He clenched his fist around the USB, impatience gripping him as he waited. He had just finished pacing only to sit down, unaware of his rocking back and forth. Once he saw her, he was back to his feet. He wanted to push it into her hand and disappear. Instead, she guided him to a table, “let’s have a drink first,” she offered.

“Sure.”

They sat, ordered drinks. Small talk. He looked around, more small talk. The crowd was distant, his mind never leaving what he ha seen. How he felt.

Once the drinks were in front of them, she sipped hers, a tall cold beer. She looked at him, “tell me what is on that, what you found.”

“It’s bad. There is a lot of sadistic, horrible child exploitation material in here,” he held his glass of straight whisky.

“I understand, can you give me a summary?”

He gulped down his whisky.

“Most of it’s point of view. The man has a camera on him, so they are filming what they are doing from their perspective. I saw them pull a kid from a bed, throw the kid to the ground, strip them naked. The kid is crying, they are scared. He keeps pulling and prying, feeling them all over. Prodding hands over their body. They do this to another kid, just as young. I saw them tie the kids up, naked, face down. Bound, hands and feet tied together. The kids are screaming, begging for mercy. Calling for their parents. Screaming for God to help them. No one comes to help them, just tears and screaming.”

“My God, that’s horrible,” she sipped her beer.

He went on, “in other clips, he kicked over a boy, that had his throat slit. The boy was still holding a bottle of water. His eyes wide open. Then another video, I could see a child running through a field. Chased, they tormented him. Then, then….they shot him. They shot this kid dead.”

“The boy, they killed him?”

He nodded, “yeah. It goes on like this. A lot of molesting and stripping but the other folders are far worse.”

“How so?” she had finished her beer.

“I think that it’s a collection put together. In one, there were boys, young, crying. They had their arms and legs beaten. Bashed until they bruised. In one, I could see the bone break the skin. The kids had their limbs shattered. Another, a truncheon sodomised the boy. The kid kept begging for help, no one came to save him. It was horrible…”

“Those poor angels,” her face trembled between anger and empathy.

“I then saw toddlers, small, fragile little things laying in dirt, bullet holes through their head or heart.”

“Sniped like game?”

“I think so.”

They ordered another drink. Her hand went for his, a waiter pushed the drinks pushed in front of them both. He carefully continued, “I saw a little girl, broken and burned. Her body falling to pieces from the trauma. She was dead but brutally so. And, and another, I saw her laying there, eyes open. Her chest busted open, I could see her heart ripped from her little body covered in ash and dirt.”

“Whoever did this will pay. The bastards.”

“I remember this one, two men held a boy down they electrocuted him and then poured water down his throat until he drowned. He begged, why would they not stop? He was scared, calling for mercy. Why was there no mercy?”

“The sadistic bastards.”

“A kid, coughing up blood, another hugging them holding them, siblings, they, they embrace. One dies while their bloody hand print is stained on the others chest. Why would someone do that?”

“Horrible.”

“I could go on, but…”

“It’s OK. Do you know where this all was filmed?”

He nodded, “yeah, Afghanistan. The other folders Iraq, Syria, Palestine…”

She broke out in laughter. A release of relief. Her eyes no longer wet from rage and sickness, instead from a strange joy.

“What, what’s wrong?” he asked confused.

“It’s OK. You mean these were filmed from the solders doing this? From wars over there?”

“Yeah.”

She pushed the USB back towards him, “it’s OK, there is a context. It’s all fine. Go home, take a sleeping pill and sleep. You are worried about nothing.”

She put money on the table to cover her drinks, stood up and smiled, “nothing there is wrong.”

“It’s wrong to me,” he whispered defeated.

She smiled, “get some sleep. It’s not wrong, you just need to learn the importance of context.”

“These are innocent kids…”

She spoke over him,“there is no innocent parties in there, you just need to understand the context. Collateral sure, but innocent they are not. You are overthinking it is all. Good bye,” she walked back into the crowd, to her career.

He sat, the USB firmly in his grip. He paid for his drinks stood to leave, as he left he dropped the USB and all within into the bin. He went home, with no peace of mind, regardless of context. She went back to her job, certain that context mattered. Context…

In 1935 while in exile Brecht wrote his poem challenging the aristocracy of history. The belief that events and the entire of human existence occurs because of a great man, the dear leader. In contemporary moments, politicians and influential people are looked at with cultish adulation. They are the exemplifiers of perfect power, human gods who may fix, solve and accomplish through their personality but above all else, the power afforded to them by status. A status safeguarded through wealth and the template of governance, to bribe the mercenary minded, zealotic believers who will do all things because they trust and adore the system or leader, the institution and hierarchy and those who are to frightened or apathetic to challenge the status quo. In their failure, the great leader is an effigy. To be blamed, their opponents may usurp them and seek to only replace them. Change is not in liberation from such people, or hierarchies, from power itself. It is only a replacement of another personality or personalities, or version of ruling ideology. .

Different books may be burned. But books shall be burned all the same. The contraband will remain forbidden or change, the censors are never unemployed. The police who enforced for one, shall as easily enforce for anyone who has power. The military will not protect and defend the people, only them. The regime, the state, the movement, the party, the faith, whatever pays them and feeds them with purpose. War abroad for imperial ambition can as easily turn inwards, checkpoints and boots on the street.

The salvation does not come from the cult leader, the prophets of destruction or the heads of state and certainly not from the politburos or parliaments. Politics is violence, every policy requires force. From the point of bayonets or the barrel of guns. Law never inhibits the powerful, it ensures it. Security, safety the catchwords that seduce. Chaos is the frightful frontier. Yet, despite all that power and laws, chaos still reigns whether close to home or in the frontiers where foreign policy bombs the poor and fills unmarked grades. Genocide reigns, whether it’s legally recognized or not. The great and powerful decide as much.

Nearly one hundred years ago, Brecht wrote this poem for the common person. The proletariat and peasant of history who are mostly nameless. We know of Harold and William, but what was the name of the gallant warrior on Stamford bridge? Who fired the arrow that fell the King himself? So long ago, trapped in a tapestry of treasure. But a moment of distant history that has made the world to this day.

“A Worker Reads and Asks”

Who built Thebes with its seven gates?
Books say it was kings.
Did kings hew and haul the rock?
And Babylon razed again and again,
who rebuilt it again and again? Where
in gilded Lima did the builders live?
When the Great Wall of China was finished
and it was evening, where did the masons go?
Monuments commemorate Roman victories. Who
carved them? Who lost when the Caesars won?
Did the Byzantines live only in palaces
and poems? Even when Atlantis sank
into myth, the sea had to drown
men howling for their slaves.

The young Alexander conquered India.
On his own?
Caesar smote the Gauls.
Wasn’t there at least a cook with him?
Philip of Spain wept when his armada
went to the bottom. Did no one else weep?
Frederick the Great won the Seven Years War. Who
won beside him?

A victory per page.
Who cooked the victory feast?
A great man per decade.
Who paid the bill?

So much to read.
So much to ask.”

BERTOLT BRECHT

Tucker Carlson has a new series coming out called “The 9/11 Files”, the first episode of which I stumbled across today on Rumble. It covers how the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was tracking two of the alleged hijackers of American Airlines Flight 77, the plane flown into the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.

The CIA tracked Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar to a meeting of Al Qaeda operatives in Kuala Lumpar, Malaysia, in early 2000 and knew they had visas to enter the US but “failed” to notify the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The FBI also “failed” to learn about the two operatives being in the country despite the pair renting a room in the home of an FBI informant.

The first episode of “The 9/11 Files”, published today, is titled “The CIA’s Secret Mission Gone Wrong“. Here’s the video description:

A former FBI agent who was embedded in the CIA’s Bin Laden unit, Mark Rossini, claims the CIA was fully aware that the 9/11 hijackers were in the United States planning an attack. Rather than inform the FBI, the CIA tried to recruit two of the hijackers for a “false-flag” operation, which quickly spiraled out of control. The failed mission raises urgent questions about government secrecy, intelligence failures, and what really happened before 9/11.