLIONS from murdering a Pakistani Colonel named Firman Ali once. It is an involved story. During the Bangladesh War he tortured and murdered 500 of the richest people in the Brickworks out by the Racetrack when the Moslems took the city. Then I took it.
Firman Ali was a Pakistani ISI interrogator and a Colonel. After I got the money off him I dropped him off in a village of Bangladeshi people who knew exactly who he was and what he did… since he did it to THEIR families. I watched them chase him like a rat and beat him to death with farm tools while they shoved him head first down a large communal privy.
I shot people I didn’t even know. I once sat for three days trying to think of the worst thing I had ever done. I remembered some real mammies. But I finally quit before I got to the very bottom. It was bad enough just opening the damn box. I once went into a man’s apartment and put a pillow over his face while he was asleep and shot him in the face through the pillow. Then I took the pillow off his face (it deadened the report of the gun) and looked at his face. A strange experience.
I am very disciplined. I like working alone. But I can also lead and have been a combat leader. I have always felt at home in the military. I was a commendable Marine. I was good at my MOS and I am multi-talented. I am excellent with all sorts of weapons and I always say “Yes Sir”. But I also know exactly what YOUR limits are. And an old saying is “if you can’t enforce a law, there is no law.” Bear that in mind.
I like guns and books. I live alone because I have a homicidal temper. I think it is wisest to limit my contact with the nice little bunny rabbits and the old ladies. I am so damn quick I can do it before I even think about it. Your neck is essentially seven little plastic spools wrapped in cheese and put in a plastic liner. Your entire body is full of things ready to go wrong.
I have a charming smile.
Shall I continue?
I like Kendo. I am passionate about Kendo. I learned it when I was a child of eight and I was taught by a Japanese who was from the Sendai Division named Ittosai.
My father was the administrator of a Japanese town during the Occupation of Japan. I was in a Japanese School and I took Kendo with the other boys. Nine of us in the school together and I had to fight every one of those boys. They were not beaten like their fathers were beaten in the war. They were school age boys and we were all there as peers and equals. And the pecking order was all we had. It was very natural. Fighting every day is what I learned as a child. I grew up from the youngest age in fights. No quarter asked or given.
Kendo was our medium of exchange. It was supervised by Ittosai so everyone had an equal chance and we learned a martial art at the same time. Very committed and instructional. All of us put ourselves into the training every day and we were absolutely focused the way only little boys can be.
I am still very good at Kendo. I own three swords, one is a Showa Blade, hand forged in a Gunto stock. Ittosai gave me his own sword when I was old enough to have it. He and I became very close. Ittosai had carried it in Manchuria against the Chinese.
Tell us something about yourself Matt O’Halloran. European or possibly English? In your thirtys or forties. Professional type? Single and living alone? Any children? I have four grown children and five grandchildren. Two of my children were adopted in India. Both are girls. One I took from a bombed out train in Chagatchka outside Jessore in the Boyra Saliant during the BanglaDesh War. I was doing forward recon for the 2nd Indian Armor under Brigadier General Raina. I was working for his R and W unit. I had an Indian Army adjutant named Atilingam as my driver. A good man in a fight.
My other daughter was given to me by a Leper family in Calcutta. I arranged for the family to receive the DANLEP treatment that cured their Leprosy. The child was born clean and I raised her as my own.
That was back in the late 1960s. My daughter is all grown up and married now. She lives next door to an American Senator in Georgetown in Washington DC and her husband is Secret Service and was part of the security coverage and body guard around Senator Kerry when he ran against Bush. My daughter went to parties in the Kerry home and I have pictures of Senator Kerry holding my grandson. I’ve even met the man and shaken his hand. My daughter may have voted for Kerry. But I haven’t asked. I have a sister who is a senior doctor in research and pediatrics at the NIH in Washington. Her husband is another of the staff at NIH.
There is a Kendo Club that meets at NIH and I have received some acclaim there against their students. I also fight in the Kendo Club at George Washington Univ and we use the Gym at the Sino-Soviet Institute when I am up there. My daughter inherited my Asian Art Collection. She was raised mostly by a woman, Jade, I never married who was Chinese and who lived in Georgetown. Jade was my business partner and I trusted her implicitly. My daughter went to Highschool with the daughters of the Diplomatic Embassy children in Washington. I sent her to a private school there for Embassy children of all Nationalities. She lived with Jade Hsu while she was going to school there.
I traveled a lot in those days, mostly in Asia. I bought art as an investment and a hobby. Do you like Art, Matt? What is your favorite European artist and what paintings do you like?
I like two paintings particularly, one is The Grand Inquisitor by El Greco. And the other is a painting by Bruegels the Elder called the Baptism of Christ which does not have Christ in the painting. There are about 200 figures in the painting but no Christ. It took me a while to understand the painting and find where Christ was in the composition. He was outside the composition standing next to me on the edge of the crowd.
What paintings do you like, Matt? You work for a Banking Firm? Investments? I do investments naturally. I am quite interested in making money by acquiring investments. If you had 10K how would you invest it?
Anyway, back to the story. As I told you I am the son of a military Officer. I grew up in a military world. Officers Club and military schools, a great deal of Travel all over the world.
I volunteered for VietNam after getting kicked out of the Monestry. Not a wise move but understandable. My brother and I had a strong religious upbringing. Very moral and rigorous. I was an altarboy and one might even call me a sacristy rat without the priggishness. Catholics are not necessarily prigs about sex for instance unless they are Irish perhaps. I was not Irish. I was sort of like a Cardinal who has a mistress sort of Catholic. I tried for a time on a Career in the Church. I was not a good candidate for the clergy and eventually it showed. The Abbot recommended me for the US Marines. He said I needed to reform my morals. That was a long shot if there ever was one.
My brother was extremely right wing when I was not. I was not into the philosophy of politics. I can remember my father eating his dinner with his plate on his knee while he watched the McCarthy hearings on early television back when McCarthy was active in politics. My father took his Oath to defend the US and the Constitution very seriously. He had become an Intelligence Officer by that time.
I saw my brother evolve into an Intelligence Officer early. He finished his tour in VietNam after mine and he went into CIA before I ever did. He served all over but eventually wound up in China and spent 16 years in Communist China, being expelled twice. He ended his career in Taiwan and Hong Kong. His children grew up in China and never felt at home in the US. All of the children went back to careers in the Far East. My brother’s son went into the Military Academy and later into the State Department and is in Norway now. The bulk of my brothers career in China was in Liaoning in tracing the Chinese Electronics industry and in Shandung tracing their heavy indutry capacity. He finished his career in Taiwan mapping their communications capacity and in inserting teachers who were spies into the Chinese Academic world. He had a whole string of people inside China working in many educational and Technical Universities.
He did a lot of harm to people who had no way of escaping what they were living doing his work. He compromised two Communist Intelligence Officers who worked for him.
I finished my first tour in Quang Ngai Province and then returned for a second tour in Eye Corps. I was assigned as a Liason to a General who had me assigned to be a body guard to the family of the CIA head of Station in DaNang. From that I was moved to assignments which became progressively more “private”. I was introduced to people who later became famous or notorious depending on your point of view. I was trusted. I was rewarded by being sent back to the US for a Scholarship at the Sino-Soviet Institute and a Masters in Asian Languages and Politics in a program offered by George Washington University and CIA. I had some personal problems with some of my political professors and some of my handlers. I stole things. I sold things I stole to my professors for grades. I stole documents they wanted and things that they didn’t have access to… but wanted very badly. I made keys and burglarized places that they gave me the floor plans for and the times of entry and the documents they wanted. I got good grades.
I learned all my lessons and was trained in watching people and getting into groups which had political agenda which were deemed suspect. I stole things in the Pentagon and practiced getting into security areas and dressing the part and getting out with forged ID’s I did pranks and left evidence behind in embarassing places. It was all a test of skills and entering and compromising security facilities.
There were a multitude of targets all around DC and Annapolis which I was given assignments to penetrate and leave a trace behind. It was a place a bug and get out game. It was a steal a Senator’s car and bug it game. Lots of games. Lots of theft.
My instructor was a man we knicknamed “Bullithead”. I intensley disliked the bastard. He was later chained naked to a radiator in the Golan heights and had all his teeth drilled out. He used to give parties at his estate in Virginia and let the CIA Interns use drugs he supplied, LSD and Pot and other things. He would film them while they used the drugs and he would film them having sex in the bedrooms and in the pool. He blackmailed them and used them whenever he had a need during their careers. I worked for Bullithead and was careful he never got anything on me. I stole from him regularly. Bullithead’s REAL name was William Buckley, he later went on to become Beirut’s CIA station chief before he was kidnapped by Islamic militants who tortured him over a 15-month period, then killed him. The day he got was well deserved. The Hezbollah captured him in Beirut and the Pasdaran drilled out all his teeth. It couldn’t have happened to a more deserving man. He was my professor, my “home room teacher” you might say. I was sent to The Farm on the James and went through a program similar to that given to Army Rangers Recon. I showed my skills as a Sniper and my talents as a body guard and they entered my record as a plus.
I was sent back to VietNam and assigned to a team at the embassy under a CIA man named Victor Marchetti. I was his driver.
I did some things which I was not authorised to do and I was reprimanded by being transferred to Laos and I was no longer ” in uniform”. They suspected I killed two men and a woman without autherization, but nothing was ever proven. My status was deemed without papers the better to keep me in control. I was not free to do..
I was told and used. I was not treated well. I was something to be lent to others for certain kinds of work. No one had to take responsibility for me.
I resolved to get free of the controls and the very nature of the work was an assistance. I had no “papers” and the moment I started to act as if this were actually true they no longer had any hold on dangling my old papers in front of me.
But I would be abandoned they said. I took the new staus and left them. I stole a small amount of money, thousands of Dollars from CIA petty cash and disappeared into South East Asia with no “papers”.
I made my living after that any way I could. I worked at anything and I worked for anyone. But I kept my freedom after a fashion and I kept moving. I went from Laos to Burma and then on to BanglaDesh. There were a whole succession of small conflicts private and institutional. Wars in which I merely had a job and no other motivation than to put my time in and complete an assignment for the money.
I finally came to India. I went to work for R and W, (Indian Intelligence) under a senior military officer in the Indian Army. He promised me new papers. I never quite got them. He always had one more assignment and then another and never any papers. I did good work for him against the Paks. I had a cover with the Catholic Relief Agency out of Calcutta and I re-established contact with CIA in India. They were not very helpful but promised me the moon. I was dangled in front of the Security Officer for Sultan Quabus Said bin Taimur of Oman. He did not know my true origins and I was hired in Oman with a completely new resume tailored to Oman.
I was not officially CIA but I officially became Omani, and after that my papers as an American were once more recognized by my own government in return for my help and “co-operation”. I did a simple task the Omanis were not able to perform. They had a problem with Arab terrorist, bombs in the palace types who wanted to destroy the Omani Royal Family and take over the country. These people had to be hunted down and “dealt with”. I did it with Rolodex and maps. I used all my collected skills and converted to Islam and was trusted.
I was given a Moslem wife and I might have had a lifetime in Oman. How wonderful, what more could I ask for. They actually believed I was grateful and looking forward to the day I met Allah at their side.
I had a lot of money I had to keep quiet… millions of dollars stolen from the Pak Colonel back in Bangladesh. I had been stealing for years. I stole a fortune in Laos. I took it with me into Burma and kept on stealing. Business on the side. There are “needs” in a war. Everyone has little desperate private needs. I supplied those needs. Even the good people at Catholic Relief had needs. Mother Teresa had needs. Everyone has a strong need for something. Can you help me?
I ended my career in Oman and asked to go on Vacation to Europe with my beautiful new Omani wife. I was allowed to go. I was trusted. I took the girl and kept right on going. I took the money and ran with it. I had waited a very long time and I had papers again and I was covered by a Passport and I kept right on and got back to the States.
I got work in New York with some Jews. They treated me reasonably well. They also trusted me. I was able to use them as a cover until I was able to break away and disappear altogether. They were into a kind of political import export thing. I was useful for three years and then vanished.
I spent three years having no contact whatsoever with anyone or anyplace that could be traced. My wife was set up with a house and land and I only contacted her in ways that could not be traced. I set up a separate identity and bought Land. I used my new identity to create another one.
I reinforced my identity and became two people. Two completely different sets of papers. Two social security numbers and no fingerprints anywhere.
And I know you don’t believe a word of this. I find that useful too. I don’t exist and I have no face and perhaps I do exist somewhere. Perhaps I am the Postmaster of Alpharetta? Maybe I am someone who owns a bank in a small town sixty miles north of Atlanta? Perhaps I am someone else altogether. Perhaps all of these people in some collage? Perhaps I am a name on a tombstone buried in a grave in Marietta. Who knows. The IRS swears I pay my taxes. But that is all papers.
Lawyers can do a series of things on a schedule that make a paper trail and maintain it.
If records are reality then reality is a piece of paper. Old pictures in yearbooks that don’t match… a face on a page of a man who never existed. I am a bigger liar than you know. But it is all true. It is possible to work three sides at the same time. But then alls well that ends well.
Do I amuse you Matt O’Halloran? Do I spin a good yarn? Am I still suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease?
Who were your ancestors… Europeans have such interesting families. Mine is quite old, we have lots of family stories… especially about Faust. My people settled on the Altamaha River in an Indian graveyard called The Tombs. We still OWN it. We made Jager rifles and sold them to the Creek and Cherokee Indians and the local settlers. We followed the wars. It was always good business.
What was your family history, Matt? We have a family joke for a motto… it goes way back. Our family motto is about being hired on as mercenary soldiers, “When the Money runs out, so do we.” Swiss Germans, big tall mountain men who were hired to fight for the Catholic Church during the Reformation. Dragoons for the Pope. It was my ancestors who torched Munster. We came to the Americas as hired soldiers for the English against the French although we were recruited in Switzerland.
Very very German. My people originally were from Konolfingen in Switzerland in Bern and we have a large number of the original family name that live in the area. We came to the Americas in 1757. Faust is an ancestor of ours. I am his descendant you might say. A Faust in our family came over in 1744 or so it is said.
If you can’t beat them, join them. Join me, as an equal, Matt. Meet me in the open. I won’t come armed if you won’t.
Oh by the way. I am published several times over.
I can’t say it was great literature but it was a good story. And I am creative.
You can still get copies of my books on E-bay though they are out of print now. There are copies still around for sale.
Like I say, not great Lit but it did make me enough money to buy a car or three.
I did most of my books back in the 70’s. It was fun for a while. I may even do some more some day.
Someone once wrote a book, an autobiography of sorts about a young man who left a Monastry to become a Marine and fight in Vietnam. It was published by Bantham.
You find the book and you’ve found me.
Faust,
Fascinating, and I am not doubting the authenticity of any of it, but the point of telling us all this is?….
Without wishing to appear too cynical, but was this a comment or a cv?…
Faust: I withdraw my tentative diagnosis of Alzheimer’s and substitute galloping logorrhoea.
I liked your ‘two liner’ reply Matt. It made laugh so loud I had to go wash my face.
I really don’t exist do I Matt. Too much of a furtive imigination and a touch of galloping logorrhoea. Isn’t that right?
The story of a young man who left the Monastry to become a Marine and fight in Vietnam. Never happened did it? I never wrote an autobiography about my life… did I? After all, Matt thinks I’m crazy.
People like me don’t really exist… do they?
I am a sweet old man who is a vicious bastard. I have little or no conscience and I work for money. I am not likely to play by any rules. I will get exactly what I want. I will smile all the way and I will not share.
I also wrap myself in OLD Glory. And I sing softly about ancient heroes and tradition and the sheer Size of Dick Cheney.
Matt doesn’t think I’m real. Matt thinks I’m a little girl from Boise, Idaho who skips from door to door selling Girl Scout Cookies at the weekend and tells tall stories on the Net.
Here’s a clue to my existance Matt. Enjoy…
http://www.americasvoices.org/avarc2002/archives2002/BowenM/BowenM_043002.htm
(Link)
When I first read Faust’s comments on Wednesday I was intrigued. So I took his e-mail address and googled.
And assuming what I discovered is correct, then Faust is Philip Kingry, author of The Monk and the Marines and I claim my five pounds.
Google is a wonderful thing, because if you search the groups, you’d also find more of Faust’s writings on the middle east situation.
And apparently he also worked on the movie Jaws.
The Jaws thing is another Kingry.
Gingerich, Gundrich, Gingery… Kingry. Mennonites (Anabaptists) who originated in Konolfingin, in the Canton of Berne in Switzerland.
I will tell you where to look for me. Atlanta: you can find that in the State of Georgia.
Now go north of that and look for a little town called Dahlonega and another littler town north of that named Suches. There is a small lake called Lake Winfield Scott near Suches. The whole area there is the Chattahoochee National Wilderrness. It is about three and a half million acres of forest and part of the Smokey Mountains. I am right out in the middle of it. You are going to have to walk, because there are no roads you can use and I don’t even think you are up to finding the trails either. I don’t think you city folk do GPS and cross country like Rangers. Camp Merrill is Rangers, that is between Dahlonega and Suches. It stands to reason that Rangers won’t be training in some place where they sell Twinkys and Cokes. I live deeper in farther than that. Find Blood Mountain on a map. Now cut the mountain in quarters, ONE TWO THREE FOUR. I am down in a Cove, a box canyon on number four. Look for a water course and there is nothing else marked. That’s me. Unless you like climbing cliffs you can’t get in here unless you know where the water course allows entry. I hope you like swamp and poiseness snakes (copperheads, water moccasins, & rattlers) because the bottom end of Raiblow lake is full of both.
On the subject of snakes. Ever eaten any Rattlesnake? I am serious. I ate some rattlesnake once. I won’t recommend it. I also did some things with Rattlesnake venom sacs but we won’t go into that. You cut them out entire and intact with a razor blade. I knew a an Indian soldier who had himself bitten on the tip of the tongue by a particular venomous snake in India. It was in conjunction with a religious ceremony and the use of drugs… I had an NCO who was a genuine Thugee. That was while I was working in the Indian Army. The man assigned as my adjutant was a Thuggee. He taught us how to use a long thin silk cord and a little round medallion of a woman with a long tongue (Kali)… how to hold it coiled in your hand and then flip it out of your hand around a person’s neck and catch it again. He found a home in the military.
He liked to have cows lick the sweat off his bald head. I once found him in a field with a cow licking his head and he was smiling. The world is full of many strange things.
I am not your suburban Smedley Dewdrop. You are on my land here. I own a thousand acres. And if you didn’t bring a witness then there are no witnesses are there?
I won’t have to worry about the deer on my land for another month or so. They have forage until probably the end of January. After that I will begin feeding them at the two shelters I built on opposite sides of the cove. There are two herds of deer, each has about twenty deer… I feed both herds. One is northeast of Crystal Lake and the other is south of Rainbow Lake. Many of the does are already carrying and they will deliver in the Spring.
I have to make sure they make it through the worst part of the winter. Deer starve and the does who are carrying are the most vulnerable. They have to feed for two.
I am doing some thinking about how George Bush is perceived. I am trying to understand why his critics need to picture him as they do. I am also trying to think out how the present strategy with dealing with the US National security here at home and abroad can be best illustrated to you people on this website. You are all “normals” and representative of the average people of your kind. I do not really seek to convert you to my way of thinking. That is not anything in reach. You will never see things beyond your own perspectives. I tend to think in larger terms than you do. Justice in the world is largely an illusion. It is never attainable. It can only be approached through real choices and real human beings who are ALL flawed and none individually has any substance which is very lasting. All are Vain, all are Vulnerable. Buckminster Fuller once said that the world is shaped by the likes of “robber barons”. The poweful. The movers and shakers of History. The world is composed of Alexander Haigs, Joseph Stalins and Henry Kissingers and George Bushes and Osama Bin Ladens. All are unique. All pursue different causes and world views. But what is the meaning of History with these realities as obvious facts?
Does History itself move in certain directions and call up the men at various times to play parts in a motion which has a direction? Or is all random and chaotic and having no direction and no Order?
Since I see order in some factors I can postulate that Order as a reality does in fact exist. If Order does in fact exist I can project a postulation that chaos and disorder are the illusion and Order itself is the overall reality. If Order is the overall reality then a direction is necessary. What is that direction?
In a word, where are WE headed?
Prophecy and prediction are two words suggesting the same process in relation to an Ontology of History. I am not content to follow my passions. That is contemptible. I prefer being clinical and surgical in my vision of what is necessary to support the directions of history. History is brutal and sometimes its means are bloody… but I think its ultimate fulfillment may be something beyond all these.
Creation feeds on blood and history flows in conflict. The right survives by being alive at the end of any contest. Might and right are inter-related. In what way? How does right survive, what is the mechanism. Justice is a poor thing in History. You simply cannot depend on a commonly held definition of what Justice is… and expect blind Justice to be expressed in a visible way. The end results are precise, the means are not always clear.
Yet the end result is obvious and survival is always obvious. The strong breed. The weak starve and wither. The resolution to the present contest and the security that is its necessity are what occupies my thoughts in front of my fireplace. It is cold outside her on the mountain.
I have to say…even if you assume Faust the warrior monk doesn’t exist, what an amazing story regardless. I hope he does, though. And why not? There are all sorts in the world. If Faust is fiction, his creator is certainly lucid.
Faust, just a gentle tip, keep comments brief please, although please do comment. Your stuff is fascinating.
Damn, that link didn’t work. Let’s try it again.
Faust, can you pls explain why, if the Sultan of Oman is SO Moslem, why is he gay, according to all Internet research? Got anything to say about that?
Faust is a 64 yoa man with two daughters and a son. He is married. He is your typical male. He lives the common life in suburbia.
His life is one made up in fantasy.
Truth is truth. and what Faust speaks of is twisted truth. He indeed did write a book entitled “The Monk and the Marine.” It is indeed out-of-print. But, that is where it ends. He tried getting another book published, but I believe the editors told him to write something “in reality.”
Faust has an awesome imagination.
And, as for me, his youngest daughter, all that he had told you is part of his fantasy world.
This is the man you call Faust – http://deelt4life.cornball.org/gallery/Family/tuxdad1
And the first angel , poured out this cup, on to the earth( the use of virus weapons by the islamists in southern ,soft europe , and know the name of the beast ,the third anti christ, ( Islamic leader to be born in eastern europe, turkey, To north of Israel, 3000 YEARS ago north,was to the west of present north, polaris star.And the second angle poured, out this cup , and the mountains moved, and fire reiged down from heaven,(atomic rocket war fare in response to islamic terror attack,attack, on america by china , backed by the arabs, who will play china against america,western world,( see peak oil)and the beast will rule over the world,globle aline ment of capitalism ,and arab, oil money, cashless form of money system based on DNA of person,FOR THE BEAST LIVES YET DOS NOT LIVE>a form of virus, linked to persons , DNA form of organic, non organic computer system,some thing way beyond what we have at the moment,20—50 years away.THIS 21 CENTURY IS GOING TO BE HELL ON EARTH. BNP supporter
And the first angel , poured out this cup, on to the earth( the use of virus weapons by the islamists in southern ,soft europe , and know the name of the beast ,the third anti christ, ( Islamic leader to be born in eastern europe, turkey, To north of Israel, 3000 YEARS ago north,was to the west of present north, polaris star.And the second angle poured, out this cup , and the mountains moved, and fire reiged down from heaven,(atomic rocket war fare in response to islamic terror attack,attack, on america by china , backed by the arabs, who will play china against america,western world,( see peak oil)and the beast will rule over the world,globle aline ment of capitalism ,and arab, oil money, cashless form of money system based on DNA of person,FOR THE BEAST LIVES YET DOS NOT LIVE>a form of virus, linked to persons , DNA form of organic, non organic computer system,some thing way beyond what we have at the moment,20—50 years away.THIS 21 CENTURY IS GOING TO BE HELL ON EARTH. BNP supporter