(I don't know I don't know. Put one of these tied off stocking caps on your head, like my dad used to wear with his old overalls at the building site of our little family house. Anything uglier I have never seen. I don't know which punishment for which shortcoming you need to receive to have to put on something as ugly as this. You cut off a stocking, tie it off at the top so that it makes a kind of bobble, and then you put it on your head. That's all.)

(My thanks to Aeschylos und the "Persians", translated by Oskar Werner [and Philip Vellacott]. As far as I'm concerned, you can add a pinch of Nietzsche. The rest is not by me either. It's lousy. It's by the media.)

 

 

It breaks through, breaking through, the sun, first messenger of defeat, to the lord what's his name again, everybody knows what his name is, the army breaks through the city, mighty in mass the army, but not mighty enough, forcing its way, the army, through people hungering and thirsting through the menacing city full of people on its way, a force of more than moderate size, far too big, its sacrilege is matched in suffering, the city, resting familiarly on the ground, lying there in the desert, its inhabitants long since baked to an army of clay. How, after this reverse, shall we and Babylon now take action for the best? Whatever you say, all they do is growl water water water, food, food. My son, my son, my two sons, my three sons, my four sons. All gone. All gone. At best both together: water and food. Parcels with food, come on, off the vehicle, a little bit faster please, or else the city dwellers, no longer bedewed by water, will break the skull of the chosen ones of the lord and thus a whole world of feelings which only we only we in the west know and a wave of hatred which only they know. But we are also thirsty, yes sir, but at least we don't hate, yes sir, though we do have feelings about this, too. But at least we don't utter them. We are not totally without feelings, and where do they lead, the feelings? Where do they come from, where do they go? Where do they lead us? To the liberation of the people they lead us. So why then do they make such a fuss? Don't they want to be free? To be free under the condition of being understood? What? Either what is said is too much or too little. The claim to expose oneself completely, with each word that is spoken, is naïve. So let's not say anything. Better like this. 

We always want to be understood benevolently, or nobody would say anything into the many cameras and microphones. We hide from what is foreign to us. We only say about ourselves what we want others to think about us, we don't say what we think. What? What? They don't want to be understood? So why do we bother? It's all the same to us. We do what we want anyway. No, we can't always do what we want. But we don't make a fuss about it. We are genuine. We take to robbery when we want something. It robs us of our sense when we don't get it. So where is all the oil now, unused? Burning. Burning. Explosives round the wells where the oil builds up and burns uselessly. Hard to imagine and difficult to predict. Whoever managed to rescue themselves from drowning in the sea, at least them we would kill. You can set our house on fire, you can also set our icons on fire, but not our oil and not our television set, this we keep, our altar, this can't disappear without trace, it is the trace! It is our tracer ammunition so that we can see in the dark. So that we can also see in the dark how lightning hits the flow of the hostile army. And this is, of course, our depleted uranium ammunition, I was looking for it earlier, because we definitely need it. Look, I will explain in simple words why: a missile draws the energy it contains from velocity and mass. It can't eat a Mars bar, right. It can't eat a muesli bar or that Kinder Surprise chocolate to help it work, rest and play to gain energy that it does not have, the missile. It can't and needn't eat, how lucky. In this one point where its force of impact first originates and ours unfortunately ends. The guns of the combat tanks only have a small diameter, not more than 12 cm, so how can this make a decent impact force? Our problem is that we need to develop a high impact on a little space, and uranium has a high density, that's its bad luck. That's also our bad luck because it might also make us sick. Yet it is rather our good luck than our bad luck when we look at it from the point of view of war. Charging ungainly ships prow to prow, that doesn't do the trick any more. But the uranium really hits the spot. As it hits us what this gentleman has just told us. There is a constant flow of supplies, but he doesn't have to run himself, this guy. But I can't get this out of my head: the feelings, are they now really all dead, really all of them? Because you had to witness such horrible things and so much suffering or what or why? All of them? So you did have some, and the others don't have any at all? That can't be! No, I can't believe that, they are still alive, no, they aren't after all. They are dead, no doubt about that. Perhaps you know none of these feelings personally. You who believe in God. But this is not enough for you. You want to set the fatherland free. But they can't because we alone resist the seducer who would only hold us up, and we query religion and we query the stones and we query the sand and we query the water, only we know God and have recognised that we don't want him, we seducers of nobody, we seducers of the image alone. When we get home, we immediately switch on the image. It must work. And it does work. Immediately. They never disappear without trace, the images of our deity that we can see, that only we can see there on the glowing screen. Right, so we strip this people of their faith, and we give them at last our icons for it, and finished. Then all will be well. Then this people will be totally finished, this people who has no notion of the primacy of the individual, for a people without any individuals, this doesn't exist. But God they know. And this is the main thing. They know nobody, they love nobody, but God they know. They don't know feelings but a God they know, so they claim. So they say. And they know that this God is theirs. They will get to know us now. Let's bet that we will soon be their gods? No? Well, then not. He who doesn't want one has already got one. It breaks through, breaking through, the ruler's army, menacing each city, here come all the names that we know or don't know, never mind, Arabia or whatever it's called bursts with names, some of them known to everybody, no one knows nobody, even he who does not know a person knows at least somebody who knows a person, for Babylon spits out a colourful mixture and now does not take it back. And all those, the lords in command, the name bearers they are heavily burdened with their golden vehicles, I mean the cars really carry them and not the other way round, they only carry the petrol behind our cars where we sometimes get killed. Thanks nevertheless, we take it gladly gladly, the golden liquid, watering with it such flowers of manhood, that has marched away to the Babylonian lands. What was I going to say. Yes. All those who threatened their neighbours find pride more alluring than the fact that everybody is equal. That's a fact. Really. This is why we now find them, wherever they are, where the king's dread word is spoken. Perhaps somebody will flee from them, but many more will come. Those of the British people and of the American people that went marching, for example. It is them, from houses rich and golden. But of course they want more. They always want more. The rich get richer. The clever get cleverer. Not everybody who wants something will get it. This one gets something, not from a coddled people, that's why he gets something. He gets something. Do you know him from before? Have you heard the name Halliburton and the name of Cheney, the holy lord, offspring of I don't know what or who, but certainly of a mother, and since then he has wrestled with the numerous soft feelings. Dick Cheney. But his feelings won't win. Halliburton will win, the company, they can build cages in Cuba, well, even I could build a cage if I had to, but it would only be strong enough for rabbits, if anything, they also built Corpus Christi in Texass, they managed that. And it earned its name. He will rebuild everything, the lord of the energy industry, Mr. Chairman of the Board, lord of the fiddled books , lord of jobs for the boys. But such boys are only found in Arabia. You can bet on it that this company will win irrespective of whoever else wins. Hang on, and what about the British with all these brave guys who so diligently butchered foreign flesh, and of course also the other way round, because nobody wants to owe the other a favour, but sometimes it has to be. They have dragged themselves to the foreign land, illusion of the avenger incarnate, and now several of them are six feet under, in the sand, and now they should get nothing? Well then. I proclaim it to you. They must get their contracts, and not too few. At the moment they haven't got any. But they are still negotiating. Flawless in beauty and in gait, sisters of one race, such that the building companies will come running. One after the other, and which comes first, all this is strictly laid down. I proclaim it to you. As the fatherland they had – won in a draw – no, not in a draw, but through common law, connections, lobbies, family ties, tradition, whatever, anyway, they got the best of the contracts. The list of contracts bends like a willow but none that weeps. Boys, the early bird catches the worm! Bush and Blair, they argue with each other in English in the summer residence Camp David, the little one with a sling shot, you know, and Goliath, Leviathan, praying for deliverance from evil and making sacrifice, there's no getting away from it, what did I want to say, never mind, the British companies have so far not had their share, but Blair wants his share, that goes without saying. That's clear. When he heard about Halliburton, he raged, then Bush soothed him and yoked them to his chariot, the lads, and fastened harness on their necks, but his own companies are like a number, with lots of zeros at the end, well, not exactly a yoke, and only for his boys, and they, proud of their trappings, were obedient to the rein to allow the contracts to run smoothly. They keep their mouths shut. And we ours. If they keep their mouths shut, then so can we. But Cheney doesn't keep his shut. And he doesn't have to. He's got something to say. He has a say. He's speaking again. But he doesn't have to, as long as he's closer to the beginning of making money than to the end of it. How is the war doing? It's still closer to the beginning than to the end. Birds of a feather flock together. Dick Cheney. Yes. He and his lot will reconstruct it all. With a sum of 100 billion dollaros, day after day counting the money, while time is stretching.

Oh dear, I can see something horrible, and it hits parents and women equally, it hits children and old people equally, what hits them is penance. Thank God it is the only one, the only penance that exists at all will be inflicted, of all people, on the tourist industry, and they are really the last ones to be blamed.


Stone panel from the North-West Palace of Ashurnasirpal II 883-859 B.C.

It breaks through, breaking through, the golden army, we can't see its full size, I think they keep it from us deliberately, neither do we know exactly where it is, we know each moment where it is, so where is it, out there in the wild, although in-the-wild doesn't exist, the army, and although it is very big it is still too small too small, weighed and found to be too small, the army, and terrible to look them in the eye, at the moment it stands in the full splendour of its armour, shall I perhaps count it personally, not even the television could ask this of me, what, I can't believe it, 1000 parachutists now also in the north, they need to be added, 100,000 more in the south, they need to be added, but I won't count any more now, they want to count for something, so who counts them, I think it isn't quite as many as that, the thousand there where the ancient ramparts of the Turks couldn't stop them, a ring that won't become a golden one any longer, not even if we were to hammer it for days with the quill of the evangelists that they should not advance up north, please please, or it'll kick off there too. Now believe in God generally, that can only help you now. Be a Christian because everything outside the good and the Christian will immediately be rendered infertile, and where then will we take the nice and good and helpful soldiers from. I don't know. I think the ground is too soft, the ground in the desert is far too soft, and in the water where the two dolphins are playing, but not with each other, you can't see it any more at all, the ground, you can't see the ground for the mines. The good face put upon it, they take it off, the goodies. Mud. Combat divers, mud, mines, mud. Diving blindly in the mud like no fish would choose to do, and like a yoke round the neck the sea god throws us the mine belt, and so the food doesn't reach the land. Too bad. The people inland wait, the people is bursting, even though not with health, and beyond the people the Great King launches this myriad flock, this prodigy of armies, driving his splendid hordes, er no, herds. A shepherd they have who tells them which life to live, not like the animals who suffer, thrown into the arms of the weak. Patient guys, still weak themselves, still without any fame, not yet stained with it, but that will be their spoils of this war, don't worry. They have already tied on their bibs against the blows to the neck and for their fame. Was there not a dam, an obstacle? No, they've flooded it so that they can't move on. Never mind. Let's go somewhere else, let's dodge round it, it is part of our culture that a certain force be exercised, unapproachable our army at war. And it doesn't need approaching, the army, the media travel with it, nicely cushioned, and their sentiments can rise together with ours, why not. On site as the sons loot the city. So much there! Who shepherds them? What master do their ranks obey? Only he leads who sets the people free so that the inhabitants are not called slaves to any man. And can their masters resist invasion? They fight. Well then. What else would they do. They fight. To those whose sons are with the army now, my words bring fearful thoughts. Never mind. Elsewhere, poverty drives the people to extremes, at least here they have a task and they keep off the streets, they've turned away from the fields where they would have been needed, they are on a different street, but we're already there. We're there, and we send the pictures, and stick to them, we're the stamps of our pictures whose only purpose is to be sent off, home. Home. We are the ultimate. No one more skilful than us, that's why we send the pictures. So that we are not sent ourselves. Into the sands. May the good fulfil itself, may we be victorious! We are the wall, us saying yes is the first mental activity. Where we say yes, the beginning finally starts. We shoot, we drink, and we send. Why on earth does he want to loot this city? We will tell him, and we will send him the pictures to go with it, so that he knows what we are telling him.


Stone panel from the North-West Palace of Ashurnasirpal II -Nimrud- 883-859 B.C.

When the ocean-tide washes up against the shore, an irresistible wave, we leave, we will have parted, then we will be washed up, in the sand, I mean, and then we come only to resist manfully. Had we not come, we wouldn't have to resist. And in this moment all cities shall be overthrown. Right. Here they lie. The law has been annihilated and won't rise again, because we lie on it, and we will stay put. Please God, come, and bring a new law so that, at last, we can do something, anything in your name! The law's on our side. Right. That's all right.

Jesus: that he is like God mocks the Jews I think. That is bad, and we will not repeat this. For Jesus is less than the father. He is not equal to the father, just like Donald Rumsfeld and George W. Bush, and Richard Perle is gone, but he is still here, and he and a few others believe that Jesus is with them, he, at the same time resting his hand on a beautiful woman wearing a dark green pashmina in order to protect her. He believes that Jesus is with him, he believes that Jesus is with them all, only thus does he feel well, and only thus does the woman feel well. Only Jesus can protect us like this man, this president is protecting his beautiful wife, and off into the helicopter! Delicately up the stairs. Floating. But this makes me think, can it really be that Jesus should be less than his father? Jesus is now more than his father or at least equal to him, I would say off the top of my head. The father has not revealed all to him, but really, whose fault was that? Should he have done so, should he have told him? Then Jesus could have referred to him, honestly. At this point, Jesus W. Bush still refuses to be called equal to God, but we will convince him sooner or later. He is the son of God, but all others can equally become sons of God, or at least they can wish for that. The Jews are so odd. But listen, they've often done that, simply allocate this divine filial rank to several people. But there can only be One, in Three. Rumsfeld, Cheney, Bush. Well, if you ask me, I'd say it's several more and then all their nice religion simply collapses. Burying us with it. And then they say that that doesn't necessarily mean that they are all God, so where do we take the third One from, after all we are not playing cards, we read maps in our tanks high above the sandy road? But anyway, son is an extremely vague, loose term in the Semitic languages, I've heard, but only of one single one, well, perhaps that isn't true.

In the south we haven't got so far out of curiosity. We've come to commit ourselves to the overthrow of these cities. Some approach us in civilian clothing waving white flags, they dare to do so, and then they shoot at us! They shoot at us! First they wave white flags and then they shoot at us. On top they wear white cloaks and underneath they wear a uniform. And they shoot at us. We've learned to walk on water, we are learning to drive on the sand, we're learning to throw things from the air, and then that! It's not fair. It is not a fair war. It is an unfair war. At least it takes place between unequals, that's something for a start. We know that. At least. They let us know that. Just offshore, they are arriving, hurriedly grouping, the great army, the Tomahawk bullies, each a little king subject to the high king, fuck, how the hell can I get from the winners to the losers, how can I get from the losers to technology, which is where I really want to be, the miracle of technology, and in comparison a human is just a piece of shit. Nobody has ever made so much effort in the attempt to make mankind, that doesn't take much, but this Tomahawk! You won't believe it! Autonomous directional control system (start it up and then forget about it). Not to mention the satellite navigation system, too complicated, dynamically calibrated inertial navigation system, plus ground radar for terrain contour matching (TERCOM), but what do we do if one stretch of land looks just like any other in the desert? What do we do if they come down in Saudi Arabia, where they have no business to be. What do we do then? At least the Tomahawk knows what to do. And that's the main thing. High precision (50% of the hits in a 2 sqm target window!) through combining several navigation and target recognition systems, and there it goes, honestly, and it even knows exactly where to! I'd like to see you do that! Your whole field of application as a human is crap in comparison, which is hardly surprising when you consider how carelessly you were produced, in any case far too quickly and mostly prematurely, well, as I've said, its field of application is 1600 km at a speed of 800 km/h, which isn't actually all that much, but that's as fast as it gets, but what's important is the precision, isn't it, just turn your gaze on the highly efficient turbo-jet engine, you wouldn't mind one of those, would you? In contrast to you who often misses the target there is only a slight danger here of being shot down due to a very small radar profile (Stealth) and the low flying altitude of 15-100m, we will hear later why this is a risk (high angle velocity, brief pre-warning time), prompt delivery for under 100 items, if you need them immediately, price per item of the standard version (without warhead, yes, unfortunately without warhead, that costs extra, there's no way round it):


Tomahawk Cruise Missile

$ 650,000. Larger orders on demand. If you don't like them we will take them back, unused of course. Well, that goes without saying. I could say a lot more about the directional control, but I'll keep it for later. Meanwhile, you can make up your mind how many you want to buy. But if you were to break it, you would be a real bastard, you would be fucked if you fuck it up, this wonder of technology, but if you have to then aim at the rear part with the little wings, look, there! As always I want to talk about the losers, and yet I end up enthusing about the winners, but that's what everybody wants, and that's why I'm desperately steering in the other direction, but my steering wheel is not obeying. In the opposite direction! Come on! Just this one more bend, I have to conquer this: make war with words. I don't know any longer who may say we and who mustn't. And while I'm still thinking, a sandstorm hits me head on, that's not on, not now that I want to go in the totally opposite direction to the losers, to the path of defeat that has already been tarmacked for me, just for me, so that I don't take another turning. Woe, there they are, hundreds of thousands. They shout peace peace. I'd better get away as fast as I can. I'm in the wrong place again, everywhere is wrong. Doesn't matter, even tanks tend to get lost. I'm so far westward where Lord Helios is swindling, er sorry, dwindling, no he hasn't joined the media yet. But they'll take him on soon. We need him, Helios, so that the missile can see better. No, what we need much more is the stored map reference ground radar (TERCOM), yes, exactly that. Please, Helios, shine here so that the missile can at least read its programmed terrain profile map, if it's too stupid to see the terrain and can't tell one dune from the other. Sand sand sand. Oh dear. Sand. With sand one grain is like another, that's a fact. It doesn't help that Helios shines and that the missile is desperately comparing its programmed map with the current figures of the height-finder radar, it doesn't help one little bit. Any deviations from the course are recognised and corrected. Or not. Or not. The principle is that at a distance of a few kilometres from the target the short-range radar target pattern recognition comes in, and it does so with the help of comparing the real terrain and building formations with the programmed information of the target to be hit, and then it hits, bang! Missed! Missed again! There is no explanation for it. But they get lost all the same. There is no rational explanation for it, well, at least I haven't got one, have you? It has still not been solved why one came down on the Al-Nasser market in Baghdad, where it really had no business to be. That really wasn't its business. Something else needs to hit there, they should tell us what because the impact was really great, not bad. Any doubts about the precision ammunition of the army? No, no doubts about the precision ammunition. We would rather doubt the enemy than ourselves. He simply isn't where we assumed him to be. No wonder that the Tomahawks sometimes don't go to the right place when even the enemy is in a different place from where he should be. Logical. And we have improved the technology so much! It can't be true that it flew to the market, such an idiot! Hours and hours we spent teaching her the map, and then she flies to the market! So, what did she want to buy there, dear little Tomahawk? Perhaps she wanted to eat? Not that there is much left in the market. So why particularly go there? When you think that each of these missiles is more intelligent than a man you can only be astounded. Some five of them have come down pointlessly in the Saudi desert, and they don't know themselves to this day why and they haven't exploded to this day. But this flight is cancelled from now on. But we can't let the missiles get away with that. They need to be punished or they will do it again. They simply mustn't go there any more, and that's it. What? Three even came down in east Turkey? Well, they certainly didn't mean to drop tourists there, stupid. That's really too bad. But the war isn't. The war can't get enough. No. Not the war. It doesn't get its mouth full, it gets it in the arse instead.

What I really wanted was to rise like a star, but I am in the west. Nothing you can do about that. So here I am, waiting, ready for the real storm, and then the only storm that comes is a sandstorm. And what do theses golden chariots feed on, the golden ones, I couldn't, couldn't possibly grasp it, 2 gallons per mile per tank, that makes 450 litres per 100 km. Now just work that out. It is roughly 400 km from Kuwait to Baghdad. That adds up. But then there are many comrades and many dangers. How do I take this bend? It is the crucial bend. It is not the northern bend of the Nuremberg Ring, which has actually always somehow interested me although it has long been dead as a door nail, but then also the dead are interesting, and not only during war, no, not now, there is still time, our timing is good, we lie absolutely within our time limit, we chose to get stuck here for days and, you see, we have been stuck here for days, precisely 90 km short of Baghdad. They reached Baghdad. Well, practically. Perhaps we were simply too fast, we didn't need to be that fast, well it is clear that we are not moving now. That we have been stopped. We were too fast. In the white crests of the bay our two dear tame dolphins, yes, it's always nice to relax with animals. You just look at them, and you automatically relax. Flipper, everyone loves the king of the sea, ever so kind and gentle is he, tricks he will do when children appear, and how they laugh when he's near!, and when he finds a mine our faces light up, ouch, I've said something similar before, but then I always say the same things, and then Flipper gets a fish, the two Flippers, hoppla! How happy this makes him! How he jumps! Hard to believe that a fish can jump so high although we've often seen it. I think apart from him nobody is justly happy at the moment. Only the war is just. This one is certainly just. That doesn't mean, however, that one is certainly safe.


Stone panel from the north-west palace of Ashurnasirpal II - Nimrud- 883-859 B.C.

The heavy tanks have started taking away the peoples of the Good although you certainly still want a word with them, hang on, you have to wait for the press conference that Tommy Franks will be giving for us, there isn't much else that he gives us. Not this time either. But we have it all. There isn't anything else that he gives us, only a tortuous plan worked by the will of God in his Heaven, the fatherland, with his golden friends, yes sir, a tortuous plan. What mortal man can elude immortal guile? No mortal escapes him. But many lies escape him, unfortunately that couldn't be avoided. Many are dead. The dead, too, unfortunately couldn't be avoided. Today several hundred more, tomorrow perhaps a thousand. I am avoiding the name of God and would rather say heaven, and look, all sorts of things come from the heavens provided there isn't a sandstorm approaching, at the wrong time, the wrong path, the wrong place. You see, they should not collide, no matter what with, that was not the idea when they took off! Anyway, God didn't want that, he who demands great things of us, but not that, he doesn't demand of us that so many should be dead. Oh, I believe that he possibly did want that, if you ask me. Because why then should we be doing it unless he demanded it of us? Otherwise we wouldn't do it, would we. Exactly. Great things command us not to talk about them or else to talk about them in  a big way, that is with innocence. After all, the Realm of God is amongst us, and it never closes, it is always open, it knows no closing times, and exactly that is what we have to hit now. The Realm and the glory in eternity. It is not within us. Please do not look for us! We have been badly hit. We have been badly hit just looking at it.

Who is he whose nimble leap lightly clears the enclosing net? Who? We are likely to. We bring death, and bring salvation, but of course not both at the same time, even you should be able to understand that. First things first, such as the Easter bunny brings the eggs but not at Christmas, but when the time is right. Smooth Delusion's flattering smile leads but where her trap is set, where the colourful bomb nests are, high up there, from which they escape, ouch, and another one, and the child only has half its face left, and that one there is totally gone, how did that happen so fast? How was that possible? It is not granted to any mortal to escape unscathed from, to fly these nests, at least not before the time is right, or they cannot stand upright, next to the nest, where they haven't been nurtured. The mortals. Who want to achieve immortality as soon as possible. Accept this wonderful medal for having died for this cause! Many thanks. Many things will happen to you, but being nurtured will not be one of them, in the nest. That's a fact. No, now it is no longer a fact.

Well, so I'll tell it the way it is: although not of a tribe of car owners, I still take a certain interest in oil, a principal interest. These are the shapes of gloom that cloak my heart in fear now; that we might not get any anymore. Or it will be too expensive for us, and indeed it is already very expensive. Or there will be too little of it. Or there will be too much of it and nobody will make any money from it. Because its extraction and promotion is free, so why doesn't anybody promote me? Am I not worth it? No, I'm not worth it. I haven't even got a car. So how should we nourish the flame with which we burn? What I miss about  the word oil is the term nature. It is a product of nature. It belongs to everybody. Nature belongs to everybody unless you haven't got a house of your own on the Wörther See or Lake Tahoe as far as I'm concerned, it is all the same or at least it will be all the same soon. If you haven't got that, you own a bit less, of course. But in any case we're all for it that it belongs to us all, that we are handed out the whole of nature, for we are all. Only a few are more. But less is often more, isn't it. We have a notion of civilisation, and we have a police force that rules us, that is right, but what are those sand niggers doing who are so original that they no longer need any culture because they've already had one, long long ago? They do not want it any more. They know it all, and they don't want it anymore. But this is where they err, because nothing exists outside of us. Outside of us, there is nothing. Great. It frightens me, but we must do what we are doing. Blessed are those who listen to the word of God and do his work. Luke, have you thought about the consequences? So why then did you write it if nobody is listening? Not just listening but doing! Oh yes. Oh no. But my fear, your fear, any fear is the dirt. Principally, oil is nothing but dirt, but you can't get it off so easily from your fingers after cleaning the spark plugs, I think you don't have to do this any more. We easily choke on it, that greasy dirt. The great city hears that man-devouring doom, but unlike the ancient stones of Susa, the native earth of this city is unfortunately not stripped of men. Such and other customers come oft because we have increased the precision of the inertial navigation so much recently, so naturally they want it too. It can now be recalibrated by the differential global positioning system (DGPS) in certain intervals, producing more precise position data, but I digress and I want to return to the city, if I only knew how. One thing I know for sure: this city is absolutely packed with people, don't you forget that. I'm aware of it and I can forget it. But you mustn't. It is absolutely packed, this city. The boat is fully packed with food, but it must wait to be inspected by the good dolphin, only then can it come in. Only then can it dock, and only then can it once more become bigger, after it has been docked, but only then. Oh no, what a pity!, that's all there is to it. That's all there is to it. The one slays the other in order to get something. The father slays the son, the neighbour slays the friend, the neighbour's wife slays the neighbour's child so that it doesn't get anything to eat so that she can eat. Despite these tragedies: when will the desert resound with the chorus that, at last there is water and food. Meanwhile alas cry the women wherever you meet them, but they cry all the time anyway, whatever happens, that's all they are capable of, the walls echo with their frenzied groans. That's all they are capable of. They cry out lamenting, while rending fingers fall on robes of finest thread, no, this they don't do because they do not have enough clothes for that. This I must certainly contradict. I, for once, would not tear my clothes if I were them. My clothes are everything to me. My clothes are all I've got. You see, to someone else their child might be everything, but I haven't got a child. I've only got my clothes.

Our whole force, mounted high on tanks and coming down by parachute, wow. And the kerosine that the Apaches use, I totally forgot to mention this earlier or did I? Can't remember, whatever, you can't imagine! First they use up so much kerosene, and then they crash anyway. Today, too,  three people dead, one injured. It was an accident. THIS WAS NOT AN ACCIDENT. That's why we need all this oil. And we do waste a lot, especially when they fall out of the sky where they shouldn't. That goes beyond our imagination, the quantities they swallow, as long as it is a good pure crude oil product, diesel, whatever, as long as it's oil that they swallow, only very few can imagine this, only those that can count, only those that can count on us, those who are with us. Us, who reject any foreign rule and yet are most alien to ourselves. Look, in principle it is like this, and we do have principles: we are the only country where the individual is still important because every one is the only one. There is no other way. It is like a river that wants to reach its end. But somehow that doesn't count because a river can't help that. Go downhill. It couldn't do anything uphill. Every human counts. Everyone counts their money. One more so, one less. Dick Cheney more, we less.  Richard Perle not anymore, but still more than us. Because the company has dropped out. Conflict of interests. But hang on, I can't believe that his interests could be in any conflict. But anyway: his spirit stays with us, don't worry. And this man, too, is important to us. As important as the least of men would be to us. Right. The aeroplane also remains after the parachutist has jumped. But up there in the heavens are many. And now a few more will join them. There are too many. And in this country there are too many. And they have too little. Whatever. This goes hand in hand with inconveniences such as was the case with this  sandstorm. They would actually need more, but they are not getting it. Whatever. As difficult as it is for the lips of a sleeper to drink water. Let's get rid of a few. Put them to sleep, forever. So you don't need to count, we aren't counting you either! You don't count, so why should you count others?


The Flood Tablet, relating part of the Epic of Gilgamesh - Nineveh 7th century B.C.

The way I do it, it only worked if both were the same. But both people are different. This really is the basis of our civilisation, that people are different. But they just don't want to see that, the sand niggers. They rise like one man and they aren't even men. Wage a deadly war against this higher type of man. Out of his instincts the Evil has come. From a beautified and embellished Christianity that says that the strong man is the reprobate. Such nonsense. And how can anyone side with all that is weak and base, with all failures? Well, I'm not taking it. I'm dropping it. I'm dropping it immediately. I'm forgetting everything right now and I'm starting again. I say, the spirit is sin. Well, the Christians always say that when they can't think of anything else, the spirit is a temptation but we must resist it. After all, that's what we're Christians for. That we don't ask any stupid questions. Sit down again and don't rock the boat that we're all in, stop rocking, immediately stop swaying and rocking! Why? Because I say so! In this sandstorm we can't navigate the bombs by laser anyway, we must navigate them via satellite, hang on, the one to the market square in Kuwait, that one we still navigate by laser, that's something, for example, that we're doing today because we haven't got anything else to do and because the weather has at last improved but in bad weather: satellite navigation, that's for certain, even you must see that, you who report, but don't understand! What else should we do. If nobody rises who ought to rise. If nobody is the enemy, then all are the enemy, but nobody rises. Where is the opposition? Please come, opposition! What, there isn't any? If you don't have any opposition you shouldn't have any people any more, because then you don't deserve to be a man yourself, if you don't have an opposition and if you don't want to allow one. What are you stuttering there? You have been told that there is one, you have just seen it before personally, the opposition, right, so where is it then? Surely it can't be invisible like the stealth bomber! It must be somewhere! Organised immorality is what rules with you because nobody rises against you! At least one person should rise and disclaim the ideals of the enemy, don't you think? From there until this claiming one's own ideals it is only a small step, but a giant leap for mankind. You're really an idiot. On everything that brings life and growth you impose a morality tax, so how then can anything live and grow? Exactly. It doesn't anyway. Everything always gets destroyed, and that is only logical. Morality as an instinct and denial of life, that's what you want. But morality must be destroyed in order to liberate life. This is how the big ones like it and this is how they are doing it now with small things. With us one of these silly moralists rose once, but here not a single person has risen! But we will teach them that! Don't worry, we will teach them that, too! They shall rise whenever they see us! He who loves us shall follow us. Why is nobody following us? People, stamping and tramping, over to our ranks to which naturally everybody wants to belong who has any sense left. It belongs that way, doesn't it. We thought swarms would leave them and come to us, like bees whose swarm follows the wise man, but where is this wise man, where is he? Why is nobody following anybody? Why do only we follow ourselves? Why don't they follow us? We are the  goodies, after all. We stride and stride, crossing over the narrow seas, from land to land across the continents, across the incontinents, ouch, over children, over old people, over women, over the paralysed, over the blind, over the deaf and dumb, over dummy bombs. If one is live, too bad for us. Next time we'll do better. The species of man is a rather strong species I say, looking at it. The woman doesn't need to be strong, but sometimes it is OK if she is. It is quite OK if she is. Sprinkling her empty bed with tender tears in vain, weeps out her lonely life, longing for him. Women in delicate grief, each in a longing full of love for the beloved, yes, also those back home have been deprived of the ones who share their beds. And what is the father saying who is holding up the photo so that we can see it? HE WAS MY ONLY SON. LOOK AT HIS PICTURE MR. PRESIDENT! MY ONLY SON! I can't take it in.

No, marching is not what they do, they cruise, no, they drive, no, they cruise properly, the lovely flying objects, and they represent a danger difficult to calculate to the enemy, to me in my armchair, where I have sunk, pleasing to the eye not me, pleasing to the eye them, for me not for me no danger. Missiles that go on foot step by step, in front of their marksmen, who would ever have imagined that. Tactical missiles that cruise. They must do the walking themselves, poor them. They have been told that the envisaged position shall be 5 metres, that under less favourable conditions it can lead to an imprecision of up to 300 metres, I expressly say can, not shall, and in the least favourable case, but of course that never happens, in the least favourable case, that is, for instance with poor or interrupted satellite reception the drift of the inertial navigation would remain totally unadjusted, oh dear. You really lack any seriousness after having heard that, or the seriousness of what you've heard is only dawning on you now, in contrast to those that have been shot dead and who already know all that. They play around with their own trajectory that we have programmed, these Tomahawks. They're not allowed to fight hand-to-hand. That's why they are programmed. So that they run away from us and hit somewhere else. Let me take the opportunity here and say what has just come to my mind: oh cities of the wide world, listen, we are adopting you now, we from the peace movement are adopting you now. Oh loved Babylonian earth, haven of ample wealth which you have long been unable to spend, no blood for oil, no money for food, no nothing. That's what I just wanted to add because nothing else comes to my mind at the moment. One blow has overthrown your happy pride; the flower of all your youth is fallen. So many men simply wasted! I could certainly still have made use of one or the other. My garden would have deserved it, my walls that need painting would have deserved it. My bed also would have deserved something better than just me alone. To bring the first news of defeat's an evil fate! And so on and so forth. Nobody has ever seen anything as terrible as that, and therefore I do not see it now, and no one else will see it either and that's it. But no, wait! There is one! But I must now unfold the whole disastrous truth: the press! The Barbarian fleet and army are no more, and the camera captures it. We don't grasp it, but the camera captures it. It captures it faster than us what is happening there. Although almost too much is happening even though the advance has come to a halt.

How Bush might be, our lord? Very well, thanks. You can't be serious about what I'm finding here, that must be something else. Somehow I still miss the seriousness. Where has it gone? Oh grief, and grief again, have you taken the seriousness with you? You should really have brought it in the first place, shouldn't you? Come on then, where is it, this cruel, unlooked-for pain, the accounts? The concern's customers? Right, everything out there has been dealt with, well, not quite, but soon. And we are now the customers. All of us customers. What must we give account of, we are the customers after all!

Something else for a change: someone has really seen how a policeman with his most faithful follower, a pistolman, shot at it and they say that he thus deflected the thing the thing the thing, the cruising missiles which is an absurdity in itself, for if it can fly why then should it cruise? Much faster, the flying! Such a complex gadget, so many people that have invented it together, unprecedented! I have already described it, and how much work it was just to describe it, let alone developing it, inventing it! Man is dirt just like oil. So why then don't the two get on with each other? Perhaps they get on all too well with each other. We, old women and old men have the privilege to hear of such pain, but also to hear of such power of invention of the people! This gives us hope. Can you imagine that there should be such a monster as to shoot in all seriousness at one of our planes, helicopters or rockets, with a simple pistoletto? Went and shot down the dear cruising missile. Aimed at the back, exactly right. Respect. Against my will I must use the word respect. Perhaps it was a mere coincidence. How mean things are. Can you imagine that one single person would be so mean? I'm criticising the virtues of man as a herd, but I also take the liberty of criticising this one single man, there must be time for that. Do you know how much the Tomahawk cost? Well, I did tell you! After all it has a mother, many mothers and fathers, no, it is likely to have only fathers, I think, fathers who are crying for it now, so much time they have spent developing it and then they continued to watch after its development, and now it's gone, this flying body that is capable of more than all the others! The policeman didn't consider that with his lousy righteousness, he didn't obey a law, he created a law for himself, how inhuman. They are expressly forbidden to make a law for themselves. Only we can do that and only if we are strong and can keep a level head for our judgement. Full of corpses of the diseased who have died a terrible death are the cities, alas, aimlessly wandering bodies some of them fleeing, some of them shot and dead. And there he goes and shoots down a missile! As if there weren't enough dead, really! Bad enough that they go astray, these poor missiles, but now they are even shot dead. And then this man who has long taken to the absurd the term man over the animosity of the states, then this Untermensch comes and takes a pistol and directs it against our dear and faithfully cruising missile, can you believe it. While it is cruising so totally unsuspecting and in a friendly manner, the well-trained, well-oiled, fresh missile, brand-new it was, completely unused, I give you my word and then that! You see, it has only been trained to destroy, but who are you to destroy it! A squadron of bodies are made the heavens' spoil, oil-drenched and swirling. They can't shoot them all down. Fortunately not. I certainly could not be as cruel as that. Shoot down innocent bodies while they are cruising. I uphold the strong man as determining the values, but they don't know any values, at least not ours. Try it for yourself as a simple farmer or policeman at a street corner perhaps having just escaped your wife, to shoot down a Tomahawk-type missile of six metres and 1300 kilograms, a missile equipped with a computer-controlled radar guidance, to shoot it down with a pistol, with a pistol! You will see what happens! It is easier for you to be shot dead than for the missile to escape you. The stone throwers have done well, nothing wrong with that. Despite that I still have a rather bad opinion of them, and I would rather not tell you because my neighbours are threatening me with what will happen if I do.

Scream, Curse you, what name more hateful to our ears, Your name? Come with me to the police station immediately. Then you will see how much pain and sorrow man can bear! You peace lover! They forgot to forget about you! Where did you put the leader of the people, he hasn't been on television for two days, I'm sure you have stolen him! I will wake you in your house, tell me immediately where you have taken our commander of the army, the general whose post death leaves unmanned! Give him back immediately, hurry up! Two days of television without him. That's not on! That is simply not on! Says the man. Next time the people will throw the dog shit back into my garden if my dog craps once more in their garden. This colourful mixture of people, you see, where is the cook, they don't go together, these people, such an explosive concoction, not edible, also takes to the streets now. Everywhere. As if they had no home. They all take to the streets now, some here, some there. Well, I would not allow this if I were the state and all dressed up ready for victory. Some of them healthy, some of them ill. Well come on then, let's also join in, let's sit over there and let's have a sit in for the underdogs. Let us consider most carefully how we can spare these poor people. Let us sit down here in the middle of the street brazen-faced, the water cannon's strength in battle has prevailed, but it is merely a street fight, don't worry. And it is our street. That's the main thing. It is the main street. The streets of the foreigners, only the eye of the camera, its uncompromising eye sees them. The streets of the foreigners. And where is the mother of our Mr. Bush? And where is his daddy? Let us bandy words about and hail them with other words because we don't have anything else to bandy about. But they do. But tell us, what have the others got meanwhile?


Stone panel from the north-west palace of Ashurnasirpal II - Nimrud 883-859 B.C.

Look here for another moment if you can spare one: there, there is another farmer, honestly, that's supposed to be a real farmer? I don't believe it, I bet that is a dressed-up farmer, a secret agent of the Republican Guard dressed up as a farmer. Belt-adorned farmer colleagues with Kalashnikovs and flintlock rifles next to him. Simple shotguns that really can't do anything but tear holes in bodies. Posing in front of other cameras. So badly can a good, educated man be spoilt, but this one is only spoilt without ever having been educated. But in any case he must look here. He must see the army, or else he won't be frightened. Such an Unmensch, shooting down these lovely Apaches, and now there it is in the sand poor Apache, and doesn't move anymore. It used to be great, and now it doesn't move anymore. You bet? So these farmers and their colleagues, we haven't ploughed them under in the desert sand yet, a mistake if you ask me, because one of them managed to shoot down with flintlock rifle a Tornado helicopter that had been deserted by its guardian angel. Apache or Tornado, it couldn't matter less. And they even got the three maintenance mechanics the day before yesterday, poor lads. Brought here by the leaders of thousands and deserted as they willingly sprang from their work places. Only allowed to shoot in self-defence. Parts of non-combat units, not even parts, on the contrary, the parts are exactly what they have to deal with. They must maintain them, maintaining faith. Just look at his calm face, the face of a fighter disguised as a farmer, flying beyond him, like a bird? It evades him because he is lying. He isn't a farmer. Or have they put up a farmer as a stage prop, they're not afraid of anything. I can't even detect pride in this face that this ancient city was at least freed of this one man. Others shall follow, but not him. I can't believe it, there really isn't anybody to follow him! Camouflaged as a taxi driver asking for help, an extreme type, you can't do anything about it, and then he blew himself up taking four of us with him to gehenna, curse those who laugh. Be good bankers! And keep stopping when we tell you or else we will shoot at you. Keep the bank and stop and come out with your hands up, and you will be searched by hand just as at the customs or before getting on the plane. More and more they are looking for suspicious behaviour. And don't put on too many clothes in this heat because you could be hiding explosives underneath, and never never never keep your hands in your pockets. Did you hear! Every single one of you is now seen to be our enemy until it has been established that he is our friend. After all we do not want to ignore the advantages that lie in the fact that we have won this city despite its heavy defence through our superiority. You acted correctly when you shot dead the seven wives and children in the van, I wanted to take this opportunity to once more explicitly state that because they didn't stop despite our several warning shots and that's not on, that can't be allowed, that's not on. As a person you are allowed to be a fool, you are allowed not to know most of what there is, as far as I'm concerned, you are even allowed to feel like a god although you know nothing, but when we say stop, then stop. Then stop! If even this Tomahawk can be made to stop, and through a simple shotgun, then you can do so, too. No, you can't hold on to me. Just hold on, that's enough. If a machine can do so, then you can do so, too. There will come more of these machines, flying, completely destroying the golden-furnished chamber where Ras would hide, the palace, the palaces, a few are kaputt already, and today this one's time has come, the one where the king used to share the conjugal chamber and raise the loving sons, we only know two of them, and they were expressly taught how to succumb to temptation, if only we didn't know! Because of such grossly inhuman  people that haven't yet returned to the mankind that they once abandoned, and at some point every young person must flee the nest and look for a flat of their own, because of such monsters our hearts are torn by anxious thoughts? Our hearts have done this for ages and still beat for us. Inhuman. Bred in hell. Murderers and rapists. It's true. I have personally seen and heard several times how they murdered and raped. They will never do this any more now. They won't have time for that. Now, all of a sudden they demand freedom. But the others should not be allowed it. They are hermits in their lowest form, all are dead who had dealings with them. But I want to spare my words about such a culmination, I might need them later. Inhuman, both sons. No heroic epic about them! Death and shame on them! I'm full, full of pieces of shrapnel and full of the murdering of these men. Now they can't do this any more. Murder. Rape. We've got them. We haven't got them yet. Oh great abhorrence of the foe, oh great abhorrence! This must be repeated again and again, or they won't believe anything else you say either. Cursed all you enemies! Beloved, victims how I commemorate your deaths! I can't really tell you any more either, but it has been proved what they did to them. I would personally do them in if they happened to appear in front of me. I'm serious. We're all serious. Thank God they're far away. But my doubts, plaguing, are not outweighed. I'm sure that they're criminals, both of them. So now who is doing away with the survival instincts of my strong life? Where is the stain remover? I really can't do with them, these survival instincts. What I need are maintenance mechanics, even the three that they got hold of I miss. I miss every single one. I miss every single human, this my conscience tells me, and it tells me that I'm right, and thus at least I'm part of a higher rank than those who really hold the power, isn't that good?! But that mustn't be, that I miss every single one without even knowing them. Just because there is war doesn't mean to say that I miss everybody who falls in it. That's what we needed the mechanics for, that nothing should be missing and all parts stay nicely together. Even when they fall. Even when we fall. In a war families are separated. But the mechanics stay together, and so do the parts of the Apaches. Well, of course they're also needed during peace, the mechanics but not so urgently. I'm only saying this because I have no car. What we would really need during war is a whole maintenance team, and we have got one of course, but I miss precisely these three men in it, and one whole woman is also missing. They each had their jobs. Every single one is missing. They shall serve you as a deplorable example of how deplorable we ourselves are. Yes, you too! Tell me: who is not dead? Who is not yet dead? Your leader for instance. Like white dawn with flashes of light, why does it always have to be so hot! And the heavy equipment, too! And then something smashes onto the ground, butting the granite rocks. And then night, at last. But also the night shall go, the night is also too terrifying, the night should please also go. Get thee behind me! At best may it evade us. A secretive trip is absolutely no longer possible in this night as bright as day. The night embraces the whole earth with its glistening shine, it is absurd to make plans for the night to be dark. And why isn't it any longer? It is terrible. It is terrifying. The least we can do is throw back the Barbarians´ song of joy against the island crags from where it came; an answering shout, an antiphony of echoes. As the echo from the Lord of the World. All burning light. Good. Right. OK. Now let us throw it all into the gloomy mists of mourning. There it rests well. There it rests well. Something is missing. I don't know what. But I'm missing something.

Well then, the time for hesitation is over. In other places they hide from the Tornadoes, but here they need them, and they simply destroy them although they would be needed somewhere else where people would perhaps be even more frightened of them. Well, I don't know. So there is this ruler, you know who I mean, and his own and his sons' vast wealth is overturned, many thanks that we can handle this for you now, mankind, the vast wealth in its rash course we overturn. YES SIR. SIR. YES SIR. What happiness this devil of mankind created, nothing did he create, and he stated that he had created the nothing following the advice of God, well, after all it is his god, he's got to work that out with him. We come in the name of our god. We've got our own, that's clear. Manifold thoughts born of this fear fill my uneasy mind: do those concerned, all of them, not know how much all this costs? Hang on a second, let me see, can I find this anywhere? I can find GPS, global positioning system as guidance system for these things, these thingummybob things that swing their hips, hands on their hips, the satellite above it leads him right, and also the TERCOM system at some point leads to the objective, everything, anything, I have already precisely described it, can be made even more efficient and improved, the pinpoints can be placed even more accurately on the shroud although nobody sees it, and all I can see is that GPS is cheaper than TERCOM, that's why the French use it. They are not economical about food, but they are economical about the guidance system. Typical. The programming of TERCOM seems to be dearer, dearer than my beloved or my child in my dream, while elsewhere child after child is taken. They don't know what is good. The best are the children. We take them first. They are worth taking. They're the most valuable that there is, that's why we take them first. I hope they are really worth it! It doesn't say anywhere how much exactly all that costs. Look, here it is. I read it earlier, then I mislaid it, and here it is again. Here is the bill. Nothing is for free. Not even death. It costs you your life. And how much does this child cost, please? Honestly, I think the children have had enough of it, in every war they serve as a target, in every war they are targeted, in every war the camera targets them, no, not always the same children, idiot, always a different child, but a child, the universal child always serves as a target so that we can wring a feeling out of ourselves, for we have an extreme nature, and we are harder than olives when it comes to pressing anything out of us. Donating money, that we do. But feelings can only be pressed out of us by a child, namely by this one, of whom there isn't much left. All that blood. We're shooting a picture. Well, all right. And this one too. And also that one, and also that other one, just like Michael Jackson, the blind seer, no, the ugly singer said about the chandelier and the huge vases when he saw them in the shop. Go right out into the staircase, don't take anything with you, there's no time for that, but do take your child! We've already got one, who we've taken photos of, bleeding all over and torn to pieces, we've got it on our hard disc. We don't need another one. Take yours and go away! After all, you want to keep that which you love. After all, you want to keep that which you loved if you could afford it. But even if you take it with you, the child, we will still get it. This one we don't get, but that one over there we will. Nono, you can't simply leave your child here like your possessions, we find it easier if you take it with you, and certainly you don't want that we have to look for it endlessly, do you? Afterwards, when we want to fetch it, you won't be able to say that you forgot it, the child. Nobody would believe you. You would never forget your possessions, would you? You've got your possessions with you, haven't you? The child is fairly small as I could see with my own eyes, a blind eye turned, blinded, but not by the light. But just forget about it, the child, you can't, I would say, that's why we are taking it. No, we are not taking it, it is too little. No, we are taking it after all. At the moment there isn't another one available. Why is it screaming like that? You can't forget it when it is screaming like that. Perhaps it is good that it is screaming. The British will see to it now that the people are getting water, and they have dug a canal, the British which they want to fill with water provided it arrives, in order to give the people back their dignity. So say the British. The people will be given back their dignity through a canal filled with water, that's the purpose of their being there. I behold this is the one and only purpose why the British are here. But currently: no water for drinking and no food. So sorry. We have no water anymore and we have no food anymore. Instead, we will soon have epidemics, more than enough. That's something for a start. Some haven't even got that. They haven't even got the bare essentials. And it doesn't make any sense to cling to that child. The child won't be able to help you. And neither will you be able to help him. In the case of the child being  spared, you will damage it if you hold on to it so hard. These protectors of yours, yes, you can just let go of the child, we protect also the child, we are telling you we will protect your child, we are doctors, so why then are you still holding on to that child? The night is watching them, with bright eyes for a change, for the rest they are dark. The night can see whether you have taken the child with you and where. Part of this child is missing, but we are taking it off you. That's the way we are. We are different. US, us who have turned up here, we're perhaps dressed differently, we are drawn here, we have turned up, and we have not withdrawn, and we shall not withdraw until especially those persons among you, the flower of youth and valour of your choice nobility, the wealthiest in money, if they haven't shipped it out of the country, the money, until we have caught them of course there won't be any peace in the region in the religion. All of them. We'll get them all.

Having said all that, it is hard to believe what different kinds of dying there are, and I hope I'm  getting this message across. The soothsayer-bird looks back and claims: there are quite a few more than you can possibly imagine! So many bones, so many soft parts, so many softies and wimps and their balls and innumerable ways that they can be destroyed. Powerless the maintenance corps. Powerless everybody before the power. First the flower of youth, then nothing. Cutting and carving their limbs like butchers, unimaginable how many there are. Close to the sea. There, a spirit has got lost in the labyrinth of the future, looking back to see where he came from, which flesh he is made of, and it is only then that he sees, that so much more can be destroyed at this Tupperwar party. And he runs and runs and runs, but he runs back, perhaps he has his face at  the back and he runs in the opposite direction, but he runs and runs and runs. Part of him runs to one place, part of him to another. He doesn't know where, he has lost his face. But it's just an example. I mean I'm not sparing anyone, and certainly not one who has his face on both sides and simultaneously runs backwards and forwards. Such a creature may not continue to live. It is doomed. Hastily like the wind leads to destruction. Where are the remnants of the army? Some of them, at a radiant oil well, no, at a water well, anyway, some of them tortured by thirst. Others, suffering from exhaustion, struggled at last until a city, Basra I think, empty of food, receives them. Just that it doesn't help. And there great numbers died of thirst and hunger, for they suffered both. Thirst and hunger, faithfully wed, faithfully lead, it is always like this. One part dies here, the other part dies there. So many parts to one person, and still there's not much to him. I don't see that there is. No wonder that there isn't much to him when you consider how much we've taken off him. In order for moral values to rule, our rule of course, first of all the immoral values and forces must help. How good that we have them. And then everything is fine, then everything will be fine. People behind him, the one I happened to see, I mean behind this one person there are so many others, God above him, sand underneath him, he is below himself, beside himself, has got nothing but himself, whatever. Something as complicated as a body that looks into the future and at the same time looks into the past, how can that be? It makes this helicopter look like Mickey Mouse in comparison. But we, who have turned up where we shouldn't be, we who have laid hands on others while what we wanted to take into our hands was ourselves, we somehow got hold of even more trivial people. And we thought there couldn't possibly be any more trivial people. We aren't gods. We are just people, but also unusual. We are normal people, that's for sure. But we're unusually well equipped. The usual and at the same time the unusual, like hardly anybody else. And yet we have come to judge and to save. To sit at the right hand of the Almighty. To the left hand there is somebody already, his turn will come. We are ones who lack wealth, that's the usual in the world, almost everybody lacks it, unfortunately, actually, Dick Cheney doesn't lack it. But we miss this man, oh no, there he is with all his many heart defects, yes, despite his defects we still miss him. Halliburton, such a nice company. For them alone he does it all! For rebuilding is more important than destroying, that is a human constant. And when it comes to rebuilding, then Halliburton, and the expensive, agreeable concern is already there, and those idiot British are out of a job, YES SIR. We have a super plan, and we will implement it in no time. Who says that we can't? We shall implement it, you can bet on it. Rocking chair generals say something else, but we say the right thing, bear with us but don't hold on to us, we can't drag you along with us, and I say this knowing that the greatest danger is modesty. The enemy, flung into the sea, are struggling to the island beach, but it does them no good. At some point 600 oil wells were burning in southern Iraq but we got them under our control and extinguished them within no time, and this is only the situation as of today. Tomorrow we shall be in a different place and in a different position. Alas, God, somewhere else it is not running all that smoothly today. Somewhere else they are running out of bombs. Curfew for bombs, this I demand and fast. Well then, you stay with us. I knew you would. And slowly something is moving again at our weather front. YES SIR.

What you will certainly not see here is a green forest, or you would have to plant it first. And having planted it you would have to tediously work out who it belongs to. At least our partner and friend Dick knows who his company belongs to. This is more than you can claim! You are just being blockheaded! He will have more dough than the forest will have trees, and you will have to tediously plant it so that there is one in the first place. It is for the shade which we are lacking badly. What has a house more precious than its living lord, but Mr. Cheney doesn't even have to be in the company personally, this company is making money by itself. After all, a Dick can't be everywhere. It suffices to be where he is. Not a single time does he need to show us in words or deeds where he could be a leader. We can handle continuously remodelled dreams quite well, but we can't handle it at all that the strong man is also the reprobate because he is reprehensible, and anything will end up reprehensible that can be reprobate.

You, in contrast, Private Ryan, who needs to be saved, or whoever you are, whatever your name might be, it's hot here by itself, what you see is sand sand sand. The rich won't send their children here, that's for sure, they get sent somewhere else, that's clear. To the National Guards. In the best case. In the extreme case. To school. In the worst case. We have here the uttermost extreme case, but where now are those children? Where are they so that for instance my son marshalled his army and set forth to waste Iraqi land. And then they really take it as far as to threaten it with destruction! Can you believe it! A spokesman of the company where my son is currently indispensable unfortunately, his dream would have been to become a soldier, but after all he is my personal offspring and therefore he can't go off anywhere, indispensable from the beginning. However, he has just asserted that what he would like best would be to be a soldier and in this company where he is indispensable, otherwise he would become a soldier this very day, they don't make any profits anymore from the war with their company, for they have been making their profits out of an army from a war for so much longer with their company, and by no means only from this war. There have been many wars before this one. Thanks Mr. Cheney for having told us this now. In turn your wife will get a nice new dress, and she will also get one or two grandchildren, I suppose, although I do not know you at all. Profits from many others. But surely also from this war where they do not have to appear before our eyes. They do not have to appear before our eyes, the living and the dead and the profit makers and the profit pedallers and the profit eaters. Well, nothing to shake hands about, this profit. Pocket it, don't lose it. And, as far as I'm concerned, you can smash the face of the enemy, but don't lose this nice high pure profit. It is absolutely unjust to claim that our profits were made out of this war because we have in fact made our profits out of many other wars too. After all, the rebuilding is the most important thing. But before one rebuilds of course one has to outweigh all the sufferings already told and make it difficult for the enemy until he breaks up, until everything breaks up and perishes so that we can command something new, surely this will make sense to you, doesn't it? And, Mr. President, in this light, you will finally have to make a decision with your advisors about what I'm saying here. Iraqis, old and trusted friends, but the age doesn't matter, whose, the Iraqis' or the advisors'?, whether old or not, well, any prudent consideration rests entirely with you, so give your advice to me! Ah well, so it is clearly the advisors´ after all. The poor guys from the maintenance corps, I expressly do not mean them here. I don't mean them. I expressly and exclusively mean the old men. They have sent them here, the young ones, and they hold on to us tightly, they soothe us as if we were women and children. When my son learned about it in his office he wanted to go off immediately and volunteer, but I didn't allow him to do so. Here, too, people are needed, here with us. The rich can send their children away, and they do so, gladly, but many also keep them. Who is not happy once the child has reached the holiday camp, rendered harmless, they will pay any postage, the parents of the rich, they will pay any fee, they earn it all, but they will not send their children here. They keep them. They don't send them away. Who would be so inhuman as to send away their own children? Exactly! They prefer to send them to a place where during their holidays they can do this new management training, very good. Such prudent consideration rests with them. They do not need to further describe the activities of their children. The children go to one university or another. I'm basing this on a detail that promptly gives way. The army pressing to its distant goal, that does not give way. In contrast to me it does not give way. Never. Terrible the slaughtering if you are an animal, and an animal you always become when it comes to slaughtering. You simply cannot avoid that.

Cut. Far south where we now are, but there is only a deep-sea harbour, actually the only one, it must go, let's take it, we must take it, there is no other one, we can't miss it, it's already in the bag because we feel like it in our pride, someone is shooting there, no, it is the pride of a proud man that commands him to shoot, from one side over to the other and back again. But the shots are few and far between. They have no sense of togetherness any more. They shoot only out of arrogance. So where have we put our tame dolphins, now that we need them, they haven't gone for a swim, have they? Ah, here they are. Animals, that's all they are. What we love is the slave yoke of technology whose masters we are, but who are the slaves? We haven't found out yet. The system, sent by others and creating such a fuss, creating so much spirit and eliminating so many and anyway, so this system is in a position to analyse the relevant territorial conditions and to steer the missiles along a winding road like you would never walk if you had lost your map while you are continuing to mentally scrutinise your sexuality because the walking itself is so boring, so, well, this path of the missile, never mind, it is not marked on any map, and it doesn't need to be, it is up in the air in the air in the air. Right then. The missile skilfully follows its path, I mean it is skilful in any case even though it was us who skilfully sent it, and so it travels it travels with utmost precision and at supersonic speed, and it does so in order for you to be able to follow it, and it travels over more then 1600 kilometres reaching its target where it was lead, not being held by any mother's hand, right up to a mother's hand, and tears the child from her arm and the laundry from her basket and the dog from its lead and the garden from the gnomes and the fruit from the tree and the vegetables from their plot, and all is faithfully lead to its target, its target. Conventionally fitted out, they can transport 50 to 200 kilometres, er, I mean kilogrammes of explosive. And all that, all that money, all that effort in order to hit exactly you exactly you! Nobody would take so much upon themselves in order to hit you. Only us only us. What an effort, incredible, they could have got you anywhere. In the market square, so they have now shot that to pieces too, but never mind. The cruising bringer of justice is worth 600,000 dollaros, reaching a top velocity of 880 kilometres per hour, well, that isn't too much, now you tell me how the difference in figures comes about! All these different data coming to me, no wonder if the cruise missiles don't make it, I said: supersonic speed, because the sound is more, but the light is much more still, more than you can comprehend, the quarks are also somehow faster aren't they?, and it is all fired from ships or submarines who have come especially to do this now for you. Aren't you proud? Aren't you proud to get so much attention from the world? In front of all the world? Not many who succeed. Certainly not me. And if my little feet were equipped with wheels from birth, I mean if wheels had grown as part of me and I were a winged messenger of doom rather than a mere conveyor of bad news for UPS, I would not succeed, and I would not be so fast because speed is relative, isn't it, and this speed suffices in any case, no matter what for. Cruise missiles can be deployed everywhere, suffice to say Iraq, Bosnia, Afghanistan and Kosovo or God knows where. I do not want to stumble over details now at the last moment, but then there are no obstacles in the desert anyway. The Battle of Basra has just begun, I forgot to look at my watch. And how far have these thorough reports taken me? Not far. I'm modest. My aim is the downfall of the government and a new order of everyone who wishes to be newly ordered. Oh dear. At this point my wardrobe has something to say who usually never says anything, shall the UN now be part of this new order or not? I think the Americans say that they don't want that. Why should they let it all out of their hands, after all they are personalities of a high standing, every single one of them. While the average family here will run out of provisions in four to six weeks or so. They themselves can't go. I mean, the provisions will go, if slowly, while the families remain. The provisions go. We stay. Nothing will happen to them, the provisions.

If all are equal there is less pride for the individual, but it will be a feast when the people hold fast to their pride to switch off feeling. It must be. It must be. One, in one impetuous bound, drives this myriad flock, this prodigy of people by land, no, two are driving their peoples, no, three are driving their peoples, it doesn't matter how many, they each drive their own people in front of them like an evil goose girl. From the darkness of his glance glares a gory dragons eye, blood on their soles, blood in their eyes, blood on their trousers, see ten thousand missiles fly, see his thousand tanks advance, each people chasing ahead, after the Führer, each one of them after their Führer, hopefully they won't confuse them, each to their own Führer, who has a deep sympathy for each one amongst his people, and even more so if that one is dead, then he returns in a pillow case, a cushion cover, convinced of what he did he was not, poor boy, but his Führer says: I have sympathy for you, you are responsible to me for this tank and this aeroplane, after all you're a mechanic, poor boy, and therefore you may now attend your own funeral in person. Your helmet is dangling lonely from a branch, and your comrades are crying timidly, and the whole sea is one din of shrieks and dying groans once they are close enough to the shore. Mostly not. Desert. The sandstorm has lain down, the sight has improved. They are shooting at us! They are really shooting at us! Look me in the eyes so that you shall be reminded of your nationality and can behave American or British or anything with each gesture, there is nothing else for you. If you can't behave the way you want, then don't be at all! We give all we've got, and you don't want to give in the slightest. Let go! Loosen up! Trust in us! Only those countries will be acknowledged by our Coalition of the Willing who are willing, and two willing are a coalition. Three would be one country too many. Fine. And Australia. But the first  to be acknowledged as a coalition are the USA and the British. They stick together. The others are a long way behind. Did you know that disaster may strike with all its might and we must confront this with a mighty army. The other children we plough under in the sand. But you may go to your own funeral because you have followed our efforts to advance into the country. Let's go! Did you say that the god of war is a mighty warrior? He is strong, and how. So we can't help having a rural war and an urban war. They differ according to where they take place. Where people, like notes played on a pipe that they have just learned, float away over and beyond, like a wailing wind. Like a desert wind. They sound and sing into the void, they sing themselves away, they breathe their last, in any case. And the cities' scum, the poor who have no basement because they are already the lowest of the low, and the cities' scum, I say, shall be overthrown and that's it. Well, perhaps one more surge, as if the sea's broad channels where whipped white by the storm-wind, howling shrill, a sea we have already, but it doesn't count, only this harbour, there's only one anyway, what's it called again, what is it called, I rush to the television set in order to find out what the harbour is called, where the people squat in the scum of their hovels, looking who is coming, in the loutish teenage years of man, half children, but they know why they are here, still they know in which flimsy den of the peoples they have ended up. And this is what they are destroying now. And that is what they will then once more fetch from the nothing from which they first came, so they already know. The nothing. The nothing. You Rose of Stamboul, you too have broken away, you slut! How dare you break away from us! You haven't come to bloom like the free opinion that we have to struggle with! So how can you expect any joy to come up?

Right then, so much for the general public in order to produce some culture that we can really do with even here: in history never look for any necessity regarding the means and purpose, that really would be taking it too far! The rule is the unreasonableness of coincidence, believe me. Now it's their turn, tomorrow somebody else's. Theirs. Whose ever. Anybody's turn in the end. Anybody's. Shore after shore will fill up with people, and we will empty them again. Here they come, how shall we deal with them all? The large sum of these events already represents the real (estate) desires of the people who have treated themselves to a lake to swim in or at least a biotope, a sewage plant with a soap separator, a hideaway of course and a vegetable garden where you can enter numb and blind but suddenly there is a leaf that runs its way along the water like a tank in the desert, only that it is in the water, but something is stopping it, no, not the tank, not us, the leaf, it is only the leaf that is stopped dead in the water. By an eddy. There it moves again. Do you really think that these persons arriving have the sense to really carry through their agenda?


A marble slab showing the musicians and attendants of Ashurbanipal

Could you be so kind as to explain this picture to me in detail? I see that this woman is pushed back but I can't see why. I see that these seven women together with their children, I don't know how many of which kind, have just been shot dead in that van. Some speak of ten. But I can't see how. They didn't stop when they were told to. They had not clad themselves in bronze. That is obvious. They had wrapped themselves up in something, but it was not bronze. If it had been, all that couldn't have hit them so deeply. At least one has to harden internally when one can't do so externally.

Probably she is after water or food, the woman,  but she does this rather without obeying any rules, at least I think so. She has two children. If I had two children, I would establish rules and I would stick to them myself, this is good for self-discipline. I can see from her facial expression that the pitiable wretch no more knows any rules. She casts her gaze on the army, but that does not still her hunger. She throws a scarf over her face, we all throw bags made from sackcloth over the heads of these prisoners, why, what for, only for them to look stupid? That can't be the only reason. Wasn't it enough to overthrow them all? No, this was not enough. She certainly can't even read, the woman, I think to myself secretly, no, I think it aloud. Explain the picture? Really? Of course pictures don't determine anything by themselves, but they are rather important, so what is it you want explained? This is as if a child is coming for a job interview. The many lovely things made from plastic that we've got! The duck in the blow-up pool, the swimming swan in the bath. No, it is not a toy, do not touch! It is a toy bomb, and that over there, yes, you may touch that, it is a tame dolphin which is now looking for mines. I am not saying that it is misinterpreting the face you have put on, it has been trained to find such mines, but it mustn't touch them. You too must not touch this toy. Or we'll have the hell bombed out of us. The poor smart animal will then also be dead, but it cannot simply be replaced by any man to do this job, if it could we would take him. We have many more men than trained dolphins, we also have trained dogs to sniff out explosives, yes, I had totally forgotten about those, and we have trained the men, too, just that it didn't take quite as long, man is not as stubborn as a dolphin, and dolphins are not fish but mammals, I think, and dogs certainly are mammals. And men don't need to eat straight afterwards. They can wait. So they have delivered this fish or whatever it is to us, and it was so much more expensive than a man. We had the dolphin come especially from San Diego so that it would help us, and you can watch it while it does. And while you are watching nature deeply moved, nature is co-operating with us. If we co-operate with nature, nature co-operates with us. It takes the food from the cities, and it is the nature of man to then die of thirst and hunger. In so far she co-operates with us, meets us half way. Not that this is desirable always or at any point in time. For she can also meet us with a sandstorm and create a confused picture in our mind because it is not easy to see who is who. Friend or foe? At times the friend disguises as the enemy and the enemy as friend, not really very good taste this disguise, if you ask me. It flares up, it was woven, it flares up even louder, the disguise, then it burns, people wail loud, and behind their disguise for a second the old tapestry becomes visible: how horrible! How horrible! We do not ever want to see this pattern again, and we don't need to, it is burning after all, and this really is the only thing one can do with it, and then we are without protection, but this is still better than this truly awful tapestry pattern. Luckily, a sandstorm prevails, and we must, no, we simply can't take a closer look. Now it prevails, now it does not. Now this ruler prevails, then another. The man used to be quite capable but now he is incapable. This cannot be said of the tapestry. Nobody can put up with this pattern for any length of time. It strikes us, it strikes us unpleasantly. We behold it in our eyes, but it is no beam. It is what it is: a disguise, and now it is gone anyway.

Do you think nature is meeting you half way by striking you as a sandstorm? Do you think that the nature of these men will meet you half way and surrender? Do you believe that they have an urge to breathe their last while the sandstorm is still raging? Then nobody hears how they die! The sun's rays shine out like piercing flames, melting in mid-stream the life span of man, firing it in the embers and finish game over.

Yes. Nature is siding with the enemy as a sandstorm. This only hurts us. Not to speak of our flight instruments! They are not used to that. The sand flees the soil and where is it heading for? It is heading for our engines where it really has no business to be! Pilots are coming, fleeing, only a few, perhaps drowned in the Tigris, anyway, the Babylonian city mourns their young men lost who have all rushed to the river and are shooting in the river with their guns, and the old ones do alike. They shoot into the water because they have nothing better to do. They always shoot. Perhaps they will hit somebody? No, they don't hit anybody. The main thing is that they are shooting. These pilots can stay under water for a long time but probably they are not even there. I don't see any patch of oil spreading. This is the truth. I strike it down like a god who I am certainly not. On this water there isn't even a trace of oil, even I can see that.

Perhaps we will be able to witness the real storm in the next few days, I am trying, I am trying hard. I'm doing it. I cannot write any faster. But I can do it faster than you in any case. Shall I describe the storm before it happens? I could try, talented demon that I am, to jump on the facts all too hard, turning them round so that they face backwards, but those who are still looking into the future, I fetch them here. I wring their necks, the facts´. First of all a question: in your opinion, is this religion worth fighting for so much? Now that it is so important to me to speak the dolphin is coming once more, distracting me, something that animals find easy to do with me even when I'm just about to break the bonds of love and morality with one single blow. Whatever it is I want, the animals don't care. Just ask my dog! It has just had a fish, this fish or whatever it is. Look, in this small pool we keep it for later, until we need it again. A lot is needed apart from food and water, and you need to use your reason, that is much less, but when you use it you will see how little is needed and how many results you can achieve with it. It suffices to just briefly think about all that conditions so that you can present your conditions here. I haven't actually left much space for you, mostly I speak myself. I always speak myself. Here I speak. You go and speak somewhere else! I can always rely on the restlessness of your feelings, and this is exactly where I'm flattering you now. Believe me! Answer me! What for instance does this religion demand and which conditions does it make? And that one there? Does it want something too? I want to know. Here you have the model of a place of worship, a little bit small but models are like this.  Please do not slander any Christians here, nor any Jews or Muslims, nor any single American! And don't betray any other man or any other god! Or you will get to know me and these Americans! We always come together. We are one American. Currently perhaps not, but principally yes. Right, in principle this is good because it is always good to grow to like foreign people and cultures as soon as possible. Better not to get in the way of this American, for then he would tar you with the same brush, and you simply would not deserve it! This I know already. I can see that. Anyway. He alone will decide. The people are all fighting, and they like it!, when the wounds in their sides inflicted on them by life contract and they can no longer put their hands into them so that they might learn the real truth and have themselves betrayed. But unfortunately his number is now showing on the display, who is it, oh yes, a Jew, as if that weren't enough! Poor him!, so now he can't have himself betrayed because I can see his number here. Let's persecute him in any case. First persecute him, then ask him questions who he believes in, and then this will have been his last sin. He is used to being persecuted. Let's start with him. What is the truth? Please tell me, pleaseplease, do tell me! I think it all starts with the Jews, they never give anybody any peace, my neighbours say so too, and they also never give anybody any peace on either side, they agree about that, but about nothing else, but here they do, and then it gets submerged once more. It always hits them, the Jews. They have been through it so many times, they hardly notice any longer when something is happening to them. They are really a very old people. Right, the Germans have once more found themselves in the wrong climate and in the wrong light, and this is what we are holding against them, but why should they now expressly pay tribute to the Babylonians? No, they haven't got any time for that. And rightly so. Didn't you also wish to contribute to our discussion? On the solidarity of the Jewish people which is quite incredible, no wonder if you consider how few of them there are left, no wonder they stick together, everybody will understand that. Their basic idea is that as far as they are concerned, no thought was given to distribution according to the merit of the individual.  Thus thinks the thinker under his brow and switches on his force of will. New Testament: caution! Don't get morally uptight! The Jews, in contrast, know no personal retaliation after death. It all happens now, or one is dead already. And once we're dead, nothing happens anymore. Good thinking. Seems very convincing to me. The main motivation of a martyr is his pure love for the law. But the martyrs are the others, aren't they? People who blow themselves up trying to take with them as many as possible? Innocent people? Principally they should only take innocent people with them because such horrible things happen to the guilty after death that we should try to spare them. Despite getting a lift they are perhaps not content with what they see there. One can't rely on the dead. On death yes, on the dead never. Nor on those who have been murdered. It is terrible. The respective god strikes down his most faithful followers onto the grille, squashing them like lice, trampling them to death. And all that just because this time he didn't win! The only difference being: my god is right. My god is a born-again Christian and he can be born again and again, that is the nice thing about him as a Christian. And better still, he can use the logic of the greatest non-believers and the morals of the greatest non-believers in order to prove that only he is right and that only he creates the law and can present things as irrefutable and anyway. He can do anything. He can do anything, my god.

Scene from the Abu-Ghraib prison, Baghdad (2003/2004)

Well then, as far as I'm concerned, everybody can believe what they want. I haven't even got a concept of person or individual, so how then can I engage in what somebody believes or not? For example, Jesus and his disciples were one because they loved each other so dearly as a mother deer loves her kid. Just like we love our country. Everybody loves themselves and loves their country. And then he must eat and drink and make love and have fun, but let's leave that aside for the time being. One should be able to slander Jews when one is totally convinced of Jesus don't you think? Yes, one should do so, and in fact this has been done very often, practically all the time. It has proved itself. However, if you slander Allah, you will see what will happen to you. There will come a time when you wish that you had never been born. And the one tearing you to pieces will hardly be the one to give you an interpretation, hardly at all. He will simply tear you to pieces in the air! Like a scrap of paper! And it is nothing to him! So you want to try and approach this foreign god, praying or in whichever way, but he will have you smashed to smithereens by his most faithful follower, his greatest fan! Does he know this at all, this god? Does he actually agree? No idea. So you had better not do that: betray Allah. Go and betray another god, but not this one! And please, don't betray mine either. Any other one, but not Allah and not mine. Neither of them would do you any good in the long run, believe me. Even though you might not know him at all, no matter which god, do not betray him, I expressly warn you. Or you will need very good connections if you want to get out of it again. Now we are out of it. At last. Thank god. Now we are out again. I wouldn't have believed that it would work. Others are not. Out. We've got out of it. OK, your execution has herewith failed once more. I herewith declare your execution failed. More tomorrow. We are still closer to the beginning than to the end. This is where we know more than God. He is the beginning and the end, but he doesn't know himself. So now another 100,000 men are coming. I do not know them either. However, they know each other and know that they can rely on each other. And each of them has two claws, with which they tear into the people of Babylon, and God knows they have deserved it. But God does not know it. He knows everything. He does not know that. He knows everything. He does not know that. I swear, he himself told me that he did not know that. He has complained that nobody tells him anything. He does know how the Tomahawks work and he will soon know how the intelligent bombs work, he just hasn't revealed it to me yet, but he doesn't currently know what our plans are. He knows everything. But he doesn't know what plan we've got. He knows what we have done to him. But what we are planning to do in the future he currently does not know. On 1st April 2003 he does not know yet.

Scene from the Abu-Ghraib prison, Baghdad (2003/2004)

From "The New Yorker"
Scene from the Abu-Ghraib prison, Baghdad (2003/2004)

 

GOD, WHICHEVER ONE APPEARS IN A CLOUD AND FINALLY SPEAKS THE TRUTH THAT WE HAVE BEEN MISSING

THAT'S ALL WE NEEDED!

Right. We have now got the airport in our possession, I can see very well from up here and I can only confirm this. I've switched off the electricity. I do not know whether we have just  dropped a graphite bomb or whether they've switched it off themselves, the rushing current, the thundering friend, but hang on, I can find out any time, I only have to get informed. Just a moment. I have to ask first. I as God do not consider it a problem whether we are content with ourselves or not but rather if we are or ever will be content with anything. This is the question. I do not want to get close to any ethos or philosophy. I would rather make them myself. I tear up the picture book of time, and they all look at us doe eyed, the fruit vendor, the farmer with his shotgun, the toy people whose ruler played games with it for so long, it wouldn't recognise itself anymore. All these big watery Bambi eyes looking at me. All these swift animal legs staggering along the thorny way of history with their inexperienced infant legs. The very old, the babies, the small children, the pregnant women. All one. One toy land is made into another toy land, a game of marbles. But I don't understand their mumbles as much as I try, sorry. And this is why I can't do anything about it. I don't see what it is they want, all I know is that it is senseless. I don't understand it and I would like to avoid saying more about it. Even I fail to understand. Bambi is always the poor, the small, the dear, the pestered. The one that has put itself in danger and perishes in it. People as toys pass from one hand to another. That which the one child has just thrown away the other can still do with. They are lead and looked after, the children, and they in their turn keep an eye on their toys so that nobody takes them away from them. Poor children. Poor people. So they have, as an encouragement, as a way of building trust, in an obligation to protect their own people cast all these cluster bombs. I personally perceive their appearance as tactless, but I do understand why they did it. They killed many, fruit vendors, newsagents, shepherds, sheltered people, unsheltered people, whole families, wholly or not, anyway, they had a right to do so, they did so in order to protect their own troops and to keep their losses as low as possible. And as for the cluster bombs which don't explode straight away, the duds can, provided they are clever enough, stay on the soil for years and decades before suddenly exploding, longer than any man would stay put, and he would be a rather thick dud if he managed to stay in one and the same spot for so long. In the long run it would in fact be rather boring to lie so still. On the other hand, we certainly don't want people to explode. People shall not become bombs. We don't really wish for that. People shall not be bombs. This is not on their agenda. This is not nice of them. We will make this into a lovely country, we will awaken its essence at some point and are waiting patiently for it to rise again. Just like I've pictured it. It has been lying on the ground for so long, the people. We want to once more see innocence shining from the eyes of the country. This is what we want to achieve. I had never planned that they should cast themselves as bombs.

Perhaps we will not have to conquer this city, we might only have to isolate it, but any other transgression, sorry, progression is also possible. Let's progress differently. No, let us not progress differently. There has been a power cut, and I don't  want any little stars twinkling in the sky like diamonds. Dark. Black. Dark. Blackness. I'll see to that, don't worry. The graphite dust can do that too, but I can do it better. Even bombs are often more intelligent than a man. I need to jog my memory for my eternal second coming, so that I should know in which form and shape I shall appear.

These bombs are so smart, you simply can't imagine. I wanted to tell you about these, didn't I. I'm really envious of them. It is all the same in which form I return as God. However, my next coming should definitely leave a deeper impression than my first, and that wasn't bad at all. I'm only a human after all who has to make this up, I have become only flesh, no, I am still God. Sometimes I have my doubts but my father has just passed me a note which reads that I am also God. Not only him. In any case I'm trying straight away, that is as soon as I've learned that I am God, naturally, to make myself useful in the spirit of Darwinist biology and thus to prove myself fit in my struggle with others. Who could be fitter than one who is both human and God at the same time? The people shall all become like me, but they're not getting there. Whatever, the real progress to me seems to be the feeling of more, the feeling of getting stronger let alone the benefit for fighting. They have found this out entirely by themselves. So here we have for instance the intellectual model GBU-28 bomb, bunker buster, total weight 2500 kg of which 2200 kg warhead and 300 kg of high explosive  (Tritonal). Measurements: length 3.88m, diameter 37 cm. Delivery method: method laser, I'm only saying this now so that you will not sell anybody a method laser who doesn't truly deserve it! Penetration depth, dependant on the solidity of course, and these walls are very solid, I can whisper this to you, I have tried them out, after all it was me who created them: up to 30m! Not bad, is it? Price: $145,600 with a minimum order of 125. Suitable platforms: F-15E and F-111F fighters. I am speaking to you as your Lord. Listen to me! With this bunker-busting bomb I am taking the liberty of shelling the self-appointed lord of this people like a nut. I have an appointment decree from my father. That gentleman hasn't got one. The lord of the world himself will hold this ruler responsible. Who else would be able to do that? Only me. He is now called to account, I have already drawn my slide rule and am now calculating all his terrible crimes and misdemeanours before him. I am drawing a line under them, adding them all up, proving his reckoning wrong, adding up all the innocent lies that he used to tell the world, I'm thwarting it, his quasi divine set-up whose components are only known to him, and we will soon get to know them too when I will have dictated it all to the media who for the time being are still sleepwalking. The lord is ruling out the ruler. And this end justifies all means. And then I will make an amusement park out of it, and everybody will be happy in it, this I promise, who else could promise that? I'm putting an end to something that would not have lasted and I'm bringing about something else that will not last. All will be happy, especially the poor, the sick, the wounded and the killed will be happy. At the moment they are not. But when we are finished they will all be happy. But in their happiness will be the beginning of their unhappiness, because all this is for nothing for nothing for nothing. Promise. It is all for a gorgeous toyland with old farmers, soldiers, children, mothers, old people, animals, machines, but it is for nothing.


GBU-28

Look, I specifically developed the GBU-28 to be able to hit the Iraqi command centres hidden deep  under the earth. It would be rather daft to miss them, wouldn't it. I do not do that on principle. Like this the ruler is held responsible in the simplest possible way or at best gets eliminated straight away. In fact, this would be the best for all. Soon we will have got him. Dead or alive. I would actually have to turn inside out myself if I didn't achieve this aim. I am the lord bringing this guy before his court. I am this court. I judge. I am the beginning and the end. I am the judgement. So for a short while I'll be the arse of man, then I would have to be his mouthpiece and blow him one at the same time, so what. Tricky act, I know. I'll invite the ruler of this country to appear before my court, then I will serve him his judgement served boiling hot but nicely arranged, and then I'll make his country more beautiful. This is where a dangerous homesickness for the dark night of the soul grabs you and this is how I'm acting it out: as I've said before, now let me explain it, this GBU-28 is a conventional weapon, 2.5 t in weight and laser guided. Those who operate it are still quite conventional men, aren't they. I've made them too, this is how I know. It has a penetrator weighing 2.2 t. Fine. This is how it was intended by me because this man will never be my friend. I suck and suck his dick but nothing is coming out that I could keep swallowing, bugger that. Perhaps nothing is bound to come out and, quite on the contrary, perhaps something should thrust. These bombs are really modified canon barrels and I keep sucking them, oh dear, it's getting hotter, it's getting harder, something as hard as this you've never had in your mouth, guys, filled with 300 kg of highly explosive Tritonal. Yes, I filled this hard, sweet muzzle with the matching GBU-27 LGB kit, that is a laser- guided retrofit set, yes, quite right, you can get it as a retrofit set, in case you haven't got a hard on long enough, then you must retrofit, then you must retrofit these dumb bombs so that they become smarter. The GBU-28 is released within the destination tunnel and finds its discharge point with the help of the reflection of a laser beam directed at the target. For this purpose the GBU-28 has four moveable fins at the rear, well our dolphins would be really envious if they could see them, so fins with whose help they can steer their path into the destination tunnel within certain limits of course which also we come up against. Now it's coming! At last it's coming, my mouth was becoming tired from scooping, my scoop to the mouth almost lame half way. Behold, I speak a bubble of soap and air, but still quite hard: the method laser can be pointed from a second aeroplane or from the ground. Or I can guide it myself if I want. The path is the goal, no, the goal is the path. Nothing can go wrong, for these method lasers are extremely precise once they have a target. Here, the picture, it appears and shines brightly, we've got it there in the box, we've got it up here, I have created all this. Sein und Schein, blending true and false. Look! All this doesn't make any being as such, it doesn't make for any being at all, yet it is equal to being. To be and not to be fall on each other and become one. It has ended in a draw between real and unreal. Both equally strong. Just as well. There isn't really a criterion for reality, I say. Everything is true which you see, but it is not right. Being is always only a degree of appearance, and it appears on the  television set, which has also been created by me. It is a handy extra to all these bombs. Wasn't that nice of me? So at least you can follow the bombs, but you won't catch up with them. You do not need to say thank you. Real and unreal, they are both one, I have made this too by inventing television, though that was quite a while ago, but since then, let's be honest, it has been like this: appearance and being does not become being. Sometimes also the appearance of not-being becomes being. Reality is only a degree of appearance, namely measured against the size of the share that we attribute to the virtual. Game over. I have given my whole share to the appearance. Now I'm content. I have created so many things. I used to give away things for free, too many things, now I'm selling them. I think I can be content with myself. Where there is little, there is also little appearance. The fewer things, the less they can appear. Right, is there at least a little annihilation in the intellectual world? No, there isn't a little annihilation in the intellectual world. I must disappoint you there. I mean the annihilation that we have achieved in the intellectual world is not exactly little. Well, that is something for a start, to know the next Safeways. Get something in your sights, pull the trigger, that's it that's it that's it. But there must be something that remains. But what? I'm still brooding over it. One must imprint the character of being onto the becoming right from the beginning, then it will work. By then this will have become our power. Because we wanted it. Somebody must want it, there it is lying on the ground, everybody stepping on it, it has become all dirty, somebody must want it, somebody must take it, and then he has got it. Somebody has taken it for himself. Bravo. Applause. Because he wanted it he was the one to take it. Just how I imagined it with my will.  He can still claim that I told him that he should take it for himself, the power. That always works. Not that anybody asks me. But I say it all the same. He shall take it, somebody must do so after all. There it lies, the power, and those boots over there have hopped over it for pure curiosity as to how it will go on, and those ones there too, sometimes stepping on it, as it goes, have been watching television I mean they have been watching something in the distance. Poor power. It makes the poor poorer and the rich richer. This is its peculiarity, one of many particularities. Everything comes round again and again, especially war. But that there are wars over and over again is the extreme approximation of this world of becoming to the world of being. Everything IS because everything is broken. Because we said so and that's it. That's it. That's it. That's it. We find ourselves on the summit of observation, looking around us, seeing that what is, is appearance, as soon as it has at last become something, as soon as it has at last become nothing, nothing yet again, and we turn away and we look into ourselves and out from ourselves. We know nothing, we experience nothing, we err, we start all over again, we deceive ourselves, we deceive others, and once deceived we are disappointed that we haven't won yet. But soon we will have won. Soon we will draw another lot, this is our lot, somebody is bound to help us, it won't be me, not yet, but soon, but soon. That's it. That's it. That's it. He's shot his load at last. I thought he would never come. Right. Now that's settled too.


Scene from the Abu-Ghraib prison, Baghdad

 

 

 

 

Pictures of ancient carvings taken from: http://iraqipages.com/iraq_mesopotamia/ancient.htm
Game cover taken from: http://www.gameeire.com

2.4.2003 (updated on 5.4.2004)

 

 

Copyright © 2004 Elfriede Jelinek

Translation into English © 2004 by Angelika Peaston-Startinig/Jennie Wright
Version of 21st June 2004

 

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